Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - Submission: “Thy Kingdom, Thy Will”

Episode Date: February 24, 2025

I’ll say it consciously: this is our worst nightmare. More than anyone else in history, modern people believe we ought to have a good life and we ought to have some control over our lives. But Jesus says when you connect with God, you must pray, “Thy will be done.”  This means the purpose of prayer is not that we would bend God’s will to meet ours, but that we melt and soften our will into God’s. The Bible says the way to find yourself and your happiness is never to seek yourself or your happiness but to seek God and his righteousness. In order to make it possible for us to do this, let’s look at what the Bible tells us about 1) where, 2) why, and 3) how to pray “Thy will be done.” This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on May 7, 1995. Series: The Lord’s Prayer 1995. Scripture: Matthew 6:9-15. Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

Welcome to Gospel in Life. What we love shapes who we are. So if we want to change, we have to start by changing what we love, what we're passionate about, what delights us. One of the primary ways we can rearrange the things we love most comes through consistent and faithful prayer. Join us today as Dr. Keller looks at how authentic prayer connects us with God and reshapes what we love. The passage on which our teaching is based this morning is found in your bulletin. It's printed out there. We've been looking at the Lord's Prayer each week. And actually you just heard the Lord's Prayer sung, but as I was told in Britain, if you know three languages you're trilingual, if you know two languages you're bilingual, and if you know one language, you're an American. So maybe we need to repeat it for you.

Americans here. Matthew 6. This then is how you should pray. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your heavenly Father will not forgive your sins." Now the reason we are looking at the Lord's Prayer in detail week after week here, I'll give you two quick reasons. And depending on where you are in your own relationship with God and the faith and such matters, one might be more telling than the other. First of all, in the early part of the 20th century we were told by the experts, especially by Freud and even before that by Marx,

but all the experts said that religion is basically the way that immature people groups adapt to their environment. It's the way scientifically immature and psychologically immature people deal with the world. But as we grow up, as we mature, psychologically, as we mature scientifically, as they said, religion would start to fade away. It would just fade away as history went on. And of course, we now know that they were wrong. And what that means at least is that there is in the human heart a relentless need for spiritual experience.

That there is a deep need to connect with the infinite and with God. And you know, what do you have in the Lord's Prayer? The most influential religious leader in the history of the world, by far, was once asked, how do you connect with God? And he gave us that. He gave us the Lord's Prayer. That's how you do it. So, you know, in light of everything we just said, that certainly bears a great deal of concentration. But here's one other thing. One of the problems for those of us who've been raised in the church is it's so familiar.

When I first came to New York, I remember visiting in a church service, and I could hear the subway come through pretty loud. You know, it would rumble through during the service. I found it pretty distracting, and afterwards I asked somebody who went to the church regularly, how do you get used to that? And he said, used to what? who went to the church regularly, how do you get used to that? And he said, used to what? And of course, that's what happens. He did get used to it. You get used to things that come through all the time.

You get used to sounds, sights, smells. You don't hear them anymore. And the great danger is the key to connecting with God, given to us by Jesus Christ himself, because it is so common. We get used to it. We don't hear it, we don't smell it, we don't see it, we don't taste it. So we have to overcome that by continually reminding ourselves of what it is and what it means. Now today we get to the place where Jesus says, when you connect with God, when you pray, you must pray, thy will be done. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. What is that? Well, literally, this

is of course an English translation from a Greek text and literally Jesus is telling us to pray, let your will happen. That's what you're praying. Jesus says, that's what you should pray. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, may thy will happen. Which is much more radical than it might appear at first. It might look like all you're praying for is, oh Lord, make it possible for me to follow all the rules.

But it's going beyond that. Thomas Watson, a 17th century writer, put it in a frightening way, but it's obviously true. He says, when you pray, thy will be done. Jesus is telling you to pray two things. You are praying that you might do diligently all he commands and that you also might submit patiently to all he inflicts. Two things.

You're not only saying, oh Lord, may I do diligently all you command, you're also saying, oh Lord, may I submit patiently to all you inflict. The reason thy will be done can be understood is it comes before give us this day our daily bread. Thy will comes before give us. Which goes to show that the purpose of prayer as Jesus gives it to us is not that we would bend God's will to meet ours. That's not the purpose of prayer, but that we melt and soften our will

into God's. Not that we bend His will into ours, but that we soften our will into His. Thy will comes first before you do any asking. See? In other words, Jesus says part of prayer, and one of the first parts of prayer before you ask for anything, you need to put your heart, your will, like metal into a fire. You need to put your heart into the fiery furnace of God's love and truth until it becomes soft. And so it can be shaped into the same shape as God's will. The purpose of, is to say, thy will be done. And just another version of it, John Wesley had a very famous prayer that he used to pray

all the time. It's just another version of thy will be done. This is how it used to go. I am no longer my own, but thine. Put me to what thou wilt. Rank me with whom thou wilt. Put me to doing, put me to suffering. Let me be employed for thee or laid aside for thee. Let me be full, let me be empty.

Let me have all things, let me have nothing. I freely and heartily yield all things to thy approval and disposal. And now that I have settled this, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now thou art mine and I am thine. So be it. And the commitment I now make on earth, let it be ratified in heaven. Amen. Now, need I tell you something that you probably know it, but let me just bring it right out. Let's say it consciously.

This is our worst nightmare. Modern people, more than anyone else in history, modern people believe that we ought to have a good life. Up until recently, that is not the way people thought. And modern people think that we should have some control over our lives. Again, that's a very modern notion. But because we're modern people, this petition falls on our ears in a way that almost nothing else does. It's our worst nightmare. Th Thy will be done. Give me all things, give me nothing. Let me suffer, let me prosper. Use me or lay me aside. I don't care. I put myself at your disposal. I am not my own anymore. And therefore, you are mine now and I am yours." You see what's in here? In the

heart of the Lord's Prayer we've got embedded the inside outness of the gospel, the upside downness of the gospel. Jesus says you have to lose yourself to find yourself. Jesus says blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness and we often like to bring this out, I'll bring it out again. Jesus doesn't say blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness. And we often like to bring this out. I'll bring it out again. Jesus doesn't say blessed are those who hunger and thirst after blessedness. It says blessed are those, the only people who get blessed are the people who don't try to be blessed, but they try to be righteous.

The Bible says the way to find yourself and your happiness is never to seek yourself or your happiness, but to seek God and his righteousness. If you seek blessedness before righteousness, you'll have neither. If you seek righteousness before blessedness, you'll have both. And here you have it again, right in the middle of the Lord's prayer. If you say, thy will before you say, give me, you'll have both a satisfied God's heart and a satisfied your heart. But if you say, give me before you say, thy will be done, you'll have neither heart satisfied. See? The inside outness, the upside downness of the Gospels right here in the middle of the Lord's Prayer, it confronts you. And Jesus says you will

never be able to relate to God unless you're able to say, before you get to give us this day our daily bread, thy will be done. All right. That's pretty frightening. That's pretty upsetting. And therefore, it's hard. And I think therefore, in order to make it possible for us to do it, let me just show you what the Lord's Prayer, I think, what the Bible tells us about where, why, and how to pray, thy will be done. Where, why, and how. First of all, where.

Let me tell you where it's most important for you to pray thy will be done. I noticed, it happens to me, it happens to you too from what I can tell. When we pray the Lord's Prayer, when we recite the Lord's Prayer, we take a breath. You have to take breaths. And we tend to separate thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, from give us this day. Have you ever noticed that? You just separate them.

That's where you take your breath. Give us this day our daily bread. You say, our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, there's a breath. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven, there's a breath. Give us this day. I don't think that's all right to take a breath there,

but I'll tell you one thing. Those two things are to be linked. Thy will and give us this day our daily bread are linked. One comes before the other, but they're very tightly together. You're not supposed to pray about bread unless you say, thy will be done. But also, here's what I think. I think they probably stand and fall together. I think they intensify and de-intensify together.

I think when you're most hurting for your daily bread, if the things you feel you need, that's what bread is. Things you feel you need, the things you feel you have to have to go on. If the things you feel that you have to have to go on are not coming through, if things aren't going right, if your life isn't going right, if he seems to be inflicting on you, as Thomas Watson said, that is where you must pray, Father, thy will be done. In the Atlantic Monthly, last year, September of 1994, there was this very interesting article about temperaments and about how now the findings of the scientists, you always have to be careful about this, but now the findings of the scientists are showing that

parenting is going to have to be different than what we thought. I don't know how many of you read it. It was a little frightening to me, but this is essentially what it said. It said, now that there's been research across 36 cultures, which is, that's quite, that's cross-cultural study, they're realizing that there is such a thing as temperament. There is such a thing as a neurochemistry that really wires kids, wires us all, towards certain habitual ways of dealing with situations. And they said, even though there's some difference of opinion, everybody knows there's at least three kinds of temperaments that we're wired for in our neurochemistry.

One is, and they have different names for it, but one is anxious. There are anxious types. Another one is aggressive. There are aggressive types. Another one is aggressive, there are aggressive types. Another one is sort of phlegmatic, you know, the laid back types. So the anxious types, when you run into trouble, you know what you say? You say is, I knew it, let's go. And the aggressive types say, let's get them before they get us. And the phlegmatic type said, well, that's life, there we go. No use getting bent out of shape about it.

And what the article said is, the problem with temperament is that a given temperament is only a wise response in a limited range of any set of situations. Sometimes the smartest response is the anxious one. Sometimes the smartest response is the anxious one. Sometimes the smartest response is the aggressive one. Sometimes the smartest response is the phlegmatic one. But the wrong response in a situation could be deadly and lethal. Now here's what they said was the news. They said, you know, for the last 20 or 30 years,

parents have thought the most important thing to do is to, your children, we were told, by the modern experts again, who are now changing their minds according to Atlantic Monthly, was, well, you know, you don't want to impose anything on your children. There's a sort of original pristine beauty about their nature, and you have to find out who they are. You have to let them discover who they are. They have their own gifts and their own self. You have to let them discover who they are. They have their own gifts and their own self. You have to let them discover who

they are. Well, these leading child psychiatrists said, we now see that the worst thing for parents to do is to completely let their kids always do what comes naturally. The only way they're going to make it in life, the only way they're going to be wise is the degree you can get them out of their temperament so that they're able to learn skills, learn responses that are not natural to them. Therefore, again and again, you have to intervene as a parent and you have to press the child to do that which goes against their grain. And they even go so far as to say, there is no one who is more truly courageous than an anxious person who has learned that response. Aggressive people

aren't courageous, that's just what comes natural. And there is no, in other words, you have to teach aggressive people that sometimes they are to blame and anxious people sometimes they're not. And you've got to teach pessimistic people to learn to have hope. And you have to teach the perpetually sunny people sometimes to sense danger, and so on and so forth. He says parenting is intervention. Parenting is pushing. Parenting is going against the deepest desires, in many cases, of the child. When you pray to God, is it more like a chat or are you really connecting with Him in a deep and meaningful way?

We'd like to help you establish a stronger, deeper, and more personal prayer life. Tim Keller's book Prayer Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God offers biblical guidance as well as specific ways to pray in certain situations, such as dealing with grief, loss, love and forgiveness. In the book, Dr. Keller helps you learn how to make your prayers more personal and powerful through a regular practice of prayer. Prayer, experiencing awe and intimacy with God, is our thanks for your gift to help us reach more people with the life-changing power of the gospel.

Request your copy today at gospelonlife.com slash give. That's gospelonlife.com slash give. That's gospelandlife.com slash give. Now, here's Tim Keller with the remainder of today's teaching. Well, I kind of despair a bit because, you know, that is tremendously hard work. I want, as a parent, somebody to tell me, don't ever go against the kid's grain. Don't ever make him cry. Don't ever say, I know this doesn't seem natural to you, but you've got to do it. Never.

Because, you know, your heart's bound up with a child, and their distress is your distress. And so the most selfish possible thing is to say, I love my child too much to make my child cry. I love my child too much to push him or her against their grain. But actually when I say that, that's a lie, that's selfish. I really love the love I'm getting more than I'm loving the child when I do that. But we have a Father in heaven who is perfect. We have a Father who though we're told in Isaiah 63, in all our distress, He is distressed.

So He is the perfect Father. Nevertheless, He doesn't just love what we give Him, He loves us. And He will put us in situations where it seems like we're not getting our daily bread, where it seems to be going against the grain, where it seems like the things that we really need in this situation we need,

but God is pushing us beyond ourselves and he's trying to deepen and expand our nature and our character. That's the reason why before thy will be done comes father. We're children. Children are always feeling that their parents don't make sense in what they're doing. They can't understand. And to say, our father thy will be done. Jesus doesn't start the prayer with thy will be done. He says start with Father. Realize who you are. Think. If everything your Father did to you made sense, that wouldn't make sense. Our Father. So first of all, he's saying especially when things are going poorly, especially when the Father seems to be putting you in situations that go against your grain,

go against the things that you feel like you need, huh? Pray especially there, thy will be done, because if you try to bend a piece of metal into the shape it ought to be, but you haven't heated it up. You may just break it, or you'll break you. And the circumstances of life that are the most difficult are coming in and they're pounding at you. Unless you put yourself into the fire, unless you learn to pray, thy will be done. It'll just make you bitter and you'll never learn the responses that your

father wants you to learn for you to become the deep and rich and wise person he wants you to be. Well somebody says, how? Why? Okay, how do I do that? Well let me merge the why and the how. You see, I've shown you what we have to pray, thy will be done, and where especially have have to pray it. But now, how do we do it? Why should we do it? Let me just merge them together with a couple of illustrations. First of all, the reason you should do it is because you have to pray, thy will be done, because when you do that, you're treating God as a subject, not an object. You're treating God as a person, not a computer program.

Let me tell you something about marriage. And I'm afraid I'm going to have to say this from the husband's point of view. So it goes like this. That's the only point of view I've ever had. And so it goes like this. If your wife sometimes says to you, do you love me? And you say, sure, I love you. And she says, why?

Okay? Let everything stop. Put everything down and think what you're about to say. Because it would be very easy to say, because you're a great mother to my children, because you're a great, and you start to go down the list. You're a great organizer, you have great insights or whatever your wife's particular gifts are. But if you stop at that, those are fine, those are fine. But if that's all you say, you're treating her as a commodity. You see, to treat a person as a person and not just as a means to the end of reaching your goals and your needs. In other words, for you to say, I love you dear because you're so serviceable to me. To avoid doing that, you have got to get inside and see what her hopes are and what her fears

are. You see, you've got to find out what her will is before you ask her for anything. Don't you see? That's the way people want to be treated. You want to get inside. That's how to treat somebody as a person. But in God we don't just have a person. We have the ultimate person. If you say, honey, I love you because you're serviceable to me, that's not true love. You know what true love is? To say, honey, I love you just for who you are. I love you just for

who you are. Not for what you give me, but just for who you are. That is the only way. If we have to go to our spouses like that, how much more the great and transcendent God, if you don't pray, thy will be done. If you don't say, Lord, I want to know what makes you happy and what makes you upset, and I want you just for who you are. Not for what you can give me, not for what you can do to help me reach my agenda, but just for who you are. If you can't say, thy will be done, do whatever you want with me, you're not able to say to him, I love you for who you are. The person who most understood that and learned that was Jacob. And in one of the most strange stories in the Bible, which you can read sometime in

Genesis 32, let me tell it to you, this is what happened. Jacob was a man full of self-pity. He spent most of his life lying and cheating to get what he wanted and never happy with the way his life was going. Never getting the wife he wanted, never getting the career he wanted, never getting what he wanted. And he was always fighting with his father and with his uncle and he was always fighting and he was always in the desert alone and a mysterious stranger pounced on him and began to wrestle with him. And Jacob began to wrestle back and they wrestled all night. Hours went by and we understand from the text that at a certain point Jacob suddenly realized who he was wrestling with.

This was not an ordinary human being. This was God himself. Come to wrestle with Jacob. And Jacob suddenly had an epiphany, had a flash of recognition. Suddenly his whole life flashed before his eyes and he realized all these years he had not really been fighting with his father or with his brother or with his uncle. He'd been fighting with God. He was in the ultimate, what everybody's ultimate dream, he had the opportunity to pin God.

Finally I will get from God what I deserve. Finally the blessings I've always wanted. I mean, that's how most people look at prayer, the opportunity to pin God, to come in and say, I have been a Christian for five years and I have said no all over the place to all kinds of temptations and that's pinning God. Give me this day my daily bread.

My will be done. Look what I've done. Finally, Jacob comes in and says, I've got the possibility of pinning God. And so he wrestles more hard than he had before and he struggles and struggles and it seems like, you know, gosh, you know, he's making some progress. But as the night goes by, at one point, the mysterious stranger shows how much power he really has. He shows that he hadn't been using hardly any of it. He reaches out and he touches Jacob's thigh and his thigh goes absolutely dead. And Jacob is permanently crippled. Suddenly Jacob realizes the folly of trying to

wrestle God into submission to his will, but he doesn't let go. A change happens in him, an ultimate change. Now blinded with tears and absolutely lame, he's still holding on. And you know what he says now? He says, bless me. And God says, you know, when the sun comes out and you want to see, when the sun comes up, you'll see my face and you can't see my face. See, Jacob was asking, I want to see your face. Something had changed in Jacob. He says, I want you to bless me. I want to see your face. God says, no, you can't. It'll kill you. But today I give you a new name

because you've finally been changed. A new name means he was born again at that moment. I give you a new name because you've finally been changed. A new name means he was born again at that moment. I give you a new name. You used to be called Jacob but now you're called Israel. You know why? Because Israel means you've triumphed. You've wrestled and triumphed. You wrestled with God and you've triumphed and then he disappears.

And you say what? He wrestled with God and triumphed? He was lame the rest of his life? Triumphed? How could he have triumphed? Don't you see? Don't you see the point? The point is God, Jacob finally figured out what life was all about. Life is not about getting things from God, it's about getting God. And he changed from saying I'm gonna get God to give me the blessings and finally he realized all I's about getting God. And he changed from saying, I'm going to get God to give me the blessings, and finally he realized, all I really need is God. At the end he says, I just want you. In your face I'll have everything. You see, when Jesus says, pray thy will be

done, what Jesus is saying to you is, God is coming and saying, I don't want you to seek things, I want you to seek me. And I don't want you to give me your requests, I want you to give me yourself. I don't want your requests, I want you. And I don't want you primarily to be asking for things, I want you to be asking for me. And until Jacob realized that, there was no freedom in his life. Don't you see prayer is the victory of the lame? Prayer is the victory of the losers. The ones who surrender and say, thy will be done if I can just have you, if I can just

please you, if I can just have you, then the requests are all gravy." And when Jacob realized that, what did God do? He turned around and he said, at last, I've been waiting all your life. Now you've won. I've been waiting to hear you say that. Now, is he waiting to hear you say that? You look and take a look at the things that are going wrong with your life. Have you just been sort of going around, thy will be done, not even thinking about what

that means? It means to say, Lord, if I get nothing else, if I only have you, that's enough. I mainly want you, and I mainly want to give you me in this prayer. And you know the reason you can do it? Somebody says that's just too hard to do. The way that I've been all along I've been saying the way to do it is you have to put your heart in the furnace. You've got to let the furnace melt you down.

Well, you know what the furnace is? You have to see that there was somebody besides Jacob who wrestled, who wrestled with God. Jesus Christ on the night before he was to die wrestled with God. He was in the garden and it was all about whose will would be done. And he saw something coming. And I used to live in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, which is the site of the greatest natural disaster ever. A town at the bottom of it, at the end of a very long valley, very steep walls, a lake came down on that town.

A lake, a reservoir, the dam burst and down it came. And the eyewitnesses that saw it, because thousands of people died in it, when it hit Johnstown, it was a wave taller than this building, taller than this room, but you couldn't see any water. It was filled with rocks and trees and locomotives and houses and they were on fire. And it was coming through the valley and it was shearing off everybody and villages and towns and everything right at the roots. It was inexorable. There was no stopping it. There was no way away from it. But that horror was just a dim reflection of what was bearing down on Jesus.

The wrath of God against sin. And Jesus says, is there any way out of this? And God says no. And what did Jesus do? He wrestled, but he said, thy will be done. And because he submitted and surrendered to God, he won through losing, just like Jacob. Because then what he did was he went off and he wrestled with our real enemy sin and death you see and he triumphed by losing he triumphed by submitting to his father if you're wrestling with God because

you're wanting to say my will be done you got to do what Jacob did you're getting lame as it is but that's okay if it teaches you this. You're wrestling with the wrong one. If you can say to him, thy will be done. If I have you, I have everything I need. And in that sense, walk on after your savior. You'll find that then you will be strengthened to wrestle with the real enemies. Your pride, your anger, your bitterness, they'll go. Do you see? George McDonald says there's only two kinds of people in the world. There's those to whom in this life they have said to God, thy will be done, and those who have refused to do that

so that on Judgment Day God will look at them and say, okay, thy will be done. You wanted life without me? You wanted things but not me? I'll give them to you. And those things will be idols, those things will be will drive you for the rest of your life. That's what hell is. If you say thy will be done, then you're free. Then you'll be following after the Lord. Look at what he did for you. Look at what

he did. Look at him wrestling in the dust for you. Look at what he did. Look at the sacrifice he made. Look at what was bearing down on him. Look at what it cost him to say, thy will be done. Nothing like what's going to cost you. Therefore you say, Lord, if you're able to say it under those circumstances, I can say under mine, and wait until you see the freedom that comes. Let's pray. Our Father, I know that as I look at all the things that the Lord's Prayer tells us, and as I looked at this whole series of sermons, I know that this is the hard one. This is the one that seems almost suicidal to modern people.

Thanks for listening to Tim Keller on the Gospel in Life podcast. If you'd like to see more people encouraged by the Gospel-centered teaching and resources of this ministry, we invite you to consider becoming a Gospel in Life monthly partner. Your partnership allows us to reach people all over the world with the life-giving power of Christ's love. To learn more, just visit gospelinlife.com slash partner. That website again is gospelinlife.com slash partner. Today's sermon was recorded in 1995. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel in Life podcast were preached from 1989 to 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.