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Searching the Unsearchable – Catechetical Series on the Lord’s Prayer: Third Petition
In the name of Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh. Amen.
Matthew 6:10: Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Romans 11:33-36: Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! “Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?” “Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him?” For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ:
We’ve come to the hardest petition: Your will be done. Why is it so hard? Because it means wrestling with this question, “Do I really mean ‘your will be done,’ or do I mean, ‘Your will be done…so long as it doesn’t conflict with my will….Your will be done…so long as it doesn’t interfere with what I want….Your will be done…so long as it doesn’t cause me trouble….Your will be done…just run it by me first?’”
There’s the rub. Even in the most sincere moments, there’s still the teeniest, tiniest part of me that really wants God to just do what I ask. And maybe it’s not so teeny and not so tiny. Maybe it’s a big part of me that says “Your will be done,” but means, “You’d better do my will here, or else!”
The problem is God doesn’t. He told us through Isaiah: My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways. And today Paul waxes eloquent on this point, as he sings to the Romans: Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out! “Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?” “Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him?” For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen. Come to grips with this: You’re not God. You don’t know God’s will. Seeking to know God’s will in its fullness is scrutinizing the inscrutable. Accept that. Accept that God’s will is beyond you. Accept that you’re searching the unsearchable. We relate to God not in terms of what He could and might do, but what He did and does.
“It’s God’s will.” Everyone’s thought that at some point. “It’s God’s will that I move here, take this job, go to this school, join this church, marry this person.” But how do you know? Would this be more accurate? “I really feel like God is leading me this way….” “I think this is what God wants us to do….” Is that letting God’s will be done? Is it even trying? No. It’s starting with my will and then attaching God’s name to it. A dangerous game. A Second Commandment breaking game.
Consider how “I think” and “I feel” theology works out more often than not. “I think that a loving God would never send someone to hell who never heard the Word of God.” “I feel like God would never condemn me for being homosexual because I can’t help it, I was made this way.” “I feel like if we love each other and are committed to each other, a piece of paper doesn’t matter, we’re married in God’s eyes.”
Do you think those are straw men? I just finished reading a book where four theologians from four different theological “schools” discussed whether it’s necessary for someone to believe in Jesus in order to be saved. Three out of four theologians were willing to say that someone who has never heard about Jesus, someone who is a Muslim, a Jew, a Hindu, or a Buddhist can be saved. Then pay attention to the decisions made recently by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Despite God’s clear words speaking against homosexuality, their most recent Churchwide Assembly endorsed homosexual relationships and allowed for homosexual clergy. Or, take a look at the increasing number of couples who’ve decided that despite the First, Fourth, Sixth, and Eighth Commandments, they’re going live together outside of marriage. Listen hard enough, and you’ll almost always hear, “I know God wouldn’t,” or “My God isn’t…” Whose will is that?
Now consider your own life and theology. How are your decisions made? Is it “I think” or “God says”? Is it based on what God could and might do or on what God did and does? God could and might do any number of things. He can save people in the blink of an eye. He can prevent every tsunami, tornado, and flood. He can cure sickness, disease, and even raise people from the dead. We’ve seen Him do it throughout Scripture. But do you accept that just because God could and might do something, that doesn’t mean that He will or does? Do you accept the fact that you are not in God’s inner councils, that He has not spoken His most intimate words to you? Do you understand that it’s possible, just possible that you don’t know everything there is to know about God, let alone the best way for the world to work? Or do you refuse to grant that authority, power, control, and wisdom to God? If you refuse that, then God is no longer God. You are.
Job came close to this. He lost his children, his home, his wealth, and his health, in a few days. His friends came and tried to convince him that he must have ticked off God, so confess! His wife concluded that God had abandoned him, so give God the finger and die. And over the course of the discussions Job had with God, he came close to doing that. Finally, God stepped in. He put a stop to “I think” theology. “Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge? What do you know, Job? Were you there at creation? Can you control the winds, the rain, the weather? Were you there when I told the devil that he could test you, but not take your life?” Job could only say, I know that you can do all things; no plan of yours can be thwarted. You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my counsel without knowledge?’ Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know…..My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.
We must do the same. We haven’t sat in on the councils of God. We don’t know what He has in store for us. We don’t know what He’s prevented. We don’t know what He’s decreed as the limits of our pain, suffering, toil, and labor. I’m reminded of a cartoon. A man walking down the street gets hit in the head with a rock. He yells at God, “How could you let this happen?!?” Then we see Jesus holding back thousands of stones, and He says, “Sorry ‘bout that.” Of course, the analogy limps if we understand it to mean things slip through the cracks on God. They don’t. But you get the point. You don’t know the depths of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God. You can’t see all the judgments He makes and the basis upon which He makes them. You can’t trace out His pathways, because you don’t have an eternal perspective. Yet.
So just stop. Stop wringing your hands over what God could and might do, what God seems to do and not do. Rather, take a moment to see what He did and does. Because as unsearchable as all those hidden parts of God’s will are, the ones that I sometimes disagree with, so unsearchable are the ways of God that I have seen. God the eternal says, “I don’t want anyone to perish. I want all men to be saved.” And so when man tossed away Paradise, God launched His eternal rescue plan, “I’ll send my Son.” And that Son, who could have questioned such a plan, instead, on the worst night of His life said, Your will be done. And our Gospel lesson revealed that will: This is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.
But keep going. Because so far He’s talking about an abstract group of people, all that he has given me. Yet, in His unsearchable judgments, He chose you. He not only sent His Son to be the ransom for the world’s sins, to offer His life and His blood as the atoning sacrifice for those sins, the one sacrifice that got up and walked away from the altar on which He was offered, so that sinners can be declared saints. But your Lord, in His unsearchable wisdom, distributes that very life, that very blood, that very Savior’s precious work to you. It’s no coincidence that your parents taught you about Jesus and brought you to a baptismal font. That's God's will. It’s no coincidence that your pastor confirmed you in the faith of the Christian Church. That's God's will. It’s no coincidence that offered to you on His altar is the very body that hung on the cross and the very blood that poured down His flesh. That's God's will. It’s no coincidence that He has preserved you in the faith. That's God's will. It’s no coincidence that the Church has never perished, that the Devil, the world, or even your flesh hasn’t fouled it up. That's God's will. It's no coincidence that you're here today. That's God's will. It’s what He did and does. It’s what Paul knew when he wrote: we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.
I don’t know everything there is to know about the will of my God. But what I do know is more than enough – Jesus. Because Jesus convinces me that even the most hidden will of God still must be for the good of His Church, and for the good of me! With Jesus in view, you can say, putting aside everything you think and feel, Your will be done, because you know the mystery of God, because you know Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Amen.
Good day, and may the Word of God comfort us with the message of mystery of our Triune God.
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