Sermon for 4th
midweek Lent, March 11, 2026
Grace, mercy,
and peace from God our Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.
Amen.
Luke 23:20-25 20Pilate
addressed them again, because he wanted to release Jesus. 21But they kept shouting,
“Crucify! Crucify him!” 22He said to them the third time,
“Why? What evil has he done? I have found no grounds for sentencing him to
death. So I will whip him and release
him.” 23But they kept
pressuring him with loud voices, demanding that he be crucified. And their voices were overwhelming. 24So Pilate decided that what they
demanded would be done. 25He
released the one they had asked for, who had been thrown in prison for
rebellion and murder, but he handed Jesus over to their will. (EHV)
What God
wills will be done.
Dear fellow redeemed,
You’ve
prayed the prayer hundreds if not thousands of times, so have you ever stopped
to consider what we are asking when we pray, “Thy will be done.”? When Jesus taught the disciples to pray this
prayer, do you suppose they recognized what it meant to say to God, “Thy will
be done.”?
I suspect that we often
are thinking that this is a concession to God expecting that He will give us
what we ask for unless He deems it not what He wants for us. I don’t believe that is what Jesus meant when
He taught us to pray the Lord’s Prayer.
As we continue our walk
through the Catechism, we come to the Third Petition of the Lord’s Prayer. That portion of the Prayer states: Thy will be done on earth, as it is in
heaven.
What
does this mean? Luther
answers, “The good and
gracious will of God is certainly done without our prayer, but we pray in this
petition that it may be done also among us.”
He then continues his explanation by asking, How is God’s will done? And again, he answers; “God’s will is
done when He breaks and hinders every evil counsel and will, which would not
let us hallow His name nor let His kingdom come, such as the will of the devil,
the world and our own flesh; but strengthens and keeps us steadfast in His Word
and in faith until our end. This is His
good and gracious will.”
Now, we come to the hard
part; what is the core of God’s will, and how does that apply to you and
me? You see, almost the whole Lord’s
Prayer is aimed at asking God to bring salvation to us. Only one petition out of seven pleads for our
earthly needs. Therefore, we must
conclude that it is God’s will to save people from their sin. God created mankind so that He might walk
among us in peace. However, sin entering
our world certainly has interfered with that.
Therefore, to restore peace between God and humankind, God moved Himself
to destroy the rift that Satan caused.
That brings me back to
what the disciples might have thought when Jesus taught them His Prayer. Did they grasp where this petition would lead
Jesus? Could they have possibly understood
that it would lead to His arrest, to a mock trial, to the lies of false
witnesses, the whipping, beatings, mockery, crucifixion, and finally to Jesus’
death on the cross and burial in a stranger’s tomb?
The actions of those
disciples the night Jesus was betrayed, and in the days immediately following,
suggests that they truly couldn’t understand or realize what it meant when they
prayed, “Thy will be done.” Now, there
was much in the writings of the psalms and prophets that should have made clear
to the disciples what would happen to the promised Messiah. Furthermore, Jesus told them on several
occasions that He was destined to suffer and die for the sins of the world, but
that He would rise from the dead. Still,
they couldn’t comprehend what that all meant.
So, are we ready to
understand? When we pray, “Thy will be
done,” we are not asking for God to will all our earthly desires into
existence. Rather, we are truly praying (even
if we don’t realize it) that God would be merciful to us and grant us the peace
that only He can give. Already early in
His ministry, Jesus told Nicodemus, “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in
the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, so that everyone who
believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his
only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have
eternal life.” (John 3:14-16)
Likewise, Jesus wasn’t shy in teaching this to His disciples and to the
crowds.
When “the Jews tried
all the more to kill him, because he was not merely breaking the Sabbath, but
was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God. Jesus answered them directly, ‘Amen, Amen, I
tell you: The Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father
doing. Indeed, the Son does exactly what
the Father does.’” (John 5:18-19)
How does this apply to God’s good and perfect will? St. Paul later explained, “Faith comes
from hearing the message, and the message comes through the word of Christ.”
(Romans 10:17)
As Jesus walked through
Galilee and Judea, He was proclaiming Good News to the people. He was telling them of God’s will to save
sinners through the life and death of His beloved Son. At first, many believed and wanted to follow
Jesus, but the more He explained and the deeper His teaching went, the more
people turned away, and at the end, probably the majority of the Jews just
wanted Jesus gone, and when whipped into a frenzy by Jesus’ enemies as He stood
before Pilate, they cried out, “Crucify!
Crucify Him!”
Even though Jesus gave His
life for ours, this is exactly what God had expected that nation of people to
do. God didn’t choose Israel as His
people because they were perfect or even believers. He chose them because He knew that though
many would believe and be saved, the crowds would eventually turn against His
Son. Still, God’s desire to save sinners
continued on, because “God our Savior, … wants all people to be saved and to
come to the knowledge of the truth. For
there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus,
who gave himself as a ransom for all, the testimony given at the proper time.” (1
Timothy 2:3-6)
On top of all this, it
would be no help to us if God demanded a payment on our part or if He only
intended salvation to come to Abraham’s blood descendants. So that we would know the truth that sets us
free from sin and death, Paul wrote, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of
the law by becoming a curse for us. As
it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.’ He redeemed us in order that the blessing of
Abraham would come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that we would
receive the promised Spirit through faith.” (Galatians 3:13-14)
We now know God’s
will. Our God loved us so much that He
would stop at nothing to reconcile sinners with Himself. He gave His Son, Jesus, into suffering and
death, so that we might live and never die.
He had Jesus suffer the torments of hell on the cross so that the full
penalty for the sins of the world has been paid. Furthermore, so that generations of people
would learn of Jesus and all He has done to reconcile us with God, God sent out
disciples, apostles, missionaries, pastors, and teachers to tell of Jesus’ love
and faithfulness.
God has also instructed
parents to teach their children of His great love and mercy. Through Moses, He instructed, “The Lord is our God. The Lord is one! Love the Lord your God with all your heart
and with all your soul and with all your might.
These words that I am commanding you today are to be on your heart. Teach them diligently to your children, and
speak about them when you sit in your house and when you walk on the road, when
you lie down and when you get up.” (Deuteronomy
6:4-7)
There are many times we
may wonder why God allows evil to continue in the world, or why He doesn’t end
all suffering right now. God doesn’t
answer every question we might have, but we do know why Jesus had to suffer. St. Peter once argued against Jesus having to
suffer and die and Jesus reprimanded that apostle for his opposition to what
was necessary. (Matthew 16:22-23) Later,
after seeing Jesus suffer and die but rise again, and after the Holy Spirit
arrived to further instruct the apostles, Peter wrote, “Indeed, it is
better, if it is God’s will, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil,
because Christ also suffered once for sins in our place, the righteous for the
unrighteous, to bring you to God.” (1 Peter 3:17-18)
So, we have our answer
concerning God’s will. He wants to save
us from the punishment and damnation we deserved, so He sent His Son Jesus to
win our freedom from sin, death, and the devil.
And God’s will is that we believe in His Son that we might be saved
through faith in Him. Before He created
the world, God chose you to hear His Good News and be saved. (Ephesians 1:4-5) This is what Lent and Christianity as a whole
is all about. Thank the Lord, What
God wills will be done. Amen.
Now to the King eternal, to the immortal, invisible, only God, be honor
and glory forever and ever. Amen.
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