When ye pray, say
Sermonic hints on the Lord’s Prayer
1.
Not a prescription of words. A great merit in prayer is that it most naturally expresses the feeling of him who offers it. A child’s prattle is more acceptable to a parent than stately utterances put into his mouth. In Raphael’s cartoon the adoring disciples surround the risen Lord in various attitudes, one kneeling, one with clasped hands, one with open palms, one with bowed head, and one shows excited reverence by the fact that he is allowing his robe to trail in the dirt; the great artist having seen that the highest expression of religious emotion must be the natural outcome of the soul, and bear the mark of the worshipper’s individuality. Horace Bushnell used to go to sleep, as he said, talking with God. Liturgies are useful to stimulate spirituality; but should be used to suggest, never to limit, religious thought.
2. The manner of the prayer is in general--
(1) Of utmost simplicity. No elaboration.
(2) Calmness. No oh’s! only quiet confidence and consecration.
3. Analyzing more particularly the sentiments of the prayer, we observe that the model prayer gives a portraiture of a model man.
(1) Filial faith. “Our Father.”
(2) Reverence. “Hallowed,” &c.
(3) Loyalty. “Thy kingdom come.”
(4) A conformed spirit. “Thy will be done.”
(5) Recognition of Providence. “Give us … daily bread.”
(6) Dependence upon grace. “Forgive us our debts.”
(7) Sincere charity. “For we forgive.”
(8) Dependence upon the Holy Spirit. “Lead us not,” etc. (J. M. Ludlow, D. D.)
The Lord’s Prayer like the Decalogue
The Lord’s Prayer, like the Decalogue, falls in two: two tables of law, two leaves of petition. The first table of the law concerns our duties to God; the first leaf of the prayer concerns the glory of God. The second table respects our duties to man; the second leaf respects the needs of man. The first table contains the laws that are the hardest to obey sincerely; the first leaf, the petitions that are the hardest to pray sincerely. Obeying the laws of the first table is what qualifies us to obey those of the second. Praying the petitions of the first leaf is what qualifies us to pray those of the second. Yet we never suppose that the prayer was composed with any reference to the Decalogue. All resemblance ceases to be interesting as soon as it is felt to be imitation. Resemblance by imitation betrays the mechanic; resemblance without imitation argues the artist, the creator. The earth did not become spherical to imitate the sun, nor do the leaves on one branch become serrate to imitate each other. Those leaves unfold up into an outward likeness because they unfolded out of an inward likeness. The Decalogue was not made, it unfolded. The prayer was not made, it unfolded; it was not built, it grew. And because Decalogue and prayer both are unfolded from out the one mind of God, leaves upon one branch, blossoms upon one stem, they show the same hues and take the same orderly arrangement. (C. H.Parkhurst, D. D.)
The Lord’s Prayer indicates the right way of looking at things
There is a fearful tendency in us all, which has infused itself most mischievously into our theology, to look first at our necessity or misery, only afterwards at our relation to God, and at His nature. The last are made dependent upon the former. We are conscious of a derangement in our condition; simply in reference to this derangement do we contemplate Him who we hope may reform it. We have just been tracing this process in heathenism. A mischief is felt; if there is a mischief there must be a deliverer. Undoubtedly the conscience bears this witness, and it is a right one. But the qualities of the deliverer are determined by the character or locality of that which is to be redressed, or by the habits of those who are suffering from it. From this heathenish habit of mind the Lord’s Prayer is the great preserver. Say first, “Our Father.” This relation is fixed, established, certain. It existed in Christ before all worlds, it was manifested when He came in the flesh. He is ascended on high, that we may claim it. Let us be certain that we ground all our thoughts upon these opening words; till we know them well by heart, do not let us listen to the rest. Let us go on carefully, step by step, to the Name, the Kingdom, the Will, assuring ourselves of our footing, confident that we are in a region of clear unmixed goodness; of goodness which is to be hallowed by us; which has come and shall come to us, and in us; which Is to be done on earth, not merely in heaven. Then we are in a condition to make these petitions, which we are ordinarily in such haste to utter, and which He, in whom all wisdom dwells, commands us to defer. Last of all comes this “Deliver us from evil.” When we are able to look upon evil, not as the regular normal state of the universe, but as absolutely at variance with the character of its Author, with His constitution of it, with the Spirit which He has given to us, then we can pray, attaching some real significance to the language, deliver us from it. Then we shall understand why men looked with faith to the aid of their fellow-men; to princes, and chieftains, and lawgivers, and sages. They were sent into the world for this end, upon this mission. They were meant to act as deliverers. They were to be witnesses of a real righteous order, and to resist all transgressors of it. We can understand why strong men felt that they had better act for themselves, than depend upon foreign help. For the Father of all put their strength into them, that they might wield it as His servants in His work; it was His Spirit who made them conscious of their strength, and of that purpose for which they were to use it. We can see why these hopes were so continually disappointed though they had so right a foundation; why they were driven to think of higher aid, of invisible champions, because those upon the earth proved feeble, or deserted the cause, and served themselves. It is true that the hosts of heaven are obeying that power which the hosts of earth are commanded to obey; that they are doing His service by succouring those who are toiling below; it is true, because He who rules all is not a destiny, but a loving will; not an abstraction, but a person; not a mere sovereign, but a Father. All creation is ordered upon this law of mutual dependence and charity; but it is only in the knowledge and worship of the Highest, that we can apprehend the places and tasks of the lower; when He is hidden, these are forgotten; society becomes incoherent; nothing understands itself; everything is inverted; the deliverer is one with the tyrant; evil and good run into each other; we invoke Satan to cast out Satan. See, then, what a restorative, regenerative power lies in this prayer! (F. D. Maurice, M. A.)
Introductory remarks
1. The first thing to be noted is the brevity of this prayer. In most religions the efficacy of prayer has been supposed to depend on its length. The notion is that the gods will do nothing for men unless they are teased. This prayer rebukes and corrects that idea.
2. How was this prayer to be used?
(1) Was it to be used exclusively? Clearly not, since in the Acts we have the record of several prayers which did not follow this form, and yet were answered abundantly.
(2) Ought we always, when we pray, to use these words--to include this prayer in all our supplications? No; I do not think our Lord means to require that. We shall often wish to pray in these words; but He means that our desires shall be free to utter themselves in their own way. The prayer is a model, in its simplicity, brevity, directness, but not a prescribed form; a staff, not a fetter, for the praying soul. (Washington, Gladden, D. D.)
The peculiar worth of the Lord’s Prayer
Not so much in particular expressions, as rather in the tenor and spirit, in the arrangement and climax of the whole, lies its peculiar worth, and those who can assert of the “Pater Noster” that it is only a joining together of Rabbinic expressions, might assure us with the same right that from a suitable number of single arms, legs, and members, one could compose an animated human body. We honour much more the wisdom of the Saviour in this, that He would teach His disciples no chords which would have been entirely strange to their unpractised lips, and in vain do we seek here for the traces of a limited Judaistic spirit. So brief is it, that it does not even weary the simplest spirit, and yet so perfect that nothing is therein wholly forgotten: so simple in words that even a child comprehends it, and yet so rich in matter that the principal truths and promises and duties are here presupposed, confirmed, or impressed, so that Tertullian rightly named it “breviarium totius evangelii.” How often soever it may have been misused, especially where it has been turned into a spiritless formula of prayer, while men have forgotten that it only expresses the lofty fundamental ideas which must prevail in the exercise of prayer, it remains yet continually a gold-mine for Christian faith, a standard for Christian prayer, a prop for Christian hope. (Van Oosterzee.)
The Lord’s Prayer
Edwin Booth, the celebrated tragedian, was a man who threw into his impersonations an amount of heart and soul which his originals could scarcely have equalled. He did Richard III. to the life, and more. He had made human passions, emotions, and experiences his life’s study. He could not only act, but feel rage, love, despair, hate, ambition, fury, hope, and revenge with a depth and force that amazed his auditors. He transmuted himself into the hero of his impersonation, and he could breathe a power into other men’s words which perhaps never was surpassed. And what is rather remarkable, when he was inclined to give illustrations of this faculty to private circles of friends, he nearly always selected some passages from Job, David, or Isaiah, or other holy men of old. When an inquiring young professor of Harvard University went to him by night to ask a little advice or instruction in qualifying himself for an orator, the veteran tragedian opened the Bible and read a few verses from Isaiah in a way that made the Cambridge scholar tremble with awe, as if the prophet had risen from the dead and was uttering his sublime visions in his ears. He was then residing in Baltimore, and a pious, urbane old gentleman of the city, hearing of his wonderful power of elocution, one day invited him to dinner, although strongly deprecating the stage. A large company sat down to the table, and on returning to the drawing-room, they requested Booth, as a special favour to them all, to repeat the Lord’s Prayer. He signified his willingness to gratify them, and all eyes were fixed upon him. He slowly and reverentially arose from his chair, trembling with the burden of two great conceptions. He had to realize the character, attributes, and presence of the Almighty Being he was to address. He was to transform himself into a poor, sinning, stumbling, benighted, needy suppliant, offering homage, asking bread, pardon, light and guidance. Says one of the company present: It was wonderful to watch the play of emotions that convulsed his countenance. He became deathly pale, and his eyes, turned tremblingly upwards, were wet with tears. As yet he had not spoken. The silence could be felt; it had become absolutely painful, until at last the spell was broken as if by an electric shock, as his rich-toned voice, from white lips, syllabled forth, “Our Father, which art in heaven,” etc., with a pathos and fervid solemnity that thrilled all hearts. He finished; the silence continued; not a voice was heard, nor a muscle moved, in his rapt audience, until, from a remote corner of the room, a subdued sob was heard, and the old gentleman (the host) stepped forward, with streaming eyes and tottering frame, and seized Booth by the hand. “Sir,” said he, in broken accents, “you have afforded me a pleasure for which my whole future life will feel grateful. I am an old man, and every day, from boyhood to the present time, I thought I had repeated the Lord’s Prayer; but I never heard it before--never!” “You are right,” replied Boeth; “to read that prayer as it should be read caused me the severest study and labour for thirty years, and I am far from being satisfied with my success.”
The fulness of the Lord’s Prayer
I used to think the Lord’s Prayer was a short prayer; but as I live longer, and see more of life, I begin to believe there is no such thing as getting through it. If a man, in praying that prayer, were to be stopped by every word until he had thoroughly prayed it, it would take him a lifetime. “Our Father”--there would be a wall a hundred feet high in just those two words to most men. If they might say “Our Tyrant,” or “Our Monarch,” or even “Our Creator,” they could get along with it; but Our Father”--why, a man is almost a saint who can pray that. You read, “Thy will be done”; and say to yourself, “Oh! I can pray that;” and all the time your mind goes round and round in immense circuits and far-off distances: but God is continually bringing the circuits nearer to you, till He says, “How is it about your temper and your pride? how is it about your business and your daily life?” This is a revolutionary petition. It would make many a man’s shop and store tumble to the ground to utter it. Who can stand at the end of the avenue along which all his pleasant thoughts and wishes are blossoming like flowers, and send these terrible words, “Thy will be done,” crashing down through it? I think it is the most fearful prayer to pray in the world. (H. W. Beecher.)
The Lord’s Prayer contains the essence of the Old Testament
When at Jerusalem I read this prayer to one of the rabbis, he said, “There is not one single prayer, not one single demand, which is not already contained in the Old Testament.” I said, “Very well, let us see.” “Now,” I said, “can you give me a parallel passage to ‘Hallowed be Thy name?’” He quoted in an instant the forty-third verse of the eighth chapter of First Kings. “Hear Thou in heaven Thy dwelling place … that all people of the earth may know Thy name to fear Thee.” And farther, he said, “‘Blessed be the name of the Lord’; what means this but ‘Hallowed be Thy name’?” “Let us go on--‘Thy kingdom come!’” He immediately gave me the passage from the seventy-second Psalm. “He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass: as showers that water the earth. In His days shall the righteous flourish; and abundance of peace so long as the moon endureth. He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth.” “Let us go on--‘Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven!’” “Does not the psalmist tell us--‘Teach us to do Thy will, O Lord?’” “Let us proceed--‘Give us this day our daily bread?’” “You find this prayer in the Proverbs--‘Give me neither poverty nor riches, feed me with food convenient for me.’” “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors!”
“This you find in the one hundred and thirty-second Psalm--‘Lord, remember David, and all his afflictions,’ and in the seventh Psalm, and the fourth verse--‘If I have rewarded evil unto him that was at peace with me.’” “Lead us not into temptation.” He said at once--“O Lord, correct me with judgment; not in Thine anger, lest Thou bring me to nothing.” And then he quoted the Apocrypha, with which he was well acquainted. “Take away the desire of sensuality; to the spirit of licentiousness do not deliver me.” “What is this but ‘Lead us not into temptation’?” “Deliver us from evil.” He quoted--“Deliver me from the workers of iniquity.” I said, “Have you done?” He said, “Yes.” “Then,” I said, “you have just shown that our blessed Lord was in the right, when He told the Jews, that He ‘came not to abolish the Law, but to fulfil it.’ And have you in the whole of the Old Testament a prayer which is not contained in the Lord’s Prayer?” He admitted that there was not one. So you see how this prayer, the Lord’s Prayer, according to the testimony of a Jew opposed to Christianity, is an abridgment, a wonderful abridgment, of the whole of the gospel, and of the whole of what Moses and the prophets have told us. So that the great and holy Stolberg says--“the child prays in it in simplicity, and the learned in vain tries to fathom its depths.” (J. Wolff, D. D.)
The Lord’s prayer
In the prayer our Lord taught His disciples, all the relationships in which we stand to God are taken up. The believer prays as--
I. A CHILD FROM HOME. “Our Father,” &c.
II. A WORSHIPPER. “Hallowed,” &c.
III. A SUBJECT. “Thy kingdom come.”
IV. A SERVANT. “Thy will be done.”
V. A BEGGAR. “Give us,” &c.
VI. A DEBTOR. “And forgive us,” etc.
VII. A SINNER AMID TEMPTATION AND EVIL. “And lead us not,” &c. (Classified Gems of Thought.)
The Lord’s prayer given as a pattern
We have here a ground-plan to fill in, and on whose lines we may build the structure of our petitions every time we pray.
I. Observe, IT IS NOT ONE OF OUR LORD’S OWN PRAYERS THAT IS GIVEN FOR A PATTERN. It is out of the question that we should offer for our daily prayer the very words once used to express the prayers of Christ for Himself. When, therefore, the disciples asked for a pattern of prayer that they might pray just like Christ, the spirit of this the opening sentence in His reply was--“No, your prayers are not to be just like Mine. I pray after that manner. After this manner, pray ye. I pray as the Lord; but when ye pray, say”--and then He gave them these words.
II. You will take notice that this pattern was granted after the petition--Teach us to pray AS JOHN ALSO TAUGHT HIS DISCIPLES. The speaker, and those for whom he was the spokesman, had no doubt, been in the school of John before they had come into that of Jesus. Yet you are ready to wonder how they could have thought of Him just then. They had just overheard that sacred secret, a secret prayer of Jesus. You say each one ought to have felt his whole being tenfold alive and awake in that moment of glory and exaltation, and you think there ought then to have been no room for the memory of anything mortal. Yet that prayer at once reminded them of their old Master, and their first wish was that Jesus would use John’s method of teaching them to pray. He must have been a tremendous man to leave an impression on the minds of his scholars that was keen even in the sharpness of such an excitement. There was much imperfection in this petition. The disciples had no right to speak to their Lord in anything like the tone of dictation. While they asked Him to teach them, they told Him how to do it, and indicated the kind of teaching they preferred. But Jesus passed by the fault, recognized the necessity, and was pleased to formulate a prayer for the help of their weakness, and also of our own; for on us also His eye rested as He gave it, and all who are trying after closer fellowship with God, may now feel their way, think their way, and pray their way, through these great words.
III. Take note of the fact that THIS PATTERN WAS GIVEN TWICE. Christ had already given it in the Sermon on the Mount. These suppliants, as if they had never heard of it, asked Him to give what He had already given. How was this? We suppose that besides the disciples who came from John to Jesus at the commencement of his ministry, and the story of whose call is told in the opening of the Fourth Gospel, there were others whose enrolment came later, and that some of these having been with John during the first delivery of the Lord’s prayer, made the appeal which led to this, the second delivery. Strange that they should have been content to miss so much! Why did they stay with John after he had pointed out Jesus to be the Saviour? and how could they stop looking at the finger-posts instead of travelling in the road? Perhaps they con sidereal themselves, so to speak, to be all the time, scholars in Christ’s school, though in John’s class, and as spiritual infants still needing his elementary lessons. They had come late to school. They had more to learn than their classmates. They had missed the Sermon on the Mount. Their new companions, spiritually dull and slow, had not told them that the Lord had already given a pattern of prayer; they therefore asked for one, and the compassionate Saviour gave them the substance of His former words. This was only like Himself, the Teacher who has infinite patience with our dulness, stoops to us, repeats His lesson, and is for ever saying, “Learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart.”
IV. THIS PATTERN OF PRAYER MUST ALWAYS BE TAKEN IN CONNECTION WITH, AND BE EXPLAINED BY, THE WHOLE OF THE CHRISTIAN REVELATION. It is a mistake to take this, or any other sectional part of revelation, as if it were the whole--a mistake to treat this as Christ’s final disclosure of grace.
V. THE PATTERN IS MEANT FOR THE USE OF ALL THE CHILDREN OF GOD, WHATEVER THEIR DIFFERENCES IN AGE, CAPACITY, OR ATTAINMENT. It fits the child, it fits the man, it fits the father and mother, it fits the youngest saint, and the saint with reverend head.
VI. THIS PATTERN IS INTENDED TO FURNISH CERTAIN RULES AND METHODS OF PRAYER.
1. Petitioners are here taught brevity.
2. They are taught to shun vain repetition. (See Matthew 6:7.)
3. They are taught to pray using these very words. The second announcement of the pattern was prefaced by the phrase, “When ye pray, say,” etc. But mark the proviso. The point is that we may only say it when we do pray. Prayer is a distinct thing from the vehicle of prayer. Beautiful as this frame is, it is only a vehicle of praying life, not a substitute for it.
4. It is a social prayer.
5. They are taught to pray after this manner.
VII. IT IS RIGHT TO CALL THIS PATTERN PRAYER THE LORD’S PRAYER. Some would prefer to call it the Rabbi’s prayer. Others the Disciples’ prayer. We might as well say of the Remembrance Feast, that it is not the Lord’s Supper but the Disciples’ Supper, for only the disciples are to keep it. As the Lord’s Supper is a remembrance feast, this is a remembrance prayer, always to be in our ears, always before our eyes, to show what we should pray for, and how we should pray; until, “at our Father’s loved abode our souls arrive in peace.” (Dr. Stanford.)
Our Father, which art in heaven
The preface of the Lord’s Prayer
I. WHAT OUR BEING DIRECTED TO CALL GOD “FATHER” IN PRAYER TEACHES US.
1. That the children of God alone can pray acceptably.
2. That it is through Jesus Christ we have access to God in prayer Ephesians 2:18), because it is through Him alone that God becomes our Father; by Him, for His sake, we are adopted into the family of heaven John 1:12).
3. That coming to God in prayer, we must come in the name of His Son, as the alone foundation of all our confidence in and expectation from God John 14:13).
4. That the Spirit of adoption, the Spirit of Christ in His people, is the principle of all acceptable praying to God; for by Him it is that we are enabled to call God Father (Galatians 4:6), and therefore it is called” inwrought prayer” (James 5:16).
5. That we should draw near to God in prayer with child-like dispositions and affections towards Him.
(1) Though He be very kind and admit us into familiarity with Him, yet we must come with a holy reverence (Malachi 1:6).
(2) Though we have offended God, and be under the marks of His displeasure, we must come with confidence, whatever we want, whatever we need (Ephesians 3:12).
(3) That God is ready and willing to help us, and we should come to Him in that confidence (Matthew 7:11).
II. WHAT OUR BEING DIRECTED TO CALL GOD “OUR FATHER” TEACHES US. Negatively: not that we may not pray, saying “My Father,” or that we are always to speak plurally, saying, “We pray.” For we have Scripture examples for praying in the singular number (Ezra 9:6; Luke 15:18-19). But--
1. That we are not only to pray secretly by ourselves alone, but with others, joining with them in public and private.
2. That we are to pray, not only for ourselves, but for others also, according to Scripture example and precept (Acts 12:5; 1 Timothy 2:1-2). Praying with and for others is a piece of the communion of saints. And it is one of the privileges of God’s family on earth, that they have the prayers of all the family there.
III. WHAT WE ARE TAUGHT BY OUR BEING DIRECTED TO ADDRESS OURSELVES TO GOD AS “OUR FATHER IN HEAVEN.”
1. That we are to eye His sovereign power and dominion over all, in our addresses to Him, believing that He is able to help us in our greatest straits, that nothing is too hard for Him, but He can do whatsoever He will Psalms 115:3). This is a noble ground for faith.
2. That we should be filled with heavenly affections in prayer (Psalms 123:1). And that God’s glorious greatness above us should strike an awe upon us in our approaches to Him (Ecclesiastes 5:2).
3. God’s glorious and wonderful condescension, who vouchsafes to look from His throne in heaven unto us poor worms on earth (Isaiah 66:1-2).
4. That we go to God as those who are strangers on this earth, and to whom heaven is home, because it is our Father’s house (1 Peter 1:17), looking on this world as the place of our pilgrimage, and the men and manners of it as those we desire to leave, that we may be admitted into the society of angels, and consort with the spirits of just men made perfect.
Inferences:
1. Let us see here the miserable condition of those who have no ground to call God Father.
2. There is no right praying without faith. (T. Boston, D. D.)
The preface of the Lord’s prayer
I. TO WHOM WE ARE TO DIRECT OUR PRAYERS; to God, the omnipresent God, who fills heaven and earth. He can hear a thousand, or ten thousand million petitioners at the same time, if there were so many, and know distinctly what every one asks. And further, we pray to an infinitely wise God, who knows what is fit should be granted us, and what not.
II. UNDER WHAT CHARACTER OR DENOMINATION God (according to our Saviour’s direction here) is to be addressed; as our Father in heaven.
1. God sustains the character of a Father in the Scripture style in a threefold respect; that is, with reference.
(1) To creation.
(2) To external separation.
(3) To adoption and regeneration.
2. We are to call upon Him as our Father in heaven. Lord, art not Thou God in heaven? O Lord God of heaven. But Christ would direct us to make our supplications to God with the deepest humility, in consideration of the infinite distance between God and us, and with admiration of His amazing condescension in permitting us to speak to the great possessor of heaven, and to implore His presence and blessing who is exalted infinitely above us.
III. THE MATTER, AND THE MANNER, of prayer. The Lord’s Prayer may be considered--
1. As a directory.
2. We may take the Lord’s Prayer as a method.
3. We may consider the Lord’s Prayer as a form. (John Whitty.)
Pater, Father
I can conceive of two ways or methods of reaching the notion of a fatherhood in the Deity, or of arriving at the use of this form of address to the Supreme Being, and calling Him Father. The first may be characterized as an ascending, the second as a descending, process; the first having its rise in an earthly and human relation, the second in a relation that is heavenly, and Divine.
I. The earthly and human relation of a child to a parent-a son to a father--is very close and tender.
II. Here we touch the other and higher view which, as I think, Scripture suggests and warrants of the relation now in question; the relation in respect of which we call God Father, and invoke Him as Our Father. It is essential to the very being of the Supreme that He should be a Father, and that of Him there should be a Son. From all eternity, accordingly--in the terms of the Creed of the Council of Nice--the Son is of the Father, “be gotten of His Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God.” He is “the everlasting Son of the Father,” “begotten, not made.” The relation therefore of paternity or fatherhood in God precedes creation, as well as redemption; and is indeed from everlasting. For before all worlds the Son is in the bosom of the Father. And the infinite, ineffable complacency subsisting between the Father and the Son, realized in the unity of the Holy Spirit with them both, is the true prototype and original model or pattern of the fatherly relation and the fatherly affection of which all who are in the Son are partakers, and in virtue of which they call God Father, and invoke Him as their Father. (R. S.Candlish, D. D.)
Pater noster, Our Father
The use of the plural form in this invocation is surely significant. We are taught, not only to call upon God as Father, but to call upon Him as our Father. We are to say, Our Father; and that too even in secret prayer. Plainly, therefore, thou dost not apprehend thyself, even in such secrecy, to be quite alone with thy God as thy Father. Others are associated by thee with thyself in this filial utterance, and in the fellowship of filial relationship which it expresses. One at least, or more than one, must be felt by thee to be embraced along with thyself in the invocation. Otherwise thou couldst not well say, with a full and deep sense of reality and truth, Our Father.
I. One at all events there surely is--the Master Himself who gives thee this gracious form of address. The Lord Jesus joins Himself to thee, and invites thee to join thyself to Him, so that the invocation may be common to both;--a joint invocation; jointly His and thine--“Our Father.”
1. Let us consider here, in the first place, the gracious condescension of the blessed Son of God in His joining Himself to us at the first. Let us behold Him drawing near to us as a brother, in order that we and He together may say, Our Father. For it is as a brother that He draws near to us and stands by us; it is in the character of a brother, “a brother born for adversity.” He takes our nature. He takes our place. He takes as His own the very relation in which we stand to God as apostate rebels, disobedient subjects, guilty and condemned, outcast and estranged. He sounds the lowest depths of its degradation, and tastes the bitterest agony of its curse. He makes common cause with us.
2. And now--thou art at home. The gracious interview is over. The reconciliation is complete. The Father hath met thee, and embraced thee, and welcomed thee as His child. Thou canst scarcely believe for very joy. But thou shalt see greater things than this. For now, secondly, in that Father’s dwelling thou hast constant fellowship with Him as a Father. And in that fellowship thou art permitted and enabled to join thyself still always to Him who in thy distress joins Himself to thee.
II. But when we say, Our Father, we associate with ourselves others in this fellowship of prayer besides the blessed Lord. He indeed is preeminently our fellow, in this act of filial devotion; and others are so, and can be so, only in Him. But there is room in this fellowship for a wide enough brotherhood.
1. All who are within the reach of saving mercy and redeeming love may be comprehended in its embrace. Men--all men--become dear and precious to me now. To every man--to any man--I can now go, and with all tenderness of fraternal pity and brotherly affection, plead--Brother, Brother--weary and wasted in that far country! To thee, as to me, Christ Jesus, the elder brother, cries, Come! Let us go, thou and I together--let us go home with Him, the elder Brother, saying--all three of us together-Our Father.
2. But a narrower line, at least as regards this earth, must hero be drawn. I am called to sympathize with the blessed Jesus, not merely in His going forth among the lost and guilty children of men, that He may win them back to His Father’s dwelling, and get them to unite with Himself in saying to Him, Our Father. But I am to sympathize with the blessed Jesus also in His going in and out among those whom He has actually brought again to that dwelling, and whom He is ever presenting there as His brethren to His Father and theirs. Let them all have a place in our heart when we say with Christ, Our Father. And that we may make room in our hearts for them all, let us see that by the help of that very Spirit of adoption--that Spirit of His Son--which the Father sends forth into our hearts--the Spirit “not of bondage and of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind”--we banish whatever tends to harden, or deaden, or straiten our affections.
3. Is this all the family? Is this the whole brotherhood? Is it merely the comparatively small company of believers among men that we have to associate with us, when in Christ, and with Christ, we say, Our Father? Nay; if there be a narrow limit to the household of faith on earth, there is ample room and verge enough elsewhere. For, not to speak of the multitude of the redeemed already around the throne, have we not the holy angels for our fellows in this filial address to God? For they also, as well as we, have an interest in the Son; “the first-begotten,” whom the Father bringeth into the world, saying, “Let all the angels of God worship Him.” Reverently--believingly--they worship Him--though, alas! too many of the bright host, through pride and unbelief, refuse. The chosen ones kiss the Son, and in the Son receive themselves the adoption of sons. (R. S.Candlish, D. D.)
What sacred associations cluster round the word Father! The very mention of it carries us back to the dawning of our consciousness, when we learned our earliest lessons at a parent’s lips. But to the thoughtful and religious soul the earthly significance does not exhaust the meaning of this holy name; for God at first designed that the human fatherhood should be the miniature of that relationship in which He stood to men, and He wished them to understand that the love of parents to their children on earth is but as a drop to the ocean of fatherly love which is in Himself.
I. When we can truly and intelligently call God “our Father,” NEW LIFE IS GIVEN TO OUR DEVOTIONS. I am persuaded that much of our lack of enjoyment in prayer, and much of the lifelessness and artificialness in our devotions generally, must be traced to the fact that we have not thoroughly received the spirit of adoption, and have lost the idea of God’s Fatherhood. Why should we be in terror of a father? What liberty is that which our own son enjoys! See how he comes bounding into our room, calculating that we will be thoroughly interested in all he has to say, and knowing that when he lays hold of our heart he has taken hold of our strength! But is it different with God?
II. When we can truly and intelligently call God our Father, NEW JOY IS GIVEN TO THE DISCHARGE OF DUTY. Heaven’s own sunshine would illuminate our pathway, if every morning we went forth to do our Father’s business; and the driest and most uninteresting things of daily life would acquire a new importance in our eyes, and would be done by us with gladsomeness, if we but felt we were doing them for a Father. Let us try this heavenly specific and we shall soon find that the glory of love will halo for us all common things with its own celestial radiance, and duty will merge into delight.
III. When we can truly and intelligently call God Father, a NEW SIGNIFICANCE IS GIVEN TO OUR EARTHLY TRIALS. The Lord Himself hath said by the month of Solomon, “He that spareth the rod hateth the child,” and He is too wise a Father to think of training His children without discipline. By trials He keeps them from falling away; He leads them to bethink themselves and return when they have been backsliding, and He prepares them for the discharge of arduous and important duties. Some time ago, while sojourning in the Housatonic valley, I was greatly interested in passing through a paper manufactory and observing how the filthy rags were put through process after process, until at length the pulp pressed between heavy rollers came out upon the other side a seamless web of fairest white, having the mark of the maker woven into it. Let this illustrate God’s purpose with His children. When He subjects them to one species of trial after another, it is only that at the last they may come forth purified and refined, having enstamped upon them His name and character, to be “known and read of all men.”
IV. When we can truly and intelligently call God our Father, a NEW GLORY IS GIVEN TO OUR CONCEPTION OF THE HEAVENLY WORLD. Jesus teaches us to say, “Our Father which art in heaven,” and so leads us to look upon that laud as our home. Home is the centre of the heart, and so, by enabling us to call God our Father and heaven our home, Jesus centres our hearts there, and gives us such an idea of its blessedness that we scarcely think of the outward accessories of its splendour, because of the delightful anticipation that we cherish of being there “at home with the Lord.” O that God, through faith in Jesus Christ, would give to each of us this noble conception of heaven! Then, on true and rational principles we shall desire the better country, and at length have fulfilled to us the beautiful German beatitude, “Blessed are the home-sick, for they shall reach home.” (W. M. Taylor, D. D.)
Christ’s revelation of the Fatherhood of God
I believe that the word “Father” is applied to God seven times in the Old Testament; among the innumerable references to the Supreme Being which crowd almost every chapter of all the books of the Old Testament but one, He is mentioned just seven times as a Father--five times as the Father of the Hebrew people, twice as sustaining that relation to individuals. Of these two intimations that God is the Father of individual men, one is a promise to David that God will be a Father to his son Solomon; the other is a prediction that by and by men will pray to God calling Him Father--a prediction fulfilled in this prayer. For there is not any record of any prayer in the Old Testament in which God is addressed as Father. “In the vocative case, as an address to God in prayer,” says Dean Mansel, the name of Father “does not occur in the Old Testament.” It was, then, practically a new thought about God which our Saviour gave His disciples when He taught them about God. They had always known Him as the Eternal, the Creator, the Self-Existent One, the Supreme Ruler, the Judge, the Lord of Hosts and of Battles, the Captain of the armies of heaven; but this thought of Him as the Father in heaven was one that was very far from all their common thoughts of Him. This word took them into a new world. It was to them as if they had been standing for a long time before the grim outer wall of some old castle which they had been summoned to enter--standing there and looking doubtfully at the forbidding granite battlements, with cannon and sentries on the ramparts with suggestions of gloomy passages and dungeons and chains within--when all at once a little door opened, and they saw within the wall a pleasant garden, with flowers and fountains and cool retreats, and caught a breath of the sweetest odours, and heard a burst of melody from singing birds and happy children playing in the sun. Such an opening into the very heart of God did this word “Father” make for all who had stood for long in the cold shadow of the old monarchical conception of His character. (Washington Gladden, D. D.)
Inferences
1. The truth contained in this new name of God is the true constructive idea in all theological science. Build all your theologies on this foundation. Hold fast to the idea of uniform law, of a nature of things which God has established, under which sin is punished; but when you speak of the personal character and government of God, of His direct interference in the affairs of men, of what He does supernaturally, in the order of history, remember that He is our Father.
2. The word suggests to us also the dignity of human nature. Man is made in the image and likeness of God. He who was before all worlds, He whose will is the source of all laws, He who is the life of all that live, the Omnipotent, the All-Wise, the Eternal God, is our Father.
3. The word not only lifts up and glorifies every humblest human creature, it binds together in one brotherhood, in one family, all that dwell upon the face of the earth. It is the grand leveller of ranks and hierarchies; the charter of fraternity; the prophecy of peace and goodwill among men.
4. Again, what help and inspiration there is for us in the thought of the relationship here pointed out. Take it home to yourself. Try to make out something of what it means when you say that God is your Father.
5. Our Father in heaven! Where it is I know not; what it is no man fully knows. But it is where our Father is. And whoever is with Him is not far from heaven. Something of the melody of its music, something of the fragrance and the beauty of its sweet fields, steal into his heart even while he walks along the dusty ways of this lower world. (Washington Gladden, D. D.)
Our Father
I. The expression implies that God has communicated to us His own QUALITY OF LIFE (see Genesis 1:27; Colossians 3:10). Traces of the Divine in man, though marred by the fall.
1. Our intellectual faculties.
2. Our aesthetic nature.
3. Our power of loving.
4. Our moral Sense.
5. Our native impulses to goodness.
6. Our disposition for Divine communion.
7. Our hopefulness.
8. Our free agency.
II. The expression implies also that God holds us In INTIMATE RELATION TO HIMSELF.
1. He holds us in the intimacy of affection (John 17:23).
2. He holds us in the intimacy of communion. A parent desires the society of his children.
(1) Therefore God gives us the command and the spirit of prayer.
(2) He communicates to us His thoughts in the Bible, and His own impressions of truth and virtue through the influence of His Holy Spirit.
(3) He dwells within us, making even our bodies His temples.
3. He visits us with an intimacy of service.
(1) His Providence secures our temporal well-being.
(2) His Grace provides our atonement.
(3) His Spirit serves our spirits in sanctifying them. (J. M. Ludlow, D. D.)
Our Father, in heaven
I. THE RELATION OF GOD TO US AS A FATHER.
1. God is a Father three ways.
(1) God is a Father by eternal generation; having, by an inconceivable and ineffable way, begotten His Son, God co-equal, co-eternal with Himself; and therefore called the “only begotten Son of God” (John 3:16).
(2) God is a Father by temporal creation; as He gives a being and existence to His creatures.
(3) God is said to be a Father by spiritual regeneration and adoption. And so all true believers are said to be the sons of God, and to be born of God John 1:12-13). Now that God should be pleased to take this into His glorious style, even to be called Our Father, it may teach us--First. To admire His infinite condescension, and our own unspeakable privilege and dignity (1 John 3:1). Secondly. It should teach us to walk worthy of this high and honourable relation into which we are taken; and to demean ourselves as children ought to do, in all holy obedience to His commands; with fear and reverence to His authority, and an humble submission to His will. Thirdly. Is God thy Father? This, then, may give us abundance of assurance, that we shall receive at His hands what we ask, if it be good for us; and, if it be not, we have no reason to complain that we are not heard, unless He should turn our prayers into curses. Fourthly. Is God thy Father? This, then, may encourage us against despair, under the sense of our manifold sins against God, and departures from Him; for He will certainly receive us upon our repentance and returning to Him.
2. The next thing observable, is the particle Our, Our Father: which notes to us, that God is not only the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, but He is the Father of all men, by creation and providence, and especially the Father of the faithful, by regeneration and adoption.
(1) Let us esteem one another as brethren.
(2) If thou art mean and low in the world, this should teach thee to be well content with thy present state and condition; for God is thy Father, and a Father to thee equally with the greatest.
(3) Since when we pray we must say, Our Father, this teacheth us, to interest one another in our prayers.
II. The next expression SETS FORTH HIS GLORY AND GREATNESS--“which art in heaven.” “But is not God everywhere present? Doth He not fill heaven and earth, and all things?” True. But this expression is used--
1. Because heaven is the most glorious place of God’s residence, where He hath more especially established His throne of grace, and there sits upon it.
2. Our prayers are directed to our Father in heaven, because, though He hears them wheresoever they are uttered, yet He nowhere hears them with acceptance but only in heaven. And the reason is, because our prayers are acceptable only as they are presented before God through the intercession of Christ. Now Christ performs His mediatory office only in heaven; for He performs it in both natures, as He is God and Man; and so He is only in heaven. And, therefore, we are still concerned to pray to our Father in heaven.
(1) Since we are directed to pray to our Father in heaven, we may be sure that there is no circumstance of time or place, than can hinder us from praying. For heaven is over thee, and open to thee, wherever thou art.
(2) Is thy Father in heaven? Thy prayers then should be made so as to pierce the heavens where God is. (Bishop Hopkins.)
The opening Invocation
This Invocation lifts upwards the child’s brow, and claims in heaven and in the King of that country a filial interest.
I. The FILIAL; he sees in the Most High a Father.
II. The FRATERNAL; he comes not with his private needs and vows alone, but with those of his race and brotherhood, “Our Father.” And--
III. The CELESTIAL; though we are now of the earth, and attached to it by these mortal and terrene bodies, we are not originally from it, nor were we made to be eternally upon it. We are of heaven, and for heaven; for there and not here our Father is, and where He is our true home is.
Conclusion. Let the Churches ponder these great truths. In the filial principle of our text they will find life and earth made glorious, by the thought that a Father made and rules them; and, above all worldly distinctions, they will prize and exult in their bonds through Christ to Him--rejoicing, mainly as Christ commanded His apostles to rejoice, in thisthat their names are written in heaven. In the fraternal principle we shall aright learn to love the Church and to compassionate the world; and in the principle celestial, we shall be taught to cultivate that heavenly-mindedness which shall make the Christian, though feeble, suffering, and forlorn in his worldly relations, already lustrous and blest, as Burke described in her worldly pomp, and in the bloom of her youth, the hapless Queen of France: “A brilliant orb, that seemed scarce to touch the horizon.” More justly might the saint of God be thus described; having already, as the apostle enjoins, his conversation in heaven, and shedding around the earth the splendours of that world with which he holds close and blest communion, and towards which he seems habitually ready to mount, longing to depart that be may be with Christ, which is far better. (W. R. Williams, D. D.)
The Divine Father
Rev. Dr. Jonas King once went to visit the children in an orphan asylum. The children were seated in a schoolroom and Dr. King stood on a platform before them. “So this is an orphan asylum,” said he. “I suppose that many of you children would tell me that you have no father or mother, were I to ask you.” “Yes, sir; yes, sir,” said some little voices. “How many of you say you have no father? Hold up your hands.” A forest of hands were put up. “So you say, you have no father?” “Yes, sir; yes, sir.” “Now,” said Dr. King, “do you ever say the Lord’s prayer? Let me hear you.” The children began: “Our Father who art in heaven Stop, children,” said Dr. King; “did you begin right?” The children began again: “Our Father who art in heaven” “Stop again, children,” said Dr. King. “What did you say? Our Father? Then you have a Father; a good, rich Father. I want to tell you about Him. He owns all the gold in California; He owns all the world; He can give you as much of anything as He sees is best for you. Now, children, never forget that you have a Father. Go to Him for all you want, as if you could see Him. He is able and willing to do all that is for your good.”
God’s headquarters
“Why do we say in the Lord’s prayer, ‘Who art in heaven,’ since God is everywhere?” asked a clergyman of some children. For a while no one answered; at last, seeing a little drummer-boy who looked as if he could give an answer, the clergyman said: “Well, little soldier, what say you?” “Because it’s head-quarters,” replied the drummer.
The address
The first part of the Lord’s prayer I have called the address, or the invocation because in it we invoke or call upon God by name, and tell Him, as it were, that we are going to speak to Him, and beg Him to listen to what we are about to say.
1. The name of “Father,” by which we are commanded to call upon God, is one of the most remarkable things in the whole prayer. To us, indeed, who have been accustomed to it from infancy, it may seem almost a matter of course to call God, Father. But to do it, and that too with a certainty that He approves of it, is so far from being a matter of course that, if God had not expressly authorized and commanded us, we should never have dared to address Him by that name; we should have felt it too great a presumption to claim relation with the Lord of the universe. Any one may see what a step Christ gave us toward heaven by com-rounding us to address our Maker, not as our God and King, but as our Father. Any one may see and feel what a pledge the name contains that God will listen to our prayers.
2. Every privilege has its corresponding duty. Let us consider what duties the privilege, which Christ has bought for us, of calling God our Father, brings with it.
(1) The first and chief duty is the behaving to Him as children should behave to their father.
(2) The knowledge that God is our Father, and can do whatsoever He pleases, should fill us with faith and a courageous trust in Him. (A. W. Hare.)
Our Father
We are commanded to say “Our Father,” and not my Father, to teach us not to pray for ourselves alone, but for the whole family of God and Christ on earth. When we say “Our Father,” we ought to bear in mind that God has other children beside us, children who have equal claims on His mercy and love, children whom He loves as well as us. We should remember, too, that, if we are all the sons of one common Father, we must all be brothers and sisters. Here is a fruitful subject for self-examination. Do we love as brothers? Do we live together as brothers ought to live, in peace and concord? Do we help each other to the utmost of our power? Do we rejoice in our brother’s prosperity, though the like may not befall ourselves? Do we feel that concern for their welfare, not in body only, but in soul, which ought to live in the hearts of all such as declare themselves before God to be members of one great family, but in the same breath for our brethren also? (A. W. Hare.)
Which art in heaven
Remember where that Father dwells. It is a Father which is in heaven that you are to pray to. Therefore He must be--
1. Most gracious; or He would never have allowed you to call Him by such a name.
2. He must be most powerful; for He is high above all things.
3. He must be most wise; for He made the world.
4. He is everlasting, and will endure without a change, when the heavens and the earth have passed away. Having then a Father, who is so powerful and so wise, and who is also unchangeable and everlasting, what an anchor of hope must this thought be to us! (A. W. Hare.)
Our Father
Does this familiar conception of the Fatherhood of God impair our reverence for Him? Let the children of the most loving parents answer the question.
1. This view of the Divine nature has its momentous bearings on the type of piety which we should cherish in ourselves and promote in others. The child of kind human parents shows his piety to them, not by despising their gifts and spurning the tokens of their love, but by enjoying all of them to the full, with his loving parents constantly in his thoughts, using their gifts as they would have them used, and deeming himself most happy when he can pursue his pleasure in their presence, and with their participation. By parity of reason, the true child of God manifests his piety, not by dashing from him the cup of joy put full to his lips, but by making his joy gratitude, his gladness thanksgiving, by using the world as not abusing it, by close adherence to the laws which always accompany the gifts and make them immeasurably the more precious, and by never losing thought of the benignant presence of Him who has all a Father’s gladness in seeing His children happy.
2. Were these views made prominent in religious teaching, and especially in the religious culture of the young, religion would not be the unwelcome theme it now is to so many, nor would the offices of Christian worship be regarded with the indifference now so sadly prevalent.
3. Fatherhood implies distinctive love for the individual child, and thus, of necessity, a personal interest in the child’s well or ill-doing, right or wrong conduct, good or bad character.
4. Whether the child finds privilege and happiness, or restraint and irksomeness, in the human father’s well-ordered household, depends on his own choice, his own character. God’s child, too, can be happy in His universal house, only through love of the father, and conformity to the ways of the house. The child of God who has not a child’s heart must go to his own place, and that cannot be a place of privilege or joy. But he is self banished, self-punished. He has forsaken his own mercies. It is not God’s love that is withdrawn from him; but he has taken himself from the shelter and joy of that love. (Prof. Peabody, D. D., LL. D.)
Carlyle and the Lord’s prayer
“‘Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name, Thy will be done’--what else can we say? The other night, in my sleepless tossings about, which were growing more and more miserable, these words, that brief and grand prayer, came strangely into my mind, with an altogether new emphasis, as if written and shining for me in mild pure splendour on the black bosom of the night there; then I, as it were, read them word by word, with a sudden check to my imperfect wanderings, with a sudden softness of composure which was much unexpected. Not for perhaps thirty or forty years had I once formally repeated that prayer; nay, I never felt before how intensely the voice of man’s soul it is--the inmost aspiration of all that is high and pious in poor human nature, right worthy to be recommended with an ‘After this manner pray ye.’” (Thomas Carlyle.)
God realized as a Father
I have been told of a good man, among whose experiences, which he kept a record of, this, among other things, was found after his death, that at such a time in secret prayer, his heart at the beginning of the duty was much enlarged, in giving to God those titles which are awful and tremendous, in calling Him the great, the mighty, and the terrible God; but going on thus, he checked himself with this thought, “And why not my Father?” (Matthew Henry.)
The Fatherhood of God
A Jew entered a Persian temple, and saw there the sacred fire. He said to the priest, “How do you worship fire?” “Not the fire: it is to us an emblem of the sun and of his animating light,” said the priest. Then asked the Jew, “Do you adore the sun as a deity? Do you know that he also is a creature of the Almighty?” The priest answered that the sun was to them only an emblem of the invisible light which preserves all things. The Israelite continued, “Does your nation distinguish the image from the original? They call the sun their god, and kneel before the earthly flame. You dazzle the eye of the body, but darken that of the mind; in presenting to them the terrestrial light, you take from them the celestial.” The Persian asked, “How do you name the Supreme Being?” “We call Him Jehovah Adonai; that is, the Lord who was, who is, and shall be.” “Your word is great and glorious, but it is terrible,” said the Persian. A Christian approaching said, “We call Him Abba, Father.” Then the Gentile and the Jew regarded each other with surprise. Said one, “Your word is the nearest and the highest; but who gives you courage to call the Eternal thus?” “The Father Himself,” said the Christian, who then expounded to them the plan of redemption. Then they believed and lifted up their eyes to heaven, saying, “Father, dear Father,” and joined hands and called each other brethren. (Krummacher.)
Of the preface to the Lord’s prayer
I. The INTRODUCTION to the Lord’s prayer--“After this manner, therefore, pray ye.” Our Lord Jesus, in these words prescribed to His disciples and us a directory for prayer. The ten commandments are the rule of our life; the creed is the sum of our faith; and the Lord’s prayer is the pattern of our prayer. As God did prescribe Moses a pattern of the tabernacle, so Christ hath here prescribed us a pattern of prayer--“After this manner, therefore pray ye,” &c. Not that we are tied to the words of the Lord’s prayer; Christ saith not, “after these words, pray ye”; but “after this manner”; that is, let all your petitions agree and symbolize with the things contained in the Lord’s prayer; and indeed, well may we make all our prayers consonant and agreeable to this prayer, it being a most exact prayer. Tertullian calls it, a breviary and compendium of the gospel; it is like a heap of massy gold. The exactness of this prayer appears--
1. In the dignity of the Author; a piece of work hath commendation from the artificer, and this prayer hath commendation from the Author; it is the Lord’s prayer. As the moral law was written with the finger of God, so this prayer was dropt from the lips of the Son of God.
2. The exactness of this prayer appears in the excellency of the matter. I may say of this prayer, it “is as silver tried in the furnace, purified seven times.” Never was there prayer so admirably and curiously composed as this. As Solomon’s Song, for its excellency, is called “the song of songs,” so may this well be called “the prayer of prayers.”
The matter of it is admirable.
1. For its succinctness; it is short and pithy, multum in parvo, a great deal said in a few words. It requires most art to draw the two globes curiously in a little map. This short prayer is a system or body of divinity.
2. Its clearness. This prayer is plain and intelligible to every capacity. Clearness is the grace of speech.
3. Its completeness. This prayer contains in it the chief things that we have to ask, or God hath to bestow. There is a double benefit ariseth from framing our petitions suitably to the Lord’s prayer.
1. Hereby error in prayer is prevented. It is not easy to write wrong after this copy; we cannot easily err, having our pattern before us.
2. Hereby mercies requested are obtained, for the apostle assures us God will hear us when we pray “according to His will.” And sure we pray according to His will, when we pray according to the pattern He hath set us.
II. THE PRAYER ITSELF, which consists of three parts:
(1) A preface;
(2) petitions;
(3) the conclusion. First.
The preface to the prayer.
1. “Our Father.”
2. “Which art in heaven.” To begin with the first words of the preface. “Our Father.” Father is sometimes taken personally--“My Father is greater than!”: but Father in the text is taken essentially for the whole Deity. This title, Father, teacheth us to whom we must address ourselves in prayer; to God alone. Here is no such thing in the Lord’s prayer as, “O ye saints or angels that are in heaven, hear us!” but “Our Father which art in heaven.” In what order must we direct our prayers to God? Here is only the Father named; may not we direct our prayers to the Son, and Holy Ghost? Though the Father only be named in the Lord’s prayer, yet the ether two Persons are not hereby excluded; the Father is mentioned because He is first in order; but the Son and Holy Ghost are included, because they are the same in essence. Princes on earth give themselves titles expressing their greatness, as “high and mighty”; God might have done so, and expressed Himself thus, “Our King of glory, our Judge”; but He gives Himself another title, “our Father,” an expression of Jove and condescension. God, that He might encourage us to pray to Him, represents Himself under this sweet notion of a father, “our Father.” The name Jehovah carries majesty in it, the name of Father carries mercy in it. In what sense is God a Father?
1. By creation; it is He that hath made us--“We are also His offspring”; “Have we not all one Father?” But there is little comfort in this; for so God is Father to the devils by creation; but He that made them will not save them.
2. God is a Father by election.
3. God is a Father by special grace. Such only as are sanctified can say, “Our Father which art in heaven.” What is the difference between God being the Father of Christ, and the Father of the elect? God is the Father of Christ in a more glorious transcendent manner. Christ hath the primogeniture. What is that which makes God our Father? Faith--“Ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.” An unbeliever may call God his Creator, and his Judge, but not his Father. Faith doth legitimate us and make us of the blood-royal of heaven--“Ye are the children of God by faith.”
Wherein doth it appear that God is the best Father?
1. In that He is most ancient--“The Ancient of days did sit.” A figurative representation of God who was before all time, this may cause veneration.
2. God is the best Father, because He is perfect--“Our Father which is in heaven is perfect”; He is perfectly good. Earthly fathers are subject to infirmities.
3. God is the best Father in respect of wisdom--“The only wise God.” He hath a perfect idea of wisdom in Himself; He knows the fittest means to bring about His own designs; the angels light at His lamp. In particular this is one branch of His wisdom, that He knows what is best for us. An earthly parent knows not, in some intricate cases, how to advise his child. He is the only wise God; He knows how to make evil things work for good to His children. He can make a sovereign treacle of poison; thus He is the best Father for wisdom.
4. He is the best Father, because the most loving--“God is love.” The affections in parents are but marble and adamant in comparison of God’s love to His children; He gives them the cream of His love, electing love, saving love. No father like God for love! If thou art His child, thou canst not love thy own soul so entirely as He loves thee.
5. God is the best Father, for riches; God hath land enough to give to all His children, He hath unsearchable riches. He gives the hidden manna, the tree of life, rivers of joy. God is ever giving to His children, yet hath not the less; His riches are imparted, not impaired; like the sun that still shines, yet hath not the less light. He cannot be poor who is infinite.
6. God is the best Father, because He can reform His children.
7. God is the best Father, because He never dies--“Who only hath immortality.” Earthly fathers die and their children are exposed to many injuries’ but God lives for ever.
Wherein lies the dignity of such as have God for their Father?
1. They have greater honour than is conferred on the princes of the earth; they are precious in God’s esteem.
2. God confers honourable titles upon His children; He calls them the excellent of the earth, or the magnificent, as Junius renders it.
3. This is their honour who have God for their Father--they are all heirs; the youngest son is an heir.
(1) God’s children are heirs to the things of this life; God being their Father, they have the best title to earthly things, they have a Sanctified right to them. Others may have more of the venison, but God’s children have more of the blessing; thus they are heirs to the things of this life.
(2) They are heirs to the other world; “heirs of salvation,” “joint heirs with Christ.”
4. God makes His children equal in honour to the angels. How may we know that God is our Father? All cannot say, “our Father”: the Jews boasted that God was their Father--“We have one Father, even God.” Christ tells them their pedigree: “Ye are of your father the devil.” They who are of satanical spirits, and make use of their power to beat down the power of godliness, cannot say, God is their Father; they may say, “our father which art in hell.”
Well, then, how may we know that God is our Father?
1. By having a filial disposition. This is seen in four things. First. To melt in tears for sin. A child weeps for offending his father. He grieves for sin
(1) as it is an act of pollution. Sin deflowers the virgin-soul; it defaceth God’s image; it turns beauty into deformity.
(2) He who hath a childlike heart, grieves for sin, as it is an act of enmity. Sin is diametrically opposite to God.
(3) A childlike heart weeps for sin, as it is an act of ingratitude; sin is an abuse of God’s love; it is taking the jewels of God’s mercies, and making use of them to sin. God hath done more for His children than others. Second. A filial, or childlike, disposition is to be full of sympathy; we lay to heart the dishonours reflected upon our heavenly Father; when we see God’s worship adulterated, His truth mingled with the poison of error, it is as a sword in our bones, to see God’s glory suffer. Third. A filial disposition, is to love our heavenly Father; he is unnatural that doth not love his father. A childlike love to God is known, as by the effects, so by the degree; it is a superior love. We love our Father in heaven above all other things; above estate, or relations, as oil runs above the water. A child of God seeing a supereminency of goodness, and a constellation of all beauties in God, he is carried out in love to Him in the highest measure. Fourth. A childlike disposition is seen in honouring our Heavenly Father--“A son honoureth his father.
How do we show our honour to our Father in heaven?
1. By having a reverential awe of God upon us--“Thou shalt fear thy God.”
2. We may know God is our Father, by our resembling of Him; the child is his father’s picture. Wicked men desire to be like God hereafter in glory, but do not affect to be like Him here in grace; they give it out to the world that God is their Father, yet have nothing of God to be seen in them; they are unclean; they not only want His image, but hate it.
3. We may know God is our Father, by having His spirit in us.
4. If God be our Father, we are of peaceable spirits--“Blessed be the peacemakers, they” shall be called the children of God.” Grace infuseth a sweet, amicable disposition; it files off the ruggedness of men’s spirits; it turns the lion-like fierceness into a lamb-like gentleness. They who have God to be their Father, follow peace as well as holiness,
5. If God be our Father; then we love to be near God, and have converse with Him. An ingenuous child delights to approach near to his father, and go into his presence. David envied the birds that they built their nests so near God’s altars, when he was debarred his Father’s house. See the amazing goodness of God, that is pleased to enter into this sweet relation of a Father. God needed not to adopt us; he did not want a Son, but we wanted a Father. God showed power in being our Maker, but mercy in being our Father. If God be a Father, then hence I infer, whatever He doth to His children, is love. But will God be a Father to me, who have profaned His name, and been a great sinner?
Wherein lies the happiness of having God for our Father?
1. If God be our Father, then He will teach us. What father will refuse to counsel his son? A man may see the figures upon a dial, but he cannot tell how the day goes, unless the sun shine; we may read many truths in the Bible, but we cannot know them savingly, till God by His Spirit shine upon our soul. God teacheth not only our ear, but our heart; he not only informs our mind, but inclines our will; we never learn till God teach us.
2. If God be our Father, then He hath bowels of affection towards us. If it be so unnatural for a father but to love His child, can we think God can be defective in His love? That you may see God’s fatherly love to His children:
(1) Consider God makes a precious valuation of them--“Since thou wast precious in My sight.” A father prizeth his child above his jewels.
(2) God loves the places they were born in the better for their sakes--“Of Zion it shall be said, This man was born in her.”
(3) He chargeth the great ones of the world not to prejudice His children; their persons are sacred--“He suffered no man to do them wrong; yea, He reproved kings for their sakes, saying, Touch not Mine anointed.”
(4) God delights in their company; He loves to see their countenance, and hear their voice.
(5) God bears His children in His bosom, as a nursing father doth the sucking child.
(6) God is full of solicitous care for them--“He careth for you.” A father cannot always take care for his child, he sometimes is asleep; but God is a Father that never sleeps.
(7) He thinks nothing too good to part with to His children; He gives them the kidneys of the wheat, and honey out of the rock, and “wine on the lees well refined.” He gives them three jewels more worth than heaven; the blood of His Son, the grace of His Spirit, the light of His countenance.
(8) If God hath one love better than another, He bestows it upon them; they have the cream and quintessence of His love. God loves His children with such a love as He loves Christ.
3. If God be our Father, He will be full of sympathy--“as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him”--
(1) in case of infirmities;
(2) injuries.
4. If God be our Father, He will take notice of the least good He sees in us; if there be but a sigh for sin, God hears it. God spies the least good in His children; He can see a grain of corn hid under chaff, grace hid under corruption.
5. If God be our Father, He will take all we do in good part. A father takes a letter from his son kindly, though there are blots or bad English in it. What blottings are there in our holy things?
6. If God be our Father, then He will correct us in measure. “I will correct thee in measure”; and that two ways: First, It shall be in measure, for the kind; God will not lay upon us more than we are able to bear. He knows our frame. He knows we are not steel or marble, therefore will deal gently. Second, He will correct in measure for the duration; He will not let the affliction lie on too long. A sting a-wing.
7. If God be our Father, He will intermix mercy with all out afflictions; if He gives us wormwood to drink, He will mix it with honey. In every cloud a child of God may see a rainbow of mercy shining, As the limner mixeth dark shadows and bright colours together, so our heavenly Father mingles the dark and bright together, crosses and blessings; and is not this a great happiness, for God thus to chequer His providences, and mingle goodness with severity?
8. If God be our Father, the evil one shall not prevail against us. God will make all Satan’s temptations promote the good of His children.
(1) As they set them more a-praying.
(2) As they are a means to humble them.
(3) As they establish them more in grace; a tree shaken by the wind is more settled and rooted; the blowing of a temptation doth but settle k child of God more in grace. Thus the evil one, Satan, shall not prevail against the children of God.
9. If God be our Father, no real evil shall befall us--“There shall no evil befall thee.” It is not said, no trouble; but no evil. What hurt doth the furnace to the gold? it only makes it purer. What hurt doth afflictions to grace? only refine and purify it. What a great privilege is this, to be freed, though not from the stroke of affliction, yet from the sting! Again, no evil befalls a child of God, because no condemnation--“no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.”
10. If God be our Father, this may make us go with cheerfulness to the throne of grace. Were a man to petition his enemy, there were little hope; but when a child petitions his father, he may hope with confidence to speed.
11. If God be our Father, He will stand between us and danger; a father will keep off danger from his child. God calls Himself a shield. God is a hiding-place. God appoints His holy angels to be a lifeguard about His children. Never was any prince so well guarded as a believer.
12. If God be our Father, we shall not want anything that He sees is good for us; “They that seek the Lord shall not want any good thing.” God is pleased sometimes to keep His children to hard commons, but it is good for them.
13. If God be our Father, all the promises of the Bible belong to us; God’s children are called “heirs of promise.”
14. God makes all His children conquerors. First, They conquer themselves. Though the children of God may sometimes be foiled, and lose a single battle, yet not the victory. Second, They conquer the world. Third, They conquer their enemies; how can that be, when they oft take away their lives? God’s children conquer their enemies by heroic patience. A patient Christian, like the anvil, bears all strokes invincibly; thus the martyrs overcame their enemies by patience.
15. If God be our Father, He will now and then send us some tokens of His love. God’s children live far from home, and meet sometimes with coarse usage from the unkind world; therefore God, to encourage His children, sends them sometimes tokens and pledges of His love. What are these? He gives them a return o! prayer, there is a token of love; He quickens and enlargeth their hearts in duty, there is a token of love; He gives them the firstfruits of His Spirit, which are love-tokens.
16. If God be our Father, He will indulge and spare us--“I will spare them, as a man spareth his own son that serveth him.”
17. If God be our Father, He will put honour and renown upon us at the last day.
(1) He will clear the innocency of His children. God’s children in this life are strangely misrepresented to the world.
(2) God will make an open and honourable recital of all their good deeds.
18. If God be our Father, He will settle a good land of inheritance upon us--“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus, who hath begottenus again to a lively hope, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled.” God’s children shall not wait long for their inheritance; it is but winking, and they shall see God.
19. If God be our Father, it is a comfort, first, in case of loss of relations. Hast thou lost a father? Yet, if thou art a believer, thou art no orphan, thou hast an heavenly Father, a Father that never dies, “who only bath immortality. Second. It is a comfort in case of death; God is thy Father, and at death thou art going to thy Father. If God be our Father, we may with comfort, at the day of death, resign our souls into His hand: so did Christ--“Father, into Thy hands I commend My Spirit.” If a child hath any jewel, he will, in time of danger, put it into his father’s hands, where he thinks it will be kept most safe. Our soul is our richest jewel, we may at death resign our souls into God’s hands, where they will be safer than in our own keeping. What a comfort is this, death carries a believer to his Father’s house, “where are delights unspeakable and full of glory!”
Let us behave and carry ourselves as the children of such a Father, in several particulars.
1. Let us depend upon our Heavenly Father, in all our straits and exigencies; let us believe that He will provide for us.
2. If God be our Father, let us imitate Him.
3. If God be our Father, let us submit patiently to His will. What gets the child by struggling, but more blows? What got Israel by their murmuring and rebelling, but a longer and more tedious march, and at last their carcases fell in the wilderness?
4. If God be our Father, let this cause in us a childlike reverence--“If I be a Father, where is My honour?” If you have not always a childlike confidence, yet always preserve a childlike reverence.
5. If God be our Father, let us walk obediently--“As obedient children.”
6. If God be your Father, show it by your cheerful looks that you are the children of such a Father. Too much drooping and despondency disparageth the relation you stand in to God.
7. If God be our Father, let us honour Him by walking very holily--“Be ye holy, for I am holy.” A young prince asking a philosopher how he should behave himself, the philosopher said, “Remember thou art a king’s son.” Causinus, in his hieroglyphics, speaks of a dove, whose wings being perfumed with sweet ointments, did draw the other doves after her. The holy lives of God’s children is a sweet perfume to draw others to religion, and make them to be of the family of God. Justin Martyr saith, that which converted him to Christianity, was the beholding the blameless lives of the Christians.
8. If God be our Father, let us love all that are His children--“How pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!”
9. If God be our Father, let us show heavenly-mindedness; they who are born of God do set their “affections on things that are above.” What, a son of God, and a slave to the world! What, sprung from heaven, and buried in the earth I
10. If God be our Father, let us own our Heavenly Father in the worst times; stand up in His cause, defend His truths.
What may we learn from this, that God is in heaven?
1. Hence we learn that we are to raise our minds in prayer above the earth. God never denied that soul his suit who went as far as heaven to ask it.
2. We learn from God’s being in heaven, His sovereign power. “By this word is meant, that all things are subject to His governing power.” “Our God is in the heavens, He hath done whatever He pleased.” God being in heaven governs the universe, and orders all occurrences here below for the good of His children.
3. We learn God’s glory and majesty; He is in heaven, therefore He is covered with light; “clothed with honour,” and is far above all worldly princes as heaven is above earth.
4. We learn, from God’s being in heaven, His omnisciency. “All things are naked, and opened to His eye.”
5. We learn from God’s being in heaven, comfort for the children of God; when they pray to their Father, the way to heaven cannot be blocked up. One may have a father living in foreign parts, but the way, both by sea and by land, may be so blocked up, that there is no coming to Him; but thou, saint of God, when thou prayest to thy Father, He is in heaven; and though thou art ever so confined, thou mayest have access to Him. A prison cannot keep thee from thy God; the way to heaven can never be blocked up. “Father,” denotes reverence; “Our Father,” denotes faith. In all our prayers to God we should exercise faith--“Our Father.” Faith is that which baptizeth prayer, and gives it a name; it is called “the prayer of faith”; without faith, it is speaking, not praying. Faith is the breath of prayer; prayer is dead unless faith breathe in it. Faith is a necessary requisite in prayer. The oil of the sanctuary was made up of several sweet spices, pure myrrh, cassia, cinnamon: faith is the chief spice, or ingredient in prayer, which makes it go up to the Lord, as sweet incense--“Let him ask in faith”; “Whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.” Faith must take prayer by the hand, or there is no coming nigh to God; prayer without faith is unsuccessful. As Joseph said, “You shall not see my face, unless you bring your brother Benjamin with you,” so prayer cannot see God’s face, unless it bring its brother faith with it. This makes prayer often suffer shipwreck, because it dasheth upon the rock of unbelief.
O sprinkle faith in prayer! We must say, “our Father.”
1. What doth praying in faith imply? Praying in faith implies the having of faith; the act implies the habit. To walk implies a principle of life; so to pray in faith implies a habit of grace. None can pray in faith but believers.
2. What is it to pray in faith?
(1) To pray in faith, is to pray for that which God hath promised; where there is no promise, we cannot pray in faith.
(2) To pray in faith, is to pray in Christ’s meritorious name--“Whatsoever ye shall ask in My name, that will I do.”
(3) To pray in faith, is; in prayer to fix our faith on God’s faithfulness, believing that He doth hear, and will help; this is a taking hold of God.
3. How may we know that we do truly pray in faith? We may say, “our Father,” and think we pray in faith, when it is in presumption: how, therefore, may we know that we do indeed pray in faith?
(1) When our faith in prayer is humble. A presumptuous person hopes to be beard in prayer for some inherent worthiness in himself; he is so qualified, and hath done God good service, therefore he is confident God will hear his prayer.
(2) We may know we pray in faith, when, though we have not the present thing we pray for, yet we believe God will grant it, therefore we will stay His leisure. A believer, at Christ’s word, lets down the net of prayer, and though he catch nothing, he will cast the net of prayer again, believing that mercy will come. Patience in prayer is nothing but faith spun out.
1. It reproves them that pray in formality, not in faith; they question whether God hears or will grant--“Ye ask and receive not, because ye ask amiss.” Unbelief clips the wings of prayer, that it will not fly to the throne of grace; the rubbish of unbelief stops the current of prayer.
2. Let us set faith a work in prayer, “our Father.” O pray in faith I Say, “our Father.” And that we may act faith in prayer, consider
(1) God’s readiness to hear prayer. Did God forbid all addresses to Him, it would put a damp upon the trade of prayer; but God’s ear is open to prayer. The Ediles among the Romans had their doors always standing open, that all who had petitions might have free access to them. God is both ready to hear and grant prayer; this may encourage faith in prayer. And whereas some may say, they have prayed, but have had no answer: First. God may hear prayer, though He do not presently answer. We write a letter to a friend; he may have received it, though we have yet had no answer of it. Second. God may give an answer to prayer, when we do not perceive it.
(2) That we may act faith in prayer, consider we do not pray alone. Christ prays over our prayers again; Christ’s prayer is the ground why our prayer is heard. Christ takes the dross out of our prayer, and presents nothing to His Father but pure gold. Christ mingles His sweet odours with the prayers of the saints.
(3) We pray to God for nothing but what is pleasing to Him, and He hath a mind to grant; if a son ask nothing but what his father is willing to bestow, this may make him go to him with confidence.
(4) To encourage faith in prayer, consider the many sweet promises that God hath made to prayer. The cork keeps the net from sinking: the promises are the cork to keep faith from sinking in prayer. God hath bound
Himself to us by His promises. The Bible is bespangled with promises made to prayer.
(5) That we may act faith in prayer, consider, Jesus Christ hath purchased that which we pray for; we may think the things we ask for in prayer too great for us to obtain, but they are not too great for Christ to purchase. (T. Watson.)
Our Father which art in Heaven
I. From these words we learn, first, that GOD IS A FATHER--“When ye pray, say ‘Father!’” At the very outset, let us beware of taking this blessed word, Father, figuratively, or, to use the language of the theologians, as au accommodation. Rather is it precisely the opposite. It is the human fatherhood which is an accommodation to the Divine, not the Divine which is an accommodation to the human. For the spiritual exists before the material, as the substance exists before the shadow it casts. The meaning, the final cause, of the earthly fatherhood itself, what is it but to testify to and interpret the heavenly? Hence the deep solemnity of the Parental Institution. The parent is to the infant the image and representation of the Parent in Heaven. And the first lesson the infant learns is Fatherhood. Happy if in learning it he learns the Divine Father hood as well as the human! Thus, the parental institution is the Heavenly Father’s means of lifting His earthly children to His own Divine Fatherhood. And now let us ponder the Divine Fatherhood in light of the human, and note some of the meanings it has for us. And, first, Fatherhood means sirehood, or communication of nature. Animals are God’s creatures; men are God’s children. This is the very point which the Lord urges when He exhorts His disciples to trust the Heavenly Father. “Behold the birds of the air; they are not God’s children; yet your Heavenly Father feedeth them; will He not much more feed you, who are His sons?” This Divine inspiration or inbreathing it is which makes man God’s image, God’s offspring, God’s son. How august the Divine record of man’s genealogy: “Who was the son of Enoch, who was the son of Seth, who was the son of Adam, who was the son of God.” Sirehood, then, is entailment of nature, and sonhood is inheritance of nature. As the difference between parent and babe is a difference in degree rather than in kind, so is the difference between God and man. Man shares finitely in God’s infinite nature. And this is true for all men. God is not only a Father; God is the Father. True, Holy Scripture speaks of adoption, or a spectral sonship. As an earthly father discriminates between his children, admitting the dutiful ones to special intimacies, partnerships, bequests, and the like, so it is with the Heavenly Father. There is a sonship of nature in the sphere of manhead; and there is a sonship of grace in the sphere of Christhead. Again: Fatherhood means authority. The government by the Father is natural, direct, personal, supreme, inextinguishable. And this is God’s government. It is based on Fatherhood. Just as an earthly father has the natural right to rule his offspring, so it is with the heavenly. Parentage, in simple virtue of its being parent age, is imperative. God is Father-King. And authority means the right--and, when needful, the duty--to punish. Alas, how often in this fallen world is punishment needed, e.g., to vindicate authority or to amend character! And observe precisely the basis of the right to chasten: it is not age, or strength, or stature; it is Fatherhood. No man has the right to punish his neighbour’s child, however vicious he may be: none but the child’s own father has that right; and he has that right because he is father. Let us beware then of sentimental views of God’s Fatherhood. But let us beware of the opposite extreme. There may be slavish views of God as well as sentimental. Particularly is this the case among the heathen; their God is force. Witness Jupiter Tonans, Thor, Siva, and the like And so, once more, Fatherhood means Love. The Heavenly Father’s love is shown in the realm of Providence. Just as an earthly father reveals his fatherhood by arranging the conditions and providing for the welfare of his children, so does the Heavenly Father reveal in the same way His Fatherhood. And as the earthly father does not leave the wants and affairs of his children--their market and clothing and school and health and holiday expenses--robe regulated by machinery, but exercises over them his personal vigilance and guardianship, being, in short, a sort of Providence; so the Heavenly Father does not leave the wants and affairs of His children to the blind operations of Nature’s laws and the inexorable sequences of fate, but He exercises over them a personal vigilance, protection, and guidance. What man, accustomed to take broad and observant views of human history, does not see that the wisest and strongest of men are often but as little infants in the Heavenly Father’s hands, sheltered by Him, guarded by Him, led by Him, arranged by Him? God’s Providence grows out of God’s Fatherhood. But the crowning proof that the Heavenly Father loves us is seen in the Incarnation of His Son,
II. But our text teaches a second lesson. It is this: ALL MEN ARE BROTHERS--“When ye pray, say: ‘Our Father’” Each is to carry the race with him,making his closet the world’s oratory. As long as He who is no respecter of persons, and with whom is no variableness or shadow of turning, invites Jew and Gentile, Mongolian and Caucasian, Nubian and Anglo-Saxon, to call Him Father, so long are Jew and Gentile, Mongolian and Caucasian, Nubian and Anglo-Saxon, brothers. These two words--Our Father--for ever settle the question of the moral unity of the race. Mankind is more than an aggregate of individuals; it is a family group; we are members of one another. Moreover, these words for ever settle the missionary question. In these words--Our Father--is born and fostered and will triumph the missionary enterprise, the true “Enthusiasm of Humanity.”
III. But our text teaches a third lesson; it is this: GOD IS OUR HEAVENLY FATHER--“When ye pray, say: ‘Our Father who art in Heaven.’” And first, negatively: the term Heaven, as occurring in our text, must not be taken in the local sense. Containing in Himself all things, God cannot be contained in anything. “Lo, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain Thee.” Affirmatively: the heaven of our text is the moral heaven rather than the local. To express moral excellence by terms of altitude is an instinct. How naturally we use such phrases as these: “Exalted worth, high resolve, lofty purpose, elevated views, sublime character, eminent purity!” How naturally, too, we use opposite phrases: “Low instincts, base passions, degraded character, grovelling habits, stooping to do it!” In like manner, pagans instinctively localize their gods on mountain-crests: e.g., the Persians on Caucasus, the Hindoos on Meru, the Greeks on Olympus. So the Jews themselves, when fallen into idolatry, consecrated high places and hill-tops. Doubtless here, too, is the secret of the arch, and especially the spire, as the symbol of Christian architecture--the Church is an aspiration. Loftiness being the symbol of whatever is morally excellent, to say that our Father is in heaven is to ascribe to our Father every moral excellence. And, first, heaven suggests our Father’s immensity. Nothing seems so remote from us or gives such an idea of vastness as the dome of heaven. Again: heaven suggests our Father’s sovereignty. Be not rash, then, with thy mouth, and let not thy heart be hasty to utter a word before God: for God is in heaven and thou upon earth; therefore let thy words be few. Again: heaven suggests our Father’s spirituality. Nothing seems so like that rarity of texture which we so instinctively ascribe to pure, incorporeal spirit, as that subtle, tenuous ether which it is believed pervades the clear, impalpable sky, and, indeed, all immensity. Again: heaven suggests our Father’s purity. Nothing is so exquisite an emblem of absolute spotlessness and eternal chastity as the unsullied expanse of heaven, untrodden by mortal foot, unswept by aught but angel wings. Again: heaven suggests our Father’s beatitude. We cannot conceive a more perfect emblem of felicity and moral splendour than light. Once more: heaven suggests our Father’s obscurity. For though God Himself is light, yet there are times when even the very heavens themselves obscure His brightness. “Why has Christ commanded us to add to the address, Our Father, the words, Who art in heaven?” asks the Heidelberg Catechism. And the answer is: “That we may have no earthly thought of the heavenly majesty of God.” A true and noble answer. The term--Father--expresses God’s relation to us--it is fatherly. The term--heaven--expresses that Father’s character--it is heavenly. Thus our text give us God for Father, man for brother, heaven for character. (G. D.Boardman, D. D.)
Our Father in heaven
I. A TENDER RELATIONSHIP.
1. A tender relationship between us and God: “Our Father in heaven. Well, when you pray, what do you do? to whom do you speak? I fancy some speak to themselves, some to those to whom they say their prayers, many to no one at all. The heathen sees his idol, and speaks to it, and you cannot understand that. But you see nothing, hear nothing, feel nothing, and so when you close your eyes and pray, it is as if you had no one to speak to. But you know how it is when you write to your absent father. You see or hear or feel nothing, and yet you know that you are speaking to him, and that the words you are writing will one day come under his eye, and serve the purpose in view. And so with your “Father in heaven.” He is a real personal God, not who was once, but who is now, “which art in heaven.” When you think of God, you often think of Him with fear, with terror. He is such a holy God, He so hates sin, and is so just in punishing it, and so mighty. And when you pray, if you think at all about the matter, your thoughts of God are such as these, and you only fear Him. But what says the text? “Our Father in heaven.” You may be afraid of others, not of a father. You may stand in doubt of others, not of a father. If there is any one you can trust and love and feel at home with, it is a father. There is a little child crying as if his heart would break. I do all I can to pacify him, but can make nothing of it. My well-meant efforts seem only to make him worse. But when his father comes in sight, how the little one stretches out his hands, how his face is lighted up, and when once fairly in his father’s arms, how his sorrow is hushed! Who is so kind and considerate and tender as a father? And such is God. I wish I could persuade you to believe in God’s love and tenderness as a Father. There is nothing which you may not tell Him. There is nothing which you may not ask of Him. There is nothing too little--too trifling. I wish I could convince you of that heavenly Father’s love. What it would do for you! I can suppose that, in the spring or summer time of the year, when the flowers are so beautiful, you have a little favourite flower. You planted it with your own hand, you water it daily, you watch it constantly, you are bent on seeing it come into bloom. The plant is somewhat sickly, and the long-watched bud seems as if it would drop off without ever opening, till you bring it out of the shade, and set it in the sun; and what you could not force in any other way, takes place quite naturally under the genial heat and sunshine of a summer’s day. Such is the effect of coming under the sunshine of the heavenly Father’s love. It would do for you what the shining sun does for the flowers--making them healthy and beautiful, a joy to all onlookers. The very word, how it should melt, and draw, and gladden you--“Our Father!” What a word this is to be applied to God! what a name for us to call Him by! There is no petition which we could address to Him at all equal to it. It is a prayer in itself, the most powerful that could be offered. Let me suppose that one of you boys or girls were drowning, that from the sea, or from some neighbouring lake or river, one of you were to send the shrill cry, “Father!” I need not tell you what would follow: I need not describe how your father would be up and off in a moment, how he would rush to the quarter from which the sound came. Not a word more would be needed, it would ask all you required, it would contain at once petition and argument--no prayer would be like it--“Father!” A mother once told me, that from the time her children began to call her “mother,” the word had a power over her which she could not describe. She might be in the attic, busily at work, but if, three stories below, she heard her boys calling “Mother!” it went to her heart. The very name was so sweet--it had such a power over her--that she would at once throw down her work and hurry to them. And now that they are grown-up men, it is still the same. I have heard the call, and soon has followed the sound of hurrying footsteps, and the gentle, “Well, dear?” in reply. Now, if this be so, if the name father or mother has such a power with earthly parents, what power may we not suppose that word, “Our Father,” from the lips of His children, to have with the “Father in heaven”? I do not know any words sufficient to express the honour of standing in such a relationship to God. Nor would it be easy to tell what we should be to such a God, how we should love and serve and obey Him. Let me just make one remark here. Those who call God “Father,” should be like Him. Have you not often been struck with the likeness of children to their parents? There are not a few children whom I could name, though I had never seen them before, just from their likeness to their parents. I have said to a child on the street, “Your name is so-and-so; isn’t it?” “Yes.” “I was sure of it: he is so like his father.” Now, so should it be with those who call God “Father.” The likeness should be such that everybody should see it. Ay, and the name should help us to be like Him. I cannot, for very shame, use that name and do as I have been doing. Just as an ill-doing son might well change his name, and try to be as unlike his father in appearance as possible, as feeling it a disgrace to be so unworthy of him; so, many of us would almost do well to give up this name, unless we are more worthy of it. Not long ago, the chaplain in one of our prisons told me, that among the prisoners to whom he ministered, he had met with a soldier whose name had been on the prison-books again and again, but who had always given a false name, assigning as the reason, that he could not bear the thought of his father’s honoured name being on the prison-books in the person of his unworthy son.
2. A tender relationship between us and Christ. This remark explains the last. This is necessary in order to the last. But for this, the other could not be. We were not always sons. We were strangers. We were enemies. “Ye are all the children of God, by faith in Christ Jesus.” “Predestinated unto the adoption of children, by Jesus Christ.” The relationship between us and Christ is that of brotherhood.
3. A tender relationship between us and others. No believer needs to be, is, can be, alone. Whenever he comes to Christ, he comes into the family.
II. THE CHARACTERISTICS OF TRUE PRAYER.
1. It should be trustful: “Our Father--our Father in heaven.” Trustful as regards His ability to do what is asked. Little children have extraordinary notions as to what their fathers can do. To hear them speak, you would almost think they believed in a father’s power to do anything. You must have noticed this in others, or in yourselves. If there is a heavy load to be lifted, which a child cannot move, more than likely he will tell you his father could lift it. If any one threatens to do him harm, though a far stronger man, he says he will tell his father, as if he could put all to rights. Prayer should be trustful, as regards God’s willingness to do anything, His love: “Our Father.” Once more, prayer should be trustful, as regards God’s wisdom: “Our Father in heaven.” How often do others give us what our fathers would deny! I find the thought on which I have been dwelling, of trust in “our Father,” beautifully illustrated in a most interesting little book, entitled, “Nettie’s Mission: Stories illustrative of the Lord’s Prayer.” Three little children were spending the evening together, when a violent thunderstorm came on, which obliged them to stay where they were, all night. “Just before prayer time, Mr. Thorn told them that they might each choose the Bible verse they liked best, and tell why they loved it. ‘I know what my verse will be for this night,’ said Margery. ‘I don’t know where to find it, but it says, ‘The Lord of glory thundereth.’ ‘Why did you choose that verse, Margery?’ asked Mrs. Thorn. ‘Because I think it so nice, when you hear that awful noise, to know it is God. It makes me think of one day long ago. Aunt Annie was out, and I heard a great noise up in the loft, when I thought I was all alone in the house; and I was so frightened, I screamed, and father’s voice called out, “Don’t be afraid, little Margie; it’s only father.” And now, when it thunders very loud, it always seems as if I heard God say, “Don’t be afraid, little Margie; it’s only Father;” and I don’t feel a bit frightened. “Don’t you think it’s a real nice verse?’” In travelling lately in a railway carriage, a friend told me the following facts with which he was personally conversant. Some years ago, a vessel, crossing to this country from the Continent, was overtaken by a storm. One of the passengers, much alarmed, asked a young sailor-boy on board, if there was danger. He said there was, but added, “Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him.” The ship reached the port in safety, and not long since the fact was called to mind in this interesting way: On board one of our steamers, a clergyman told the captain what I have told you, adding that he was the passenger, and that the boy’s trustful word had had such effect on him, that it had led him to seek the Saviour, and ultimately to become a minister of the gospel. “And I,” answered the captain, “am that sailor-boy!” I give you the story, in substance, as it was told to me; that Christian sailor and his friend being, I believe, still alive.
2. Prayer should be reverent: “Our Father in heaven.” The word “Father” implies that, still more “in heaven.” How particular you are when you speak to one higher in rank than yourself! What thought it gives you beforehand! How anxious you are to have all right, as regards your dress, your hair, &c., how in the porch outside, you might been seen, with your cap or your handkerchief, wiping the dust off your shoes; and after you have rung the bell, how your heart beats before the door is opened, and you are ushered in! With what reverence people appear before and speak to the Queen! The highest men among us would be not a little anxious today, if they had to appear before her Majesty to-morrow. And what about appearing before God, and speaking to God?
3. Prayer should be in the name of Jesus.
4. Prayer should be unselfish. (J. H. Wilson, M. A.)
God a Father
A strong and practical belief of the Divine being and presence lies at the basis of all true devotion. An atheist cannot pray. “He that cometh to God, must believe that He is, and that He is the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.” Prayer is the language of nature, because it is the language of want; it is the language of a creature to his Creator, of a child, dependent, helpless, benighted, to his unearthly Parent. From whatever station in human life, or portion of the world, or degraded state of human society; from whatever throne or dungeon, from whatever liberty, or whatever servitude, any one of the vast family of man may affectionately and dutifully address his thoughts to heaven, he shall find a Father’s ear, and the heart of a Father. His family is large and widely dispersed; it is composed of millions upon millions, scattered over every continent and island, every sea and shore, every mountain and valley, every palace and every log-cabin; nor is any one of them denied the relation of children. One of the obligations of piety is founded on this natural relation which men sustain to God as the parent source of their being. When we adopt the language, “Our Father who art in heaven,” we are also reminded of the still more endearing relation which exists between their Heavenly Father, and those who constitute His spiritual family. The Scriptures and facts instruct us that every son and daughter of Adam is by nature alienated from God, and a child of wrath. Even under the old dispensation, the people of God were not denied the hopes and consolations of this filial relation. The language of Moses to the people of Israel is, “Ye are the children of the Lord your God.” “Doubtless Thou art our Father,” is the language of the prophet. The beautiful language of his prayer is, “Our Father.” There are two thoughts of interest in this emphatic phraseology. “Thou art my God,” says the Psalmist, “and I will exalt Thee.” Elsewhere he says, “God, our own God, shall bless us.” There are the actings of an appropriating faith in words like these. But this is not all which these cheering words express. The social character of this prayer may not be passed over in silence. It is “Our Father.” The social character of religion is too little known by the men of the world, and appreciated too little by Christians. True piety has indeed much to do with individual character and obligations. It cannot exist without secret meditation, and solitary communion with God. Yet is it designed to call into exercise and consecrate all the social principles of our nature. There are common interests, and there are individual interests, to be prosecuted in joint supplication. God is not only the hearer of prayer, but the hearer of social prayer. The social relations flourish only under the genial influence of Christianity. They have never been known in their purity in Pagan lands, however elevated by science, and refined by the courtesies of life. The gospel alone purifies and elevates them, and gives them principle. “Our Father who art in heaven!” how strong the bond! Here the worst affections are subdued, and the best called into exercise. The powers of earth and sin are here subdued, suspicion and jealousy, envy and hatred. Nor may the thought be lost sight of, that union is the soul and strength of prayer. If “united action is powerful action,” so is united prayer powerful prayer. Why should the social principle be pressed into every other service, save the service of God; and why, while men associate for the purposes of business, pleasure, literature, accomplishments, science, and the arts, are there so few associations for prayer? Shall every other society be sought, rather than the society of God’s children? There is also in this brief address a sublime ascription. “Our Father, who art in heaven! “The Divine Being is not confined either to the heavens or the earth. He filleth all in all”: He is in heaven; highly exalted as God over all; reigning there in invisible majesty, and dwelling in light that is inaccessible and full of glory. He is venerable for His greatness. He decks Himself with light as with a garment, and is arrayed in majesty and excellency. There is great imperfection in earthly parents compared with God. Earthly parents know not how to adapt their bounty at all times to the wants of their children. There is no such defect, and no such mistake with God. But nothing restricts God’s power to give: giving does not impoverish, withholding does not enrich Him. The love of earthly parents is strong; it survives separation, annihilates distance, forgives disobedience, rebellion, and neglect. It does not perish even with the infamy of its objects, nor will it yield its claims to the stern and inevitable demands of the grave. It outlives life; feeds on recollected joys and hopes, and lavishes on the marble and on the turf that tenderness of which the dead are unconscious. It is a self-sacrificing and uncomplaining, coveting even weariness, and watchings, and pain for those it loves. But it is not indestructible. Let the spirit of this first sentence in the Lord’s prayer counsel us to cherish more befitting impressions of the God we worship. He is no unbending tyrant, no hard master; but the best and kindest of fathers. (G. Spring, D. D.)
Our Father
1. Christ here teacheth us to call God “Our Father”; and by God’s providence and fatherly goodness we are incorporated as it were and kneaded together, that by softness of disposition, by friendly communication, by mutual praying, we may transfuse ourselves one into another, and receive from others into ourselves. And in this we place the communion of saints.
2. In the participation of those privileges and characters which Christ hath granted and the Spirit sealed, calling us to the same faith, baptizing us in the same laver, leading us by the same rule, filling us with the same grace, sealing to us the same pardon, upholding us with the same hope.
3. In those offices and duties which Christ hath made common, which Christ requires of His Church: “Where my fear watcheth not only for myself, but stands sentinel for others; my sorrow drops not down for my own sins alone, but for the sins of my brethren; my joy as full with others’ joy; and my devotion is importunate and restless for the whole Church.” I cry aloud for my brother, and his prayers are the echo of my cry. We are all joined together in this word noster, when we call God “our Father.” (A. Farindon.)
Love abroad
Our love is so chained to ourselves that she cannot reach forth a hand to others. She is active and vocal at home, but hath the cramp and cannot breathe for the welfare of our brethren, impetu cogitationis in nobis ipsis consumpto, “having consumed and spent herself at home.” (A. Farindon.)
Of applying God’s Fatherhood to ourselves
A particular persuasion of God’s fatherly affection to ourselves is then especially requisite when we pray unto Him. We cannot in truth say unto Him, “Our Father” without such a persuasion. The benefits of that particular persuasion are great and manifold. For--
1. It distinguisheth the sound faith of true saints from the counterfeit faith of formal professors and trembling faith of devils. They may believe that God is a Father, but they cannot believe that God is their Father.
2. It maketh us more boldly to come to the throne of grace. “I will go to my Father.”
3. It maketh us to rest upon God more confidently for provision for all things needful, and protection from all things hurtful. For this particular relation of God’s fatherhood to us showeth that God taketh an especial care of us, to whom the promise of God’s care especially belongeth.
4. It doth much uphold us in all distresses.
5. It strengtheneth our faith in all the properties and works of God.
6. It affordeth much comfort against our manifold infirmities.
7. All that can be said of God’s fatherhood will bring no comfort to a man unless he can apply it to himself. Children do not go to a man for the things they want because he is a father of other children, but because he is their own father. (William Gouge.)
God hath abundance of blessing for all
Concerning the abundance of blessing which this our common Father hath, it appeareth to be sufficient for all, in that Christ directeth all to go to Him, and that for others as well as for themselves, and not to fear to put Him in mind that He is the Father of others as well as of ourselves, and that He hath others to bless as well as us. So as God is not like Isaac, who had bet one blessing, and having therewith blessed one son, could not bless the other. He is as a springing fountain which ever remaineth full, and continueth to overflow, though never so much be taken out of it. Men that are very chary in keeping standing ponds private to themselves suffer springs to flow in common for others. Thus doth God’s fatherly bounty flow out to all that in faith come to partake thereof. (William Gouge.)
Of God’s being in heaven
How is God’s greatness set forth? By His mansion place which is in heaven. A mansion place is an usual means of greatness or meanness. When we see a little thatched ruinous cottage we may imagine that he is a poor mean person that dwelleth there. Thus Eliphas setteth out the baseness of men who “dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust.” But if we see a fair and stately palace, we think that he is a great personage that inhabiteth there. Great Nebuchadnezzar did thus set out his own greatness: “Is not this great Babylon that I have built for the house of the kingdom and for the honour of my majesty?” Many do so pervert this description of God’s greatness, as thereby they much impeach the excellency of His majesty. For--
1. Some thence infer that God may be circumscribed and compassed in a place.
2. Others thence infer that He is so high as He cannot see the things below, which Eliphas noteth to be the mind of the profane in his time who say, “Is not God in the height of heaven? How doth God know?”
3. Others thence infer that though it be granted that God secth the earth and all things done thereon, yet He ordereth them not, which was the conceit of many philosophers.
Why is God thus set forth?
1. To make our souls ascend as high as possibly can be when we pray unto Him. Above heaven our thoughts cannot ascend.
2. To distinguish God from earthly parents, and to show that He is far more excellent than they, even as heaven is higher than the earth, and things in heaven more excellent than things on earth.
3. To show that He is free from all earthly infirmities, and from that changeableness whereunto things on earth are subject.
4. To set Him forth in the most glorious manner that can be. As kings are most glorious in their thrones, so is God in heaven, which is His throne.
5. Because His glory is most manifested as in heaven, so from heaven.
What direction doth it give for the manner for prayer?
1. That in prayer we conceive no image of God. For whereunto can He, who is in heaven, be resembled?
2. That we conceive no earthly or carnal thing of God who is in heaven.
3. That we measure not God, His Word, nor works by the last of our reason. He is in heaven; we on earth. This, therefore, is to measure things heavenly with an earthly measure, which is too Scanty.
4. That we apply all the goodness of earthly parents to God after a transcendent and supereminent manner. For as the heaven is higher than the earth, so great is His mercy, &c.
5. That with all reverence we prostrate ourselves before God our Father in heaven.
6. That we make no place a pretext to keep us from prayer. For as the heaven and the sun therein is everywhere over us so as we cannot withdraw ourselves out of the compass thereof, so much more is God in every place over us. Is our Father which is in heaven tied to one country, or to one place in a country more than to another? An heathenish conceit[
For the heathen imagined their Apollo, from whom they received their oracles to be at Delphi, Cuma, Dodona, and such other places.
7. That we lift up pure hearts in prayer. For heaven, where God is on His throne of grace, and whither our souls in prayer ascend, is a pure and holy place.
8. That our prayers be made with a holy subjection to God’s will.
9. That in faith we lift up eyes, hands, and hearts into heaven.
10. That our prayers be so sent forth as they may pierce the heavens where God is. This is to be done with extension not of voice, but of spirit. The shrillest sound of any trumpet cannot reach unto the highest heaven, nor the strongest report of any cannon. But ardency of spirit can pierce to the throne of grace.
11. That we pray with confidence in God’s almighty power.
12. That we pray with courage, not fearing what any on earth can do to hinder the fruit and success of our prayers. (William Gouge.)
Of the direction which God’s being in heaven giveth us for the matter of prayer
What direction doth this placing of God in heaven give us for the matter of prayer? It teacheth us what things especially to ask.
1. Things of weight and worth meet for such a Majesty to give. When subjects prefer a petition to their sovereign sitting on his throne, or chair of estate, they do not use to make suit for pins or points. This were dishonourable to his majesty. Shall we then make suit to this highest Majesty being in heaven for toys and trifles? Shall a dice-player pray that he may win his fellow’s money? Shall an angry man pray to God that he may be revenged on him with whom he is angry? Shall any one desire God to satisfy his lusts?
2. From this placing of God in heaven we are taught to crave things heavenly, which are
(1) Such as tend to the glory of God that is in heaven.
(2) Such as help us to heaven. If the things which we are here taught to pray for be heavenly, how is it that temporal blessings come in the rank and number of them? As appendices and appurtenances to heavenly and spiritual blessings, for so they are promised. “First seek the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”
As when a man purchaseth manors and lands, the wood in hedgerows for fire-boot, plough-boot, and other like purposes is given in the gross. Or more plainly, when a man buyeth spice, fruit, comfits, of any such commodities, paper and packthread is given into the bargain. So if thou get heavenly blessings, temporal things, so far as they are needful for thee, shall be cast in.
3. From placing God in heaven we are taught to crave heaven it§elf, that we may be where our Father is, and where we may most fully enjoy His glorious presence. (William Gouge.)
Our Father which art
From the greatness of His love to us when we call Him Father. From the liberal communication of His goodness to us in that we say “Our Father.” From the immutability of His essence, intimated in these words, Qui es, “Which art.” From the high domination and power He hath over us when we say In Coelis, “Which art in heaven.” (Archdeacon King.)
“Our,” better than mine and thine
Meum and Tuum, these words, “Mine” and “Thine,” have been the seeds of envy and contention ever since the world was habitable. From these little grains hath the law’s large harvest grown up. These were they which at first invented, and ever since exercised our terms--the common barristers, causes of all rents and schisms in the commonwealth’s body. These have blown the coals of strife, occasioned brothers to go to law with brothers, nay, brothers to destroy one another. If Abel should have asked Cain upon what quarrel he killed him, he could have stated his controversy in no other terms but Meum and Tuum--“Thy sacrifice is better accepted than mine.” These have been the accursed removers of neighbours’ bounds and landmarks, have entitled the vigilant oppressor to another’s patrimony. These were the bloody depositions that cost Naboth his life; had he relinquished his right to the vineyard, and not called it mine--“I will not give thee my vineyard”--he had preserved a friend of Jezebel and a life too. These two little monosyllables, “mine” and “thine,” they are the great monopolists that span the wide world, that, like Abraham and Lot, divide the land betwixt them, yet cannot agree, but are ever wrangling and quarrelling about their shares; like these two factious brethren, Eteocles and Polyniees, who never could be reconciled, living nor dead, for when they had slain one the other, and were put on one hearse, one funeral pile, their ashes fought, and the flames that burnt the bodies, as sensible of the mortal feud which was betwixt them living, divided themselves. How many actions and suits begun upon these terms “mine” and “thine” have survived those that commenced them first, and descended from the great-grandfather to the heir in the fourth generation? Since then these two had occasioned so much strife, so much mischief in the politic body, Christ would not have them admitted to make any faction or rent in the mystical body of the Church. But as He was the Reconciler of God and man by His blood, so would He show Himself the Reconciler of man and man, shutting up all opposition of mine and thine in this one word, as the common peacemaker, Noster, Our Father. (William Gouge.)
A lesson of humility
He would not have any to prize themselves so much as to scorn and disvalue all below them. God is a God of the valleys as well as the hills, nor is He a Father of the rich and noble, but of the poor too. Be their qualities and degrees never so different in the account of the world, summed up in the account of this prayer, they are all even. As but one sacrifice was appointed for the rich and poor, so Christ hath appointed but one prayer, but one appellation for them all, Pater Nester, Our Father. The king and the beggar, the lord and the slave, all concur and say, “Our Father.” God is no partial Father, nor is His ear partial; He hears and accepts the one as soon as the other. For our prayers do not ascend in their ranks, nor doth the poor man’s petition stay to let the great ones go before; but when we pray, God comprehends us all under one common notion of sons and suitors. (William Gouge.)
God our Father
The spirit of adoption is shed abroad in our hearts, and its cry is “Abba, Father.” Now I need not say, I am sure, that of all feelings in the world there is none which is so likely to exhibit itself by outward signs and proofs as this--none so impossible to conceal, and of the existence of which, in consequence, we need have so little doubt. In the first place, then, let us see what proofs there may be of this love of God within us I First, as a matter of course, like any other passion or strong feeling which takes possession of us, it will be constantly present to us. Let the urgent business be over, and the burthen, so to say, removed from the mind, it returns like an unstrung bow instantly to its own bent. It delights to recover its liberty, and those beloved thoughts which for the moment had been driven into the background, resume their natural place, and become the first without an effort. Thus it is, as we all know, that the man of pleasure finds thoughts of pleasure uppermost; he does not seek for them; they come. The man whose heart is set on gain finds worldly speculations occupying him whether he will or not, I believe without exception, and so on through all the varieties of human pursuit! The favourite thought comes! Now this is what I mean in regard to God. In all the intervals which our worldly occupations leave, which in those whose hearts are not given up to them, are very many, it is the thought of our heavenly Father which presents itself most naturally and unaffectedly to us. Secondly. There is another principle which flows naturally out of this constant presence of the thought of God in our secret souls, and it is one of the most delightful, if not the most so, which comes out of those treasures of grace which enrich the converted soul, even the feeling of trust, an entire confidence without reserve or drawback, in Him whom we love. It is just that sort of reliance, without check or a doubt of suspicion, which you see in an innocent child towards an affectionate parent. Thirdly. Another proof of the love of God, as a real living principle within us, is the readiness with which men encounter difficulties, or make what the world calls sacrifices of gain or pleasure, in order to further the holy will of Him whom they serve. Fourthly. Another evidence of the love of God or not, is the delight, or otherwise, with which the soul traces out in all things the signs of God’s presence, and the proof of His manifold mercies towards us. Finally, there is another sign of this love of God, which is, perhaps, the strongest and best of all. I mean love to other men’s souls, and a longing for their eternal happiness. (J. Garbett, M. A.)
Hallowed be Thy name
On hallowing God’s name
1. A man does not hallow the name of God who does not speak of Him most reverently. He helps to hallow it who endeavours to prevent others from profaning it.
2. The man who would hallow the name of God should be very diligent in publicly worshipping Him: he who is diligent in attending on the public worship of God thereby honours God Himself, and also protests against the conduct of those who honour Him not; and may not he who wishes to hallow the name of God do something by his influence towards persuading others to hallow it?
3. Every man who wishes to do as he prays should be careful to honour God in his household; the master of a house should hallow God’s name by daily gathering his family about him, and praising Him and making supplication before Him; he should hallow God’s name, too, by teaching his children to fear it, by bringing them up in the fear of it; he should make it his constant effort that God should be recognized as the Lord of that house that His name should be hallowed in his family however it may be profaned in others. (Bishop Harvey Goodwin.)
Hallowing God’s name
This petition relates to what is called “declarative glory”--a prayer that God’s name may be made known, and honoured by all His creatures.
1. The desire that God’s name may be “hallowed” implies that we have a just sense of His majesty and holiness. He who is really anxious for the honour of God’s name will respect His Holy Word, His house, His day, His sacraments, and all the institutions of His Church.
2. The petition, “Hallowed be Thy name,” is a prayer that all people may learn to love and obey that gracious Father in whose service we find such freedom and delight.
3. This petition should also remind us of the various ways in which our Heavenly Father is treated with disrespect and contempt.
4. Once more, the petition, “Hallowed be Thy name,” may be regarded as a devout response of faith and hope to the prophet’s vision of coming glory Malachi 1:2).
Two classes of persons should consider the subject of this sermon as applicable to them.
1. It speaks loudly to those who, while living upon the daily bounty of a gracious providence, to all intents and purposes ignore the very existence of God. The greatest miracle in the world is our heavenly Father’s patience toward the unthankful and the evil.
2. Must not even the professed followers of Christ acknowledge, with deep mortification, their own neglect to promote the honour of God? (J. N. Norton, D. D.)
The petition for the advancement of God’s glory
I. WHAT IS MEANT BY THE NAME OF GOD. The “name” of God is any perfection ascribed to Him, whereby He has been pleased to make Himself known to men.
1. God’s titles are His name.
2. God’s attributes are His name. And there are two ways whereby God has made known Himself and His name to us: by His works and by His Word.
II. WHAT IT IS TO HALLOW THIS NAME OF GOD. We can add nothing to His infinite perfections, nor to the lustre and brightness of His crown; yet then are we said to sanctify and glorify God, when, in our most reverend thoughts, we observe and admire His holiness and the bright coruscations of His attributes; and when we endeavour by all holy ways to declare them unto others, that they may observe and admire them with us and give unto God that holy veneration which is due unto Him.
III. WHAT IS CONTAINED IS THIS PETITION.
1. In that Christ hath taught us to make this the first petition in our prayer to God, we may learn that the glory of God is to be preferred by us before all other things whatsoever.
2. In that this petition is placed in the beginning of the Lord’s prayer, it intimates to us that in the very beginning and entrance of our prayers, we ought to beg assistance from God, so to perform holy duties that God may be glorified and His name sanctified by us in it. It is a good and needful request to beg of God the aid and help of His Spirit to enable us to hallow His name in the succeeding requests we are to make.
3. Observe that when we present this petition before God we beg three things of Him.
(1) Such grace for ourselves as may enable us to sanctify and glorify Him.
(2) Graces likewise for others to enable them thereunto.
(3) That God would by His almighty providence direct and overrule all things, both good and evil, to the advancement of His own glory. (Bishop Hopkins.)
Hallowing God’s name
I. WHAT IS MEANT BY THE NAME OF GOD.
1. God Himself. Names are put for persons.
2. Everything whereby He makes Himself known to His creatures.
II. IN WHAT SENSE GOD’S NAME IS TO BE HALLOWED OR SANCTIFIED. Not effectively. “Holy is His name”; it cannot be made more so.
2. But manifestly and declaratively, viz., when the holiness of His name is manifested, declared, shown, and acknowledged, “They shall sanctify My Isaiah 29:23). The holy name in the dark parts of the earth andin the dark men of the earth is a candle under a bushel; it has a glorious light, but it is not seen; the bushel being removed, and the splendour breaking forth to open view, it is hallowed; men then show, declare, and acknowledge it.
III. WHY GOD’S NAME IS SAID TO BE HALLOWED OR SANCTIFIED RATHER THAN GLORIFIED.
1. Because God’s holiness is His glory in a peculiar manner.
2. Because it is the manifesting of His holiness, in the communicating of it to the creature, that brings in the greatest revenue of glory from the creature to God. The truth is, none are fit to glorify Him but those who are 1 Peter 2:9).
IV. THE IMPORT OF THIS PETITION God’s name is hallowed--
1. By Himself, manifesting the glory of His holy name. And this He doth in all the discoveries which He makes of Himself to His creatures.
2. By His creatures, they contributing to His glory, by showing forth His praise, and declaring the glory of His name. So we pray in this petition.
(1) That God would by His overruling providence hallow His own name and glorify Himself (John 12:28).
(2) That God would by His powerful grace cause the sons of men, ourselves and others, to glorify Him and hallow His name.
V. WHY IS THIS PETITION PUT BY OUR SAVIOUR FIRST INTO OUR MOUTHS? The reason is, because the glory of God or honour of His name is the chief end of our being and of all others. And therefore it should lie nearest our hearts (Romans 11:36). Inferences--
1. The dishonour done to God by one’s own sin and the sins of others must needs go near the heart of a saint (Psalms 51:4).
2. Habitual profaners of that holy name are none of the children of God, whose main care is to get that name hallowed.
3. Holiness is the creature’s glory, and its greatest glory, for it is God’s glory, and therefore unholiness is its disgrace and dishonour. (T. Boston, D. D.)
What the first petition implies
I. We must pray that God will enable us to sanctify Him in our hearts, in our words, and in our actions.
1. In our hearts. We must pray that holiness to the Lord, the holy Lord God, may be engraven there. We must pray further: that we may always maintain in our hearts a reverent esteem of God, as a Being of infinite, unblemished purity, &c.
2. We must likewise pray, that we may sanctify the name of God with the tongue.
3. We are here directed to pray, that we may sanctify the name of God by practical obedience.
II. We must likewise pray, that God by His providence will dispose of all things for His own glory, as the universal Lord and Ruler, of whom, and through whom, and to whom are all things, and whose throne is for ever and ever; who has the hearts of all in His hand, universal nature at His command, from the meanest worm or insect to the highest of all the angelic orders in heaven; and who has wisdom and power sufficient to govern all in the best manner and to promote the best end. (John Whitty.)
The hallowing of God’s name
I. THE TERMS OF THE PRAYER. To implore that God’s name may be hallowed, is to ask that it may be treated with due reverence, as befits the holy. In heaven it is so treated (Isaiah 6:3). But what is God’s “name”? It stands for His character, and includes all those signs and deeds by which God makes known to us His moral essence;--all the manifestations which He has given of His nature and purposes;--as well as in the narrower sense of the titles and appellations which He has chosen to proclaim as His own. As His Scripture, or His Word, is a fuller and clearer manifestation of His character than is contained in this material structure--the handiwork of God, the visible Creation; so, consequently, this volume of Divine Scripture and the revelation there made are an important part of His name. As the Son, in His incarnation, yet more clearly” and yet more nearly manifested God, He, the embodying Messiah, is called the Word of God.
For as the word or speech is the embodiment of human thought, so His humanity was the embodiment of the Divine thought, or rather, of the Divine Spirit. Moses had, when sheltered in the cleft of the rock, heard the name proclaimed. Elijah caught its “still, small voice.” But Christ was the distinct, full, and loud utterance of the name--articulate, legible, and tangible--complete and enduring. And all the institutions which Christ Himself established, or which His apostles after Him ordained by His authority, since those institutions bear His name, or illustrate His character, are to be regarded as coming within the scope of the text.
II. THE SINS CONDEMNED BY THIS PETITION.
1. The profanity which trifles with God’s name and titles is evidently most irreligious; and it is, though so rife a sin, most unnatural, however easily and however often it be committed. Other sins may plead the gratification of some strong inclination--the promise of enjoyment or of profit, which they bring with them, and the storm of emotion sweeping the tempted into them. But what of gain or of pleasure may be hoped from the thoughtless and irreverent--the trivial or the defiant use of that dread name, which angels utter with adoring awe? That the sin is so unprovoked adds to its enormity. That it is so common, fearfully illustrates the wide removal which sin has made of man’s sympathies from the God to whom he owes all good;--rendering him forgetful alike of his obligations for past kindnesses, and of his exposure to the coming judgment. How murderously do men guard the honour of their own paltry names, and how keenly would they resent, on the part of a fellow-sinner, though their equal, the heartlessness that should continually, in his narratives, and jests, and falsehoods, call into use the honour of a buried father, and the purity of a revered and departed mother, and employ them as the expletive or emphatic portions of his speech--the tacks to bestud and emboss his frivolous talk. And is the memory of an earthly, and inferior, and erring parent deserving of more regard than that of the Father in heaven, the All-holy, and the Almighty, and the All-gracious? And if profanity be evil, what is perjury, but a daring endeavour to make the God of truth and justice an accomplice in deception and robbery? The vain repetitions of superstitious and formal prayer; the acted devotions of the theatre, when the dramatist sets up worship on the stage as a portion of the entertainment; and the profane intermixture in some Christian poets of the gods of heathenism with the true Maker and Ruler of Heaven, re-installing, as poets both Protestant and Catholic have done, the Joves and Apollos, the Minervas and Venuses of a guilty mythology, in the existence and honour, of which
Christianity had stript them--will not be passed over, as venial lapses, in the day when the Majesty of heaven shall make inquisition of guilt and requisition for vengeance. And so, as to those institutions upon which Jehovah has put His name, just as an earthly monarch sets his seal and broad arrow on edict and property, the putting to profane and common uses what God has claimed for sacred purposes, betrays an evident failure to hallow His name.
2. But from the sins in act, which this prayer denounces, let us pass to the sins more secret, but if possible yet more deadly, those of thought--the errors and idolatries of the heart. Jehovah’s chosen and most august domain is that where human legislators cannot enter or even look--the hidden world of man’s soul. And in the speculations, and in the mute and veiled affections of that inner sphere, how much may God be profaned and provoked.
III. Consider the DUTIES to which this prayer, for a hallowing of our Father’s name, pledges us.
1. As, in order to hallow God’s name, we must ourselves become holy, repentance and regeneration are evidently required to acceptable service before the Lord our God. Are Christians called vessels of the house of God? It is needful that they be purified “to become vessels meet for the Master’s use.”
2. And, as a consequence of this growing holiness, Christians must grow in lowliness and self-abasement.
3. Pledged thus to holiness, and to lowliness as a consequence of understanding the true nature and the wide compass of holiness, Christians are again, in crying to their Father for the sanctification of His name, pledged to solicitude for the conversion of the world. (W. R.Williams, D. D.)
The sacred name
What “name” is this that our Lord here teaches us to “hallow” in our prayers? God has been known by many names. He was first revealed as Elohim, the God of nature, the Creator--a name to which in the early Scriptures no moral attributes are attached. He was known also to the early patriarchs as El-Schaddai--the God Almighty. He was known also as the Holy One of Israel, and as the Lord of Hosts. Above all, He declared Himself by that name which in our version is rendered Jehovah--or for which the word LORD in small capitals is substituted,--which seems to mean the Self-existent and Eternal Being. And now Jesus teaches us to address Him as our Father. Which of these names are we here bidden to hallow? As soon as we ask this question, it at once becomes plain that “name” is not used herein the narrow verbal sense of which we have been speaking, but in a wider and larger sense. It is not merely the letters and syllables that spell the name by which God is known, that our Lord teaches us here to sanctify. The petition includes, I suppose, all the names by which God has revealed Himself. There is no word that is large enough to hold all the truth that God has told men about Himself. He must needs choose many different words under which to declare to men different attributes and phases of His character. And when all these words are uttered, the half is not told. And it is not only by words that He has made Himself known. In the order and the beauty of the universe He discloses Himself; in the movements of the race; in the person of His Son; and in the heart of the humble and contrite believer. Indeed the whole of creation, the whole of providence, the whole of history, is simply God’s method of revealing Himself. Now, as I understand this first petition, it includes the thought that all these distinct but conspiring revelations of God are to be reverenced. Whatever helps us to a fuller knowledge of Him--His nature, His character, His purposes, His works--ought to be held sacred. But the name of God stands for God Himself, and I suppose that when we intelligently offer this prayer we express the desire not only that the various revelations which God has made to men may be reverently treated, but that God Himself may be honoured in our thoughts and in our conduct. (Washington Gladden, D. D.)
On hallowing God’s name
To hallow is either to make holy or to consider and recognize as holy. We cannot by our words nor by our deeds add any essential holiness to the Holy One of Israel; but we can think holy thoughts about Him; we can sanctify Him in our hearts. And in this petition we are taught to ask that our thoughts of God may be freed from error and cleansed from corruption; that our conception of His character may be corrected and enlarged and hallowed, so that it shall come nearer to the ineffable Divine reality. Moreover, the name of the Lord is hallowed, by our adding, as we can, to the respect and honour in which His name is held among men. The true child of God desires that all men should love and revere his Father in heaven; that not only the goodly fellowship of the prophets, &c., should praise Him, but that all men everywhere should honour Him; that earth as well as heaven should be filled with the majesty of His glory.
1. We cause His name to be hallowed in the earth by telling the truth about Him. One reason why many men do not hallow His name is simply that they do not understand His character. They have been told many things about Him that are not true. You are not hallowing the name of God when you make statements about Him which give the impression that He is unjust, or tyrannical, or cruel.
2. We can cause His name to be hallowed, also, by showing men that we honour and love Him. Good as well as bad sentiments are contagious. The unconscious influence of reverent hearts and praising lives will help to lift the thoughts of others to the same sublime realities.
3. Of praising lives, I said. For it is not chiefly by the reverent demeanour and the devout speech of God’s children that the glory of their Father is promoted, but by the fidelity and nobility and beauty of their conduct. If we proclaim that He is our Father, then those who do not acknowledge Him will look to see what manner of spirit we are of. And if in our lives men see the purity and truth, the manliness and honour, the fidelity and charity that belong to all who learn of Him and abide in His fellowship and are transformed into His image, they cannot help honouring Him in whom we live and move and have our being. (Washington Gladden, D. D.)
Selfishness excluded
This first petition of the Lord’s prayer, without saying anything about it, deals a most effective blow at the central evil of human nature--our selfishness. Men are apt to be nearly as selfish in their religion, nearly as egotistic in their prayers, as in any other part of their lives. But this petition turns their thoughts wholly away from themselves. “Our Father, who art in heaven,” we say; and now that our thought is lifted up to the Infinite Giver, what shall we ask for first? For the easing of our pains, the supply of our wants, the pardon of our sins, the saving of our souls, the welfare of our friends? No; these are things to ask for, but not first. “Hallowed by Thy name”! Away from ourselves to God our thought is quickly turned. “Begin to pray,” this petition says, “by ceasing to think of yourselves; by remembering that your small personality is not the centre round which this universe revolves.” “Seek first the kingdom,” &c., is the Master’s great command, and here He frames it into the first petition of the prayer that is to be always on our lips. “After this manner, therefore pray ye. Self must be the fulcrum on which your prayer will rest, but it is not the power that lifts you heavenward. It is by looking out and not in, up and not down, that a man escapes from the bondage of sin into the liberty of the sons of God. (Washington Gladden, D. D.)
Some things upon which God has recorded His name
1. Outward nature is stamped with the Divine name. Our Lord set us the example of sending worshipful thoughts to the Heavenly Father at the hint of the grass, the lilies, the sparrows, our hair, fountains, clouds, &c. The man of science ought to be the most devout of all, for, as Max Muller says: “The eye of man catches the eye of God beaming out from the midst of all His works.”
2. Our human nature bears the name of God. To revere God fully, I must revere His image in myself. To abuse my nature in any way is blasphemy. Especially are conscience, the impulse to pure love, faith, hope, &c., Divine characters impressed upon us, to ignore or debauch any of which is sacrilege.
3. Providences, especially those in connection with our own lives, are to us God’s names. Every blessing is a souvenir inscribed with the name of the Giver; and every affliction is the branding which the Great Shepherd of our souls has put upon us to mark us and assure us that we are His.
4. The Bible bears God’s name. It is a series of His Fatherly letters to us.
5. Jesus Christ is, above all, the name of God, which could only be articulated in the pulsations of a grand life. (J. M. Ludlow, D. D.)
Hallowing God’s name
God’s name--that is, His nature or character. It is for the hallowing of this that Jesus teaches us to pray. Not that God’s name can be more truly holy in itself at one time than another. The name of the Holy One of Israel is always equally holy in itself; just as the sun is always equally hot and glorious. To us, however, the sun is sometimes hotter and sometimes colder, sometimes brighter, and sometimes less bright; sometimes, too, we lose sight of it altogether, and are left in night and darkness. So it is with God’s name. Though in itself it is always holy, all-holy, yet by us sinners it is more reverenced and more hallowed at one time than another. There is a summer of the soul, when we look in the sunshine of God’s countenance; and there is also a winter of the soul, when our souls are cold and wither for the want of His cheering, enlivening presence. There is a night, too, of the soul, when we lose all sense and feeling of His holiness, and are, as it were, left in the darkness of sin. Therefore, in praying that God’s name may he hallowed, we pray that there may be no more spiritual winter, no more spiritual darkness, but that the souls of all men may at all times feel the same bright and gladdening sense of God’s true nature and character; we pray that all men may at all times think of God truly as He is. Now there is much need, believe me, of praying for this.
I. There is much need of praying that we may all of us always cherish true and holy and reverent thoughts about God.
1. The hardened sinner dishonours God’s name, by robbing Him of His justice and hatred against sin.
2. The despairing sinner dishonours God in another way, by forgetting His mercy and lovingkindness. When we pray that God’s name may be hallowed among the sons of men, we pray, in other words, that they may have such a true and lively sense both of His justice and of His mercy, as may lead them at once to fear and to love Him.
II. But since we are made up of soul and body, not only does it behove us to sanctify and hallow our Father and Saviour in our hearts and souls, we must also hallow Him with our bodies, and with outward actions-for instance, with our tongues and voices--by telling forth all His praise, especially by joining in the public service of the Church.
III. Let us hallow God’s name by reverencing everything belonging to Him, His Word, His day, His sacraments, His ministers, His people. (A. W. Hare.)
Religious reverence
Reasons for the decline of it.
1. Technical theology, in attempting to delineate the Divine attributes, has dwarfed them, by using about them terms that describe human necessities and limitations, even human infirmities and passions.
2. There are certain stages of scientific research that are unfavourable to religious awe and devotion. Reverence and science have, however, no essential antagonism, and cannot be permanently or long divorced.
3. Another reason for the decline of reverence among us has been the decline of parental authority and domestic discipline.
4. There is also a style of religious instruction for the young which generates irreverence. I refer to the mania for explanation, which belittles all that is great, and degrades all that is lofty in the endeavour to make truths vast as immensity and eternity comprehensible by the youngest and feeblest mind. (Prof. Peabody, D. D., LL. D.)
The primal obligation of reverence
If there is One, by and in whom alone I live, to whom my whole consciousness lies open, whose power and love throb alike in every pulse of light from the far-off stars, and in every beat of my own heart; to whom there is no far nor near, no great nor small; to whom my least needs are known, and my least desires precious; who is to me more than I can comprehend in the dearest names of human love, and is no less the tender and compassionate Father of myriads upon myriads in every realm of His universe--to feel all this is to worship and adore, and to say, in profoundest reverence, “Hallowed be Thy name.” (Prof. Peabody, D. D., LL. D.)
Irreverence in speech
Trifling with a name is disrespect to the person to whom it belongs. In the filial relation irreverence of speech and the corresponding deficiency in conduct uniformly coincide, the two being reciprocally cause and effect. The former, however, would of itself produce the latter. Were a son who really honoured his father and mother tempted by bad example to talk flippantly about them, and to call them by names unworthy so sacred a relation, irreverence in feeling and conduct would be the swift and inevitable consequence. The Hebrews dared not pronounce, even on solemn occasions or in reading the Scriptures, Jehovah, the most sacred name of God--a reticence which must have made blasphemy the rarest of sins. Would that we might take a lesson from them as to the needless use of the Divine name, even at sacred times and on sacred themes, much more as to its utterance on ordinary occasions! The frivolous or profane use of that name cannot long co-exist with a reverent spirit. Early and of necessity it lapses into practical atheism. It is a social offence against which no stress of indignation can be excessive. As lese-majeste against the Sovereign of the universe, it is the climax of human audacity. As a sin against one’s soul, I will not say that it is irreparable; for I do not believe that recuperative power is denied to any being under the reign of infinite love; but of all forms of guilt and wrong it has this bad preeminence, that it fouls the only fountain for its own cleansing, desecrates the very shrine before which lowly, awe-stricken worship is its only token of repentance and condition of forgiveness. (Prof. Peabody, D. D., LL. D.)
Of the first petition in the Lord’s prayer
This petition, “Hallowed be Thy name,” is set in the forefront, to show that the hallowing of God’s name is to be preferred to all things.
I. It is to be preferred before life: we pray, “Hallowed be Thy name,” before we pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.” When some of the other petitions shall be useless and out of date; we shall not need to pray in heaven, “Give us our daily bread,” because there shall be no hunger; nor, “Forgive us our trespasses,” because there shall be no sin; nor, “Lead us not into temptation,” because the old serpent is not there to tempt: yet the hallowing of God’s name shall be of great use and request in heaven; we shall be ever singing hallelujahs, which is nothing else but the hallowing of God’s name. Every Person in the blessed Trinity--God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost--must have this honour, to be hallowed; Their glory being equal, and Their majesty co-eternal--“Hallowed be Thy name.”
1. What is meant by God’s name?
(1) By God’s name is meant His essence--“The name of the God of Jacob defend thee”; that is, the God of Jacob defend thee.
(2) By God’s name is meant anything by which God may be known; as a man is known by his name. God’s name is His attributes, wisdom, power, holiness, goodness; by these God is known as by His name.
2. What is meant by hallowing God’s name? To hallow, is to set apart a thing from the common use to some sacred end. As the vessels of the sanctuary were said to be hallowed, so to hallow God’s name, is to set it apart from all abuses, and to use it holily and reverently. In particular, hallowing of God’s name is to give Him high honour and veneration, and render His name sacred. When a prince is crowned, there is something added really to his honour; but when we go to crown God with our triumphs and hallelujahs, there is nothing added to His essential glory; God cannot be greater than He is, only we may make Him appear greater in the eyes of others.
8. When may we be said to hallow and sanctify God’s name?
(1) When we profess His name.
(2) We hallow and sanctify God’s name when we have a high appreciation and esteem of God; we set Him highest in our thoughts.
(3) We hallow and sanctify God’s name when we trust in His name.
(4) We hallow and sanctify God’s name when we never make mention of His name but with the highest reverence; God’s name is sacred, and it must not be spoken of but with veneration. The Scripture, when it speaks of
God, gives Him His titles of honour--“Blessed be the most high God”; “Blessed be Thy glorious name, which is exalted above all blessing and praise.”
(5) We hallow and sanctify God’s name when we love His name.
(6) We hallow and sanctify God’s name when we give Him a holy and spiritual worship. Then we hallow God’s name, and sanctify Him in an ordinance, when we give Him the vitals of religion, and a heart flaming with zeal.
(7) We hallow and sanctify God’s name when we hallow His day “Hallow ye the Sabbath-day.”
(8) We hallow and sanctify God’s name, when we ascribe the honour of all we do to Him--“Give unto the Lord the glory due unto His name.” This is a hallowing God’s name when we translate all the honour from ourselves to God--“Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy name give glory!” The king of Sweden wrote that motto on the battle of Leipsic: “Ista a Domino facta sunt”; “The Lord hath wrought this victory for us.”
(9) We hallow and sanctify God’s name by obeying Him. How doth a son more honour his father than by obedience?
(10) We hallow and sanctify God’s name when we lift up God’s name in our praises. God is said to sanctify, and man is said to sanctify. God sanctifies us by giving us grace, and we sanctify Him by giving Him praise. Especially, it is a high degree of hallowing God’s name, when we can speak wall of God, and bless Him in an afflicted state--“The Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord!” Many will bless God when He gives, but to bless Him when He takes away is in an high degree to honour God and hallow His name.
(11) We hallow and sanctify God’s name when we sympathize with Him; we grieve when His name suffers.
(a) We lay to heart His dishonour. How was Moses affected with God’s dishonour! He broke the tables.
(b) We grieve when God’s Church is brought low, because now God’s name suffers.
(12) We hallow and sanctify God’s name when we give such honour to God the Son as we give to God the Father.
(13) We hallow God’s name by standing up for His truths. Much of God’s glory lies in His truths; God’s truths are His oracles. God’s truths set forth His glory; now when we are zealous advocates for God’s truths, this is an honour done to God’s name.
(14) We hallow and sanctify God’s name, by making as many proselytes as we can to Him; when, by all holy expedients, counsel, prayer, example, we endeavour the salvation of others.
(15) We hallow God’s name when we prefer the honour of God’s name before the dearest things.
(a) We prefer the honour of God’s name before our own credit. This is a hallowing God’s name, when we are content to have our name eclipsed, that God’s name may shine the more.
(b) We prefer the honour of God’s name before our worldly profit anti interest--“We have forsaken all and followed Thee.”
(c) We prefer the honour of God’s name before our life--“For
Thy sake are we killed all the day long.”
(16) We do hallow and sanctify God’s name, by an holy conversation--“Ye are a royal priesthood, a peculiar people: that ye should show forth the praises of Him who hath called you.”
1. See the true note and character of a godly person; he is a sanctifier of God’s name “Hallowed be Thy name.”
2. I may here take up a sad lamentation, and speak, as the Apostle Paul, weeping, to consider how God’s name, instead of being hallowed and sanctified, is dishonoured. Theodosius took it heinously when they threw dirt upon his statue; but now, which is far worse, disgrace is thrown upon the glorious name of Jehovah. Let us hallow and sanctify God’s name. Did we but see a glimpse of God’s glory, as Moses did in the rock, the sight of this would draw adoration and praise from us.
That we may be stirred up to this great duty, the hallowing, adoring, and sanctifying God’s name, consider--
1. It is the very end of our being. Why did God give us our life, but that our living may be a hallowing of His name? Why did He give us souls but to admire Him; and tongues, but to praise Him? The excellency of a thing is, when it attains the end for which it was made; the excellency of a star is to give light, of a plant to be fruitful; the excellency of a Christian, is to answer the end of his creation, which is to hallow God’s name, and live to that God by whom he lives.
2. God’s name is so excellent that it deserves to be hallowed--“How excellent is Thy name in all the earth!” “Thou art clothed with honour and majesty.” God is worthy of honour, love, adoration. We oft bestow titles of honour upon them that do not deserve them; but God is worthy to be praised; His name deserves hallowing. He is above all the honour and praise which the angels in heaven give Him.
3. We pray, “Hallowed be Thy name”: that is, let Thy name be honoured and magnified by us. Now, if We do not magnify His name, we contradict our own prayers.
4. Such as do not hallow God’s name, and bring revenues of honour to Him, God will get His honour upon them--“I will get Me honour upon Pharaoh.”
5. It will be no small comfort to us when we come to die that we have hallowed and sanctified God’s name: it was Christ’s comfort a little before His death; “I have glorified Thee on the earth.”’ (T. Watson.)
“Hallowed be Thy name”
Now there are two reasons why this prayer, “Hallowed be Thy name,” is especially needful. The first springs from our own limitations as finite creatures. Sons of God though we are, we are finite, and God is infinite; and, therefore, our conceptions of Him will be commensurate with ourselves: that is to say, will be finite; and, so far, imperfect, meagre, unworthy. But there is a second reason why we ought to offer this prayer. “Hallowed be Thy name!” We are not only finite, and therefore, must necessarily have stinted conceptions of God; we are also fallen, and, therefore, must necessarily have sinful conceptions of Him. How we mistake God’s character, purposes, providences, justice, love, authority--in one word, His Fatherhood! To hallow our Heavenly Father’s name, then, is to have His name hallowed in the sphere of our own thoughts, feelings, desires, purposes, in a word, our characters. It is to pray: “Enlarged be our conceptions of Thee, O infinite One! Chastened be our feelings toward Thee, O Holy One! Exalted be our purposes in reference to Thee, O Mighty One! Celestialized be our characters before Thee, O All-seeing One!” Again: To hallow our Heavenly Father’s name is to have it hallowed in the sphere of our own words. Once more: To hallow our Heavenly Father’s name is to have it hallowed in the sphere of our own lives. For the life without answers to the life within. Our opinions concerning God control our practices. Remembering, then, that our lives represent our views of God, what constant need there is of praying: “Father, Hallowed be our lives!” In drawing our meditation to a conclusion, I ask you to observe. First--That the knowledge of God’s name has been an unfolding purpose. Again: The hallowing the Heavenly Father’s name is the purpose or final cause of creation itself. (G. D.Boardman, D. D.)
“Hallowed be Thy name”
Regarding this petition I have three remarks to make.
I. The PLACE which this petition occupies in the Lord’s prayer. It occupies the very first place, as the most important thing in all the prayer. There is a young artist, who has spent many a weary day on a painting, which, as his masterpiece, will, he hopes, secure for him both fame and fortune. No one may enter the room but himself. He carries the key in his pocket. His first thought is his picture. If any harm were to befall it, he would be a ruined man. But one day you see the smoke issuing from his house, and then the flame darts out, and all is in a blaze, There can be no coming back. Whatever he most values, each must seize at once, and run for life, so that the choice tells the value he attaches to his burden. Not a look does he cast at his precious piece of workmanship, but through smoke and flame you see him bearing, not the picture, but his old bedridden father!-so important to him as to eclipse all else. Now, just as the youth regarded the interests of his father, as momentous above all else, so what concerns God should, with every man, come before what concerns himself; and that, not as differing from, but as having pre-eminently to do with, himself. How often most of us have passed this great petition lightly by, with little thought of what it meant, and with little desire that our prayer should be granted, when we said, “Hallowed be Thy name.” And yet it concerned ourselves and others, the Church and the world, unspeakably more than anything of a temporal kind we could have asked.
II. The MEANING of this petition. The name of God is that by which He makes Himself known. I remark, that the prayer asks--
1. That God’s name may be known. Unless it be known, it cannot be hallowed. You have seen a person’s shadow: you could learn something about him even from that. You have seen one of those likenesses taken from the shadow which the head casts on the wall; you can gather something from that. But when you see a well-finished portrait, it makes all the difference. It is almost as good as seeing the person himself. Now God in His works gives us the shadow, the dim profile. But God in His Word, and, above all, God in His Son, Jesus Christ, gives us His likeness, His portrait, so that we find Jesus saying, “He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.”
2. That the name of God may be reverenced and honoured. He is the King; He is the Creator; He is God. He made all things. He upholds all things. The hosts of heaven praise Him night and day.
3. That the name of God may be loved. This is higher than the last.
III. The BEARING of this petition. See its bearing--
1. On the literal name of God. Everything pertaining to God is holy, and should be reverenced and honoured. Especially, “holy and reverend is His name.” We have here the third commandment, “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain,” turned into a prayer.
2. Its bearing on God’s House. Long ago, the temple was called the holy place, as the place where God had His dwelling.
3. Its bearing on God’s Word. The Bible is God’s letter, and may well be honoured and prized. And yet how often is it other wise, both with the book itself, and what it says! Look at the back of it, and what have you there? “The Holy Bible.” In all your dealings with your Bible, reading it or listening to it, or otherwise having to do with it, remember that word, “Hallowed be Thy name.”
4. Its bearing on God’s Day. It is called the Lord’s Day. He calls it, “My holy day.”
5. Its bearing on the Son of His love. This was the best of all God’s gifts--His only-begotten and well-beloved Son. He was peculiarly the name ofGod--the Revealer of the Father, regarding whom He says, “My name is in Him.” (J. H. Wilson, M. A.)
The name of God hallowed
In expressing this first and greatest desire of every devout mind, it is of some importance to institute the inquiry, How is so desirable an end to be brought about? We confess our inability to honour God aright. We ask that He would make us fit to honour Him, and to give Him the glory which is due.
1. This is done, in the first place, by our becoming acquainted with God. Many a man fails of receiving due honour from his fellow-men, because he is not known. It needs but to become acquainted with his excellencies, in order to love and respect him. His excellencies may be unpresuming and retired, and need searching out; or they may be obscured by his humble condition or covered by a veil of prejudice, and require to be inspected by an impartial eye, that they may be appreciated, No man honours God while he remains ignorant of Him. We respect the Deity, from a consideration of His Divine excellence; nor can we fail, at least, to respect him, if we know Him.
2. The name of God is also hallowed by a reverential treatment of Him in our thoughts, words, and actions. “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” Low, unworthy thoughts of God, will lead neither to complacency, gratitude, nor honour.
3. God’s name is hallowed by a suitable regard to all His institutions and ordinances. Just as “truth is in order to goodness,” institutions are for the sake of principles. And such are all the institutions of a pure Christianity. The institutions which the Great Founder of religion has appointed, coincide with the great end for which the entire system of Christianity itself was revealed. They are the visible symbols of great and important principles, and the means by which they are advanced and perpetuated. The gospel cannot live without them. Prostrate these, and you exterminate true religion from the earth.
4. The name of God is also hallowed by the exhibitions which He Himself makes of His own excellence. When we pray that God’s name may be hallowed, we pray that He Himself would make it holy and venerable, by more and more extended and refulgent exhibitions of His glory. There is another general inquiry, the answer to which may serve still further to illustrate the import of this petition: Why does this petition hold so high a place in this summary of prayer; and why is it so desirable and important that God’s name should be hallowed? Great and eternal interests depend upon the honours of His name.
We shall dwell a few moments upon the reasons which justify these general remarks.
1. Our Heavenly Father’s name and honour are justly great and endeared. It is the greatest, most endeared name in the universe. Angels cannot bear to see it dishonoured, because He is God their Maker and Sovereign; His children cannot, because He is their Father, and they have all the honourable, honoured sentiments of children.
2. That God’s name should be hallowed, is also demanded by the great interests of holiness in our world.
3. Inseparable from these suggestions also is the thought that the happiness of creatures requires that God’s name should be hallowed. Let God be brought into view, and a holy mind will be happy; let God be withdrawn, and it is miserable. The happiest moment of the Christian’s life, is when he enjoys the most enlarged and most impressive views of God, and dwells with adoring wonder on His boundless and unsearchable perfections. (G. Spring, D. D.)
God’s name our first regard in prayer
Could we raise our devotion to this pitch, it were indeed in its proper zenith. But our prayers for the most part are blemished with some partialities and by-respects, and ourselves are more respected in them than God. If they be petitory, we request some good for ourselves; if eucharistical, we give thanks for some good we have received; if deprecatory, we request to be preserved from some evil. Still ourselves have the chiefest part; and our prayers are like the Parthian horsemen, who ride one way, but look another; they seem to go towards God, but indeed reflect upon ourselves. And how many of us would fall down before God if we did not stand in need of Him? And this may be the reason why many times our prayers are sent forth like the raven out of Noah’s ark, and never return. But when we make the glory of God the chief end of our devotion, they go forth like the dove, and return to us again with an olive-branch. It is a nice observation of Quadrigarius in Gellius, that darts and arrows which are shot upward do fly more level, and more surely hit the mark, than those which are shot downwards. But it is most true in our prayers, which are called “ejaculations,” because they are darted from us as shafts out of a bow: those that fly upward to God, and aim at His glory, do more fix upon and take Him than those other which fly downward upon ourselves. (A. Farindon.)
Of the particulars to be prayed for under the first petition
Unto how many heads may those particulars which in the first petition we are taught to pray for, be referred? Unto three especially. For we are taught there to desire--
1. Such graces in ourselves as may enable us to hallow the name of God.
2. Such graces in others as may enable them thereto.
3. Such an overruling providence in God, as may direct everything thereto. What are the graces which we desire for ourselves to the foresaid end?
Such as are requisite for every power of our soul, and part of our body to make them fit instruments of hallowing God’s name, as--
1. For our understanding, we desire knowledge of God; that (as the apostle prayeth) “God would give to us the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him.”
2. For our will, we desire a thorough and full submission of it to God, as to our sovereign Lord.
3. For our mind and will jointly together, we desire faith, whereby we give all due credence to the truth of God’s Word, and believe in Him. This is a great honour done to God; “for he that receiveth His testimony, hath set to his seal thus God is true.”
4. For our heart, we desire that it may be wholly set upon God; and that He may be made the object of all our liking affections.
5. For our speech, we desire to mention the name of God, as we have occasion, with all reverence; yea, and to take all occasions of speaking of the glory of His name.
6. For our life and outward actions, we desire that they be holy, just, and blameless. What graces do we desire for others to the hallowing of God’s name? All those which we are to desire for ourselves.
What things do we desire that God by His overruling providence would turn to the hallowing of His name? Everything whatsoever, as--
1. The virtues of His saints, whereby else they may be puffed up.
2. The peace and prosperity of His saints, whereby else they may be drawn away from God.
3. The failings and folly of His saints, as He did turn the envy of Joseph’s brethren to the accomplishment of His word.
4. The troubles and crosses of His saints, that they sink not under the burden of them.
5. The wicked plots and practices of His enemies, and of the enemies of His Church.
6. All that all creatures do; that thus in all places, at all times, in and by all things, the name of God may be hallowed. All things whereby we ourselves are enabled to hallow God’s name; whether in our soul, as the gifts and graces thereof; or in our body, as health, strength, agility, and dexterity to anything that maketh to that end; or in our calling, whether it appertain to Church, Commonwealth, or family; or in our outward estate. (W. Gouge.)
To what heads may the duties, which by reason of the first petition we are bound unto, be referred? What are we bound unto in regard of ourselves? To make the best use that we can of all the means which God affordeth to enable us to hallow His name, by giving us knowledge of God.
1. So to behold the creatures, and meditate on them, as we may discern the stamp of God in them, and the evidences which they give of His wisdom, power, justice, mercy, providence, &c. David also by this means had his heart even ravished with an holy admiration of God (Psalms 8:1, &c.).
2. To take more distinct notice of God in and by His Word. The Scriptures are they that testify of God.
3. To take all occasions of stirring up our glory (as David styleth our tongue) to speak of, and to spread abroad the glory of God’s name.
4. To order the whole course of our life, so as it may be worthy of the Lord, and a means to bring honour to His name. What are we bound unto in regard of others?
To do our uttermost endeavour to draw on others to hallow God’s name; for this end we ought--
1. To instruct such as are ignorant of God in the knowledge of God.
2. To draw them to set their whole heart on God, by commending to them the greatness and goodness of God, so as they may be enamoured therewith.
3. To encourage them to all good works whereby God is glorified. (W. Gouge.)
What are we to bewail in regard of the first petition?
1. Atheism, which is aa utter denying of God.
2. Ignorance of the true God.
3. Errors of God.
4. Light esteem of God.
5. Neglect of due worship.
6. Undue using of His name.
7. Profaneness, and all manner of impiety.
8. Contempt of His image in such as He hath set over us. (W. Gouge.)
The conquering name
This petition stands in the head of the troop, being brought up before the others to acknowledge the power of that name which could give success to all we sought for in the rest of them. Constantine wore that victorious motto in his banner, In hoc vinces. Well may I write upon the front of this petition, Hoc nomine vinces; by this name shalt thou obtain the victory. (Archdeacon King.)
Thought better than speech
Thy understanding will be more sharp and clear to discern Him without a name. Better is it only to conceive than to name God, for our conceit is more ample than our language; and ‘tis more glory to God, when in a silent contemplation we confess Him far greater than we can utter. Let us be religious to sanctify, not curious to search His name. For thy service and adoration thou needest know no other name but God. That title is enough to give aim to thy petitions; that object powerful to grant them. (Archdeacon King)
God’s attributes
Rather I should think it a good moral way of expressing God’s infinity by an infinite number of attributes. What hurt or blemish is it to the diamond, though you put several rates upon it? the quantity and the lustre is still one and the same; so is God. Neither do those attributes of His which began in time, cause any alteration or change in His eternity. One and the same piece of money is successively called a price, a debt, a pawn, a tribute; yet those appellations change neither the metal, nor the weight, nor the impression. How much easier, then, may we apprehend the immutability of God’s substance amidst these His attributes--“In whom there is no shadow of change.” (Archdeacon King.)
Thy kingdom come:--
God’s kingdom
I. THE KINGDOM FOR WHICH CHRIST HAS TAUGHT US TO PRAY. A spiritual kingdom. The prayer has for its objects--
1. The spread of the gospel among men.
2. The saving reception of the gospel by man.
II. WHY THE COMING OF THIS KINGDOM IS ACCOUNTED DESIRABLE. Tills will appear when we consider the numerous and valuable blessings which it invariably brings: such as--
1. The light which it spreads.
2. The liberty which it grants.
3. The peace which it promotes.
4. The laws which it enforces.
5. The purity which it establishes.
III. THE CONSIDERATIONS WHICH SHOULD INDUCE US TO PRAY FOR THE COMING OF THIS KINGDOM. We have an inducement in the consideration--
1. That the Sovereign of this kingdom has an indisputable right to universal rule.
2. This kingdom has not yet come to the full extent of the dominion promised.
3. The universal establishment of this kingdom is ultimately certain.
IV. THE DUTY OF THOSE WHO PRAY FOR THE COMING OF THIS KINGDOM. It is their duty--
1. Personally to receive the gospel.
2. Personally to promote the spread of the gospel.
3. Personally to persevere in prayer for the success of this gospel. (W. Naylor.)
Reasons for missionary exertions
I. We pray that the kingdom of God may come, because of THE WRETCHEDNESS WHICH PREVAILS WHERE HIS KINGDOM IS NOT ESTABLISHED. The very religion of the heathen is their misery.
II. THE GOSPEL IS IN ITSELF A MIGHTY BLESSING.
III. We desire that the gospel may be carried into all lands, because IT LEADS TO UNSPEAKABLE BLESSINGS HEREAFTER. (Archbp. Sumner.)
The reign of heaven
The mere mention of a kingdom suggests the idea of power and glory.
1. The kingdom of God, although not a temporal one, is a real one.
2. The kingdom for whose advancement we so often pray is a peaceable kingdom, and one which is constituted in the very person of the King Himself.
3. The kingdom of our blessed Lord, for whose prosperity we are permitted to pray and labour and endure, admits of unlimited extension throughout the world.
4. We should offer this petition for ourselves, that the Spirit of God may so rule in our hearts that every thought and desire may be subdued to the obedience of Christ. It is heart work, much more than head work, which is to make us fit for this kingdom. Religion is an inward principle, calling for personal self-denial and effort; and as vegetation is more advanced by the gentle dews and showers than by violent torrents of rain, so is it with the growth of grace in the soul.
5. When we offer the petition, “Thy kingdom come,” we not only pray for ourselves, but also for those who enjoy fewer religious privileges than we do. The philanthropist is not satisfied to enjoy his abundance, nor the patriot his liberty, alone. The true Christian, like his Divine Master, would have all to be saved, and he feels pity for those who know not the way of life. Zeal for the honour of God, and for the advancement of His kingdom, may be exercised without the slightest infringement on the rules of Christian charity. One of our American bishops, on entering a beautiful church in Spain, was accosted by a Romish priest, who inquired if he was a Catholic. “Yes,” was the prompt reply, “Catholic, but not Roman.” The good priest grasped his hand and said, “It is sad that those who love Jesus should differ. We will tell it to Him, and, some day, His prayer will be answered, and we shall all be one.” As the two parted for ever this side the grave, the Spanish priest said, with evident sincerity and emotion, “Pray for me!” Whenever such a spirit shall prevail among the disciples of Christ, the dawn of the millennium will be close at hand. The acting upon St. Augustine’s famous rule will be helping the good cause: “In things essential, unity; in things questionable, liberty; in all things, charity.” (J. N. Norton, D. D.)
The coming of God’s kingdom
1. We must distinguish of God’s kingdom. Now the kingdom of God is twofold; either universal, or more particular and peculiar. The one is His kingdom of Power; the other is His kingdom of grace. It is this latter that is meant here. Now this kingdom of grace is His Church, and may be considered two ways.
(1) In its growth and progress.
(2) In its perfection and consummation. In the former respect, it is the Church militant here upon earth; and, in the latter, it is the Church triumphant in heaven: for both make up but one kingdom, under divers respects.
2. The next thing in order is, to show how this kingdom of God is said to come. This word, “come,” implies that we pray for a kingdom that is yet in its progress; and hath not yet attained the highest pitch of that perfection which is expected and desired. Now this peculiar kingdom is said to come in three respects.
(1) In respect of the means of grace and salvation: for where these are rightly dispensed (I mean the Holy Word and Sacraments) there is the kingdom of God begun and erected; and therefore we find it called “the word of the kingdom” (Matthew 13:19).
(2) In respect of the efficacy of those means. When all ready and cordial obedience is yielded to the laws of God, then cloth this kingdom come, and the glory of it is advanced and increased.
(3) In respect of perfection. And so it comes when the graces of the saints are strengthened and increased; when the souls of the godly, departing this life, are received into heaven; and when the whole number of them shall have their perfect consummation and bliss, in the glorification both of soul and body, after the general resurrection. And thus we have seen how the kingdom of God may come.
3. In the next place, we must inquire what it is we pray for when we say, “Thy kingdom come.”
(1) I answer, there are various things lie couched under this petition, as
(a) We pray that God would be pleased to plant His Church where it is not.
(b) This petition intimates our earnest desire that the Churches of Christ, where they are planted, may be increased in the numbers of the faithful: that those, who are as yet enemies to the name and profession of Christ may be brought into the visible Church; and that those in it who are yet strangers to a powerful work of grace, may, by the effectual operation of the Holy Ghost, be brought in to be members of the invisible Church.
(c) We pray that all the Church of Christ, throughout the world, may be kept from ruin. That they may not be overrun with superstition or idolatry: that God would not, in His wrath, remove His candlestick from them; as
He hath, in His righteous judgment, done from other Churches which were once glorious and splendid: we pray, likewise, that God would make up all breaches, and compose all differences, and silence all controversies.
(d) It intimates our humble request to God that His ordinances may be purely and powerfully dispensed.
(2) This petition likewise respects the Church triumphant in heaven.
(a) We may well pray that the whole body mystical of Jesus Christ, and every member of it, may be brought to the full fruition of heaven and happiness; that daily more may be admitted into the heavenly fellowship, till their numbers as well as their joys be consummate.
(b) We may also pray that the bodies of all the saints may be raised again, united to their souls, and made glorious in the kingdom of heaven. (Bp. Hopkins.)
Thy kingdom come
I. WHAT IS MEANT BY THE KINGDOM OF GOD. A fourfold kingdom.
1. The kingdom of His power.
2. The kingdom of His gospel.
3. The kingdom of His grace.
4. The kingdom of His glory.
Use
1. Submit yourselves contentedly to the disposals of Providence. If God be King over all, is there any fault in the administration; nay, is not all well done, yea, best done?
2. Submit yourselves to the good sceptre. Are ye subjects of the gospel-kingdom? Then it becomes you to be subject to the laws, to observe the ordinances, and to be submissive to the officers of the kingdom.
3. Let our royal Master have your hearts for His throne, and set up His kingdom of grace there.
4. Labour and be restless till ye get your interest in the kingdom of glory secured And this is done by closing with Christ for all the ends for which He is given of God. It is dangerous to delay this.
II. THE IMPORT OF THIS PETITION. The four kingdoms are sweetly linked together, and stand in a line of subordination, the end of which is the kingdom of glory, the kingdom of grace being subordinate to it, the gospel-kingdom to that of grace, and the kingdom of power to the kingdom of the gospel. Therefore I must begin with the kingdom of glory.
1. What is the import of this petition with reference to the kingdom of glory? It imports--
(1) That the kingdom of glory is not come yet “It doth not yet appear what we shall be” (1 John 3:2). The King has not yet erected that kingdom. The King’s coronation-day for that kingdom (2 Thessalonians 1:10) is not yet come.
(2) That it will come. The King really designs it. From eternity He decreed John 17:24).
(3) That it is the duty and disposition of the saints and children of God, to desire the coming of this kingdom, and that themselves and others may be brought into it (2 Timothy 4:8).
2. What is the import of this petition with reference to the kingdom of grace? There is no getting into the kingdom of glory but by coming through that of grace. So that desiring the coming of the former is desiring the coming of the latter too. It imports--
(1) That all men naturally are without this kingdom, under the dominion of Ephesians 2:2-3).
(2) That we cannot bring ourselves or others into it (John 6:44).
(3) That we cannot, where it is set up, maintain and advance it against the enemies of it (2 Corinthians 3:5).
(4) That it is the duty and disposition of the children of God to desire that the Lord Himself may bring forward His kingdom.
3. What is the import of this petition with reference to the kingdom of the gospel? By it one is brought into the kingdom of grace. So desiring the coming of the one, we desire also the coming of the other. It imports--
(1) That there are many impediments in the way of the propagation and efficacy of the gospel which we cannot remove.
(2) That the Lord Himself can remove all the impediments out of the way, and make the gospel triumph over them all, persons or things, sins or troubles, that are laid in the way to hinder it (Isaiah 57:14).
(3) That it is the duty and disposition of the children of God to desire the advancement of the kingdom of the gospel.
(4) That God would exert His power for all this.
4. What is the import of this petition with reference to the coming of God’s kingdom of power? It is by the power of God that all these great things must be brought about. So the desiring of the coming of the gospel, is the desiring of the coming of this kingdom too. It imports--
(1) That these things will not be done unless Omnipotency interpose. The work is great, the hands employed in it are feeble, and there is great opposition. It will stick, if heaven put not to a helping hand.
(2) That it is the duty and disposition of the children of God, to desire that God would exercise the kingdom of His power in the world, as may best conduce to these ends (Isaiah 64:1-2).
III. THE REASONS OF THE CONCERN OF THE CHILDREN OF GOD FOR THE COMING OF HIS KINGDOM.
1. The new nature in them moves that way (Isaiah 43:21).
2. It is their Father’s kingdom. How can they help being concerned for it?
3. Their own interest lies in it.
Use
1. Of information.
(1) The excellency, usefulness, and necessity of the glorious gospel. It is the kingdom of God.
(2) That the cry for the ruin of the kingdom of God can be no other but the cry of the family of hell.
(3) That the kingdom of our Lord will triumph over all its enemies, and drive over all opposition.
2. Of trial. Try by this whether ye be of the family of God or not. Have ye a kindly concern for the coming of His kingdom? Do your hearts say within you, “Thy kingdom come”? If it be not so, God is not your Father; but if so, He is. (J. Boston, D. D.)
The prayer for the coming of God’s kingdom
I. What is meant by the KINGDOM?
1. Not that general kingdom of God which extends to all the world, and all ages of it.
2. Nor the kingdom of grace, whereby God rules in the hearts of His people; for God always has thus ruled in such as He was pleased to subdue to Himself. This cannot, therefore, be what Christ directly pointed at, though the increase of that kingdom, by the addition of real members to His Church, may be included in that petition.
3. Our Saviour did not direct His disciples to pray that a worldly kingdom may be set up under the Messiah.
4. Nor can we judge that Christ directed them to pray that the kingdom of glory might come immediately, or in a short time. For the gospel was to be preached to all nations, and a Church to be gathered to Christ through a succession of many ages before that end would come. However, that glorious everlasting kingdom seems to be included.
5. The gospel dispensation, which was to be put under Christ, God’s anointed, as the Lord and head of it, to whom all judgment was committed, was plainly intended in this place.
II. What we are to understand by the COMING of this kingdom. This includes, we may suppose, three things.
1. That the prophecies which related to the kingdom of the Messiah might be accomplished. That that kingdom might be actually set up, of which it was said, it should have no end; that throne of God erected, of which David wrote, “that it should be for ever and ever.” In a word, that all that God had spoken by His prophets of that nature might be fulfilled; and that the commencement of that kingdom might soon take place, which John had preached as then at hand.
2. That it might appear that Christ was the Lord’s anointed, though His kingdom would not come with observation, with such external pomp and splendour as would raise admiration.
3. The coming of the kingdom of God must be understood as meaning the increase and advancement of it, as well as its commencement.
III. What were the DISCIPLES to pray for in this petition? Undoubtedly they were to pray for the completion of those things which had been promised and prophesied concerning the kingdom of Christ.
IV. What are we to pray for in this petition? Are we not to offer up this request in the very same sense, to ask the very same thing the disciples of Christ did, to whom He delivered these instructions about prayer, how to pray, and what to pray for? I answer, no; undoubtedly we are not to use these words in the same sense they did. It was proper for those who lived before Christ’s coming, and looked for redemption, to pray for the advent of the Messiah; that the desire of all nations might come: it would be absurd and impertinent for us to do so, since we know that in this sense the kingdom (i.e., the gospel dispensation)
began almost two thousand years ago.
1. We must pray, that the kingdom of Satan may be destroyed.
2. We must pray, that the borders of Christ’s kingdom may be enlarged; that more of the kingdoms of the earth may be added to it; that His interest may grow and flourish; and the kings and princes of this world, who are not yet acquainted with Christ, the universal Lord, may bring their glory and honour into His Church.
3. We must pray, that the number of true believers may be increased: that Christ may have numerous faithful subjects subdued to Him, a willing people, to whom His yoke is easy, and His burden light; who do not only confess His name, and attend upon His ordinances and the like, but sincerely honour, esteem, and love Him, and desire grace to enable them to adorn their holy profession by strict obedience to His gospel. And we should pray that in all the Churches of Christ truth and holiness and peace may prevail; that the true gospel doctrine may be universally and faithfully preached, gainsayers convinced, and their mouths stopped, errors confuted, and all corruptions removed as to worship or Church-government. And that holy discipline according to the gospel direction, may be kept up, where it is already used; and restored, where it is dwindled away into nothing, through lukewarmness and negligence, or by pride and ambition and covetousness turned into tyranny and oppression.
4. Under this head of prayer we may make mention of ourselves, and pray that our own souls may be subdued to Christ, and that His kingdom may come in us.
5. We should pray for that glorious state of the Church, which the Scripture gives us ground to believe there will be before the end of the world. A millennium, or thousand years’ reign of Christ, is spoken of in the Revelations, when the devil is to be bound a thousand years, and Christ to reign in some eminent sense for that term.
6. We are directed by this petition to pray that the kingdom of glory may be hastened.
Practical reflections:
1. We should heartily commiserate the unhappy parts of the world where the gospel of the kingdom is not preached, and from whom the mystery of redemption is altogether hidden.
2. We should be heartily thankful that unto us it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven.
3. It is a shame and reproach to such a nation as this, that so little of the holy fruit of the gospel is to be seen among us; and so much vice and impiety, as (all things considered) can hardly be equalled among the heathen. Will they not rise up in judgment with us in the last day, and condemn us as more guilty than themselves?
4. We should fear the righteous judgment of God, and pray that God will pour out His Spirit upon us; upon magistrates, ministers, and all sorts of people; that the glory may not depart from us, but that the kingdom of God may be advanced and flourish among us, in righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost; and that that kingdom may come in our own hearts.
5. Those that pray that the kingdom of Satan may be destroyed, should take care that they do not anything to promote it by practising unlawful things themselves, or by conniving at such things, or encouraging them in others. Should we do this, our own prayers would condemn us. (John Whitty.)
The coming of God’s kingdom of grace
The kingdom here intended is the dominion of His grace--that provision of His infinite mercy, by which He is to subdue our sinful race into cheerful allegiance, and exulting homage, and general service. This, as yet, has come but in part. Its full and final establishment has been long the theme of prophecy, and the burden of prayer. The movements of God in His kingdom of Providence had respect from the beginning to the development of this kingdom of grace. Let us now consider the several aspects of this kingdom.
I. It is spiritual. As man’s noblest nature is his inner, invisible, and spiritual one, it is to this mainly that God and the religion of God look. The power that is to change the face of earth, and the history of the race, is not an army, not a fleet, not a treasury; but a word of salvation--something of the mind, and for the mind--and it is a Spirit renewing and sanctifying--the creative Spirit come down, to rear again and restore our fallen, created spirits. Now, as the Holy Ghost is the great primal agency in advancing and upholding the spiritual dominion of God on earth, aught that grieves or repels Him--aught that assumes to replace Him in His prerogatives, or claims to mortgage Him to a certain ecclesiastical communion, or to imprison Him in certain ordinances, as dispensed by a certain order of men, and, above all, aught that forgets our dependence on Him, or affects independence of Him and His aids, is so far a hindrance in the way of the coming of this spiritual empire. To enter ourselves Christ’s Church, or to aid others in advancing it, we must be born of the Spirit.
II. It is social. Though religion begins with the individual, it, after having renovated the inner world of the heart, necessarily affects the outer world, or the man in all his relations to his fellow-creatures; both those of like feelings with himself, or men spiritually minded, and those also who are not yet in affinity and sympathy with him, or, as the Scripture calls this last class, the men who are carnally minded. If a man is a true disciple of Jesus, he is, or ought to be, the better man in all his relations to worldly society, as far as those relations do not assume to control and overtop his duties and relations to heaven. Education and commerce and art--so far as they keep themselves in a position of due deference to a pure Christianity--will elevate and bless society. So far as they shall rival or defy her, they cannot fail to disappoint the hopes which they excite, and to bleat the body politic into a diseased appearance of prosperity, the unsoundness of which any great reverse of affairs will soon betray. Pauperism, slavery, and the question of labour in our times can be reached most safely and effectively by Christian principles diffused throughout the community.
III.
But whilst this religion, beginning in the individual and spiritual man, works inevitably its way outward upon all social relations and interests and maladies, it is, unlike the government and institutions of earth, eternal. So Daniel described it, “a dominion that shall never end.” The Churches of earth are but like the receiving-ships of a navy, from which death is daily drafting the instructed and adept recruit for his entrance upon service in the far and peaceful seas of the heavenly world. Christ asks the heart and the homage of the deathless spirit; and, as death moulders and disperses for a time the bodily tabernacle, He neither loses His rights in, nor His care over, the spirit which that bodily tabernacle for the time housed. Now the kingdom of heaven has already known, amid seeming and local reverses, its stages of regular extension and advancement. It has overspread a large portion of the globe. The most powerful nations of the world are its nominal adherents. Missions are diffusing it on this very Sabbath amongst tribes whose names even our fathers knew not, and in empires which those fathers deemed hopelessly barred against the access of our faith. Prophecy assures us that this shall go on with still augmented zeal, and still expanding conquests. The Jews shall be brought in. Mahommedanism shall fall, and is even now evidently withering. Antichrist shall be shattered. These are stages in the social development of Christ’s blessed kingdom. But behind and above them come higher developments in the individual Christian. The righteous here have in their earthly homes but lodges in the wilderness. The most prosperous of earthly churches is but a green booth, reared by pilgrims beside the fountains of Elim, and which is soon to be forsaken in their onward march beyond the line of the present visible horizon. But in the heavenly Canaan there is a fixedness of tenure, and perpetual repose, and fulness of felicity--of knowledge--and of holiness. Towards this crowning and culminating state of the Redeemer’s kingdom all the earlier and inferior stages tend. Zion’s sorrows are disciplinary; her reverses but school her for a more successful onset on the powers and strongholds of darkness; and with the destinies of her Redeemer embarked in her, and with infallibility and Omnipotence united in her Helmsman, her course, like His, is “conquering and to conquer.” Now, when the Word of God speaks of this kingdom, it sometimes alludes to its incipient, and sometimes to its advancing, and sometimes again to its final stages. In its spiritual and individual beginnings it is within us. In its social leaven reaching the tribe, the nation, and the race, it is around us. In its last and triumphant day it is no longer a matter of time and earth. It is beyond and above. It has come in splendour never to wane, in power never to be lessened; and the kings of the earth bring their glory into its gates never to be closed. To pray, then, for Christ’s kingdom, is to pray for the conversion of sinners and the edification and sanctification of disciples. (W.
R. Williams, D.D.)
Thy kingdom come
1. Consider the boldness of Christ in speaking these words. Here is a single thought of His, which is the sublimest ideal ever presented in human speech--something which, heretofore, was utterly unknown on earth, in its truescope and fulness. Christ here announces the fellowship of the human with the Divine nature, the sanctification of man’s will and temper, and its union with God’s purpose and plan. In the midst of all the rivalries of the race, Christ stands as the index of a spiritual kingdom, for the prevalence of which His disciples are to pray. He perfectly, they--timid and passionate--very imperfectly, represented the kingdom of God to be set up in theworld.
2. Think what light is cast upon the gospel by this utterance of the Son of God. The Word of life was to regenerate the world.
3. The true standard by which we are to measure society. The test is, How far is the Divine idea realized? Is the kingdom of God set up?
4. Here, again, we find the criterion of judgment as to what constitutes individual renown in history.
5. We are reminded by these words of the great opportunity of life. We may co-operate with God in bringing, first our own souls into harmony with His will, and then leading other spirits under the sweet dominion of His royal law. (R. S. Storrs, D. D.)
The eternal kingdom
The kingdom of God is in its essence a spiritual kingdom; the seat of His dominion is in the thoughts and affections of men; the tokens of its sway are a deepening purity and a growing love among the children of men. Of course it takes hold on things outward also, and shapes them by its law; it changes the manners and the fashions and the laws and the social relations of men; it is not in its essence meat and drink, but it rules the lives of men who are its loyal subjects whether they eat or drink or whatever they do. Still it affects the forms and fashions of men only as it transforms the thoughts and the desires of men; it works from within outward; its forces are all spiritual, though its manifestations are visible in all the realms of life. And it includes everything that is true, everything that is pure, everything that is lovely, everything that is honest and brave and sound and sweet in the universe. Whatsoever is good is of God, and is a sign of the rule of His kingdom in the world. Whatsoever shows improvement--whether it is from good to better, or from worse to better--is a token of the progress of God’s kingdom in the world.
Wherever morality and purity are gaining, wherever the vile are becoming less vile, and the cruel less cruel, and the coveteous less coveteous, there the kingdom of God is advancing. “There is none good but one, that is, God,” said our Lord Himself; and there is no good in any man, from the feeblest virtue in the worst man to the grandest integrity in the best man--there is no good in any beneficent institution, or in any kindly custom, or in any refinement of social life--that is not a Divine inspiration; that is not the result of obedience to the Divine law; that is not, therefore, a token of the presence and the prevalence in some degree of God’s kingdom. When we intelligently offer this petition, then, we are asking for nothing less than this, that the light and love and power of God may increase and abound everywhere in the world. “But why, then,” it may be asked, “should we say, ‘Thy kingdom come’?” If God’s kingdom is the sum of all beneficent forces, of all holy influences, of all truth and all love and all righteousness, why should we pray that it may come? It is here already. The world has never been wholly destitute of righteousness. God has never been without a witness on the earth. Why then do we pray, “Thy kingdom come”? Why do we wish or ask in March that summer may come? That would surely be a proper wish, and might be a fitting prayer. Yet all the elements of the summer are here to-day. The earth, from whose fruitful breast the summer springs, lies waiting here; in her veins a myriad lives are throbbing; the mighty prince of light is shining down on us every day; air and light, and moisture and warmth, all the forces that make the summer, are here; every day the sun is wheeling his chariot a little higher into the sky; every day the empire of the light enlarges, and the realm of night is narrowed; yet, though the elements and forces out of which the summer comes are here, we might wish to have them here in greater fulness and in greater power. And so this petition asks, not that righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost may begin on the earth, for they began to be long ago, but that they may continue, and that they may increase. Probably it is the increase of this kingdom that is more specifically intended. It is a fuller, a broader, a more glorious manifestation of these great principles and forces. It is a prayer that the lives which are not now under their sway may be brought into subjection to them; that the institutions that now are ruled by selfishness and strife may be pervaded by them; that the homes in which vice and greed and worldliness now reign may be cleansed and hallowed by the spirit of purity and love; that the societies in which frivolity and vanity now rule may be ruled by soberness and modesty and quietness; that many lands which are now habitations of cruelty may hear and obey the gospel of goodwill. It is not a prayer that the leaven may be brought and placed in the measures of meal, but that its subtle, transforming influence may extend until it shall pervade the whole lump. It is not a prayer that the mustard seed may be planted, but that its growth may be hastened by the gentle dews of God’s grace and the sunlight of His truth until it shall become a great tree, whose branches shall be vocal with the songs of Paradise, and in whose shade all the weary of the world may rest. (Washington Gladden, D. D.)
The most comprehensive petition
This is the most comprehensive petition of the Lord’s prayer. Indeed, it is the most comprehensive petition that it is possible for man to utter; there is hardly anything that we ask for that is not summed up in this prayer. It is a prayer that the whole world may grow better and brighter; that all the people in the world may grow gentler and stronger, and truer and kinder, and happier year by year. And it is a recognition of the fact that this can come to pass only as the world is filled with the knowledge of God and ruled by His law; only as the people in the world come to know Him better and to obey Him more perfectly. (Washington Gladden, D. D.)
Answers to this petition
People sometimes question whether prayer is ever answered; but here is a prayer that Christians have been offering now for eighteen hundred years, and if you want to know whether it has been answered, read the whole of history since Christ ascended. “Thy kingdom come!” the disciples prayed, and presently a bloody persecution fell upon them in Jerusalem, and drove them forth from the holy city, and made them homeless wanderers. That was a strange way of answering the prayer. But “they that were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the Word.” Up and down the rugged roads of Palestine they went proclaiming the glad tidings of great joy. It was not long before the messengers found their way over the heights of Mount Taurus, and here and there a centre of light was kindled in the dark provinces of Asia Minor; then the voice came to Paul summoning him to Macedonia, and Europe was invaded by the intrepid apostle, who planted the standard of the gospel on the classic fields of Philippi and on the heights of the Areopagus. From these small beginnings the leaven of Christianity has spread, until now nearly a third part of the human race acknowledge Jesus Christ as Lord “Thy kingdom come!” good Christians prayed. And He who hears the cry of His children came down to earth and stretched forth His hand to woman, so long the slave of man’s power, and the drudge of his indolence, and the victim of his passions, and lifted her up, and clothed her motherhood with dignity, and her womanhood with divinity, and gave us by her hand the blessings of home, the best of all earth’s precious things. “Thy kingdom come!” the strong of faith were crying; and a Presence unseen by men stood among the prisoners in the dungeons that were festering dens of disease and vileness, and laid its gentle hand upon these hapless children of the evil, and lifted the weight of hate and scorn that made their lot so desperate, and sought to lead them forth to ways of purity. “Thy kingdom come!” God’s children cried; and the victims of insanity saw a beam of hope through the mental darkness in which they were walking, and found themselves no longer chained and scourged like criminals, but gently led and kindly treated. “Thy kingdom come!” was the voice of millions who groaned in slavery, and of millions more who remembered their brethren in bonds as bound with them; and one by one the fetters have snapped asunder--the strong shackles of the Roman law, the wounding cords of feudal villenage, the degrading toils of British slavery, the prescriptive manacles of Russian serfdom--until even in our own land, and in our own day, “our eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord,” as He comes proclaiming liberty throughout the land to all the inhabitants thereof. “Thy kingdom come!” the children of the light were pleading; and the hierarchies that sought to confine the thought of men were baffled and paralyzed, and the Bible was unchained, and the ways that lead to the mercy-seat were opened to the feet of all penitent believers. Thus it is by these mighty changes which have liberated and elevated and enlightened the children of God that God’s kingdom has been coming through all the ages, with increasing glory and enlarging power. (Washington Gladden, D. D.)
Ways in which we may hasten the coming of God’s kingdom
Even the children can help to bring, in many places, this kingdom of God for which they daily pray. I heard a mother telling the other day of her children who had quarrelled sometimes, as many children do, I fear, but who had both been made so thoroughly sorry and ashamed on account of one of their quarrels that they were careful for many days after that not to say a bitter word, or to do a hateful deed. So peace came to that home through the prayer and the watching of these two Christian children; and peace, you know, is one of the signs of the kingdom of God in the world. And I hope that when the children offer this prayer, they will remember that this is one of the ways in which it is answered, and in which they may help in answering it. And wherever we help one another to the living of better lives--to be more truthful or upright or honourable or kind, to be more faithfulin our duties to God or to men--there we are helping to answer our prayer, and to hasten the coming of God’s kingdom. (Washington Gladden, D. D.)
Loyalty to God
Reverence recognizes the majesty of God; loyalty His authority. We might revere a foreign king; we are loyal only to our own. Many are able to feel the former sentiment who are apparently uninfluenced by this. They go in crowds to worship, confessing that it is good and seemly to do so, but never think of leaving their homes for the sake of obeying a Divine precept in doing an act of justice or charity in God’s name. Lord -Bacon was a very reverential man, but not loyal, for he was an unrighteous man. Robert Burns must have had some hallowing sense of Divine things to have written the “Cotter’s Saturday Night”; but he was not an honest subject of God, for he did not keep the seventh commandment. “The kingdom” is that condition in which God’s laws are perfectly kept, and His promises fulfilled. The kingdom of God, with its hallowing influences, presses against our generation, and against every man in it, as really as the upper ether presses against the earth’s atmosphere. The righteousness of the kingdom presses upon our consciences; our moral natures are as sensitive to it as our nerves are to the slightest motional influence. We cannot keep out the sense of justice and judgment, awakening complacency or dread, according to our lives. We are all and always conscious of spiritual realities about us and within us. When we pray, “Thy kingdom come,” we ask that the same righteousness which makes heaven perfect may come to reign in all men’s lives, not dimly discerned through conscience and reflected in the Bible precepts, but as it is in the character of God our King. We pray that the love which makes heaven happy may fill every human soul, not as we feel it in our kindliest charity, but as it is in God who “is love”: we pray that Christ may come, in whom Divine righteousness and love were embodied, and win all hearts to His sway. And if we are honest in the prayer we open our own hearts to receive the kingdom, that upon it may be put those laws of holiness and love. The petition sincerely uttered is thus a formula of consecration. An illustration of spiritual loyalty to our King may be taken from a historical scene. When William the Conqueror assumed dominion in England, each of his barons knelt before him bareheaded, and, placing his hands within those of his superior, swore--“Hear, my lord, I become liege-man of yours for life and limb and earthly regard, and I will keep faith and loyalty to you for life and death. God help me.” Whereupon the kiss of the king invested him with his portion of the land. (J. M. Ludlow, D. D.)
Appreciation of God’s kingdom
It is the state of a man’s mind which qualifies him to enjoy any one of God’s kingdoms. What is the celestial kingdom of suns and stars to him whose eye is downward looking? Tell him that in yonder space “there are 1,000 stars seen by the naked eye, and each of them is the centre of a planetary system; that it has been computed that 100,000,000 might be seen by the telescope were they explored”; but his soul is not awakened to these stupendous and distant realities, and that celestial kingdom rings no peal of harmonies, no everlasting chime in his ears. The world is what we make it. It is a marketplace, or the portico of a temple, or a school where character is disciplined for eternity, or a sphere of government where the ground wears the stamp of God’s footsteps to the observant eye; the world is either of these to us according to our culture, our knowledge, our life. So this kingdom of God is to you according to your point of observation. It is appreciated or neglected as you are wont to prize or to despise the spiritual world and spiritual influences. Do you think that the greatest thing in the world is a soul ruled by God? A soul receptive of influence to guide its convictions and to give conscience dominion over the passions? Are you wont to think that falsehood, excess, enmity, impurity, ignorance--the curses which turn the earth into a wilderness--shall be weeded up as sure as there is a God in heaven; weeded up out of the soil of men’s affections by the mighty power and all-subduing love of the gospel of His Son? Is it a bent of your mind, a resolute habit of thought, that you will not dishonour your Maker’s purpose or character by suspecting that He could make this earth for a horde of guilty and unbridled passions to riot in; for war and cupidity, for envy, lust, and avarice; that it is no part of your creed that disease and the cry of the lazar-house are the natural state of man kind? No; they were brought in by evil, by malignant influences; brought into a world which its Maker pronounced to he “very good”; brought in by sin. But as God did not bring them in, He will rid the earth of them. Their sentence is already pronounced. The throne is set. Judgment is passed. Let them revel their appointed time. To your eye they are doomed; creation has groaned under their weight too long already, but the hour of its redemption is come; to your ear it is already striking; and “Behold, I make all things new: new heavens, and a new earth.” “Belief is something towards its own realization.” Grotius, in de scribing the success of the Batavians in breaking the Spanish yoke, says beautifully, “credendo fecerunt.” By believing they could do it--they did it. So he who prays, “Thy kingdom come,” from his heart, hastens its coming, and sees it come. (B. Kent.)
A slave’s definition of the words, “Thy kingdom come.”
A female slave in Travaneore, at a public examination of candidates for baptism, in reply to the question, What is meant by the words, “Thy kingdom come”? (when the silence of others made it her turn to speak), modestly said, “We therein pray that grace may reign in every heart.” The most learned divines could not have answered the question better.
God’s kingdom not of this world
No doubt many of us have heard the well-known story which is told of the early Dominican monk, St. Thomas of Aquinum. He was one day sitting in the Vatican with Pope Innocent the Fourth, and large masses of gold and silver were being carried into the treasury. “The day has passed, you see,” said the Pope, in a self-satisfied manner, “when the Church could say, ‘Silver and gold have I none.’” “Yes,” replied St. Thomas, “and with it has also passed the day when she could say to the paralytic, ‘Rise up and walk.’” No, it is not endowment but fidelity which God regards--the establishment of a connection between the Church of any country and the State must never, in any sense, be regarded as an establishment of the “kingdom of God.” (W. S. Carter, M. A.)
God’s threefold kingdom
What is this kingdom, the coming of which our Lord thus commands us to ask and wish for? The kingdom of God, so far as we have any concern with it in this prayer--so far as it is still to come, and must therefore be something different from that rule and dominion which He is always exercising over every part of His creation--is a threefold kingdom.
I. There is His kingdom and authority over the souls of all true believers, which we call His SPIRITUAL KINGDOM.
II. There is His kingdom upon earth, or His Church, which we call HIS VISIBLE KINGDOM, because it is visible to all men, and all may see it.
III. There is His HEAVENLY KINGDOM, which is to come after the resurrection, and to last for ever. (A. W. Hare.)
Thy kingdom come
I never felt the power of this petition more impressively than when once standing in the midst of a leafless wood. It was a clear day in early spring. Every cloud had been withdrawn from the canopy. The trees were perfectly naked, and their great branches were like arms outstretched in prayer. To me they seemed to be saying: “O spring, come and clothe us with thy beauty; summer, come and enrich us with thine abundance; we are patiently waiting for thee; through the long winter storm we have tarried for thee; thy kingdom come.” I, too, a poor, leafless human tree, lifted up my entreaty, saving, with a full heart, “O fairer Spring, O richer Summer, O purer Light, come, clothe me, adorn me, make me beautiful; O, Saviour, Thy kingdom come.” (Dr. J. Parker.)
Thy kingdom come
1. Human life is one great WANT.
2. This want should turn human life into one noble ASPIRATION.
3. This aspiration can only be noble as it is lifted up towards A FATHER.
4. This Father must be asked to come in all the power and splendour of A KINGDOM. (Dr. J. Parker.)
The kingdom of God
I. WHAT IS THIS KINGDOM?
1. The term in its primary signification no doubt suggests a material territory, with a personal sovereign, laws, offices, institutions. But without any effort we transfer this organization to that which is ideal, and use the term in a figurative sense. We are accustomed to speak of a kingdom as representing some particular section of created things; as, for example, the animal kingdom, the vegetable kingdom, the kingdom of letters. The principle of life, and not any particular mode or form of its development, must be the same in the several members of the kingdom. In like manner, the phrase “kingdom of God” is intended to comprise all who are spiritually related to God-all who are partakers of the Divine nature, and are subservient to the Divine rule and government. The complete development of that kingdom is, I take it, the meaning of the term here; and towards that our prayer is directed, though in reality the kingdom itself has already come.
2. This thought suggests another. We have spoken of a common life, a Divine life which constitutes citizenship in the kingdom of God, of laws by which this life is governed, of principles by which it is animated. Let us amplify this idea, so as to see what are the moral forces at work within the kingdom. “The kingdom of God is within you.” It is not a thing to be seen; it is a power to be felt. This view of the kingdom is purely a personal one. Its principles must be apprehended, so that he who is enrolled as its subject may possess the moral qualities pertaining to it. “The kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.”
II. WHOSE IS THIS KINGDOM? It is the kingdom of God. But not of God only as God. It is the kingdom of the Father. Whose Father? My Father? Our Father.
III. TO WHOM IS THE GOVERNMENT OF THIS KINGDOM COMMITTED? TO Him who by the mysterious incarnation was at once Son of God and Son of Man. Both natures are needed in His capacity of Prince and Ruler. As God, He rules with Divine attributes; as man, He knows and feels for the governed. Let us take care to be in readiness to recognize this kingdom when it comes. (T. Lessey.)
Thy kingdom come
A soul truly devoted to God joins heartily in this petition, “Thy kingdom come!”
1. In these words this great truth is implied--that God is a King. He who hath a kingdom can be no less than a king--“God is the King of all the earth.” And He is a King upon His throne--“God sitteth upon the throne of holiness.” He hath His kingly prerogatives; He hath power to make laws, to seal pardons, which are the flowers and jewels belonging to His crown. Thus the Lord is King.
2. He is a great King, “a King above all gods.” He is great in and of Himself; and not like other kings, who are made great by their subjects.
3. God is a glorious King--“Who is this King of glory? He hath internal glory--The Lord reigneth, He is clothed with majesty.” Other kings have royal and sumptuous apparel to make them appear glorious to the beholders, but all their magnificence is borrowed; but God is clothed with majesty, His own glorious essence is instead of royal robes, and “He hath girded Himself with strength.”
He sets up His throne where no other king doth; He rules the will and affections; His power binds the conscience.
1. (1) If God be so great a King, and sits King for ever, then it is no disparagement for us to serve Him. “To be a servant of God is to reign as a prince”; it is an honour to serve a king. If the angels fly swiftly upon the King of heaven’s message, then well we may look upon it as a favour to be taken into His royal service. Theodosius thought it a greater honour to be God’s servant than to be an emperor. Therefore as the queen of Sheba, baying seen the glory of Solomon’s kingdom, said, “Happy are these thy servants which stand continually before thee,” so, happy are those saints who stand before the King of heaven, and wait on His throne.
(2) If God be such a glorious King, crowned with wisdom, armed with power, bespangled with riches, then it shows us what prudence it is to have this King to be ours; to say, “My King and my God!”
It is counted great policy to be on the strongest side.
(1) If God be so glorious a King, full of power and majesty, let us trust in Him.
(2) If God be so great a King, let us fear Hiram “Fear ye not Me? saith the Lord: will ye not tremble at My presence?”
(3) If God be so glorious a King, He hath the power of life and death in His hand.
(4) Is God so great a King, having all power in heaven and earth in His hand? Let us learn subjection to Him. Obey the King of glory.
3. Comfort to those who are the subjects of the King of heaven; God will put forth all the royal power for their succour and comfort.
(1) The King of heaven will plead their cause.
(2) He will protect His people; He sets an invisible guard about them.
(3) When it may be for the good of His people, He will raise up deliverance to them.
4. Terror to the enemies of the Church. What kingdom doth Christ mean here?
Neg. 1. He doth not mean a political or earthly kingdom.
2. It is not meant of God’s providential kingdom; “His kingdom ruleth over all”; that is, the kingdom of His providence. This kingdom of God’s providence we do not pray should come, for it is already come. What kingdom then is meant here when we say, “Thy kingdom come”?
Positively. 1. The kingdom of grace, which kingdom God exercises in the consciences of His people--this is God’s lesser kingdom. When we pray, “Thy kingdom come”--
(1) Here is something tacitly implied, that we are in the kingdom of darkness.
(a) We pray that we may be brought out of the kingdom of darkness.
(b) That the devil’s kingdom in the world may be demolished.
(2) Something positively intended.
(a) We pray that the kingdom of grace may be set up in our hearts and increased.
(b) We pray that the kingdom of glory may hasten, and that we may in God’s good time be translated into it.
These two kingdoms of grace and glory differ not specifically, but gradually; they differ not in nature, but only in degree. The kingdom of grace is nothing but the inchoation or beginning of the kingdom of glory; the kingdom of grace is glory in the seed, and the kingdom of glory is grace in the flower; the kingdom of grace is glory in the daybreak, and the kingdom of glory is grace in the full meridian; the kingdom of grace is glory militant, and the kingdom of glory is grace triumphant. There is such an insepatable connection between these two kingdoms, grace and glory, that there is passing into the one kingdom but by the other. At Athens there were two temples, a temple of virtue and a temple of honour, and there was no going into the temple of honour but through the temple of virtue; so the kingdoms of grace and glory are so close joined together, that we cannot go into the kingdom of glory but through the kingdom of grace. Many people aspire after the kingdom of glory, but never look after grace; but these two, which God hath joined together, may not be put asunder; the kingdom of grace leads to the kingdom of glory. How many ways is a natural man in the kingdom of darkness?
1. He is under the darkness of ignorance--“having the understanding darkened.”
2. Let us pray that God will bring us out of this kingdom of darkness. God’s kingdom of grace cannot come into our hearts till first we are brought out of the kingdom of darkness. Why should not we strive to get out of this kingdom of darkness? Who would desire to stay in a dark dungeon? Go to Christ to enlighten thee--“Christ shall give thee light”; He will not only bring thy light to thee, but open thine eyes to see it. That is the first thing implied in “Thy kingdom come”; we pray that we may be brought out of the kingdom of darkness.
II. The second thing implied in “Thy kingdom come,” we do implicitly pray against the devil’s kingdom, we pray that Satan’s kingdom may be demolished in the world. Satan hath a kingdom; he got his kingdom by conquest; he conquered mankind in paradise. Satan’s kingdom hath two qualifications or characters.
1. It is a kingdom of impiety.
2. It is a kingdom of slavery. Let us pray that Satan’s kingdom, set up in the world, may be thrown down.
When we pray, “Thy kingdom come,” here is something positively intended.
1. We pray that the kingdom of grace may be set up in our hearts and increased.
2. That the kingdom of glory may hasten, and that we may, in God’s due time, be translated into it. I begin with the first, the kingdom of grace.
When we pray, “Thy kingdom come,” we pray that the kingdom of grace may come into our hearts.
1. Why is grace called a kingdom? Because, when grace comes, there is a kingly government set up in the soul. Grace rules the will and affections, and brings the whole man in subjection to Christ; grace doth king it in the soul; it sways the sceptre, it subdues mutinous lusts.
2. Why is there such need that we should pray that this kingdom of grace may come into our hearts?
(1) Because, till the kingdom of grace come, we have no right to the covenant of grace. The covenant of grace is to an ungracious person a sealed fountain; it is kept as a paradise with a flaming sword, that the sinner may not touch it; without grace you have no more right to it than a farmer to the city-charter.
(2) Unless, the kingdom of grace be set up in our hearts, our purest offerings are defiled; they may be good as to the matter, but not as to the manner; they want that which should meliorate and sweeten them.
(3) We had need pray that the kingdom of grace may come, because till this kingdom come into our hearts we are loathsome in God’s eyes--“My soul loathed them.” I have read of a woman who always used flattering glasses; by chance seeing her face in a true glass, she ran mad. Such as now dress themselves by the flattering glass of presumption, when once God gives them a sight of their filthiness they will abhor themselves--“Ye shall loathe yourselves in your own sight for all your evils.”
(4) Till the kingdom of grace comes, a man lies exposed to the wrath of God--“and who knoweth the power of His anger?”
(5) Till the kingdom of grace come man cannot die with comfort; only he who takes Christ in the arms of his faith can look death in the face with joy. But it is sad to have the king of terrors in the body, and not the kingdom of grace in the soul.
3. How may we know that the kingdom of grace is set up in our hearts?
(1) Men think they have the kingdom of grace in their hearts because they have the means of grace; they live where the silver trumpet of the gospel sounds; they are lift up to heaven with ordinances--“I have a Levite to my priest,” sure I shall go to heaven.
(2) Men think they have the kingdom of grace set up in their hearts because they have some common works of the Spirit. How may we know the kingdom of grace is set up in us? In general, by having a metamorphosis or change wrought in the soul; this is called “the new creature.” When the kingdom of grace is set up, there is light in the mind, order in the affections, pliableness of the will, teaderness in the conscience; such as can find no change of heart, they are the same as they were, as vain, as earthly, as unclean as ever; there is no sign of God’s kingdom of grace in them. We may know the kingdom of grace is come into our hearts by having the princely grace of faith. We may know the kingdom of grace is come into our hearts by having the noble grace of love; faith and love are the two poles on which all religion turns--“The upright love thee.” We may know the kingdom of grace is come into our hearts by spiritualizing the duties of religion--“Ye are an holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices.” We may know the kingdom of grace is come into us by antipathy and opposition against every known sin--“I hate every false way.” We may know the kingdom of grace is come into us, when we have given up ourselves to God by obedience; as a servant gives up himself to his master, as a wife gives up herself to her husband, so we give up ourselves to God by obedience. I fear the kingdom of grace is not yet come into my heart.
1. I cannot discern grace. A child of God may have the kingdom of grace in his heart, yet not know it. The cup was in Benjamin’s sack, though he did not know it was there; thou mayest have faith in thy heart, the cup may be in thy sack, though thou knowest it not. The seed may be in the ground, when we do not see it spring up.
2. Before the kingdom of grace come into the heart there must be some preparation for it; the fallow ground of the heart must be broken up; I fear the plough of the law hath not gone deep enough; I have not been humbled enough, therefore I have no grace. God doth not prescribe a just proportion of sorrow and humiliation; the Scripture mentions the truth of sorrow, but not the measure.
3. If the kingdom of God were within me it would he a kingdom of power; it would enable me to serve God with vigour of soul; but I have a spirit of infirmity upon me, I am weak and impotent, and untuned to every holy action. There is a great difference between the weakness of grace and the want of grace: a man may have life, though he be sick and weak.
4. I fear the kingdom of grace is not yet come, because I find the kingdom of sin so strong in me. Had I faith, it would purify my heart; but I find much pride, worldliness, passion. Those sins which you did once wear as a crown on your head are now as fetters on the leg; is not all this from the Spirit of grace in you? Sin is in you as poison in the body, which you are sick of, and use all Scripture antidotes to expel.
5. Where the kingdom of grace comes it softens the hears; but I find my heart frozen and congealed into hardness; I can hardly squeeze out one tear. Do flowers grow on a rock? Can there be any grace in such a rocky heart? There maybe grief where there are no tears, the best sorrow is rational. Labour to find that this kingdom of grace is set up in your hearts; while others aspire after earthly kingdoms, labour to have the kingdom of God within you.
The kingdom of grace must come into us before we can go into the kingdom of glory.
1. This kingdom of God within us is our spiritual beauty; the kingdom of grace adorns a person, and sets him off in the eyes of God and angels.
2. The kingdom of grace set up in the heart is our spiritual defence.
3. The kingdom of grace set up in the heart brings peace with it--“The kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness and peace.” There is a secret peace breeds out of holiness.
4. The kingdom of grace enriches the soul; a kingdom hath its riches.
5. When the kingdom of grace comes, it doth fix and establish the heart--“O God, my heart is fixed!” Before the kingdom of grace comes the heart is very unfixed and unsettled, like a ship without ballast.
6. This kingdom of grace is distinguishing; it is a sure pledge of God’s love.
How should we do to obtain this kingdom?
1. In general, take pains for it; we cannot have the world without labour, and do we think we can have grace? “If thou seekest her as silver.”
2. Such as have this kingdom of God set up in them, it calls for gratulation and thanksgiving. What will you be thankful for, if not for a kingdom? If God hath crowned you with the kingdom of grace, do you crown Him with your praises. The second thing intended by our Saviour in this petition is, that the kingdom of grace may increase, that it may come more into us. And this may answer a question. Why do we pray, “Thy kingdom come,” when the kingdom of grace is already come into the soul? Till we come to live among the angels we shall need to pray this prayer, “Thy kingdom come.” Lord, let Thy kingdom of grace come in more power into my soul; let grace be more augmented and increased. When doth the kingdom of grace increase in the soul?
When is it a flourishing kingdom?
1. When a Christian hath further degrees added to his graces; there is more oil in the lamp, his knowledge is clearer, his love is more inflamed; grace is capable of degrees, and may rise higher as the sun in the horizon.
2. Then the kingdom of grace increaseth when a Christian hath gotten more strength than he had. That grace which will carry us through prosperity will not carry us through sufferings; the ship needs stronger tackling to carry it through a storm than a calm.
3. Then the kingdom of grace increaseth when a Christian hath most conflict with spiritual corruptions.
4. Then the kingdom of grace flourisheth when a Christian bath learned to live by faith--“I live by the faith of the Son of God.”
5. When s Christian is arrived at holy zeal
6. Then the kingdom of grace increaseth when a Christian is as well diligent in his particular calling as devout in his general.
7. Then the kingdom of grace increaseth when a Christian is established in the belief and love of the truth.
8. Then the kingdom of grace increaseth in a man’s own heart when he labours to be instrumental to set up this kingdom in others.
Wherein appears the needfulness of this, that the kingdom of grace should be increased.
1. This is God’s design in keeping up a standing ministry in the Church, to increase the kingdom of grace in men’s hearts.
2. We had need have the kingdom of grace increase, in respect we have a great deal of work to do, and a little grace will hardly carry us through.
3. If the kingdom of grace cloth not increase, it will decay--“Thou hast left thy first love.” If grace be not improved, it will soon be impaired.
4. To have grace increasing is suitable to Christianity. The saints are not only jewels for sparkling lustre, but trees for growth. They are called the lights of the world. Light is still increasing: first there is the daybreak, and so it shines brighter to the meridian.
5. As the kingdom of grace increaseth, so a Christian’s comforts increase.
How may they be comforted, who bewail their want of growth, and weep that they cannot find the kingdom of grace increase?
1. To see and bewail our decay in grace argues not only the life of grace, but growth.
2. If a Christian doth not increase in one grace, he may in another; if not in knowledge, he may in humility. If a tree cloth not grow so much in the branches, it may in the root; to grow downwards in the root is a good growth.
3. A Christian may grow less in affection when he grows more in judgment. As a musician when he is old, his fingers are stiff and not so nimble at the lute as they were, but he plays with more art and judgment than before; so a Christian may not have so much affection in duty as at the first conversion, but he is more solid in religion, and more settled in his judgment than he was before.
4. A Christian may think he doth not increase in grace because he doth not increase in gifts; whereas there may be a decay of natural parts, the memory and other faculties, when there is not a decay of grace. Parts may be impaired, when grace is improved.
5. A Christian may increase in grace, yet not be sensible of it. I come to the second thing intended in this petition, “That the kingdom of glory may hasten, and that we may in due time be translated into it.” When we pray, “Thy kingdom come,” here is something positively intended. We pray, 1st, that the kingdom of grace may be set in our hearts; 2nd, that it may increase and flourish; 3rd, that the kingdom of glory may hasten, and that God would in His due time translate us into it.
1. What this kingdom of glory is.
2. What are the properties of it.
3. Wherein it exceeds all other kingdoms.
4. When this kingdom comes.
5. Wherein appears the certainty of it.
6. Why we should pray for its coming.
First. What this kingdom of glory is. By this kingdom is meant that glorious estate which the saints shall enjoy when they shall reign with God and angels for ever. If a man stand upon the seashore he cannot see all the dimensions of the sea, the length, breadth, and depth of it, yet he may see it is of a vast extension; so, though the kingdom of heaven be of that incomparable excellency that neither tongue of man or angels can express, yet we may conceive of it to be an exceeding glorious thing, such as the eye hath not seen. 1st. What the kingdom of heaven implies.
I. It implies a freedom from all evil.
1. A freedom from the necessities of nature. What need will there be of food when our bodies shall be made spiritual? Though not spiritual for substance, yet for qualities. What need will there be of clothing when our bodies shall be like Christ’s glorious body? What need will there be of armour when there is no enemy? What need will there be of sleep when there is no night?
2. In the kingdom of heaven we shall be freed from the imperfections of nature. Since the fall our knowledge hath suffered an eclipse.
(1) Our natural knowledge is ira-per feet, it is chequered with ignorance. Our ignorance is more than our knowledge.
(2) Our Divine knowledge is imperfect--“We know but in part,” saith Paul.
3. In the kingdom of heaven we shall be freed from the toilsome labours of this life. God enacted a law in paradise, “in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.” Where should there be rest but in the heavenly centre? Not that this sweet rest in the kingdom of heaven excludes all motion, for spirits cannot be idle; but the saints glorified shall rest from all wearisome employment; it shall be a labour full of ease, a motion full of delight; the saints in heaven shall love God, and what labour is that? Is it any labour to love beauty? They shall praise God, and that sure is delightful; when the bird sings, it is not so much a labour as a pleasure.
4. In the kingdom of heaven we shall be freed from original corruption: this is the root of all actual sin. There would be no actual sin if there were no original; there would be no water in the stream if there were none in the fountain. What a blessed time will that be, never to grieve God’s Spirit more!
5. In the kingdom of heaven we shall be freed from all sorrows--“There shall be no more sorrow.” Our life here is interlarded with trouble. Either losses grieve, or lawsuits vex, or unkindness breaks the heart. We may as well separate moisture from air, or weight from lead, as troubles from man’s life.
6. We shall, in the kingdom of heaven, be freed from the immodesty of temptation.
7. In the kingdom of heaven we shall be freed from all vexing cares.
8. We shall, in the kingdom of heaven, be freed from all doubts and scruples. In this life the best saint hath his doubtings, as the brightest star hath his twinkling.
9. We shall, in the kingdom of heaven, be freed from all society with the wicked.
10. We shall, in the kingdom of heaven, be freed from all signs of God’s displeasure.
11. We shall, in the kingdom of heaven, be freed from all divisions.
12. We shall, in the kingdom of heaven, be freed from vanity and dissatisfaction.
II. In the kingdom of heaven there is a glorious fruition of all good. Concerning the fruitions and privileges of this heavenly kingdom--
1. We shall have an immediate communion with God Himself, who is the inexhausted sea of all happiness; this divines call “the beatific vision.” God hath all excellencies concentred in Him. If one flower should have the sweetness of all flowers, how sweet would that flower be! All the beauty and sweetness which lie scattered in the creature are infinitely to be found in God; therefore to see and enjoy Him will ravish the soul with delight. We shall so see God as to love Him, and be made sensible of His love.
2. We shall, in the kingdom of heaven, with these eyes see the glorified body of Jesus Christ. If the glory of His transfiguration was so great, what will the glory of His exaltation be?
3. We shall, in the kingdom of heaven, enjoy the society of “an innumerable company of angels.”
4. We shall, in the kingdom of heaven, have sweet society with glorified saints; then the communion of saints will be illustrious.
5. In the kingdom of heaven there shall be incomprehensible joy.
6. In heaven there is honour and dignity put upon the saints. A kingdom imports honour. When all the titles and ensigns of worldly honour shall lie in the dust--the mace, the silver star, the garter--then shall the saints’ honour remain.
7. We shall, in the kingdom of heaven, have a blessed rest. This rest is when the saints shall lie on Christ’s bosom, that hive of sweetness, that bed of perfume.
8. The saints shall, in the kingdom of heaven, have their bodies richly bespangled with glory; they shall be full of clarity and brightness, as Moses’ face shined that Israel were not able to behold the glory. The bodies of saints glorified shall need no jewels when they shall shine like Christ’s body.
9. In the heavenly kingdom is eternity; it is an eternal fruition; they shall never be put out of the throne, “they shall reign for ever and ever.” It is called “the everlasting kingdom,” and “an eternal weight of glory.” The flowers of paradise, of which the saints’ garland is made, never wither. Well may we pray, “Thy kingdom come.”
What are the properties or qualifications of the kingdom of heaven?
1. The glory of this kingdom is solid and substantial; the Hebrew word for glory signifies a weight, to show how solid and weighty the glory of the celestial kingdom is. The glory of the worldly kingdom is airy and imaginary, like a blazing comet, or fancy.
2. The glory of this kingdom is satisfying--“With Thee is the fountain of life.” How can they choose but be full who are at the fountain-head? “When I awake, I shall be satisfied with Thy likeness.” The soul is never satisfied till it hath God for its portion and heaven for its haven.
3. The glory of heaven’s kingdom is pure and unmixed; the streams of paradise are not muddied. There is ease without pain, honour without disgrace, life without death.
4. The glory of this kingdom is constantly exhilarating and refreshing; there is fulness, but no surfeit. Worldly comforts, though sweet, yet in time grow stale; a down-bed pleaseth a while, but within a while we are weary, and would rise.
5. The glory of this kingdom is distributed to every individual saint. In an earthly kingdom the crown goes but to one, a crown will fit but one head; but in the kingdom above the crown goes to all, all the elect are kings. God hath land enough to give to all His heirs.
6. Lucid and transparent. This kingdom of heaven is adorned and bespangled with light.
7. The glory of this kingdom is adequate and proportionable to the desire of the soul. The excellency of a feast is when the meat is suited to the palate; this is one ingredient in the glory of heaven--it exactly suits the desires of the glorified saints.
8. The glory of this kingdom will be seasonable. The seasonableness of a mercy adds to its beauty and sweetness; it is like apples of gold to pictures of silver. After a hard winter in this cold climate will it not be seasonable to have the spring-flowers of glory appear, and the singing of the birds of paradise come?
Wherein the kingdom of heaven infinitely excels all the kingdoms of the earth.
1. It excels in the architect; other kingdoms have men to raise their structures, but God Himself laid the first stone in this kingdom. This kingdom is of the greatest antiquity; God was the first King and Founder of it; no angel was worthy to lay a stone in this building.
2. This heavenly kingdom excels in altitude; it is higher situated than any kingdom, the higher anything is the more excellent; the fire being the most sublime element is most noble. The kingdom of heaven is seated above all the visible orbs. If wicked men could build their nests among the stars, yet the least believer would shortly be above them.
3. The kingdom of heaven excels all others in splendour and riches; it is described by precious stones. Those who are poor in the world, yet, as soon as they come into this kingdom, grow rich, as rich as the angels; other kingdoms are enriched with gold, this is enriched with the Deity.
4. The kingdom of heaven excels all other kingdoms in holiness. Kingdoms on earth are for the most part unholy; there is a common sewer of luxury and uncleanness running in them. Holiness is the brightest jewel of the crown of heaven.
5. The kingdom of heaven excels all other kingdoms in its pacific nature; it is a kingdom of peace. Peace is the glory of a kingdom. A king’s crown is more adorned with the white lily of peace than when it is beset with the red roses of a bloody war. There is no beating of drums or roaring of cannons; but the voice of harpers harping, in token of peace.
6. The kingdom of heaven excels in magnitude; it is of vast dimensions. As every star hath a large orb to move in, so it shall be with the saints when they shall shine as stars in the kingdom of heaven.
7. The kingdom of heaven excels in unity; all the inhabitants agree together in love; love will be the perfume and music of heaven; as love to God will be intense, so to the saints. Perfect love, as it casts out fear, so it casts out envy and discord. There Luther and Zuinglius are agreed; Satan cannot put in his cloven foot there to make divisions; there shall be perfect harmony and concord, and not one jarring string in the saints’ music. It were worth dying to be in that kingdom.
8. This kingdom exceeds all earthly kingdoms in joy and pleasure; therefore it is called paradise.
9. This kingdom of heaven excels all earthly kingdoms in self-perfection. Other kingdoms are defective; they have not all provisions within themselves, but are fain to traffic abroad to supply their wants at home; King Solomon did send to Ophir for gold; but there is no defect in the kingdom of heaven; it hath all commodities of its own growth.
10. This kingdom of heaven excels all others in honour and nobility.
11. This kingdom of heaven excels all others in healthfulness. In the heavenly climate are no ill vapours to breed diseases, but a sweet aromatical smell coming from Christ; all His garments smell of myrrh, aloes, and cassia.
12. This kingdom of heaven excels in duration; it abides for ever. It is founded upon a strong basis, God’s omnipoteney; this kingdom the saints shall never be turned out of, or be deposed from their throne, as some kings have been, namely, Henry VI., etc., but shall reign for ever and ever. When shall this kingdom be bestowed? This glory in the kingdom of heaven shall be begun at death, but not perfected till the resurrection. Wherein appears the certainty and infallibility of this kingdom of glory?
That this blessed kingdom shall be bestowed on the saints is beyond all dispute.
1. God hath promised it--“It is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom”; “I appoint unto you a kingdom.” The whole earth hangs upon the word of God’s power; and cannot our faith hang upon the word of His promise?
2. There is a price laid down for this kingdom. Heaven is not only a kingdom which God hath promised, but which Christ hath purchased; it is called a “purchased possession.”
3. Christ prays that the saints may have this kingdom settled upon them: “Father, I will that they also whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am,” that is, in heaven.
4. The saints must have this blessed kingdom by virtue of Christ’s ascension: “I ascend unto My Father and your Father, to My God and your God.” Where lies the comfort of this? Here it lies--Jesus Christ ascended to take possession of heaven for all believers. As a husband takes up land in another country in the behalf of his wife, so Christ went to take possession of heaven in the behalf of all believers--“I go to prepare a place for you.”
5. The elect must have this blessed kingdom, in regard of the previous work of the Spirit in their hearts.
6. The elect must have this blessed kingdom by virtue of their coalition and union with Jesus Christ. They are members of Christ; therefore they must be where their Head is.
Why should we so earnestly pray for this heavenly kingdom, “Thy kingdom come”?
1. Because it is a kingdom worth the praying for.
2. We must pray for this kingdom of glory, because God will not bestow this kingdom on any without prayers” They seek for glory and immortality”; and how do we seek but by prayer?
3. We must pray that the kingdom of glory may come, that by going into it we may make an end of sinning. I think sometimes what a blessed time it will be never to have a sinful thought more! We must not pray, “Thy kingdom come,” out of discontent, because we would be rid of the troubles and crosses of this life.
4. Because that all Christ’s enemies shall be put under his feet.
5. We must pray earnestly that the kingdom of glory may come, that we may see God “face to face,” and have an uninterrupted and eternal communion with Him in the empyrean heaven.
1. From all this you see then that there is nothing within the whole sphere of religion imposed upon unreasonable terms. When God bids us serve Him, it is no unreasonable request; He will out of free grace enthrone us in a kingdom. When we hear of repentance, steeping our souls in brinish tears for sin, or of mortification, beheading our king-sin, we are ready to grumble, and think this is hard and unreasonable--“But do we serve God for nought?” Is it not infinite bounty to reward us with a kingdom? This kingdom is as far above our thoughts as it is beyond our deserts. Our service cannot be so hard as a kingdom is sweet.
2. See hence the royal bounty of God to His children, that He hath prepared a kingdom for them, a kingdom bespangled with glory; it is infinitely above the model we can draw of it in our thoughts.
3. See hence that religion is no ignominious, disgraceful thing. Would a prince regard the slightings of a few frantics when be is going to be crowned? You who are beginners, bind their reproaches as a crown about your head, despise their censures as much as their praise; a kingdom is a-coming.
4. See what contrary ways the godly and the wicked go at death; the godly go to a kingdom, the wicked to a prison; the devil is the jailor, and they are bound with the “chains of darkness.”
5. See then that which may make us in love with holy duties; every duty spiritually performed brings us a step nearer to the kingdom. As every flower hath its sweetness, so would every duty, if we would look upon it as giving us a lilt nearer heaven.
6. It shows us what little cause the children of God have to envy the prosperity of the wicked.
7. Is there a kingdom of glory a-coming? then see how happy all the saints are at death; they go to a kingdom; they shall see God’s face, which shines ten thousand times brighter than the sun in its meridian glory. The godly at death shall be installed into their honour, and have the crown royal set upon their head. In the kingdom of heaven the saints are crowned with all those perfections which the human nature is capable of. In the kingdom of heaven there is glory in its highest elevation; in that kingdom is knowledge without ignorance, holiness without sin, beauty without blemish, strength without weakness, light without darkness, riches without poverty, ease without pain, liberty without restraint, rest without labour, joy without sorrow, love without hatred, plenty without surfeit, honour without disgrace, health without sickness, peace without war, contentation without cessation. O the happiness of those who die in the Lord I they go into this blessed kingdom. And if they are so happy when they die, then let me make two inferences.
(1) What little cause have the saints to fear death I Are any afraid of going to a kingdom?
(2) If the godly are so happy when they die, they go to a kingdom: then what little cause have we to mourn immoderately for the death of godly friends. Shall we mourn for their preferment?
8. See the wisdom of the godly; they have the serpent’s eye in the dove’s head; wise virgins. Moses chose “rather to suffer affliction with the people of God.” It was a wise, rational choice; he knew if he suffered he should reign. At the day of judgment those whom the world accounted foolish will appear to be wise; they made a prudent choice, they chose holiness; and what is happiness but the quintessence of holiness?
9. See the folly of those who, for vain pleasures and profits, will lose such a glorious kingdom. Lysimachus, for a draught of water, lost his empire; so for a draught of sinful pleasure these will lose heaven. We, too, much resemble our grandfather Adam, who for an apple lost paradise; many for trifles, to get a shilling more in the shop or bushel, will venture the loss of heaven. If Satan could make good his brag, in giving all the glory and kingdoms of the world, it could not countervail the loss of the celestial kingdom.
Of reproof.
1. It reproves such as do not at all look after this kingdom of glory; as if all we say about heaven were but a romance, they do not mind it. That they mind it not, appears because they do not labour to have the kingdom of grace set up in their hearts. If they have some thoughts of this kingdom, yet it is in a dull, careless manner. Luther spent three hours a day in prayer. “Anna, the prophetess, departed not from the temple, but served God with fasting and prayers night and day.” How zealous and industrious were the martyrs to get into this heavenly kingdom I They wore their fetters as ornaments, snatched up torments as crowns, and embraced the flames as cheerfully as Elijah did the fiery chariot which came to fetch him to heaven; and do we not think this kingdom worth our labour?
2. It reproves such as were once great zealots in religion, and did seem to be touched with a coal from God’s altar, but since have cooled in their devotion, and have left off the pursuing the celestial kingdom.
Whence is this?
1. For want of a supernatural principle of grace. That branch must needs die which hath no root to grow upon.
2. From unbelief--“An evil heart of unbelief, departing from the living God.”
3. Men leave off pursuing the heavenly kingdom; it is from some secret lust nourished in the soul, perhaps a wanton or a covetous lust. Demas for love of the world forsook his religion.
4. Men leave off pursuing the kingdom of heaven out of timorousness; if they persist in religion they may lose their places of profit, perhaps their lives.
How shall we know this kingdom is prepared for us? If we are prepared for the kingdom. How may that be known? Would we go to the kingdom of heaven? are we heavenly?
1. Are we heavenly in our contemplations? Do our thoughts run upon this kingdom?
2. Are we heavenly in our affections? Do we set our affections on the kingdom of heaven? This is the temper of a true saint; his affections are set on the kingdom of God, his anchor is cast in heaven, and he is carried thither with the sails of desire.
3. Are we heavenly in our speeches? Christ after His resurrection did speak of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God. Are your tongues tuned to the language of the heavenly Canaan?
4. Are we heavenly in our trading? Is our traffic and merchandise in heaven? Do we trade in the heavenly kingdom by faith? A man may live in one place and trade in another; he may live in Ireland, and trade in the West Indies; so, do we trade in the heavenly kingdom? They shall never go to heaven when they die who do not trade in heaven while they live.
5. Are our lives heavenly?
Of exhortation to all in general.
1. If there be such a glorious kingdom to come, believe this great truth.
2. If there be such a blessed kingdom of glory to come, let us take heed lest we miss of this kingdom, let us fear lest we lose heaven by short shooting. Trembling in the body is a malady; in the soul a grace.
How many steps may a man take in the way to the kingdom of God, yet miss of it!
1. He may be adorned with civility, he may be morally righteous, he may be prudent, just, temperate, he may be free from penal statutes; this is good, but not enough to bring a man to heaven.
2. He may hang out the flag of a glorious profession, yet fall short of the kingdom.
3. A man may be a frequenter of ordinances, and yet miss of the kingdom.
4. A man may have some trouble for sin, and weep for it, yet miss of the heavenly kingdom.
5. A man may have good desires, yet miss of the kingdom--“Let me die the death of the righteous!”
6. A man may forsake his sins, oaths, drunkenness, uncleanness, yet come short of the kingdom.
Secondly, this fear is necessary, if we consider what a loss it is to lose the heavenly kingdom.
1. The eyes of the wicked shall be opened to see their loss; now they care not for the loss of God’s favour, because they know not the worth of it.
2. A second aggravation of the loss of this kingdom will be, that sinners shall be upbraided by their own conscience.
3. A third aggravation of the loss of heaven will be to look upon others that have gained the kingdom.
4. A fourth aggravation is, this loss of the kingdom of heaven is accompanied with the punishment of sense.
5. A fifth aggravation of the loss of this kingdom will be to consider on what easy and reasonable terms men might have had this kingdom.
6. Aggravation of the loss of this kingdom, it will be an eternal, irreparable loss; heaven, once lost, can never be recovered. What shall we do that we may not miss of this kingdom of glory?
1st. Take heed of those things which will make you miss of heaven.
1. Take heed of spiritual sloth.
2. Take heed of unbelief. Unbelief kept Israel out of Canaan; so we see “they could not enter in because of unbelief.”
3. If you would not miss of the heavenly kingdom, take heed of mistake, imagining the way to the kingdom of heaven to be easier than iris; iris but a sigh, or, “Lord have mercy!”
4. If you would not miss of the heavenly kingdom, take heed of delays and procrastinations.
5. If you would not come short of the kingdom of heaven, take heed of prejudice. Many take a prejudice at religion, and on this rock dash their souls.
6. If you would not miss of the kingdom of heaven, take heed of presumption.
7. If you would not miss of the heavenly kingdom, take heed of the delights and pleasures of the flesh.
8. If you would not fall short of the kingdom of heaven, take heed of worldly-mindedness; a covetous spirit is a dunghill spirit, it chokes good affections, as the earth puts out the fire.
9. If you would not come short of the kingdom of heaven, take heed of indulging any sin.
10. If you would not fall short of the kingdom of heaven, take heed of inordinate passion; many a ship hath been lost in a storm, and many a soul hath been lost in a storm of unruly passions.
11. If you would not fall short of the kingdom of heaven, take heed of injustice in your dealings; defrauding lies in two things. Mixing commodities--as if one mix bad wheat with good, and sell it for pure wheat, this is to defraud.
12. If you would not miss of the kingdom of heaven, take heed of evil company.
13. If you would not fall short of the kingdom of heaven, take heed of falling off; beware of apostasy; he misseth of the prize who doth not hold out in the race; he who makes shipwreck of the faith cannot came to the haven of glory. 2nd. The second means for the obtaining of the kingdom is serious consideration; most men fall short of heaven for want of consideration. 3rd. The third means for obtaining this kingdom is to keep up daily prayer. 4th. If you would obtain the heavenly kingdom get a love to heaven. Love puts a man upon the use of all means to enjoy the thing loved. 5th. If you would obtain the kingdom of heaven, make religion your business. 6th. If you would obtain the kingdom of heaven, bind your hearts to God by sacred vows. 7th. If you would obtain the kingdom, embrace all seasons and opportunities for your souls--“Redeeming the time.” 8th. We obtain the kingdom of heaven by uniform and cheerful obedience. Obedience is the road through which we travel to heaven. 9th. If we would obtain this kingdom, be much in the communion of saints; one coal of juniper will warm and inflame another. 10th. If we would attain to this kingdom of heaven, let us be willing to come up to Christ’s terms.
Many will be cheapening, and bid something for the kingdom of heaven; they will avoid gross sin, and will coma to church, and say their prayers; and yet all this while they are not willing to come up to God’s price. How doth a Christian hold on till he comes to the kingdom? How doth he persevere?
1. By the aid of the Spirit. God carries on a Christian to perseverance by the energy and vigorous working of His Spirit.
2. Christ causeth perseverance and carries on a saint till he come to the heavenly kingdom by His intercession. The kingdom of heaven cannot be obtained without labour. A boat may as well get to land without oars, as we to heaven without labour. We cannot have the world without labour, and do we think to have heaven? What striving is there for earthly kingdoms, which are corruptible, and subject to change? With what vigour and alacrity did Hannibal’s soldiers continue their march over the Alps and craggy rocks, and Caesar’s soldiers fight with hunger and cold! Men will break through laws and oaths, they will swim to the crown in blood; will they venture thus for earthly promotions, and shall not we strive more for an earthly kingdom? This is “a kingdom which cannot be moved,” a kingdom where there is unparalleled beauty, unstained honour, unmixed joy; a kingdom where there shall be nothing present which we could wish were removed, nor nothing absent which we could wish were enjoyed. (T. Watson.)
Thy kingdom come
First: there is His natural kingdom, or His kingdom over the material creation. Secondly: there is God’s supernatural kingdom, or His kingdom over the moral creation. For, let it be noted, our Father’s kingdom, like all things of life, is a growth. And first, the kingdom of God, viewed as an inception, has its beginning with and in Jesus Christ. Not that the kingdom of God, as a spiritual sway, had not existed before the Incarnation. Prophets and patriarchs were members of it; but they were members of it anticipatively. The kingdom of God, then, surveyed as a beginning, had its root in Jesus Christ: and so it is called His kingdom, the kingdom of the Son, the kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. And thus surveyed, the kingdom of God has already come. In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, and saying: Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. From that time, Jesus Himself began to preach and to say: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe in the gospel.” Again: the kingdom of God, viewed as a growth, has its unfolding in the Holy Ghost. For, being a spiritual kingdom- the building up of a spiritual character--it needs a spiritual architect, a spiritual workman, a spiritual aedile. God’s kingdom is not food and drink, a matter of ceremonial distinction between clean and unclean; it is righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. As such, the kingdom of God, since the Son departed and the Spirit came, has ever been and still is coming. The conversion of each separate sinner through all these centuries has been the setting up of a new and distinct duchy or principality in the empire of the Father. Once more: the kingdom of God, viewed as a consummation, has its end and completion in the Father. The kingdom for whose coming we are here taught to pray is, as we have seen, the kingdom of the consummation, when God shall be all in all. But as the coming of what is ultimate involves the coming of what is intermediate, and as the Christ must continual reigning till He hath made all His enemies His footstool, the prayer for the coming of our Father’s kingdom involves prayer for the coming of His Son’s. But it is not enough that we simply pray, “Thy kingdom come!” We must also work in theline of our prayer. (G. D. Boardraan, D. D.)
Thy kingdom come
He who is “our Father:” is also a King. This is a prayer which even children may offer. This is a matter with which even children have to do. In the war that not long since was raging on the continent of Europe, the interest and the work were not confined to those who were grown up. Not only in the universities and among the students, but in the schools, and among the young people generally, there was not only enthusiasm, but effort. They all felt that they could do, and should be doing, something. The war-spirit seemed to have made its way into the very infant schools. The very infants were quite becoming little soldiers. “What could such children know about these things?” you ask. Perhaps the best answer I can give, is to read to you an extract which I cut out of a newspaper at the time: “The energy, concord, and practical good sense shown by the Genoese ladies, in their labour of charity and patriotism, were marvellous. The first instalment of supplies for the wounded had been despatched on the 20th ult., under the superintendence of surgeons and their dressers. The chests contained bandages, compressers, lint, and shirts. They were forwarded to the central depot at Milan, and not a day too soon. Every class has vied in these offerings. Even the children of the infant schools had given up their money allowance for fruit, and for some weeks had eaten dry bread at their noonday meal, and, with the money thus saved, had bought materials for their contributions.” Shall the names of Italy’s king and captains be household words among the people? Shall the children of Italy be familiar with the names of Garibaldi, and Victor Immanuel, and La Marmots, and Cialdini, and rise into enthusiasm at the very mention of them? Shall they be interested in the movements of their armies, and talk among themselves of winning Venetia and Rome to the Italian crown, and shall our boys and girls take no interest in the coming of that kingdom of righteousness and peace, of which our text speaks? We do not want fighting of that kind, we want praying. Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world.”
I. THE PRAYER: “Thy kingdom come!” What is implied in it?
1. The destroying of the kingdom of Satan. Satan, too, is a king--a mighty king--the head of a kingdom, with wide-spread dominion, and many subjects. I have spoken of Italy. Not long since, that country was divided into a number of petty kingdoms and states. In some of these the people were groaning under the yoke of their oppressors. Their prisons were loathsome and filthy dungeons, filled with miserable prisoners, who were there for what, in this country, would not have been accounted crime at all. For having a Bible or tract in their possession, for getting it out of its hiding-place at dead of night, and gathering a few neighbours together to hear it read, for telling about Jesus and the way of salvation, they were imprisoned and banished. Don’t you think, when they heard the tidings of Garibaldi’s wonderful exploits, and of what he and his band of brave red jackets were bent upon doing for the whole country, as they listened to the distant bugle sound, and then to the crack of musketry closer at hand, as they heard it coming nearer and nearer--oh, don’t you think they would devoutly pray, “Thy kingdom come,” as they thought of the approach of one who would give them civil and religious liberty, who would break off the fetters from the prisoner and open the prison doors, and bring the reign of terror to an end? During the Indian Mutiny, when our countrymen were hemmed in on all sides by bloodthirsty rebels, who had been guilty of the most dreadful atrocities, and were waiting, like beasts of prey, ready to rush in whenever an opening was made, and subject their victims to what was worse than death--how they longed for the coming of the British soldiers, to break the power of the enemy, and bring to a speedy close his brief but dreadful supremacy! Had the mutineers got their will, we can hardly think what might have been--how women and little children would have been mercilessly tortured and slain, and brave men would have died a lingering and shameful death. Oh, how their hearts yearned for the quiet and safety of their far-off home; and as they went back, in thought, to the land of their birth, how earnestly they sighed, “Thy kingdom come!” And when at last there was the sound of distant bagpipes, telling that Sir Colin Campbell and his brave Highlanders were coming to the rescue, and their colours at length appeared flying in the wind, and the boom of cannon fell upon the ear, who shall ever tell how welcome it was, sad how they wept for joy, as the restoration of British rule saved them from the hands of cruel foes? This petition asks the destroying of Satan’s power
(1) in ourselves. We have more to do with this than many of us fancy.
(2) It asks the destroying of Satan’s power in others. Drunkenness, profanity, carelessness, and crime, at home. It bears upon all these.
(3) Slavery and oppression. This evil is not now what it was once. But in many parts of the world it still exists.
(4) War. Is it not strange that men should take such delight in murdering each other?
(5) Error and superstition. I have chiefly in view here, the gigantic systems of Popery and Mahometanism, which have cast their dark shadow over many beautiful lands--in Europe, Asia, South America, and other parts of the world.
(6) Judaism -the religion of the Jew. There are thousands upon thousands of Jews, scattered all over the world, whose bitter hatred to the Lord Jesus is something wonderful, shared in, as it is, by the very children.
(7) Heathenism.
(8) Division among the professed friends of Christ. “By this,” said Jesus, “shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye love one another.” Now I have come to you to-day as a sort of recruiting-sergeant. Don’t be alarmed. I have no wish to entrap you, and though I would fain have you to enlist under the banner of my King, I cannot, though I would, slip His shilling into your hand, and fasten the badge of the recruit to your bonnet, so that you should wake up as out of a sleep, and all of a sudden find yourselves soldiers. I only wish I had the power and the happiness to enlist you all. When settlers take possession of a new country, there are two things to be done. They must first clear the ground of what is on it, felling the great trees, as in the backwoods of America, or removing the brushwood and weeds that have got possession of the soil. But that is not enough. Stopping there, things would soon be again where they were. The old things have passed away, but the new things have not yet come in.
They must cultivate the ground, sowing and planting, and prevent the springing up again of what is evil or useless by growing what is useful and good. When the ground is merely cleared, the work is but half done. If you were getting a property into your hands, with a house on it that was ugly to look at, and dangerous to live in, a ruin, it would not be enough that you took down the old house, and cleared away the rubbish. That would be necessary, indeed, but it would merely be a step in the right direction--a means towards an end. The old house once away, a new one would have to be set up in its place. You would have forthwith to begin to build, strongly and beautifully, and the perfection of the thing would be, to have, instead of the ruin, not a mere vacant site, but a comfortable and elegant dwelling. Now all this is just what must be in the other case. Satan’s kingdom may be so far destroyed, but if the kingdom of God is not set up in its stead, Satan will come back again, and get firmer possession than ever. Just such a picture we have in Matthew (Matthew 12:43-45), drawn by the hand of Jesus Himself.
Let us see, then, what is meant by the advancing of the kingdom of grace.
(1) The coming of Christ as King into our own hearts. Naturally we have rebel hearts, acknowledging Satan the usurper as king. Why not lay aside the prayer, as not needing it any longer? Because we need it still. Is not Ireland a part of Great Britain? Does it not belong to the British crown? Is not Victoria queen there as well as here? You say, “Yes; of course.” Then why is regiment after regiment being sent across the Channel--cavalry, and infantry, and artillery, scattered all over the land? Because there are rebels in the country, who need to be overawed, conquered, and, if it may be, changed into loyal subjects. Now, Ireland at present, loyal as a whole, but with Fenians here and there, in town and country, not coming out openly and giving battle, but meeting in secret, having their drill at night, working in the dark, and every now and then being discovered and apprehended, is just like a Christian child or man. He is a subject of Christ, right at bottom, sound-hearted, loyal. But there are still traitors within--rebels--the remains of the old nature--evil tempers, evil habits, evil dispositions, evil tendencies, not indeed what once they were--unchecked, unresisted--but not rooted out, not dead yet. And so there is a constant fight kept up; and when you think they are fairly conquered, and you have seen the last of them, up they start, all of a sudden, and show their heads again--so that at times it is almost like a struggle for life.
(2) The coming of Christ as King into the hearts of others. I can fancy one of you, with all the rest of your family, spending an hour on the ice, at some neighbouring loch. When you are in the middle of the loch, suddenly there is a creak, and in half a minute you are all in the water, struggling for life. The alarm is given. Ropes, and poles, and boats, and life-preservers, are all in requisition; but the ice is rotten, and, once it is broken, no one can get near. At length, with great difficulty, you are rescued, and words cannot tell how glad and thankful you are. But why don’t you hurry home, and get off your wet clothes, and beside a blazing fire, or in a comfortable bed, get all right again? Why do you linger on the bank, the water dripping off yon, half dead with cold? why look so wistfully, and seem as if you would rush back again--ay, would, if they did not prevent you by force? I think I hear you saying, “Don’t you see my father, my mother, my sister, seizing the slippery surface only to lose hold of it again, or able only to stretch out the hands, or, benumbed and exhausted, giving in and going down?” I think I hear your piercing cry, “O my father, my father!--save him! What would my own life be to me without him? God save my beloved father!” Anything else than that, you would think strange indeed. The truth is, you cannot be rightly saved yourself, without having the desire, and sending up the prayer, and making the effort, that those you love may be saved as well. If you have no care about their salvation, you have reason to be in doubt about your own. In like manner, when you get anything good, if you are at all right-hearted, you have a desire that others should share it with you. If you are looking at a beautiful picture, the wish at once starts up that some friend were there to see it; and if you found him standing beside you, it would double your own enjoyment. If I were to find you ill-protected from the cold, on one of these winter days, going bare-footed, or with your hands all frost-bitten, or with no warm covering to wrap about you, and were to give you a pair of shoes and stockings or of warm gloves or a comfortable cloak or overcoat--if you were the only one that got this help, and the rest of your family were left starving as before--do you think you could take the things, or wear them, with any measure of comfort? When you saw your little brother’s cold hands or feet or shivering body, could you help taking off what I had given you, and, at least, sharing the use of them with him? and would not your joy be increased a hundredfold, if I gave the same gift to all, and made all alike?
3. This petition implies the hastening of the kingdom of glory. We come now to consider--
II. OUR DUTY in connection with it.
1. To pray. Many of us say this prayer who never pray it. Many repeat the words who have no desire for the thing. At the last great exhibition in London, there was one object that excited special interest. It was a speaking-machine, so contrived as to give utterance to certain sounds, like those of a human voice. Many of our prayers are as worthless as if they were uttered by such a machine, because they are not the prayers of the heart. Why, just suppose that the children of any town or district were to combine to get something they wanted very much from their parents or teachers, and were with one voice to ask it, would it not be a very difficult thing to refuse the request? Would they not be almost sure to carry their point? One great complaint just now, throughout the Churches, is the want of missionaries. Men cannot be got to go and tell the heathen the story of redeeming love, and preach among them the unsearchable riches of Christ. Would it not be a sad thing, if, on a harvest day, when the fields are covered with waving corn, all ready to be cut down, no one could be got to reap it, so that the grain began to fall out of the ear, or to rot upon its stalk? That is just a picture of the heathen world now. What would help to get them? One thing, I know, would help wonderfully--the prayers of our children. Another complaint in many quarters is, the want of blessing where the missionaries are. The hearts of some of them are failing, because there seems to be so little fruit of all their labours. They need--they ask your help. I saw lately, the picture of a party of children who had gone a bird-nesting. The nest was on the face of a cliff. One of the boys had a rope tied firmly round his waist, and was let gently down. In one sense he did the work; but did not everything depend on the others holding the rope? And when, having robbed the nest, he was attacked by the mother bird, I can fancy he was not so much afraid of that as of their letting him go; so that I think I hear his cries to those above, on whom all depended, “Hold the rope! Hold the rope!” One of the first missionaries who left this country to unfurl the gospel standard in India, said he would only consent to go down into the mine, on condition that his friends, whom he left behind, should thus “hold the rope.” That is what they want and expect you to do now. They have gone instead of you; and from all lands, the missionaries’ cry, to the children at home, amid all their dangers and discouragements, is, “Hold the rope! Hold the rope!” The holding of the rope is the offering of earnest believing prayer.
2. To work. It is not enough to pray. We must work as well as pray. The two should always go together--praying and working. Perhaps you say, “What can the like of us do? We cannot preach to people; we cannot go out as missionaries; we don’t see that we can be of any use--that we can do anything at all ill this matter.” Well, you can do many things else. Many of you have a wonderful amount of energy. I have seen many of you at your games, and have watched you with not a little interest and pleasure as you made such tremendous efforts to come off first in the contest. Young people, who can master such difficult lessons at school, who can acquire a knowledge of Latin and Greek, and French and German; who are so well versed in geography, and arithmetic, and mathematics; who carry off prizes, and get no end of praise for your abilities and good qualities, you can surely do something for Christ. There is much of children’s work that is lost. There is, perhaps, good got from it as regards the promoting of the general health of the body, but very little as regards the direct result. There are some things which a child cannot do so well as a man. There are some kinds of work which he cannot do at all--some burdens which he cannot carry. But there are things which he can do every whir as well--some better. A little body can get in at some openings where a big one cannot. A little hand can do some things which a big one cannot. In our large factories, children can go where old people cannot, and can do what others cannot. So in field labour. Work for Christ is often compared to the sowing of seed. Now, sometimes a young hand can drop a seed where an older one cannot. We are told of a Scotchman in another land, that missing the thistle of his native country, and longing to see it as at home, he procured a supply of seed, and when travelling to and fro, scattered it from his carriage window wherever he went. Dropping it here and there, it was not long ere the Scotch thistle bristled all over that region. Now, a child’s hand can do that, and sow better seed than the Scotch thistle. It can sow the incorruptible seed of the Word in human hearts. Let me give you some illustrations. There is one who is described as “neither believing in heaven nor hell, God nor devil.” There is no way of getting at him. Ministers and others have tried in vain to reach him. “He said if any parson dared to enter his room, he would smash his brains out with the poker.” He is an infidel, and he is ill how shall he be got at? A little girl repeats to him a hymn she has learned at the Sabbath-school, and as she goes on, he covers his face and weeps. The door is thus opened, and the man’s heart reached, and when, a while after, he dies, among the last words he utters are three lines of that child’s hymn, which he has learned to make his own:--
“See smiling patience smooths my brow,
See the kind angels waiting now,
To waft my soul on high”;
and his last wish is to have a sermon preached from the text “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief.”
3. To give. It does not matter though it is little you have to give, Children should be early accustomed to give to the cause of Christ, and to give what is their own. Every family should be a little missionary society--praying, working, giving. “Sir,” said a working man to Mr. Knill, of St. Petersburg, “I went last night to the missionary meeting, and I heard you speak of the love of Christ, and of the responsibility of Christ’s people to seek the salvation of the heathen. I have professed many years to be a Christian, but I have never yet given anything to the Christian cause. I have come now to say that, by good health and constant work, I have saved up £10; and I have brought it, begging your acceptance of it, as my first contribution to the missionary society.” Don’t make a show of giving, any more than of working. Be like a youth in a small country town in Scotland, who afterwards became a good and useful man. His ambition was to give a piece of gold to the cause of Christ; and, when at last he had a half-sovereign, and the day had come when he was to put it into the plate at the church door, the attention of the two eiders at the door was attracted by the careful way in which the lad put down his penny. On lifting it, there, between two pennies, lay the yellow coin! (J. H. Wilson, M. A )
The kingdom of God on the earth
We shall have still clearer views of this kingdom by specifying some of its great features. It possesses very remarkable characteristics, and is unlike every other kingdom.
1. It is emphatically distinguished by the character and authority of its Great Prince. At all times, under all circumstances, and in its whole procedure and administration, this kingdom is subjected to Him as its great and sole Monarch. Its common law and its positive statutes may be prescribed by no earthly and secular power. In no one particular may His decisions be departed from.
2. Another peculiarity of this kingdom will be found in the principles by which it is administered. “Justice and judgment are the habitation of God’s throne”; these are the great principles on which it is built and stands firm. And in this preeminently consists the force and excellence of His claims upon the hearts of His subjects. His very law is clothed with new power by the grace that bringeth salvation. Principles which thus originate with the heart of the Deity, are fitted to address themselves to the hearts of men.
Hence one peculiarity of the laws of this kingdom is the fact that they are spiritual, and go beyond the exterior man. They aim at the heart.
3. Another peculiarity of this kingdom is found in the character of its subjects. The subjects of this kingdom are they who are redeemed by the blood of its Prince, and sanctified by His Spirit. They possess a congeniality of mind with the spirit and tenor of God’s Word; while their practical compliance with it is the effect of the love of God shed abroad in their hearts.
4. Another peculiarity of this kingdom, therefore, consists in its benevolent and hallowed influence. Depraved as the world is, its great security, under God, is in the practical influence of this Divine kingdom.
5. Another of the distinctions of this kingdom is, that it is a happy kingdom. The kingdom of God has come to them as suffering, perishing men, with the abundance of its light, the plenitude of its pardons, the redundancy of its grace. The malady and the misery which consisted in their departure from God, are healed by their being restored.
6. The only remaining characteristic of this kingdom on which I shall dwell is its perpetuity. It is a kingdom which “shall never be destroyed”: it shall “not be left to other people”: it shall “stand for ever.” “Of this kingdom,” said the angel Gabriel to Mary, “there shall be no end.” The “gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”
The means of extending God’s kingdom
It is destined to advance; but the inquiry is one of interest, How and by what means is its advancement to be secured? Its conquests are not physical, nor political, nor military conquests; but spiritual victories, and are achieved by a spiritual armour.
1. There are preparatory measures by which the minds of men are rendered accessible to its influences. There is an intimate connection between the system of providence and the method of grace. One of the selected and ordained means of advancing the kingdom of God, ever has been the revolutions and conduct of His own mighty providence. His providence, in ways unseen, as well as seen, prepares the way for His gospel, and is the appointed precursor to herald its approach. The history of the past, as well as events that are taking place under our own observation, abundantly show how the many overturnings in the affairs of men, subserve the purpose of His mediatorial reign. Even the sword of the conqueror receives its commission from Him who purposes to follow it with the sword of His Spirit.
2. In addition to these preparatory arrangements, there are moral instrumentalities by which this kingdom is to be advanced.
3. Another of the means by which this kingdom is advanced, is the religious education of the young. I remark, then, once more, there is an appropriate place for another powerful agency in advancing the kingdom of God: I mean the power of prayer. (G. Spring, D. D.)
Thy kingdom come
In this petition we have three words, and all very observable.
I. A noun--“Kingdom”;
II. A pronoun--“Thy”; and--
III. A verb--“Come.”
I. The kingdom which here we are commanded to pray for is not that which the Chiliasts or Millenaries fondly dream of, the enjoyment of pomp and pleasure and all temporal happiness upon earth for a thousand years together after the resurrection. This fancy they fetch from Revelation 20:1-15. and other places.
II. I now proceed further, to unfold the nature of the kingdom of God. It is Regnum Tuum, “Thy kingdom.” Which puts a difference betwixt this and other kingdoms. To speak something of these in their order.
1. First. In the kingdom of Christ and His laws neither people, nor senate, nor wise men, nor judges had any hand. The laws of Christ are unchangeable and eternal, but all human constitutions are temporary and mutable.
2. The second head wherein the difference of this kingdom from others is seen, is the power of it, which is extended not to the body alone, but to the soul also. Magistrates promulge laws, threaten, bind the tongue and hand; but have no influence nor operation on the hearts and wills of men. But in this our spiritual kingdom the King doth not only command, but gives us His helping hand that we may perform His command. But we must remember it is a kingdom we speak of; and Christ is a King, not a tyrant.
3. We pass now to the third head of difference, which consists in the compass and circuit of this kingdom, which is as large as all the world. In this respect all kingdoms come short of it, every one having its bounds which it cannot pass without violence. A foolish title it is which some give the Emperor of Rome, as if he had power over the most remote and unknown people of the world. Bartolus counts him no less than a heretic who denies it. But his arguments are no better than the emperor’s title, which is but nominal. “The gospel must be preached to all nations,” saith our Saviour (Mark 16:15). But as the sun hath its race through all the world, but yet doth not shine in every part at once, but beginneth in the east, and passeth to the south, and so to the west; and, as it passeth forward, it bringeth light to one place, and withdraweth it from another: so is it with the Sun of Righteousness; He spreads His beams on those who were in darkness and the shadow of death, and makes it night to them who had the clearest noon. Not that His race is confined, as is the sun’s, but because of the interposition of men’s sins, who exclude them selves from His beams.
4. And now to proceed to our fourth head of difference: As this is the largest of all kingdoms, so it is the most lasting.
5. We will conclude with the riches of this kingdom. If money were virtue, and earthly honour salvation; if the jasper were holiness, and the sapphire obedience; if those pearls in the Revelation were virtues; then that of our Saviour would be true in this sense also, “The kingdom of heaven would be taken by violence” (Matthew 11:12). The covetous, the ambitious, the publicans and sinners, would all be candidati angelorum, “joint-suitors and competitors for an angel’s place.” Behold, then, in this kingdom are riches which never fail; not money, but virtue; not honour, but salvation; not the jasper and the sapphire, but that pearl which is better than all our estate. Having now made the comparison, the choice is easy. And a great folly it were to prefer the world to the Church. In the world the laws are mutable, here everlasting. In the world they have tongues many times to speak, but not hands to strike; here they both thunder and lighten. There power beats the ear, here it pierceth the very heart. The kingdoms of the world are bounded by place and time; this is unconfinable: more scope in the Church than in the world. The riches of the one are fading and transitory, of the other everlasting. And of this just and mighty and large and rich and everlasting kingdom we cannot but say, Adveniat, “Let it come.”
III. We pass now to the petition itself, to the verb Adveniat, “Let it come.” Which breathes itself forth in an earnest desire to draw this kingdom nearer. Whether you take it for the gospel, which is the manifestation of God’s will; or for the receiving of the gospel, which is the performing of His will; whether you take it for the kingdom of grace here, or for the kingdom of glory hereafter; A dveniat, “Let it come!” That is the language of every true Christian. “Where it is not yet come, ‘let it come’; it cannot come soon enough. And when it is come, let it come nearer. When it is within us, let it be established there; and when it is established, let it be eternized there. Remove all obstacles, supply all helps, ut adveniat, ‘that it may come’; that Thy kingdom of grace may entitle us to Thy kingdom of glory.” I might name here many hindrances of the growth of the gospel; as heresy, which is a most poisonous viper biting not the heel but the very heart of it; infidelity, which robs Christ of His subjects, contracts His kingdom into a narrow room and into a small number; disorder, which rends it, which works confusion there.
1. Further: this Adveniat reacheth to the second advent of Christ, even to the end of all things. For of His kingdom of glory we say, “Let it come.” And it is a word of desire, not of impatience. For though we cry out, “How long, Lord? how long?” (Revelation 6:10) yet we are willing to stay His leisure. For it is also a word expressing our hope. And hope as it doth stir and quicken our desire, so doth it also temper it, that it be not irregular.
2. Secondly. Adveniat is a word expressing our faith. Though hope takes a long day, yet faith lays hold on the promises as if they were present, being “the substance, the evidence,” the presence, “of things to come” Hebrews 11:1). Faith is the life of hope, without which it cannot have existence. Hope doth suppose faith; but faith may be where there is no hope at all.
3. Lastly. This Adveniat, as it is the language of our hope and faith, so is it the dialect also of our charity and love both to God and our brethren. (A. Farindon, D. D.)
Of the difference betwixt the kingdoms of grace and glory
The kingdoms of grace and of glory are but one and the same kingdom, distinguished into two parts, which differ in six circumstances.
1. In time. The kingdom of grace is now present while here we live. The kingdom of glory is to come.
2. In place. This of grace is on earth; that of glory in heaven.
3. In condition. This is continually warfaring against many enemies, in which respect it is styled the Church militant; that triumpheth over all the enemies, in which respect it is called the Church triumphant.
4. In order of entering into them. This is to be entered into, and passed through before we can enter into that. The priest was to enter through the sanctuary into the sanctum sanctorum.
5. In the manner of government. This is governed and ordered by many subordinate means, as magistrates, ministers, and sundry ordinances. That immediately by God Himself.
6. In continuance. This hath a date, and is to come to an end. That is everlasting without end. (W. Gouge.)
How ought we to pray for particular Churches whose estate we know?
We ought to frame our prayers according to that we hear, see, or otherwise know of any. As--
1. If any especial blessing be bestowed on any, to pray that it may be continued and increased.
2. If any mischievous plots be practised against any, to pray that they may be prevented.
3. If ministers or other members of any Churches be surprised, to pray that they may be delivered.
4. If persecution be raised against any Church, to pray that either that fire may be quenched, or else that sufficient courage and strength may be given to such as are persecuted to hold out, and endure the uttermost trial.
5. If any noisome weeds of idolatry, heresy, schism, or the like, sprout up in any Church, to pray that they may be rooted out. To sharpen our prayer herein, we ought oft to call to mind that which in this case is promised by Christ, “Every plant which My heavenly Father hath not planted shall be rooted up.” This is that true use which we are to make of the knowledge that we have of the estate of any of God’s Churches. (W. Gouge.)
Of the things to be bewailed under the second petition
All such things as any way make to the disadvantage or disparagement of the kingdom of Christ. As--
1. That great sway which Satan hath in the world.
2. The small circuit of Christ’s kingdom.
3. The mixture of Satan’s subjects with Christ’s in that small circuit.
4. The many clouds which obscure the light of the gospel. I mean the clouds of error, superstition, human traditions and such like.
5. The spoils of the Church made by open enemies.
6. Treacheries of false-hearted brethren.
7. Unfaithfulness in magistrates.
8. Unfaithfulness in ministers.
9. Desolation of seminaries.
10. Disorder of families.
11. Professors’ unworthy walking.
12. Reproaches cast upon the saints.
13. Persecution raised against the Church.
14. Timorous backsliding of professors.
15. Schisms, sects, and dissensions in the Church. (W. Gouge.)
Prayer for the advancement of Christ’s kingdom
1. The first motive, to which I request your attention, is the Divine command. We ought to pray for the advancement of this kingdom, because God, our rightful Sovereign, requires it of us.
2. A second motive, which should induce us to pray for the coming of God’s kingdom is, that by this desirable event the Divine glory will be greatly promoted.
3. The benefits which will result to mankind from the coming of God’s kingdom, furnish another powerful motive to induce us to pray for its advancement. The number and value of these benefits, as they respect the present life, may in some measure be inferred from a consideration of the nature and tendency of Christ’s kingdom. It essentially consists, as has already been observed, in righteousness, peace, and holy joy.
4. We may therefore add, as another motive which should induce us to pray for the universal spread of Christ’s kingdom, that He has promised, and even sworn by Himself, that this event shall infallibly take place.
5. As a farther inducement to do this, permit me to remind you that the time allotted for their fulfilment is rapidly advancing, and that the present appearance of the world and the dispensations of Providence plainly indicate that God is about to finish His work and out it short in righteousness, and that the latter day of Christ’s kingdom is beginning to dawn.
6. As a farther motive to induce you to this, consider the happy effects which it will have upon yourselves. Nothing can more directly or more powerfully tend to destroy every baleful, malignant passion in your breasts, or promote in them the growth of Divine benevolence, than frequently praying for the advancement of Christ’s kingdom. That our prayers for this event may be acceptable to God, two things are indispensably necessary.
(1) The first is, that they be accompanied by corresponding exertions.
(2) The second thing necessary to render our prayers for the advancement of Christ’s kingdom sincere and acceptable is, that we become willing subjects of His kingdom ourselves. (E. Payson, D. D.)
Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth
Doing God’s will
I. WHAT IS MEANT BY THE WILL OF GOD.
1. The will of God’s commands (Hebrews 13:24; Matthew 7:21). God’s will may be reduced to two heads:
(1) Faith;
(2) Holiness.
2. The will of God’s providence (Psalms 135:6). It may be considered--
(1) As directing to duty (Psalms 32:8);
(2) As ordering and disposing of events about ourselves and others Matthew 10:29-30).
II. BY WHOM GOD’S WILL IS DONE IN HEAVEN.
1. By the heavenly bodies--sun, moon, and stars.
2. By the angels.
III. THE IMPORT OF THIS PETITION.
1. With reference to the will of God’s command.
(1) A confession that--
(a) The will of God is not done on earth as it is in heaven,
(b) There is in all men naturally an utter indisposition and unfitness for the will of God’s commands.
(2) A profession that--
(a) It is the grief of their hearts, that God’s will is not done by themselves or others, as it is done in heaven (Matthew 21:29).
(b) That God by the power of His grace is able to reform this, and to frame the souls of men on earth to the doing His will, as in heaven.
(3) A desire
(a) That He would by His grace remove from themselves and others all spiritual blindness and cause them to know His will
(b) That God by His grace would remove from themselves and others all weakness, indisposition, and perverseness, and cause them to obey and do His will, as it is done in heaven (Psalms 119:35). And here as in a glass we may see what sort of doing the will of God the saints aim at and desire. It is--
(i) To do it evenly, without stumbling or changing their course.
(ii) To do it unweariedly.
(iii) To do it universally.
(iv) To do it humbly.
(v) To do it cheerfully.
(vi) To do it readily, without delay.
(vii) To do it constantly.
2. With reference to the will of God’s providence.
(1) A confession--
(a) Of a natural aptness in all men to quarrel, repine, and murmur against the methods and disposals of Providence (Numbers 14:2).
(b) Of a natural backwardness to fall in with the designs of providence of one sort or other.
(2) A profession--
(a) of the saint’s sorrow for this disposition of heart crossing the will of God;
(b) of the faith of the power of grace to subdue the will to this conformity.
(3) A desire for grace for a thorough compliance with the will of God’s providence.
(4) A consent to the will of God, a yielding of the heart that it may be done.
IV. WHY the saints have such a concern that the will of God may be done in earth, as it is in heaven.
1. Because it is most just, holy, reasonable, and equitable, in all things, and they see it so (Psalms 119:128).
2. Because the glory of God, which of all things is dearest to the saints, is deeply interested in this matter.
3. Because this would make a heaven on earth. If there were such a harmony betwixt earth and heaven, that God’s will were done in the one as in the other, it would make on earth--
(1) A heaven for beauty and order of all things.
(2) A heaven for happiness. The happiness of men lies in their assimilation to God; and they are so far like Him as they conform to His will. (T. Boston, D. D.)
On doing God’s will
This petition is often quoted as if it were merely a prayer for meek resignation; or, as though it contained but an echo of the sobbings of Gethsemane. But whilst this is certainly included, the prayer seems to comprise much more; and to ask for Christian energy as well as for Christian endurance; and for diligence as much as patience. It is not only the motto of that blessed Redeemer, as He is beheld mutely suffering, but also as He is presented incessantly and effectually larbouring. All Christ’s obedience in life, as well as His obedience unto death, is embraced in the sentiment and spirit of the petition before us. There would be another incongruity in giving to the present sentence merely the narrow construction of resignation to suffering; it is that angels and saints in heaven could scarce be presented to us in the manner in which here they are, as our patterns. Patterns they could not well be of those who are enduring evils, since from all evil they are now and for evermore exempt. But give to the petition the wider scope of conformity to the Father’s will--in action as well as in submission--let it be the Lord’s will done, aswell as the Lord’s will borne--endeavoured as well as endured--and you may readily see how the glorified worshippers on high--those who continually and perfectly and cheerfully obey the Father’s wishes--may well be made models for our imitation, and their zeal furnish a burning incentive to our flagging emulation. It is the language of adoring obedience.
I. WHAT IS GOD’S WILL? There are depths and heights in His will yet but very partially known. It is His will of control--that sovereign and all-governing purpose, which foresees and uses all occurrences and all influences, and all resistances even--providing for the eruptions and avalanches of our revolt, and of our sinful disregard of Him, and of our league with hell, and weaving even these into His wide plans. Much of this controlling and overruling Will is among those “secret things” which, as Moses declared, belong only to the Lord; whilst the “things revealed” belong more properly to us and to our children. The great outlines and last results of this controlling and sovereign purpose He has made known; but its details and many of its relations are as yet inscrutable to our limited faculties. But there is another aspect of His will. It is His will of command; what He requires of us, and what He disapproves in us. This He makes known by the voice of reason and conscience in part, but more perfectly in the book of His Scriptures, and by the influences of His Spirit. We see in human beings, even the just and the wise of the race, the same distinction between their will of control, and their will of command or counsel. Take, for instance, the illustrious Howard the missionary martyr, of benevolence to the imprisoned and forsaken. This good man had devised, from his experience and observation, certain rules for the better construction and governance of prisons. Now, if his will of counsel or command, so to speak (his precepts of wisdom and kindness), had been heeded by evil-doers, they would not be the inmates of prisons; and the other portion of Howard’s studies, his law of control, would be no longer needed. But if men, in the abuse of their freedom, did wrong, then in his controlling will--his disposition to bring out of the case as it stood, not as he had wished it, but as they made it, the most good to society and to the transgressor himself--he had his prisons prepared and arranged for the detention and restraintof the evil-doer. So too, a civil government, upright and equitable, whose just laws are threatened with resistance by a portion or by an entire province of its subjects, may by its will of counsel or command, urge sincerely and kindly the men of the province to abide the civil law; but if they scorn the milder legislation, it may in its will of control, proclaim, and that justly and inevitably, martial law for the repression of the revolt, and for the avengement of its own dishonoured and imperilled authority. Now sin is an anomaly in God’s dominions. He, allowing to His creatures in the angelic and human races the exercise of freedom, may have permitted sin to occur, whilst His will of command or legislation sincerely and strictly condemns it; but He so permits it only because in His will of control He will ultimately restrain its ravages, and make its wrath to praise Him. His precepts are one thing; His decrees, in the event of our rejecting His precepts, another. To leave room and range for the exhibition of man’s real character, for the evolving of the blossom and the full-blown flower of his depraved heart--to allow verge and margin enough for the existence of a world of probation, and for the manifestation of Satan’s nature and will, and for the true fruits of the tempter’s infernal counsels--God gives but the will of His command to be fully known; and keeps as yet in reserve and comparative darkness the will of His control; just as a legislator, having given his subjects, ere their revolt, just and full statements as to his statutes, is not bound, if they spurn these, to add a full and minute plan of His campaigns, when, as the avenger, He comes forth to punish them for the infringement of those statutes. It is enough for justice, that the sinner should know that his transgression, persisted in and remaining unrepented of, will be assuredly and eternally visited.
II. WHAT DOES THIS PETITION COMPRISE? Very comprehensive.
1. In offering this request, we by necessary implication ask that we may have grace earnestly and honestly to inquire, in all the channels through which it is to come to us, What His wishes are, and what He would have us His children do? So did Paul in the first agony of his conversion--“Lord, what wouldest Thou have me to do?” Conscience, then, will be cherished, and kept not as a tarnished but as a burnished mirror, that it may more clearly reflect the light and images cast upon it. Scripture will be pondered, habitually and prayerfully and practically. And as none of these petitions are isolated and selfish, but grasp our brother’s needs as well as our own--to pray that God’s will may be known is virtually to implore that thetwo Testaments of Revelation, the Old proclaimed by the prophets of the Saviour, and the New by the apostles of the Saviour, may be diffused abroad. It is to pledge ourselves at the mercy-seat that the prayers we offer shall be accompanied by plans and alms, and efforts for the translation and dispersion of these Scriptures among the whole brotherhood of our race.
2. It is, again, a prayer explicitly that the will, being once and in any way--by reading or hearing, by conscience or Scripture, or by the ministrations of the nursery, of the Sabbath-school or the pulpit--made known, it may be done by us. It is thus a prayer that God would give us the grace of obedience in action, that our lives and words and thoughts may practically carry out His law and exemplify His gospel.
3. But though obedience in action be required, it is not the sole meaning of the petition. Obedience must be shown in suffering as well as in toiling. And the obedience of suffering submits itself not only to the will of God’s command, as requiring us to encounter all sacrifices of reputation and interest and ease that obedience to his precepts may occasion us; but it subjects itself also to the will of God’s control, to His Sovereign and inscrutable Providence, which orders all events and overrules even the wickedness and wrath of man and of devils, for the accomplishment of its own wise purposes. (W. R. Williams, D. D.)
The reign of grace viewed in relation to the work of righteousness
I. IT IS HERE ASSUMED THAT THE WILL OF GOD IS DONE BY ALL THE INHABITANTS OF HEAVEN AS HE HIMSELF REQUIRES. The place, the parties, and the practice to which this statement refers, must, in succession, receive a distinct though brief consideration.
1. To determine the locality of heaven beyond the possibility of a reasonable doubt will, probably, for ever exceed the ability of man while on earth.
2. If, however, we cannot fix the locality of heaven, we can describe its inhabitants.
3. Having shown who the inhabitants of heaven are, we have to consider how they act. Every individual of this innumerable company serves God day and night in His temple. The obedience of each begins and ends in love. This sacred passion is fixed supremely on the Lord.
II. THERE IS HERE A DOCTRINE TO BE ESTABLISHED. The phrase, “Thy will be done on earth, as it is done in heaven,” certainly shows that in the opinion of its author God not only has, but will exercise the same authority over men on earth as over saints and angels in heaven.
1. Our first proof is to be obtained from the dictates of conscience. By conscience we mean that power of the human mind which approves the actions it considers right, and condemns those which it thinks wrong. By all its operations it recognizes a greater than human authority.
2. This momentous doctrine admits of further confirmation from the deductions of reason. The will of God is declared in His laws. These are framed with an especial reference to either matter or mind; forming, in the one case, the basis of natural, and in the other, the foundation of a moral government.
3. To adduce direct evidence from Scripture in support of the doctrine the text implies. There are two individuals introduced to our notice on the sacred page, to whose history we need do little more than refer, for a confirmation of the truth that God will not suffer the wicked to prosper in their wickedness. These are Adam and Noah.
III. A DUTY TO RE ENFORCED.
1. The objects for which the Christian is here taught to pray must be noticed in the order of their own importance. They are two--the one evidently supreme, and the other subordinate. As an ultimate object, we are to pray that the will of God may be done on earth as it is done in heaven; and as though conscious that this end could be secured by no other means, we are to pray that His kingdom may come.
2. The importance of our prayers in regard to this matter will immediately appear, if we consider the manner in which they affect our own minds, and the numerous promises God has made both to hear and answer them.
(1) It is impossible for any one to enter into the spirit of this petition without feeling the power of a true Christian philanthropy. All who can say, with the understanding and the heart, “Thy kingdom come,” must be constrained to ask if they can in any way assist in its advancement. It would, perhaps, not be going too far to affirm, “that wherever these words have been properly employed in the worship of God, they have been expressive of a real concern for the welfare of man.”
(2) Prayer, when thus associated with exertion, is sure either more or less to prevail. God says to His Son, “Ask of Me and I will give Thee the heathen for Thine inheritance, and the uttermost part of the earth for Thy possession.” For this He is doubtless asking personally in heaven and by His people on earth, for we are told that prayer shall be made for Him continually. And is it not answered as well as made? In reviewing our subject we naturally remark--
1. That obedience to the will of the Creator is absolutely essential to the welfare of every intelligent creature.
2. Moreover, it is obvious that had there been no sin there would have been no suffering.
3. It is, therefore, certain that in order to be happy we must be in a state of acceptance with God. (J. Jukes.)
How is God’s will done in heaven?
A Sunday-school teacher was once questioning his class as to the meaning of the petition, “Thy will be done,” when he said, “And how do you suppose that the angels, who are to be our patterns, do God’s will?” Several very proper answers were given, and, at last, a little girl arose, and said, “Why, sir, they do it without asking any questions!”
I. It is certainly done zealously. No lagging nor loitering; no lame excuses for neglecting God’s will. Can we claim to be zealous, even in a moderate degree? Are we zealous enough to do things which really call for no special sacrifice nor endurance?
II. The angels in heaven do God’s will REVERENTLY. Contrast the four-and-twenty elders, whom St. John beheld in his vision, falling down before the Divine Redeemer, and casting their golden crowns in the dust Revelation 4:11), with the conduct of sinful mortals who treat God s Holy Temple with disrespect, and whose stubborn knees refuse to bend in prayer, and then say whether the lesson which the reverent behaviour of the angels shall teach has been very perfectly learned.
III. God’s will is also done in heaven WITH CHEERFUL ALACRITY. The grand passage from the vision of Isaiah (Isaiah 6:1-3) need hardly be quoted to prove this point.
IV. Again: God’s will is done in heaven PERSEVERINGLY. The angelic host “serve Him day and night in His Temple” (Revelation 7:15); and “they rest not day and night” (Revelation 4:5) in their exalted ascriptions of praise. While the weakness of our moral nature obliges us to rest, even from the offices of our religion, the blessed spirits in the better land move swiftly, without sense of weariness, and worship God with undistracted soul. What a change must come over us before those who fancy that they are patterns of propriety--because they attend public worship for a brief hour, morning and evening, on Sunday--will be prepared to serve God day and night, in the heavenly sanctuary.
V. Angels, moreover, do God’s will in heaven HARMONIOUSLY. Jealousy and envy find no admittance there.
VI. Once more: God’s will is done in heaven PERFECTLY. Imperfections and frailties mar our best services on earth. Angels no sooner learn the will of God, than it is promptly and perfectly obeyed. (J. N. Norton, D. D.)
The doing of God’s will
I. THE PETITION ITSELF.
1. What this will of God is.
(1) God’s purpose is His will.
(2) The precepts and commands are also the will of God.
2. What will it is we pray may be done.
(1) It is clear that we especially and absolutely pray that the will of God’s precept may be done, and that, not only by us, but by all men: for this will of God is the rule of our obedience, and according to it we ought to conform all our actions. And, because we are not sufficient of ourselves so much as to think anything of ourselves, much less to perform all those various and weighty duties of holiness which God hath enjoined us in His Word, therefore our Saviour hath taught us to beg of God grace and assistance to enable us to fulfil His will. And, indeed, there is a great deal of reason we should pray that His will of precept should be done on earth, if we consider--
(a) The great reluctancy and opposition of corrupt nature against it. The Law is spiritual; but we are carnal, and sold under sin (Romans 7:14).
(b) God’s glory is deeply concerned in the doing of His will. For it is the glory of a king to have his laws obeyed. And so is it God’s.
(c) Our own interest is deeply concerned in it.
(2) It is more doubtful, whether we are simply to pray that God’s will of purpose should be done.
(a) Because the will of God’s purpose is secret and unknown, and therefore cannot so immediately concern us in point of duty; for secret things belong to God, but revealed things belong to us and to our children Deuteronomy 29:29).
(b) Because this will of God shall, within the periods set by His eternal decrees, have its most perfect and full accomplishment. For, though His revealed will may be resisted and hindered, yet neither men nor devils can hinder His secret will and the purposes of His counsels: these shall take place, notwithstanding all their spite and oppositions; and therefore it seems act altogether so proper matter for our prayers.
(c) Many things come to pass by the will of God’s purpose which we ought not to pray for; yea, which we ought to pray against. As--not to instance in God’s will of permitting the sins and wickednesses of men, which, beyond all exceptions, we ought to deprecate--let us but consider, common charity obligeth us not to pray for any evil of suffering to befall either ourselves or others; and yet we know that it is oftentimes the will of God’s purpose to bring great and sore judgments upon kingdoms, and upon families and persons. And if we may indefinitely pray that this will should be done, this would be nothing else but to pray for the death and ruin of many thousands, whom yet the revealed will of God commands us to pray for, and to desire all good and prosperity to them. But yet, notwithstanding all this, we may doubtless pray that the will of God’s purpose may be done, so far as it brings to pass those things which we are obliged to pray for by the will of His precept.
(3) The next thing to be taken notice of is the particle “Thy”--“Thy will be done. And this carries in it both an emphasis and an exclusion.
(4) The last thing to be inquired into, is, what is meant by God’s will being “done on earth.” And here, briefly to resolve this, that the will of God should be done on earth, signifies that it be done by men living on the earth; the place here being put for the persons in it.
(a) That all men in the world, renouncing the will of Satan and their own corrupt wills, may readily subject themselves unto the will of God.
(b) We pray that we may employ and improve the few and short days of this mortal life to the best advantage.
II. THE MEASURE AND PROPORTION OF THE PETITION. That we may the more fully understand what it is we pray for, we shall inquire how the holy angels and blessed spirits do the will of God in heaven.
1. Their obedience is absolutely perfect.
(1) They do all that God enjoins.
(2) They do the whole will of God with all their might.
2. Their obedience is cheerful, not extorted by fear.
(1) The will of God is done in heaven with zeal and ardency.
(2) The will of God is done in heaven with celerity and ready dispatch.
(3) The will of God is done in heaven with all possible prostration, reverence, and humility.
(4) The will of God is done in heaven with constancy and perseverance. (Bishop Hopkins.)
Practical reflections
I. We should not think it hard to be subject to the Divine government, obliged to do the will of God, and to submit to it. This is more reasonable, and more profitable for us, than to be left to our own liberty, to follow our own pleasure, and to choose our own circumstances. But we are not easily persuaded to think so. I suppose some will say, God, who is the Father of spirits, and the author of all the powers of the soul, has given us senses and appetites; and is it not lawful for us to gratify them? Doubtless it is; but within due bounds. God has given man reason too, by which his sensual inclinations and appetites are to be governed, as the superior faculty whereby we are distinguished from beasts; and He has given us His Word, containing His will, the law of nature, and positive ordinances, to which, as the subjects of God, we know we ought to endeavour to conform our heart and life. Now, if we will not use our understanding, if we follow not the dictates of reason, nor regard the voice of conscience, even natural conscience, and give up ourselves to sensual lusts and appetites, then we transform ourselves into brutes, and render ourselves contemptible to God, and to all wise men.
II. Let us bless God that His will is revealed to us.
III. Let us desire and endeavour to know the will of God as it is revealed to us. To have it in the Scripture is one thing, and to have it in the understanding, the memory, the heart, is another.
IV.
Let us do the will of God.
“If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them.
To him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.” The meaning is, that knowledge, without obedience, is so far from excusing men when they sin, or from extenuating the guilt, that it aggravates it.
V. Let us go to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy to pardon our opposition to the will of God in thought, word, or deed; and for grace to help us proportioned to the work He has given us to do, and to our infirmities which disable us for it; that His grace may be sufficient for us, and His strength made perfect in our weakness.
VI. Let us be exhorting one another to an obediential regard to the Divine law. So we are taught to do in many places of the Sacred Word. And let us take great care that we do not, on the contrary, lay a stumblingblock in the way of others, and tempt them to offend. We have guilt enough of our own, let us not be partakers of other men’s sins; let us not enter into a confederacy against God.
VII. Let us all labour to be prepared for that world wherein dwelleth righteousness. Where there will be no sin nor temptation to it, no inclination nor allurements to oppose the will of God; where we shall not tempt others, and where there Will be none to tempt us. Happy place I where the holy God will rule without opposition. (John Whitty.)
The blessed will
This petition doubtless conveys to many of those who use it a lesson of simple submission. And undoubtedly it includes this. Sometimes the will of God conflicts with our plans, runs counter to our wishes, disturbs our repose, and then it is necessary that we should submit. In such times it is good for us to be able to say from the heart, “Thy will be done”; and therefore it is well for us to settle it in our thoughts beforehand that His will is a good will, and ought to be done; and that though for the present it may seem grievous, it is sure to bring forth the peaceable fruits of righteousness in all who trust Him and wait upon His Word. There is a mistake just here, however, against which we must be watching. It is possible to be too submissive. Submissiveness may degenerate into supineness. We ought to be measurably sure that the ills that threaten us are coming upon us by the will of God before we submit to them. A man is sitting upon a steep hill-side in the spring-time when he hears a noise, and, looking up, perceives a huge rock that has been loosened by the frost rolling down upon him. It is evident that the rock will pass directly over the place where he is sitting, and though there is time for him to escape, he sits still, saying, “It seems to be the will of the Lord that I should perish here, and His will be done.” But this is not the will of God in the truest sense of the word. The will of God is that the man shall escape; the noise that warns him is the call that summons him to escape; his sitting still is not trusting God, nor submitting to God, but tempting God most wickedly. A man is suffering from dyspepsia, the result of his own imprudence in the use of food; or from nervous headache, the result of an intemperate indulgence in tobacco; and though he does not mend his habits, we hear him talk in the midst of his sufferings about being submissive to the trial God has put upon him. All suffering, lie says, comes from the hand of God; it is His will that I should suffer; His will be done. But it is not God’s will that this man should suffer; this is not the portion that God has chosen for him; it is the portion that he has chosen for himself, tie is altogether too submissive. It is only in a secondary sense that suffering can ever be said to be the will of God. His will is expressed in His laws; obedience to His laws brings health and happiness and peace; disobedience brings suffering. The suffering is a warning against disobedience, and a dissuasive from it. (Washington Gladden, D. D.)
On doing God’s will
To do God’s will we must know what it is. How shall we find it out? The first and most obvious answer to this question is that His will has been revealed, and that we find it in His Word. It is especially to be found in the teaching of Christ and His apostles. Our Lord Himself has condensed the whole of God’s law into two short commandments--“Thou shalt love,” etc. He who perfectly obeys these two commandments perfectly does God’s will. So then we find in this Holy Book such a declaration to us of the will of God as may serve to guide our feet into the ways of obedience. If we study the Word with a prayerful and teachable mind, we shall know more of His will than we shall ever find time and strength to do. And if, in all our study of the Bible, we sought this mainly--to find things to do--to get hints as to the kind of work God has for us, in the cleansing of our lives, and in the serving of Him and of our neighbours in the world; if we went to it as to an order-book in which we expected to find some definite direction for the doing of God’s will today--I am sure that our study of the Bible would do us much more good than it now does. We are too apt to read the Bible and study the Bible as a mere perfunctory service. It is a thing to be gone through with, there is so much Bible-reading or Bible study to be done; it is a duty, and when it is done it is done, like any other duty. Or else we fall into the habit of thinking that there is a certain charm about it; that the study of the Bible in some mysterious way has a kind of alterative effect upon the character; so that to spend a certain time every week reading it will prove to be a means of grace. If we could get rid of all such formal and superstitious notions, and just remember that our main business with the Bible is to find out from it what God wants us to do, the book would speedily come to have new meaning and value. Mr. Matthew Arnold says that conduct is three-fourths of life, and that the Bible, far above all other books, is the book of conduct. We shall be safe, I am sure, in adopting his maxim, so that while we pray, “Thy will be done,” we may search the Scriptures to find each day how to help in answering our prayer--what part of God’s will we ought each day to be doing. (Washington Gladden, D. D.)
God’s will to be discovered in nature and providence
God’s will is revealed not only in the Bible, but also in nature and in providence. We learn the will of God as we learn the will of a man, net only by attending to what He has said, but by observing what He is doing. His works, quite as distinctly as His words, indicate His will. So when I pluck in the meadow a violet or a crowfoot bloom, and look it in the face and see how deftly its petals are carved and how daintily they are painted, then I learn a little of what God’s will is. Such a thing of beauty as this is an expression of His thought and of His love. He no more wills that I should be holy than that this flower should be beautiful. And although the flowers are not all perfect; although in an unkindly environment some of them have been maimed and scarred; yet of this we are always sure, that the flower which is most beautiful comes nearest to being the flower that God meant to make, and did make in the beginning. So when we see a human being of full stature and fair proportions, with a clear eye and a ruddy skin, and the wholesome beauty that springs from perfect health, we are able to say with equal assurance that God’s will is revealed in the body which the soul inhabits, however poorly it may be done by the inhabitant. And though there are many decrepit and diseased bodies in which human beings make their homes, yet we are sure that those bodies which are soundest and most symmetrical and most beautiful are the nearest like what God means all the bodies of men to be. In like manner when we meet with a human life that is upright and modest and pure and beneficent, based on firm principles of justice and honour, working quietly but energetically for the building up of righteousness, we know that God’s will is revealed in such a life as this more perfectly than any words can tell it, more clearly than any flower can show it, more fully than the shapeliest form and the comeliest face can reveal it. And when we go into a home in which love is the law, in which each member of the household seeks to live worthily, and in which all conspire together to seek one another’s welfare and happiness, so that the law of the home seems to be, Each for all and all for each--then we are sure that God’s will is made known to us in the life of this household; that something like this is what He would have every home to be. And if we should find ourselves in a community where peace, and order, and temperance, and thrift, and industry, and contentment abounded; where there was no squalid poverty, and no filth, breeding pestilence, and no enormous fortunes, and no profligate expenditures of wealth, and no extortionate capitalists who kept themselves wholly aloof from the workpeople by whose labour they were enriched, and cared not, so long as their dividends were undiminished, how fast the labourers were pauperized and brutalized; where there were no eye-servants, that worked only when they were watched, and no discontented, and surly, and suspicious employers; where the law of goodwill had prevailed over the law of supply and demand, making peace where there once was strife, and spreading plenty where there once was poverty--if we ever should find such a community as that we should know of a surety that God’s will had found expression in its corporate life; we should say with confidence that every community on earth would be like this community when His will should be done on earth as it is done in heaven. (Washington Gladden, D. D. )
A conformed spirit: unquestioning submission
This exceeds mere loyalty. A man is loyal to an earthly kingdom if he keeps its laws, and pays the due tribute; but, at the same time, he may criticize the laws and wish they were different; may regard the Government’s policy as unwise and an infringement of his personal liberty; and dislike the individuals having the administration. Gladstone is a loyal Englishman, though in the so-called Opposition. But the Christian who can use this petition would have no opposition party within God’s kingdom. He loves the Sovereign, would delight in the administration, and desires that the details of the Divine will may become his will also. To fulfil the sentiments of the petition there must bed
1. Comformity of natural desire to His Providence.
2. Conformity of moral desire to His Law.
3. Conformity of spiritual desire to all His truth as taught either in His Word or by his Spirit. (J. M. Ludlow, D. D.)
God’s will must be the rule of our life
If a man lay a crooked stick upon an even level ground, the stick and ground ill suit together, but the fault is in the stick; and in such a case, a man must not strive to bring the even ground to the crooked stick, but bow the crooked stick even with the ground. So is it between God’s will and ours; there is a discrepancy and jarring betwixt them; but where is the fault? or rather, where is it not? not in the will of God, but in our crooked and corrupt affections; in which case we must not like Balaam seek to bring God’s will to ours, but be contented to rectify and order the crookedness of our wills by the rectitude and sanctity of the will of God, which must be the ruler and moderator of our wills; for which cause we are to cry out with David, “Teach me, O Lord, to do Thy will”; and with the whole Church of God, in that pattern of wholesome words, “Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven”; never forgetting that, too, of Christ Jesus Himself in the midst of His agony and bloody sweat, “Father, not My will, but Thine be done” (Luke 22:42). (Augustine.)
God’s will the best
A man must be untrue to his own moral convictions who can say to a God that violates his ideas of sanctity and Divine excellence, “Reign, rule.” There must be presented to the human soul a deity that is better than man, in each and in every respect--so much better that it shall seem an infinite and unspeakable blessing that such a God should control all things, and should constrain men to become like Himself. Men have taught that God had a right to rule, simply because He was the strongest. It is true that the wisest, the best, and the strongest must take precedence. It is true, therefore, that God has a right to reign in heaven and on earth--everywhere--but not because He has power to reign. It is true that when you see the use that God makes of His power, you cannot help following with those that in the apocalyptic vision worshipped His power, and acclaimed praise to it; but when you look at the question narrowly and reduce it to its basis, no being in heaven or on earth has a right to reign, simply because he has power. Right goes with moral quality. If God’s conscience is pure, and supreme over all consciences; if God’s moral sentiments are themselves the very fountains from which our moral sentiments flow; if His wisdom is supreme and unerring; if His love is broader, deeper, higher, wider, and more full of bounty than any other love, these qualities raise him to supremacy. But the mere fact that God made men, is no more an argument that He owns them, than is the fact that I have children an argument that I own them. I have obligations to rear them; but when they come to man’s estate, is the mere fact of paternity a reason why I may wring their necks off, or why I may make a slave of one, and put one in hateful preference cycle another? Paternity gives no one a right to set at naught the great moral distinctions which love and conscience have established in the world. It does not among men, and still less does it in God. Those dec trines, therefore, are inconsistent with a cheerful reliance upon the will of God, which have taught that God had a right to reign simply because He had power to do it; that we had no business to question that Divine power; and that, when men set up their images of ideas, their idols of teaching, saying “This is God,” if men questioned them, they questioned the real God because they questioned these theoretic gods. And this idea that God had a right to reign simply because He was able to do it, would be despotism in heaven, as much more hateful than despotism is upon earth, as the sphere is broader, and the Being wiser and more comprehensive. God’s wisdom, God’s justice, God’s truth, God’s love, God’s fidelity--these give Him--shall I say right?--necessity, to reign. These exalt Him, and on these stand the throne of the universe. (H. W. Beecher.)
Willingness that God should rule
“Begin and say, Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come”--stop! if you say the next sentence, it is all gone--you are His “Thy will be done.” What? In you? In your reason? In your taste? In your affections? In God’s providential counsels for you in the affairs of your family? Stand then, mother, over your little child that lies sick in the cradle, and say, if you can, “Our Father which art in heaven”--then God is your Father, and He loves your child better than you do--“Hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come”--now do you dare look down into the face of your little child and say, “Thy will be done,” if it is the will of God to take the child? Look upon your estate, that seems trembling, and about to totter and fall. Look upon your property that seems to take to itself wings and fly away. In my boyish days, in just such weather as this, in old Bethlehem, Connecticut, where I studied Latin by hunting pigeons, I have stood and seen among the young and tender leaves, thousands, myriads of pigeons. The trees seemed laden with them. And I see in the city here, rich men, all of whose branches are loaded down with money. At the report of a gun, or the flight of a stone, or a little shout, the pigeons, with a rip and a roar, all rose, and the air was clamorous, as they flew every whither; and in a minute the wood was still, with the exception, perhaps, of the bark of a squirrel. They had taken to themselves wings and flown away. And so the man that yesterday was branch-ful, to-day is branch-less. Everything is stripped from him, and gone. And can you stand in your barrenness and say, “Thy will be done”? Between two there has come the shadow and the darkness, and both hearts sorrow, and both yearn. Can you both say, in the sight of final, everlasting separation-in this world, everlasting--“Thy will be done”? Can you stand in the house of your pride, and say, “Thy will be done”? Is your God such a one that, for the sake of the sweetness in Him, for the sake of the beauty in Him, for the sake of the joy that you have in Him, for the sake of His glorious excellence, you can say of your pride, “God’s will be done therein”? Can you say is of your vanity? Can you hush every passion to sleep with the name of God? (H. W. Beecher.)
God’s will, not ours
This is the petition with which we have the closest concern. It shows us what ought to be the great aim and end of our lives--that we may be able to do the will of God. After praying to our Fatherthat His name may be hallowed, and that His kingdom may come, we pray that His will may be done; for, unless His will be done, His kingdom cannot come, His name cannot be hallowed. Can a father be said to be honoured by his children while they are disobeying him? Can a king be said to reign over His subjects while they are rebelling against him? At the Fall man set up his own will against God’s; and so his will became corrupt and tainted, as everything must become when God’s purifying Spirit leaves it. Man set up his own will. This is the great disease and the main evil of our nature. It comes to us from our parents; it shows itself soon after our birth; and the seeds of it continue to lurk, even in the best of men, as long as they remain in the body. Having thus found out the cause of the disorder, we may more easily see how it is to be cured. We must get rid of that cause; we must root out that self-will which is the source of the whole evil. We must take God’s wilt for our rule and guide, and must endeavour by all the means in our power, by prayer, by meditation, by self-denial, to bring our own will first into complete obedience to God’s, and then to make it one with God’s. Then there is another portion of God’s will which must also be taken into account. I mean that portion of it which is done towards us, and which exercises our patience and our faith, as that portion of it which is to be done by us exercises our obedience and activity. We must sacrifice our wills to the will of God, not merely by doing His will, but by suffering His will, with faith, submission, and contentment. (A. W. Hare.)
The measure and degree in which God’s will ought to be done by us
“As it is done in heaven.” The measure which Christ lays down for us is always an infinite measure, and the pattern is always a heavenly pattern. As Moses was commanded to make the tabernacle for the children of Israel according to the pattern showed to him in the mount, so we, too, are to frame the tabernacle of our Christian life, and all things belonging thereto, according to the perfect model of heaven. We are to pray and to strive that God’s will may be done on earth as it is in heaven; that is, we are to do it as the angels do it.
(1) Wholly;
(2) readily;
(3) cheerfully;
(4) out of love to God, for His glory, and not for our own. (A. W. Hare.)
The spirit of true resignation
As Richard Baxter lay dying, in the midst of exquisite pains which arose from the nature of his disease, he said, “I have a rational patience and a believing patience, though sense would recoil, Lord, when Thou wilt, what Thou wilt, how thou wilt.”
Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven
-This petition consists of two parts.
I. The matter--“doing of God’s will.
II. The manner--“as it is in heaven.”
I. The matter of this petition is, “the doing of God’s will”: “Thy will be done.”
1. What is meant by the will of God?
2. What do we pray for in these words, “Thy will be done”? We must know God’s will before we can do it; knowledge is the eye which must direct the foot of obedience. Knowing God’s will may make a man admired, but it is doing God’s will makes him blessed.
(1) The bare knowledge of God’s will is inefficacious; it doth not better the heart. Knowledge alone is like a winter-sun, which hath no heat or influence; it doth not warm the affections, or purify the conscience.
(2) Knowing without doing God’s will, will make one’s ease worse. Many a man’s knowledge is a torch to light him to hell. Let us set upon this, the doing of God’s will, “Thy will be done.”
3. Why is the doing of God’s will so requisite?
(1) Out of equity. God may justly claim a right to our obedience; He is our founder. God is our benefactor; it is but just that, if God give us our allowance, we should give Him our allegiance.
(2) The great design of God in the Word is to make us doers of His will. If you tell your children what is your mind, it is not only that they may know your will, but do it. All God’s providences are to make us doers of His will. As God makes use of all the seasons of the year for harvest, so all His various providences are to bring on the harvest of obedience. Afflictions are to make us do God’s will.
(3) By doing the will of God, we evidence sincerity.
(4) Doing God’s will much propagates the gospel; this is the diamond that sparkles in religion.
(5) By doing God’s will, we show our love to Christ--“He that hath My commandments and keepeth them, He it is that loveth Me.” What greater love to Christ, than to do His will, though it cross our own? “We do not revere the Prince if we hate His laws.” It is a vain thing for a man to say he loves Christ’s person, when he slights His commands. Not to do God’s will on earth is a great evil. It is sinful, foolish, and dangerous. Either we must do God’s will, or suffer it.
(6) Whatever God wills us to do is for our benefit; behold here self-interest. As if a king commands his subject to dig in a mine of gold, and then gives him all the gold he had digged. God bids us do His will, and this is for our good.
(7) To do God’s will is our honour.
(8) To do God’s will on earth makes us like Christ, and akin to Christ.
(9) Doing God’s will on earth brings peace in life and death.
(10) If we are not doers of God’s will, we shall be looked upon as contemners of God’s will; let God say what He will, yet men will go on in sin. This is to contemn God--“Wherefore do the wicked contemn God?”
4. In what manner are we to do God’s will, that we may find acceptance? The manner of doing God’s will is the chief thing. The schoolmen say well, “The manner of a thing is as well required as the thing itself.” If a man build a house, if he cloth it not according to the mind of the owner, he likes it not, but thinks all his charges lost; so if we do not God’s will in the right manner, it is not accepted. We must not only do what God appoints, but as God appoints; here lies the very life-blood of religion. So I come to answer this great question, “In what manner are we to do God’s will, that we may find acceptance?”
(1) We do God’s will acceptably when we do duties spiritually--“which worship God in the spirit.” To serve God spiritually is to do duties from an inward principle. A crab-tree may bear as well as a pearmain, but it is not so good fruit as the other, because it doth not come from so sweet a root; an unregenerate person may do as much external obedience as a child of God; he may pray as much, hear as much, but his obedience is harsh and sour, because it doth not come from the sweet and pleasant root of grace. The inward principle of obedience is faith; therefore it is called “the obedience of faith.”
(2) We do God’s will acceptably when we prefer His will before all other; if God wills one thing, and man wills the contrary, we do not obey man’s will, but rather God’s.
(3) We do God’s will acceptably when we do God’s will as it is done in heaven; that is, as the angels do it. To do God’s will as the angels, denotes this much, that we are to resemble them, and make them our pattern. Though we cannot equal the angels in doing God’s will, yet we must imitate them. A child cannot write so well as the scrivener, yet he imitates the copy. In particular--
(a) we do God’s will as the angels do it in heaven when we do God’s will regularly; we go according to the Divine institutions, not decrees of councils, or traditions. This is to do God’s will as the angels: they do it regularly; they do nothing but what is commanded. Angels are not for ceremonies; as there are statute laws in the land which bind, so the Scripture is God’s statute law which we must exactly observe. The watch is set by the dial; then our obedience is right when it goes by the sundial of the Word. If obedience hath not the Word for its rule, it is not doing God’s will, but our own; it is will-worship. There is in many a strange itch after superstition; they love a gaudy religion, and are more for the pomp of worship than the purity. This cannot be pleasing to God, for, as if God were not wise enough to appoint the manner how He will be served, man will be so bold as to prescribe for Him. To thrust human inventions into sacred things is a doing of our will, not God’s; and He will say, “Who hath required this at your hand?”
(b) We do God’s will as it is done by the angels in heaven when we do it entirely, without mutilation; we do all God’s will. He who is to play upon a lute must strike upon every string, or he spoils all the music. God’s commandments may be compared to a ten-stringed lute--we must obey God’s will in every command, strike upon every string, or we can make no good melody in religion. The badger hath one foot shorter than the other; hypocrites are shorter in some duties than others. Some will pray, not give alms; hear the Word, not forgive their enemies; receive the sacrament, not make restitution. How can they be holy who are not just? But who is able to do all God’s will? Though we cannot do all God’s will legally, yet we may evangelically, which is--First: When we mourn that we can do God’s will no better; when we fail, we weep. Second: When it is the desire of our soul to do God’s whole will. Third: When we endeavour to do the whole will of God.
(c) We do God’s will as it is done in heaven by the angels when we do it sincerely. First: To do God’s will out of a pure respect to God’s command. Thus the angels do God’s will in heaven; God’s command is the weight that sets the wheels of their obedience a-going. Second: To do God’s will sincerely is to do it with a pure eye to God’s glory.
(d) We do God’s will as it is done in heaven by the angels when we do it willingly, without murmuring. The angels love to be employed in God’s service; it is the angels’ heaven to serve God. “There is no virtue in that to which we are compelled.” A pious soul goes to the Word as to a feast, or as one would go with delight to hear music. Not that a truly regenerate person is always in the same cheerful temper of obedience: he may sometimes find an indisposition and weariness of soul; but his weariness is his burden--he is weary of his weariness; he prays, weeps, useth all means to regain that alacrity and freedom in God’s service that he was wont to have. Love is as musk among linen, that perfumes it; love perfumes obedience, and makes it go up to heaven as incense.
(e) We do God’s will as the angels in heaven when we do God’s will fervently. The angels serve God with fervour and intenseness. Formality starves duty; when we serve God dully and coldly, is this like the angels? Duty without fervency is as a sacrifice without fire; we should ascend to heaven in a fiery chariot of devotion.
(f).We do God’s will as the angels in heaven when we give God the best in every service. The Jews might not offer to the Lord wine that was small or mixed, but the strong wine, to imply that we must offer to God the best, the strongest of our affections. Domitian would not have his image carved in wood or iron, but in gold: God will have the best we have; golden services.
(g) We do God’s will as the angels in heaven when we do it readily, and swiftly. The angels do not dispute or reason the case, but as soon as they have their charge and commission from God, they immediately obey.
(h) We do God’s will as the angels in heaven when we do it constantly. The angels are never weary of doing God’s will; they serve God day and night. Constancy crowns obedience. Our obedience must be like the fire of the altar which was continually kept burning.
Use 1. Branch 1: See hence our impotency; we have no innate power to do God’s will. What need we pray, “Thy will be done,” if we have power of ourselves to do it?
Branch 2: If we are to do God’s will on earth as it is done by the angels in heaven, see then the folly of those who go by a wrong pattern; they do as the most of their neighbours do. We must make the angels our patterns, and not our neighbours. If our neighbours do the devil’s will, shall we do so too? If our neighbours go to hell, shall we go thither too for company?
Branch 3: See here that which may make us long to be in heaven, then we shall do God’s will perfectly as the angels do. Alas, how defective are we in our obedience here I Let us be doers of the will of God--“Thy will be done.” First: It is our wisdom to do God’s will. Keep and do these statutes, “for this is your wisdom.” Second: It is our safety. Hath not misery always attended the doing of our own will, and happiness the doing of God’s will?
(a) Misery hath always attended the doing of our own will. Our first parents left God’s will to fulfil their own, “in eating the forbidden fruit.” And what came of it?
(b) Happiness hath always attended the doing of God’s will. Daniel did God’s will contrary to the king’s decree; he bowed his knee in prayer to God, and did not God make all Persia bow their knees to Daniel?
(c) The way to have our will is to do God’s will. You see you lose nothing by doing God’s will. This is the way to have your will: let God have His will in being obeyed, and you shall have your will in being saved.
5. How shall we come to do God’s will aright?
(1) Get sound knowledge; we must know God’s will before we can do it.
(2) If we would do God’s will aright, let us labour for self-denial; unless we deny our own will, we shall never do God’s will. God’s will and ours are contrary, like the wind and tide, and till we can cross our own will, we shall never fulfil God’s.
(3) Let us get humble hearts. Pride is the spring of disobedience.
(4) Beg grace and strength of God to do His will. If the loadstone draw the iron, it is not hard for the iron to move; if God’s Spirit enable, it will not be hard, but rather delightful, to do God’s will.
II. In this petition, “Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven,” we pray that we may have grace to submit to God’s will patiently in what He inflicts. The text is to be understood as well of suffering God’s will as of doing it.
1. What this patient submission to God’s will is not. There is something looks like patience which is not, namely, when a man bears a thing because he cannot help it; he takes affliction as his fate and destiny, therefore he endures that quietly which he cannot avoid. This is rather necessity than patience.
2. What is it may stand with patient submission to God’s Will?
(1) A Christian may be sensible of affliction, yet patiently submit to God’s will. We are bid to humble ourselves under God’s hand, which we cannot do unless we are sensible of it.
(2) A Christian may weep under an affliction, yet patiently submit to God’s will. God allows tears. Grace makes the heart tender; grief shut up chokes us; weeping gives vent to sorrow.
(3) A Christian may complain in his affliction, yet be submissive to God’s will--“I cried to the Lord with my voice, I poured out my complaint before Him.”
3. What is it that cannot stand with patient submission to God’s will?
(1) Discontentedness with Providence. Discontent hath a mixture of grief and anger in it, and both these must needs raise a storm of passion in the soul.
(2) Murmuring cannot stand with submission to God’s will. Murmuring is the height of impatience; it is a kind of mutiny in the soul against God. Murmuring is very evil; it springs--First: From pride: men think they have deserved better at God’s hand. Second: Distrust; men believe not that God can make a treacle of poison, bring good out of all their troubles. Men murmur at God’s providences, because they distrust His promises.
(3) Discomposedness of spirit cannot stand with quiet submission to God’s will. To be under a discomposure of mind is as when an army is routed, one runs this way, and another that, the army is put into disorders: so when a Christian is in a hurry of mind his thoughts run up and down distracted, as if he were undone. This cannot stand with patient submission to God’s will.
(4) Self-apology cannot stand with submission to God’s will; instead of being humbled under God’s hand, a person justifies himself.
4. What is this patient submission to God’s will?
(1) In acknowledging God’s hand; seeing God in the affliction--“Affliction cometh not forth of the dust.”
(2) Patient submission to God’s will lies in our justifying of God. Patient submission to God’s will lies in the accepting of the punishment. This patient submission to God’s will in affliction shows a great deal of wisdom and piety. The skill of a pilot is most discerned in a storm, and a Christian’s grace in the storm of affliction; and indeed this submission to God’s will is most requisite for us while we live here in this lower region. In heaven there will be no need of patience more than there is need of the starlight when the sun shines. In heaven there will be all joy, and what need of patience then? When do we not, as we ought, submit to God’s will in our affliction?
1. When we have hard thoughts of God, and our hearts begin to swell against Him.
2. When we are so troubled at our present affliction that we are unfit for duty.
3. We do not submit as we ought in God’s will when we labour to break loose from affliction by indirect means.
The means for a quiet resignation to God’s will in affliction are--
1. Judicious consideration--“In the day of adversity consider.” Consideration would be as David’s harp to charm down the evil spirit of frowardness and discontent. Frowardness and unsubmissiveness of will to God is very sinful.
(1) It is sinful in its nature; to murmur when God crosseth us in our will shows much ungodliness.
(2) To quarrel with God’s providence, and be unsubmissive to His will, is sinful in the spring and cause; it ariseth from pride.
(3) Quarrelsomeness and unsubmissiveness to God’s will is sinful in the concomitants of it. It is joined with sinful risings of the heart. Evil thoughts arise; we think hardly of God, as if He had done us wrong, or as if we had deserved better at His hands. Passions begin to arise; the heart secretly frets against God.
(4) Frowardness and unsubmissiveness to God’s will is evil in the effects. It unfits for duty; it is bad sailing in a storm. Unsubmissiveness to God’s will is very imprudent. We get nothing by it; it doth not ease us of our burden, but rather makes it heavier. The more the child struggles with the parent, the more it is beaten. The mischief of being unsubmissive to God’s will in affliction, it lays a man open to many temptations. To bring our wills to God in affliction doth much honour the gospel; an unsubmissive Christian reproacheth religion, as if it were not able to subdue an unruly spirit. It is weak physic which cannot purge out ill humours; and surely it is a weak gospel if it cannot master our discontent and martyr our wills. We may the more cheerfully surrender our souls to God when we die, when we have surrendered our will to God while we live.
The second means to bring our will to God in affliction is to study the will of God.
1. It is a sovereign will; He hath a supreme right and dominion over His creatures. A man may cut his own timber as he will.
2. God’s will is a wise will; He knows what is conducive to the good of His people.
3. God’s will is a just will--“shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?”
4. God’s will is a good and gracious will; it promotes our interest. God’s flail shall only thrash off our husks.
5. God’s will is an irresistible will; we may oppose it, but we cannot hinder it. The rising of the wave cannot stop the ship when it is in full sail; so the rising up of our will against God cannot stop the execution of His will--“Who hath resisted His will?” Who can stay the chariot of the sun in its full career? The third means to submission to God in affliction is, get a gracious heart; all the rules and helps in the world will do but little good till grace be infused. The bowl must have a good bias, or it will not run according to our desire; so till God puts a new bias of grace into the soul, which inclines the will, it never submits to God. The fourth means to submission to God in affliction is, to get an humble spirit; a proud man will never stoop to God. Fifth means: Get your hearts loosened from things below; be crucified to the world. (T. Watson.)
“Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven”
Observe, then, that there are two ways of doing the Father’s will: a right way, as, for instance, it is done in heaven, and a wrong way, as, for instance, it is done on earth. Not but that on earth our Father’s will can be, and often is, done in a right way. But the cases, comparatively speaking, are so rare, that we must look elsewhere for our model, even as mariners in mid-ocean take their bearings, not from anything they can see around them, but from the heavenly bodies above them. What we are bidden, then, to pray is this: As Thy will is done in heaven, so, Father, may Thy will be done on earth! And now let us glance at some of the particulars of the way in which our Father’s will is done in heaven And first, our Father’s will is done in heaven voluntarily. There are two kinds of loyalty. There is the loyalty of necessity. Such is the loyalty of the material creation. There is not an atom of matter throughout measureless immensity but that obeys God’s will instantly, completely, everlastingly. The star nearest the outskirts of creation and the atom nearest earth’s centre alike join in an obedience profound and unquestioning. But in all this profound obedience there is no liberty of choice. And this in large measure is the loyalty of earth. For even wicked men, as we have seen, are doing God’s will; but they do it reluctantly, in spite of themselves. And this brings us to consider the other kind of loyalty, the loyalty of choice. This is the supreme prerogative of the moral creation as distinguished from the material. Again: Our Father’s will is done in heaven consciously. Not always, not even generally, is it thus done on earth. Wicked men, as we have seen, are doing God’s will; but they do it unconsciously. Not in way of personal absorption into Deity, as the Buddhist craves, but in way of conscious response, do the angels in heaven do their Father’s will. It is their will to do His will. Again: Our Father’s will is done in heaven totally, with the whole nature. Alas! it is not so done on earth. Take even the saintliest of His children; with what a partial, fractional heart do they serve Him! Though the spirit is willing, the flesh is weak. In heaven reason, judgment, memory, imagination, language, motive, choice, resolve, tendency, activity, obedience, cheerfulness, humility, gratitude, conscience, faith, hope, love, reverence, worship--every sensibility, every power, the nature as a whole and in each and every part, all, and without alloy, and in every one of the heavenly hosts, blend in a common incense of service and adoration. Again: Our Father’s will is done in heaven joyously. Again: Our Father’s will is done in heaven universally. Again: Our Father’s will is done in heaven concurrently. And to each dweller in heaven is assigned his own part, be it voice or finger, in the ever-varying music of the skies; and each fulfils his own part in perfect time and chime, so that not a note is wanting or superfluous, not a note dissonant, in the universal choir--archangel and saint, principality and firstborn--all heaven itself, evermore moving in majestic concurrence and beatific melody. Again: Our Father’s will is done in heaven uninterruptedly and everlastingly. How irregular and fitful is the obedience of many of God’s children on earth! In way of conclusion, let it be observed: One there is who, in the sphere of manhood, has done the Father’s will on earth even as the angels do it in heaven. “Then said I, Lo! I am come--in the volume of the book it is written of Me, to do Thy will, O God!” (G. D.Boardman, D. D.)
“Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven”
You learn here what it is that makes heaven to be heaven. It is that God’s will is done there--perfectly, always, in everything. That is what makes heaven. It makes heaven anywhere, everywhere. It brings heaven into a heart. It brings heaven into a home. It brings heaven into a street, or city, or land. If universal, it would make it to be heaven all the world over. When Garibaldi, the hero of Italy, entered on his career of conquest, ore rather I should say, of emancipation, many parts of Italy were groaning under oppression and tyranny; the prisons were crowded; justice was not to be had; liberty there was none. Ignorance and crime and misery was everywhere to be met with. As he advanced, throwing open the prison doors, giving the people freedom, leaving the way clear for all good influences being brought to bear on them, you might have asked, What makes the difference between one town or province and another lying close beside it, where no such changes had taken place? And you might have been told in answer, “The will of the Liberator, or of his royal Master, is done here!” And the same explains the difference between one heart and another, between the happy and good, and the evil and wretched among men; they are the one or the other, just according as the will of God is done among them, or not.
I. A GREAT AUTHORITY--the will of God: “Thy will.” If a master and a servant give opposite orders, I do not hesitate to obey the master; and if I am asked the reason, I say, He is my authority. At the mills, or any public works, if a foreman were giving certain orders, the workman or mill-girl might point to the printed regulations, signed by the manager, and having the seal of the company attached, and say, “That is my authority, which I may not disregard.” If a railway servant were asked or bribed to do something that was a violation of rule, he would pull his instructions out of his pocket, and having first pointed to the paragraph that forbade him, he would put his finger on the signature of the manager, and say, “That is my authority; I dare not.” Now, I wish you were just as particular in the respect you pay to the authority of God as the mill-worker or railway-man is in his regard to the authority of his manager, deciding everything by the will of God.
1. The will of God is above that of magistrates and kings.
2. The will of God is above that of masters and mistresses.
3. The will of God is above that of parents.
4. The will of God is above our own will.
II. A HARD LESSON--submission to the will of God: “Thy will be done.” I have heard of a lady who, on being visited by a friend, said: “I was just trying to learn the Lord’s prayer as you came in.” “What,” said her friend, “have you never learned the Lord’s prayer?” “No,” was the reply; “I have just got the length of the third petition, and I find it hard to learn: I cannot say yet, ‘Thy will be done!’” It is called, “that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.” The hardness lies in us--in our being so sinful and depraved, so ignorant and self-willed. If you were to take a straight rule, wouldn’t you find it a hard thing to get a tree that had grown crooked and gnarled to lie alongside of it, so as just to answer to it? Luther got so far as to say, it was not, “Thy will be done,” but “My will be done,” so much had Goal’s will become his. There is a godly woman sick unto death. She is asked whether she would live or die. “Which God pleaseth,” is her reply. “But if God should refer it to you, which should you choose?” “Truly if God should refer it to me, I should even refer it to Him again.” See that deaf and dumb boy. As the school where he is is being examined, the question is written on a slate, “Why were you born deaf and dumb, while I can hear and speak?” “Never,” says the narrator, “shall I forget the look of holy resignation and chastened sorrow which sat on his countenance as he took up the chalk and wrote, “Even so, Father, for so it hath seemed good in Thy sight.” There is a Christian officer, well up in years, with an only and beloved son. During a siege, they are sitting together in their tent, when a shot carries off the son’s head. What shall the father do? “He immediately arose, first looked down on his headless son, and then, lifting up his eyes to heaven, while the tears rolled down his cheeks, said, ‘Thy will be done!’” Faith in God alone can bring us to this. Sight and sense will not suffice. There is a merchant travelling with a considerable amount of money, overtaken by a heavy rain and thoroughly drenched. He is inclined to murmur, and upbraid Him who sent it; but just as he comes to a wood, he gets other thoughts to occupy him, for a robber lies awaiting him, and the next moment the muzzle of a gun is pointed at him, the trigger is drawn, its click is heard, but the gun will not go off, for the rain has drenched the powder; and putting spurs to his horse, the traveller gets back in safety to his wife and family. The rain that he so grumbled at was the means of saving him. How this is to be got at--this submission--I cannot tell better than in the words of one who had his full share of trouble, but was never heard to repine: “I can teach you my secret with great facility; it consists in nothing more than making a right use of my eyes. In whatever state I am, I first of all look up to heaven, and remember that my principal business is to get there; I then look down upon the earth, and call to mind how small a place I shall occupy in it; I then look abroad into the world, and observe what multitudes there are who are in all respects more unhappy than myself. Then I learn where true happiness is placed, where all our cares must end, and what little reason I have to repine or complain.”
III. A HOLY PRAYER--that God’s will may everywhere be supreme: “Thy will be done on earth,” &c. Our last remark had reference more especially to the providence of God, this to the commands of God. The one spoke of submission, the other speaks of obedience. For, notice, the prayer is, that the will of the Lord may be done. He has a work and a will to be done, and we and others must be the doers. And then notice, it is “on earth.” Many are willing that God’s will should be done in heaven, not on earth. “We shall do His will when we get there.” Nay, but in earth as in heaven. How can that be? Chiefly in the spirit of it. And how do they serve in heaven? The Word gives us glimpses, from which we may gather--
1. That they do the will of God promptly. There is nothing of doubt or uncertainty--nothing of hesitation, or hanging back, or deferring.
2. They do it cheerfully.
3. They do it with all their might. Oh, what a waste of power there is on earth.
4. They do it always, constantly, unweariedly. “They serve Him day and night in His temple.”
5. All do it. “Are they not all ministering spirits? “Like the different threads in a loom, all combine to make up the fair fabric with its leaves and flowers, so delicate in colour, and elegant in form, that delights the eye of the onlooker. (J. H. Wilson, M. A.)
The will of God performed on earth
God’s right thus to give law is founded on His original and underived supremacy. The eternity of His existence, the supremacy of His wisdom, power, and goodness, so infinitely above those of all creatures, give Him the throne and make Him the monarch. That it is the perceptive will of God to which this prayer refers, cannot admit of a question. An object obtained cannot be the object of petition. This request cannot relate to God’s purpose, because His purpose is accomplished as well on the earth as it is in heaven. “His counsel shall stand, and He will do all His pleasure.” But it is not so with His law. His perceptive will is accounted as a strange thing; it is transgressed, abused, and vilified. How then is the will of God done in heaven?
1. The will of God is there done in all its parts. There is no form or modification of holy affection toward God, which does not there exist and is not acted out. Nor are there any violations there of the great law of love to fellow intelligences. There is no murderous hand, or malignant intention; no furious and revengeful passion; no harshness or cruelty; no unkindness, or even inattention and negligence. There are no revolting scenes of impurity, no haunts of licentiousness, and no lascivious eye. There is no lying tongue or covetous desire.
2. The will of God is there obeyed also by all its inhabitants. There is no jar in their society, and no discord in their song.
3. In heaven the will of God is also done with sincerity and cheerfulness. There is no hypocrisy there; no formal sacrifice is offered on that altar. In this low world, true religion is an exotic; an unnatural and unindigenous plant, confined and stinted in its growth, and sometimes a meagre, dwarfish, and ungainly thing. It partakes of the cold soil and cheerlessness of this low earth, never arrives at maturity, and sometimes blooms to fade. But what pencil can paint, or what poetry describe its beauty and fragrance, when transplanted to the skies? No longer some depressed and drooping floweret, it is like Sharon’s rose, unfolding its leaves on its native bed.
4. In heaven the will of God is likewise done perfectly and for ever. The flow of holy affections is there constant and resistless, and “clear as crystal” and their strength and vigour remain for ever unabated. There are no seasons of langour and declension, and no apostasy and backsliding.
5. It is not out of place to submit the remark, that the law of God is no less binding on the earth than it is in heaven. While every man should obey the law of God, merely because it is law, and an expression of His will, it is a right rule to which he is subject. It is as reasonable that the will of God be done on earth, as that it should be done in heaven. Is it reasonable for those immortal princes to obey their sovereign, and is it unreasonable for man?
6. Obedience to God’s will would produce a high degree of happiness in the earth as well as in heaven. The foundation on which the happiness of thinking beings rests, is their obedience to the Divine will.
7. Still further: God would be as truly honoured and glorified by the obedience of earth, as He is by the obedience of heaven. He is eminently exalted by the sinless per faction of the heavenly world.
8. Nor is this all. In some respects, God is even more honoured by the obedience of earth, than by the obedience of heaven. The planet on which we dwell is a peculiar world. It has properties and relations altogether peculiar to itself. There are no such expressions of the Divine goodness made to any other world as are made to this. Nowhere does it assume the form of favour to the guilty, except to men. Others have gained the heavenly inheritance by their own righteousness; inhabitants of earth are the purchase of the Saviour’s blood, and the reward of His obedience unto death.
9. Mournfully affecting to every Christian mind is the present condition of the Church and the world.
10. Yet, notwithstanding this, does this very prayer suggest a ground of hope. (G. Spring, D. D.)
Of the manner of following a perfect pattern
How can we do God’s will as they do it, seeing they in all points do it most perfectly, and it is impossible for us to attain to such a perfection?
1. In such a manner as they do may we also de God’s will, though not in so complete a measure. A candle giveth light in an house, even as the sun doth in the world: in such a manner, not in so great measure. There may be in quality and likeness a comparison betwixt things that are in quantity and measure very unequal.
2. All the saints even on earth have the beginning of that heavenly perfection wrought in them, which beginning the apostle styleth “the first fruits of the Spirit.” Now we may be “confident of this very thing, that He who hath begun a good work in us, will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ: that we may be blameless in that day.”
3. Our desire and endeavour may and must be beyond our ability, as shall be proved by and by. (W. Gouge.)
We are very prone to follow imperfection
As a stream where a breach is made will leave the channel to run in that breach, and by striving to run therein will make the breach greater and greater; so we, where we see any defect in the pattern, are ready not only to fail by that defect, but to be far worse. A proselyte made by a Pharisee proved twofold more a child of hell than the Pharisee. We are, by that corruption of nature which is in us, prone to swerve from the pattern which is set before us, even where the pattern itself is good and right. How much more shall we swerve when the pattern is defective? Yet by a perfect pattern we shall be kept the nearer, and held the closer to perfection. (W. Gouge.)
High shooting
A man that shooteth at a mark within his reach may shoot short for want of putting out his full strength. (W. Gouge.)
What are the particulars for which by virtue of the third petition we ought to pray?
1. Such as concern the petition itself.
2. Such as concern the direction added thereto. To how many heads may the things which concern the petition itself be referred? To four especially. Which are these--
1. The rule itself, in this word “will.”
2. The restraint of it, in this particle “Thy.”
3. The extent of it, in this phrase “be done.”
4. The place where it is to be done, “in earth.” What desire we in regard of the rule?
1. Knowledge of God’s Word; for in and by God’s Word is His will revealed, and knowledge thereof is the ground of true obedience, “Give me understanding,” saith the Psalmist, “and I shall keep Thy law: yea, I shall keep it with my whole heart.” Desire of obedience without knowledge is very preposterous. An ignorant man practise is like a blind man’s wandering in by-ways. How can it otherwise be, but that such should fall into many dangers?
2. A conformity of our will to God’s; or a readiness in our will and heart to yield to whatsoever we shall know to be God’s will.
3. Strength of memory to hold fast God’s Word, and that in the good directions and sweet consolations, in the precepts and promises thereof.
4. Life of conscience, both to cheer us up in doing the will of God, and also to check us when we swerve from the same, and not to suffer us to be quiet till we turn to it again.
5. Love of God’s Word: that our hearts be so set upon it, as we make it our joy and delight.
6. Renovation of our outward parts, that they may be made instruments in their several functions, to execute God’s will: that thus as there is a readiness to will, so there may be a performance also.
What desire we in regard of the restraint of the fore-named rule in this word “Thy”?
1. A distinct understanding of the excellency and perfection of God’s will.
2. A right discerning of the vanity and corruption of the creature’s will, especially when it is not agreeable to God’s.
3. A denial of our own will.
4. Mortification of the flesh. For “the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, so that we cannot do the things that we would.”
What desire we in regard of the extent of the fore-named rule? (be done).
1. An accomplishment of whatsoever God hath determined.
2. A contented submission to everything which God bringeth to pass.
What desire we in regard of the place here specified for doing the will of God, “in earth”?
1. Grace well to use the time of this mortal life. For the time while we abide on earth is the day wherein we may work, and the time of doing good.
2. Universal subjection to God’s will throughout this world. For this indefinite phrase, in earth, showeth that our desire ought to be extended to all that are on the face of the earth. To how many heads may their manner of obedience be reduced? To six especially: which are these that follow:--
1. Sincerity.
2. Integrity.
3. Alacrity.
4. Sedulity.
5. Ardency and zeal.
6. Constancy. (W. Gouge.)
Of sins against the manner of doing good
What are failings against the direction which we ought to bewail? An evil manner of performing good things; as when they are performed.
1. Hypocritically, in show and appearance only, and not in truth.
2. Partially, or by halves; so far as seemeth good to ourselves, but no further.
3. Grudgingly, as if it were done more by compulsion then by any free disposition of will.
4. Negligently, and carelessly, without heed-taking, or such respect as beseemeth so weighty a matter.
5. Lukewarmly, without any fervour of affections.
6. Inconstantly, as if we repented of that good we had done, and thereupon refuse to hold on therein. (W. Gouge.)
Liberty is clogged with restraint
It is a negative freedom, like that which is indulged to prisoners who are allowed the liberty of the prison, to go freely about the house, but may not exceed that circuit (if you can call it a liberty not to wear shackles) or else have leave to walk abroad with their keepers, or be confined to one room, this is such: man is not left indifferent to himself, but still waited on by an abridgment. To speak more properly, man hath such a freedom over his will, as keepers have over lions in their grates, who permit them a kind of liberty: they do not tie them up, but let them walk about in their cells, and can choose, keeping them within those bounds, whether they shall do any hurt; but it were a dangerous presumption to inlarge them further, as dangerous in their boldness, who dare impute to man the liberty of doing well, or give the latitude and scope to will, which, if it be not bridled and with a strait band held in, is wilder than the wildest of creatures. Man may rudely cast and project good things, intend and mean towards well, yet all this is but purpose, but pretence, it is not action. He must wait on God for the finishing his good intents. For though he may cast the model, lay the platform of virtue, he cannot raise the work without higher assistance. “Except the Lord build the house,” in vain is all other endeavour. (Archdeacon King.)
God’s will seen in His Word
We will here call down our contemplation, and as they that look on the sun reflected in the water, see him more perfectly and more safely than if they should gaze on him in his own sphere wherein he moves; so will we behold the glorious Will of God by reflex in His Word. Thus looking on it, we shall be able to satisfy ourselves in so much as becomes Christians, not over-curious to understand. (Archdeacon King.)
A bad copy
We must lead our lives in, but not by the world, Sicut in Coelis, non sicut in Terra, earth is a bad copy, lame and imperfect. Let beasts make that their object, the level of their thoughts. Man’s exalted strait form bids him look up, invites his contemplation to the things above, not the things below. That man degenerates from nature much, from grace more, that proposes unto himself low ignoble patterns. (Archdeacon King.)
Knowing God’s will not enough
It is not enough to know the Bible, or be able to repeat the several volumes of His will, unless a practice be joined to this speculative science of Christianity. Knowledge what to do, and forbearance to do what we know, hastens our condemnation, and adds weight to it. (Archdeacon King.)