Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: Matthew 6:9-13 | Date: January 4, 2026 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

Working our way through the Lord’s Prayer, as it is so called, this model prayer that He has given to us to pray, we spent our first time just giving an overview of the passage regarding prayer and the larger context, beginning with verse 1, of spiritual exercises, spiritual disciplines, and how they are to be done. We noted then that the Lord’s Prayer is given to us as a model against the backdrop of some perversions of prayer, and then we introduced the prayer, showing its structure as the address to God as our Father in heaven, and then six petitions divided into two groups: three pertaining to God, three pertaining to us.

We’ve gone through the first one, “Our Father in heaven,” the address; the first petition, “hallowed be your name”; and then “your kingdom come.” And tonight we look at the next petition, “your will be done.” Let’s begin with verse nine.

“Pray then like this: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

All right, again, we have this prayer that is basically two parts: three petitions that are pertaining to God, three pertaining to us in these broad areas. We saw the first in verse nine, “hallowed be your name.” That is a prayer that God would sanctify His name in the earth. We saw in Ezekiel that that is precisely what God’s purpose is in history. He will sanctify His name in the earth. He’ll make it great. And so we are to pray that God would do that, that the world would recognize Him as the God that He is, and pray that they will come to submission to Him.

And that feeds into the second petition, “your kingdom come.” And again, it is prayer that we would enter into God’s purpose in history, pray for Him to bring about what He has purposed to bring about, that the kingdom of Satan would be destroyed, and that the rule of Christ would be realized in the earth. This is God’s purpose in history ever since Genesis, and the prayer here is that God would bring that to pass. We related that to the prayer that Christ would return quickly, that He would return soon, hastening the day as Peter calls it, praying for the kingdom, both in its gospel advance in this age, but primarily in its consummation state in the return of Christ.

Now notice—and I’ve emphasized this before and I’ll do it again tonight—before we get to this third petition, notice the order. First petition: hallowed be your name. Second petition: your kingdom come. Third petition: your will be done. And only then do we get to these “give us,” “protect us,” and so on. So the order is, first of all, with Godward concerns. I’m not suggesting that every prayer that is ever given must follow this direct order, but it is at least pointing out for us priorities in prayer. Prayer is not, first of all, about us. According to Jesus’ model prayer that He’s given to us, prayer, first of all, is about His will, His name, His kingdom.

Your Will Be Done

And so we come then to this third petition, and it continues in that same God-centered vein as the previous two: “your will be done.” Now there are two aspects to God’s will that we find in the scriptures. Curiously, neither of them is similar to what is most commonly used with that expression today in Christian lingo. In Christian lingo today, God’s will generally means some secret purpose that He has for your life that you are supposed to figure out. He’s hidden it, and you’ve got to discover it. What job to take, where to go to school, what girl, what guy to marry. He’s got a purpose for you, and if you’re going to follow God’s will, you’ve got to figure that out. I’ve often characterized this as the view of God like the cosmic Easter bunny that hides His will in a bush and you’ve got to figure it out and find it and discover it.

Curiously, that’s the way the expression “God’s will” is probably most commonly used today in Christian lingo, but that’s not how it is used in the New Testament. What we find in the scriptures is two aspects of divine will.

Number One, His Decretive Will

That which God has decreed will come to pass, and that is His will that cannot be thwarted. If God has decreed something to come to pass, it will.

And Then There’s Also What We Call God’s Preceptive Will

The will of His command. He’s commanded us to do certain things.

Now, the two are related, that God’s decretive will is to redeem this world and to fix it all. That’s been His will ever since creation, ever since the fall. He’s going to fix the mess that the world is in, and He has given commands for people everywhere to follow His will. His decree is that at some point, culminating in the return of Christ, that He will bring the world into subjection to Him, and we’ll have a world then of willing worshipers, and that’s His ultimate aim in world history.

But here it’s pretty clear that what is in view is submission to God’s commands. “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” In heaven, God is worshiped. In heaven, God is cheerfully obeyed. In case you haven’t noticed it, that’s not really the case on earth. And so Jesus says, pray. Pray that God’s will will be followed. His commands will be cheerfully obeyed on earth, just as they are in heaven.

Now, of course, there are some underlying assumptions in all of this. One, obviously, is that the world is in rebellion against God. We see this everywhere in the Scriptures. On earth, God is blasphemed. On earth, God is rebelled against. On earth, God is disobeyed. And that’s been the story of human history ever since Genesis chapter 3. We find it all through the Old Testament. We find it warned of in the Psalms with the nations raging against God. We find it in the New Testament. Jesus condemns the world with the statement that the world loves darkness rather than light because its deeds are evil. He warns us, His people, in John chapter 15, that just as the world hates Him, and because it hates Him, they will hate us as well. And we find it, of course, culminating in the book of Revelation and that grand drama of world rebellion against God.

The world is in rebellion against God. There’s another assumption. Not only is the world in rebellion against God, but there’s an adversary, the devil, actively promoting evil and promoting unrighteousness in the earth. One of the, I think, most fascinating passages that deal with this is in Ephesians chapter two, in those opening verses of the chapter where the Apostle Paul tells us that the world walks in lockstep with the devil, that he’s the great prince and power of the air, calling the shots, as it were, and so it’s this grand conspiracy theory that is true, that behind all of the collective rebellion in this world, there’s a great organizer, Satan himself leading it all. And then you add to that, not only is the world in rebellion and there’s an adversary, the devil, but there is in fact the sinfulness of the human heart itself. The fact of universal sinfulness in all of us, even those of us who have been redeemed, there’s the remains of sin within us that we have to contend with.

You put all of that together—the rebellion of the world, the adversary that is promoting evil, the innate sinfulness in our hearts—and what you get is an earth that does not look much like heaven. That, I say, has been the story since the book of Genesis.

God creates humanity in Genesis chapter 1 for the purpose of extending His rule over the earth. “Let them have dominion over the earth.” Extend God’s rule as God’s vice-regents ruling over the earth. It doesn’t last long. We get to Genesis chapter 3 and it all falls apart. Humanity is in rebellion against God and we see it still today.

You’ve heard me mention it many times. Just look at the cultural centers of our society. Education, media, government, big corporations, even anymore professional sports—more and more, you see in our cultural centers a collective kind of rebellion against God’s will.

And in light of all of that—the world and its rebellion, our cultural centers controlled by those who hate God—in light of all of that, Jesus says, pray. Pray that God’s will will be done in earth, just like it is in heaven.

The church is not given the sword. Weapons of our warfare, Paul says, are not carnal ones. We can pray. Pray that God will sovereignly move in society. Pray that God will move the hearts of men and women, turn them to Him in submission.

J.I. Packer writes this in his little catechism: what do we pray for as we seek to do God’s will? We pray for God’s will to be done. His answer is this: “I pray for God to break the dominion of the world, the flesh, and the devil, to establish justice and thwart the plans of the wicked, to strengthen and direct his church, to extend the kingdom of his grace.”

So keep this in the bigger picture. Our purpose in all of this is—the purpose of this passage is to teach us how to pray. So in the bigger picture, God invites us as His children to come to Him with all of our concerns.

And I don’t mean at all to diminish the importance of coming to God with your own concerns. Pray about yourself, your family, your needs, your health, your grandmother’s health. Pray for all of that. Pray for our church. Pray for its ministry. But the point here is to think bigger. Prayer is not, first of all, about us.

Think in the big picture of God’s concern in this world, God’s concerns, and His purposes in history. And so He says, pray. Pray, God, make it such that people in this earth obey Your will cheerfully. Change hearts. Work through the gospel and make earth to be like heaven. Isn’t that a wonderful way to pray? Think of the anticipation in that.

It is connected to the previous, “your kingdom come, your will be done in earth as in heaven.” God’s purpose is to, in a sense, renew Eden, to bring us back to the perfections of the created order that we see in Genesis chapter one, and here we pray for that. Your will be done. And so we should pray it, and we should pray expectantly.

Pray for an increase of righteousness. Pray for those in our cultural centers. Pray that God would put in men and women who fear God. Pray for our governmental leaders, that God will give us men and women with conviction—men who know right from wrong and are convicted of it such that they follow it at whatever cost. Pray for it with respect to our nation, our society, our culture, the entire globe for that matter.

There are, of course, with this, gospel implications. I mentioned it a minute ago. Ultimately, this isn’t going to happen—God’s will done in earth as it is in heaven—this is not going to happen apart from the gospel. It is the gospel that changes hearts, and so we’re praying again for the advance of the gospel that God would change men and women, bring them into relationship with Christ, teach them to bow before His kingship so that His will is done in earth as it is in heaven.

On the same respect, of course, we can pray this with regard to ourselves as individuals. Lord, make me more obedient. Give me a heart that is increasingly submissive to Your will. Pray the same with regard to our church. Lord, make us all You’ve called us to be so that we will honor You, that our church will do Your will as You have called us to do it.

But again, this is what I’m trying to emphasize in this part of the series: to recognize that prayer is not, first of all, about us. Learn to think big. Learn to think in terms of God’s purposes in history with concerns bigger than your own. Lord, advance Your saving purpose in this earth. Advance the gospel, through preachers, through missionaries around the world, through Your people, men and women all over the world who carry the gospel. Work through them.

In terms of the commission in the book of Acts, from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth, make the gospel advance and bring men and women into submission to Christ. We pray, when we pray this, “your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” we pray, Lord, begin here with me, with my family, begin with our church, the Foreign Baptist Church of Franconia, shape us to be what You’ve called us to be, work through the missionaries that we support, work through Your people the world over, and may Your will be done in earth as it is in heaven, to Your glory. Amen.