Tonight, I invite you to turn with me to John chapter 6, as we read together verses 25-41 of that chapter. A familiar chapter, as we know, it begins with Jesus feeding the 5,000 men plus women and children. The portion we want to read is specifically the portion where Jesus talks about Himself as the bread of life. Focusing on particularly verses 38 through 40, in connection with the Lord's Day 49. If you would also turn in the back of the Psalter hymnal to page 61, to the Heidelberg Catechism. Page 61 in the back of the Psalter hymn, The Lord's Day 49, dealing with the third request of the Lord's Prayer, Thy will be done. And we give expression to what it is we confess the Scriptures teach regarding this petition. The question asks, what does the third request mean? Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven means help us and all men to reject our own wills and to obey your will without any backtalk. Your will alone is good. Help everyone carry out the work he is called to as willingly and faithfully as the angels in heaven. John chapter 6 as we give our attention to the reading and consideration of God's Most Holy Word. Beginning at verse 25. When they found Him on the other side of the lake, they asked Him, Rabbi, when did you get here? Jesus answered, I tell you the truth, you are looking for Me not because you saw miraculous signs, but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. On Him, God the Father has placed His seal of approval. Then they asked Him, What must we do to do the works God requires? Jesus answered, The work of God is this, to believe in the One He has sent. So they asked Him, What miraculous sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? Our forefathers ate the manna in the desert. As it is written, He gave them bread from heaven to eat. Jesus said to them, I tell you the truth, It is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is My Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. Sir, they said, from now on, give us this bread. Then Jesus declared, I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me will never go hungry, and he who believes in Me will never be thirsty. But as I told you, you have seen Me, and still you do not believe. All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and whoever comes to Me I will never drive away. For I have come down from heaven not to do My will, but to do the will of Him who sent Me. And 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. At this, the Jews began to grumble about Him because He said, I am the bread that came down from heaven. There ends the reading of God's Word. May He add His blessing to it and impress its eternal truths upon our hearts. Beloved, in the Lord Jesus Christ, this third request, this third petition of the Lord's Prayer, Thy will be done, naturally fits with the first two. Hallowed be thy name, and thy kingdom come. Because God's name, beloved, is hallowed. God's name is set apart. It is treated as holy, as His will is seen as holy, as it is seen as good, and as it is seen as for our good. And His kingdom comes more and more as His citizens more and more submit to the rule of His Word and Spirit by obeying God's will. Now, it's clear, I trust, that the Catechism, summarizing what Scripture teaches with regard to this petition, that the Catechism defines thy will be done to be talking about obedience. It's talking about obedience to God's will. It's a call for the church to positively obey the will of God. In all things to ask, Lord, what would you have me to do? Now, in Deuteronomy 29, verse 29, Moses says, The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may follow all the words of this law. We distinguish between the secret will of God and the revealed will of God. And God's secret will is His sovereign plan made by God from all eternity. We don't know this plan. We don't know this will of God until He unfolds His purpose for us day by day throughout history. But we do know what God has said. We do know what God has revealed to us in His Word, which includes His law for our lives. how He desires us to live before His face and before the eyes of a watching world, for which we are taught to pray, Thy will be done. Yet in this text before us tonight, from John chapter 6, Jesus points out a most glorious truth that includes the believer's call to obey the will of God. And with regard to God's will, Jesus gives what we might call a panoramic view, a comprehensive view of God's will concerning Christians and the glorious picture of why we are able to pray this request with confidence. God's will be done for us, in us, and by us. Now again, we understand the context. Jesus had just fed the 5,000 a short time before with five small loaves of bread and two small fish. And this miracle was not lost on the people. That food had to come from somewhere. They noticed that Jesus did something. And they wondered, could He be the one? Yet we know here from what Jesus said, for all they saw, they were blind to the truth. They looked for Him not because of the miracle. They looked for Him because their stomachs had been filled. And now they want a sign from Him like Moses through whom God gave manna from heaven. And Jesus, in essence, flat out says to them, I am the bread from heaven. I am the bread of God. I am the Savior. I am the very one that you need. And in verse 38, He says, For I have come down from heaven not to do My will, but to do the will of Him who sent Me. he identifies himself with God. I came down from the Father. I came down from this very One who sent me to you. And I have come to do His will. Not that the will of Jesus ever clashed with or was ever different from the will of God. But here, he claims to be one with God, the Father. He claims to be the fulfillment of David's words in Psalm 40 when he says, Then I said, Here I am. I have come. It is written about me in the scroll. I desire to do Your will, O my God. Your law is within my heart. In essence, Jesus says, I am the fulfillment of what David says there. I'm the one he was talking about. And then Jesus teaches the most glorious truth of God's will to be done, first of all, for us. On our behalf. Notice verse 39. And 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. And notice with that also verse 37, All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. Did you catch what Jesus is saying there? That God's will includes our salvation. God planned to save us now that must be amazing to you and me beloved because God knew that we would offend him he knew that we would hate him he knew that mankind would try to take his place yet God planned he willed to save a people for himself God's will, which He reveals to us, includes our salvation. These verses are about the certainty of God's power to keep. To keep whom? Those He has given to His Son. Who are they? As Paul says, those whom God elected, those whom God chose before the foundation of the world. He chose them. He has given them to His Son. And the Father has called upon His Son to do that for us, not to lose one of them. Jesus is saying here, that's God's will for me to carry out God's will for you and that's my will too. Not to reject any that God has given to me, verse 37, but to accept every single one of them And therefore, not to lose, verse 39, not to lose even one. To receive them, to accept them all, and to save them all. God's will be done for us. Christ has done it, beloved. He has saved those given to Him to save. He has accomplished that salvation for each and every one through His sacrifice on the cross. He received those the Father had given to Him by taking their place, as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5, God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us. And as Isaiah 53 says, He took up our infirmities. He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. We need to be reminded of that over and over and over again that it was ours. Otherwise, we might become arrogant. we might think that we deserved that He should do this for us. We might even tend to think that we really didn't need His salvation, but what a nice gesture on His part. We need to be reminded, beloved, that the curse for our sin, the punishment that was due against you and me, He took every bit of it. Christ has done it through His sacrifice on the cross because He was qualified. He was perfectly sinless. Now, this is a truth that we know, but I think that sometimes it's hard for all of us to imagine from the youngest child, the young people, to the oldest one here. It's hard to imagine that Jesus Christ was perfectly sinless. He did not sin even one time in thought, in word, in action. Not one time. He was perfectly sinless. He was perfectly obedient to the will of God. He kept all of God's commandments perfectly. And he carried out a perfect salvation. His work alone of perfect obedience to the will of God and his perfect sacrifice, his work alone was acceptable to God and is accepted by God on behalf of those that God gave him for every single one that God gave him. In John 17, verse 12, Jesus prays, None has been lost except the one doomed to destruction, so that Scripture would be fulfilled. Again, hard to imagine, Judas Iscariot was not given to the Son by the Father. Judas Iscariot was not chosen by God. Not all have been chosen by God. But yet the comfort for you and me, beloved, is that the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ and His saving sacrifice will never lose its power. It will never lose its effectiveness. Instead, it will always have power to transform and to gather even the very last of God's elect that might still need to be gathered in to gather that one into salvation. And that means that not only has Christ done it for us, not only has He done God's will for us, But He is still doing it. He is still doing God's will for us. He is still gathering by His Word and Spirit those given to Him by the Father. And also, He is still keeping those whom He has already gathered. He is preserving His people even as we walk this earth. He says in John 10, beginning at verse 27, My sheep, listen to My voice. I know them and they follow Me. I give them eternal life and they shall never perish. No one can snatch them out of My hand. My Father who has given them to Me is greater than all. No one can snatch them out of My Father's hand. I and My Father are one. And Paul says in Romans 8, Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord Jesus. Christ is still doing it for you and me. He is still carrying out the will of God. And this means that even the sin that you and I continue to struggle with, even that sin that we still commit, that sin that we are called to fight against, even that very sin, beloved, cannot and will not snatch us from Him because God's will will be done. Jesus Christ will not lose even one for whom He died. And of course we know that that does not mean that we can go out and sin at will. We are not to go out and live like we want because, well, God's will will be done anyway. We are called as God's people to fight against that sin. God's will be done for us. He has done it. He is doing it and He will do it. Jesus Christ will fulfill God's will completely and perfectly He guards our salvation not only for one day or one week or one year but eternally forever I will raise them up at the last day I will lose none literally Jesus says I will lose no thing I will lose no thing about them this is pointing to the resurrection of the body and the reunion of that body with the soul Jesus will not lose even one part of us His salvation is complete of all of us, every bit of us, body and soul. That is God's will for us. Accomplished by and being accomplished by Jesus Christ. And it means that God's will must also be done in the second place in us. These two are inseparably tied together. God's will for us and God's will in us. Notice what Jesus says in verse 40. 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. God's will includes the fact that those whom He has given to the Son, those for whom Jesus has died, God's will includes the fact that they be brought to faith. That they believe on the One who died for Him. Notice, the goal of God's will, as verse 40 makes clear, is eternal life, as we have said. The goal of God's will is salvation from the curse of sin and from its eternal punishment in hell to new life in Christ, looking forward to that eternal blessedness in the glory and the perfection of heaven and the accomplishment of God's will then, in addition to the work of Jesus Christ for us, as we have already talked about, is the application of Christ's work in us. and the accomplishment of that application in us. You see, we know that eternal life is not gained by keeping a few commandments. It's not gained by you and I even keeping God's commandments perfectly. In sin, it never has been accomplished that way. Eternal life is only accomplished by Jesus Christ and applied to those given to Him by the Father through the Holy Spirit applied by faith therefore thy will be done beloved includes bringing his children to fame having as their very own that which jesus christ has accomplished looking at and believing the son seeing the son notice in verse 36 what jesus says about those who were there at that time but as i told you you have seen me and still you do not believe they saw jesus they saw jesus physically with their eyes, they saw what He could provide for their physical life, but they were blind to the truth. They were blind to their spiritual, their eternal need. But it is God's will that those who look to, not just with a quick glance, but those who gaze upon, those who fix their eyes upon, those who recognize, understand, and discern Jesus Christ, who He is, that He is God Himself and what He has done, that He has given His life in the place of those who believe and those who see that He is the only hope for the lost sinner and knowing who Jesus Christ is by faith and believing the Son with heart and mind and will, trusting in Him, looking outside myself, as the preparatory form says, looking outside myself to another for salvation. and trusting in Him and His sacrifice alone to be made right with God. Theirs is eternal whole. Beloved, the will of God really concentrates on the Son of God, doesn't it? It concentrates on what the Son of God has done for us and who He is to us. It concentrates on His work for us, taking us from the Father, giving His life, and then keeping us. And what He has done in us, bringing us to faith in Him and therefore giving us that eternal life already today at the moment that one believes that eternal life is their blessed possession at that very moment. God's will, beloved, is for our election. It is for our justification by faith, believing in Him. It is for our preservation, but it doesn't end there. It is also for our sanctification. That's a part of His work in us by the Holy Spirit. But in the third place, it also includes God's will be done by us. Someone has said the fact that God has placed His own eternal and everlasting life within us is evidence that His will extends to the way we live, think, act, and grow. Now. It must be that way. Eternal life is new life, brand new life, transforming life. It cannot be the same. Life is no longer as it was before. God's will be done by us, by a living faith. James says, faith without works is dead. Without the works of the law of love is dead. It is not true faith. It is not real faith. Jesus' will was always and only thy will be done. He taught us to pray that prayer. He taught us to desire it. He taught us that God's will, God's way, God's word be foremost in our heart and in our mind and in our actions. Jesus' will for you and me as kingdom citizens is that we delight in and obey the kingdom rules which are for our good. They're for our protection. How could we not want them? His will for us as sheep in the fold of the Good Shepherd is to hear His voice and follow Him only. A living faith, but also an active faith that positively seeks to obey the will of God without any back talk, without talking back as the Catechism says. Boys and girls and young people, I trust you do your chores. Right? No doubt you do your chores, but maybe you do them with some grumbling. Maybe you complain a little bit or a lot because you simply don't want to do them. You don't like to. You don't want to. That's not pleasing to God. He calls us to obey His will without any back talk and to do so in all of life. In our vocation, wherever God has called us, in our recreation or hobbies or home life or marriages or relationships, we are to strive to serve God, to apply the will of God using the wisdom He has given to us, applying it in every situation of life. Striving to serve God through faithful obedience, willingly and faithfully on earth as it is in heaven, like the angels. You see, the angels, the angels who surround the throne of God, they are excited to obey God. They are delighted to obey God. They want to obey God. And that is to describe those whose will it is that God saves. That we want to do His will as a rule of gratitude for God's will, being grateful for God's will to save us. Also, as Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 4, verse 3, for this is the will of God, your sanctification. And therefore, sanctification includes a cleansed life. The Catechism says, Help us and all men to reject our own will. Indeed, beloved, it is our desire that all men would come under the will of God. But it begins right here in my heart. It begins in your heart, in our lives. Help us, O Lord, to deny our own selfish, our own sinful will. Because the Catechism rightly says only God's will is good. Only God's will is for our good. Ours by nature is evil. It is harmful. But instead, as Paul says to Titus, for the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, it teaches us to say no to ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in this present age while we wait for the blessed hope, the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for Himself a people that are His very own, eager to do what is good. That is what God's grace accomplishes. And therefore, as Paul says, to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. Thy will be done. You see, that's how it will be in heaven forever. And that is what you and I as God's people are called to practice today to put God first always. Thy will be done, beloved, is a prayer for the work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts. A prayer that we do God's will from the heart freely and fully without any reservations, without being offended at God's will and instead knowing just how privileged we are that it is God's will that we be saved from sin. That it is God's will that we be in His family. That it is God's will that we live in true peace with Him. And therefore, this is also a prayer of confidence. A prayer of confidence from those who have been given a transformed heart. A transformed heart that is made able to obey our God. You see, that's the truth of God's people in Christ Jesus. is He has made us able to obey Him. Sadly, we don't do it perfectly. We do struggle with sin. We do struggle with a desire to sin. We do commit sin. Yet, praise God, that sin that we continue to struggle with and do commit does not invalidate, it will not invalidate Christ's perfect work. That sin will not ever again cut us off from Him. Instead, God's will be done gives us the assurance that more and more our sin will be cut off from us as the Holy Spirit is faithful to complete the work that He has begun in us. Dear people of God, God's will for us is our salvation. God's will in us is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And therefore, he calls us that God's will also be done by us, equipped by the Holy Spirit to live like the children we are. Praise God for his saving will, guaranteed, accomplished, and applied by Jesus Christ. Amen. Let's pray together. Father, as we bow before You at the close of this service together, at the close of this Your day, we do praise Your most holy name once again for loving us and granting us salvation full and free in Christ Jesus. We thank You for Your holy will. We pray that more and more, Lord, You would open our eyes to see the truth of Your will, To see the goodness, the perfection of it. To desire to live for You. To live in praise to Your most holy name. So often we fall so far short of that, Father. That we pray that You will continue that great work more and more in us. Continue to carry out Your will for our lives. As those to whom You have given such a great salvation. Continue to mold us and make us more and more in the image of Christ. And let us ever be thankful to You. In Jesus' name we pray these things. Amen.