00:00:00.000 - 00:01:07.000

[Music] Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

00:01:07.000 - 00:01:34.000

Not tragedy, but triumph. A message by Dr. Bruce W. Thielman. Last Sunday morning, one of the high school young people of our church was kind enough to come to my study, following the eleven o'clock hour of worship, and share some comments and words of appreciation with regard to the study of the patterned prayer in which we are now engaged.

00:01:34.000 - 00:01:57.000

He said that he felt he'd never realized all the implications of the words which our Savior has delivered to us. And after exclaiming over what we had already talked about, I went on to remind him of the phrase with which we would be confronted this week. "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."

00:01:57.000 - 00:02:23.000

And with the honesty which high school kids seemed to radiate, he looked at me and said, "Wow!" Well, it's that kind of phrase. And if we haven't discovered anything else about this prayer to this point, we at least have discovered, I trust, that every word in it is pregnant with meaning. Every phrase is heavy laden with the truth we need to know and to live.

00:02:23.000 - 00:02:43.000

"Our," the very word with which the prayer starts, "our," that asserts the brotherhood of man. We see it in many aspects of our life. Someone pointed out to me the other day how we are medically dependent upon one another. For example, our children don't get diphtheria because of the studies of a Japanese and a German.

00:02:43.000 - 00:02:59.000

Our children don't get smallpox because of the studies of an Englishman. They don't suffer from rabies because of the studies of a Frenchman. They don't suffer from pellagra because of the research of an Austrian. They don't know the dangers of poliomyelitis because of the research of an American.

00:02:59.000 - 00:03:18.000

You see, medically we are dependent upon one another. Science knows no boundaries, and this is true of all education and culture and art. In every dimension of our experience we can discover our dependence upon one another, but somehow we have a tendency to forget this, and so at the very beginning of this prayer,

00:03:18.000 - 00:03:39.000

Jesus says, "Pray, 'Our,'" which asserts that we are brothers. "Father," how loaded with meaning is that single word? The Jewish concept of father was of strength and love. The father was one you could depend upon, and you could depend upon with total confidence,

00:03:39.000 - 00:03:57.000

that he would lift you up. I stood once and watched the father berate his son. His words were scathing and cruel, and he ended his denunciation with these words, "Jesus Christ would have never done what you did."

00:03:57.000 - 00:04:19.000

At that point I couldn't stand it any longer, and I looked at the father and I said, "And Jesus Christ would have never done what you just did." So the concept of father is one of strength, yes, and correction, yes, and discipline, yes, but always with tenderness and forgiveness and with love.

00:04:19.000 - 00:04:36.000

Even the little word "art," "Our Father which art," that refers to Christ being now, to God being now, and in this day when radical theology is popular, that's quite a concept to announce. For there are many who in this time are heralding the fact that God is dead, at least in his transcendent dimension.

00:04:36.000 - 00:04:55.000

He exists no longer, and we only discover him as we discover him in other people. There is no longer reverence for the phrase, "I am that I am," that God is and that God is now and that God always will be. But that's what this prayer asserts. I love the little story of the two preachers

00:04:55.000 - 00:05:18.000

who arrived at heaven's gate simultaneously. One was a country preacher who'd ministered all his life in a little church far out in the boondocks. And St. Peter said to him by way of interrogation, "Who is God?" And the old man answered, "God is my Father who gave his Son and comforts me with his Spirit."

00:05:18.000 - 00:05:37.000

St. Peter said, "Enter in. The kingdom of heaven is yours." And the other minister was a professor of systematic theology, and he was known round the world. And he approached the gate and St. Peter said to him, "Who is God?" And this learned man looked at St. Peter and said, "God is the ground of all beings.

00:05:37.000 - 00:05:51.000

He is the necessary foundation of all that exists. But we must not make the mistake of thinking that God himself exists, for if God is, then by his very isness he is limited." And St. Peter looked at him and said, "Huh?"

00:05:51.000 - 00:06:13.000

[laughter] There's a lot of truth in that, I suggest. And this prayer announces to us so positively we can't deny it, that not only God is, but God is with us now, hearing the very prayer that we pray, every word.

00:06:13.000 - 00:06:35.000

And then we come upon this phrase, "By kingdom, by will, on earth as it is in heaven." Sermons could be preached on every word, multitudes of sermons, on each and every concept that's captured in this single phrase. And how are you supposed to surround that phrase, to penetrate that phrase,

00:06:35.000 - 00:06:52.000

to surround, to somehow pull it apart and put it back together again in the very few minutes that are ours? A Texan was visiting in Israel, visited a small farm, asked the Israeli farmer how large his farm was. The farmer said, "Forty acres."

00:06:52.000 - 00:07:09.000

Then the Israeli farmer said to the Texan, "And how large is your farm back in Texas?" And the Texan said, "Well, I get in my car in the morning and I drive three hours due east. Then I turn right and I drive three hours due south. Then I turn right and I drive three hours due west.

00:07:09.000 - 00:07:26.000

Then I turn right and I drive three hours due north. And at the end of that drive I have gone completely around my ranch." And the Israeli looked at him and said, "I know just what you're going through. I used to have a bum automobile like that, too."

00:07:26.000 - 00:07:49.000

Well, as I contemplate this phrase, I begin to think to myself that no vehicular power within my mind or my spirit is going to enable me to surround, to encompass, to capture everything that is here for our sharing in these minutes. So let me just state the phrase in other words, try to sum its sense in a single sentence, and then just make a few brief comments about it.

00:07:49.000 - 00:08:18.000

What Jesus is saying to us is this. "Pray that all the universe will acknowledge God as King, do His will, and find its peace." There it is in a single sentence. "Pray," Jesus says, "that everything that is will acknowledge God as Sovereign Lord,

00:08:18.000 - 00:08:48.000

will seek only to do His will, and in the doing of that will will discover its peace." Some people have taken that beautiful prayer and made a very ugly thing out of it. How many there are, for example, who look at this sentence and this prayer and transform it into some kind of a plea for a fanatical fatalism.

00:08:48.000 - 00:09:17.000

The doctrine that everything that happens in our experience is planned, premeditated, and ordered by God. A mother has her drunken husband mash her child's brains out. And someone visits and says, "It was the will of God." You stand confronting a 13-year-old boy who's just come from his mother's funeral,

00:09:17.000 - 00:09:44.000

and you say, "It is the will of God." How much evil, how much false truth, how much perverted doctrine has been foisted upon the minds of innocent people by those who look at every cruelty, every calamity, every tragedy, every disaster in life, and attribute it to God.

00:09:44.000 - 00:10:06.000

How can one see God as He's painted on the pages of Scripture and in the life of Jesus Christ and accuse Him of such a thing? It's blasphemous. And yet there are those who see God as one who intimidates,

00:10:06.000 - 00:10:24.000

as one who moves us like so many keckers upon the board of life, as one who bosses us around. Reinhold Niebuhr once invited his little girl to go for a walk with him, and she didn't want to go. So he reasoned with her, and she decided to go with him.

00:10:24.000 - 00:10:42.000

And when they came back, he said, "Now, aren't you glad you decided to go with me?" She said, "I didn't decide. You were bigger than I was." Well, there are a lot of people who look at this petition and see here the instruction to pray to a God who's bigger than we are

00:10:42.000 - 00:11:05.000

and simply say, "Big God, don't be too hard on us." And that kind of a fatalistic interpretation of this word is far from true and far from what we know of God. And then there are those who take this sentence and try to make out of it a kind of a battle cry

00:11:05.000 - 00:11:19.000

to bring the kingdom of God on earth. And they, of course, know what the kingdom of God is. These are those individuals who, through the keyhole of their insight, have penetrated the dark mysteries of God

00:11:19.000 - 00:11:34.000

and having discovered everything that needs to be known and having a perfect picture of how life on earth is supposed to be lived, they set out to bring others to their point of view. Sometimes I get letters, letters which will attack a particular personality

00:11:34.000 - 00:11:53.000

or a church or a concept, and they'll attack it in the most harsh and cruel and unrelenting and uncompromising words. And then these letters, always anonymous, are signed with these words, "I've been led of God to say this to you."

00:11:53.000 - 00:12:09.000

I stood one day, a very sunny day in southern Spain, at Toledo, outside of the churches in Juan, and this beautiful little church, like a jewel in the midst of the city, is lovely to look upon.

00:12:09.000 - 00:12:24.000

And it was hard for me to imagine as I looked at it that it was here, within the confines of this building, that Torquemada began the Spanish Inquisition. Torquemada, a man who twisted men's bodies, who tortured,

00:12:24.000 - 00:12:47.000

who inflicted unspeakable pains and travesties upon the bodies of men in order to force them to believe what he understood the kingdom of God to be. I'll go to Geneva, and there at Geneva stand at the statue of Michael Servetus. Servetus was a man who had a different idea from Calvin.

00:12:47.000 - 00:13:07.000

And Calvin, the founder of our faith, so caught up in the truth of what he believed, and I believe too that it is true, could not tolerate the presence of Servetus, and so he tried him and had him beheaded. And later, the citizens of Geneva were so ashamed over what had happened

00:13:07.000 - 00:13:26.000

that they erected a statue in the memory of Servetus. Now this is what can happen when an individual becomes so possessed with the notion that they and their understanding of the kingdom of God is right, and they are going to bring it into being here on the face of the earth,

00:13:26.000 - 00:13:53.000

to become so possessed and obsessed with it that any love in their life is lost. And they become narrow and severe and without charity. Our church has been very much criticized because we elected to separate ourselves from the National and World Council of Churches.

00:13:53.000 - 00:14:10.000

There have been those who have said that we've done this because we look upon these agencies as being communist conspiracies. That is completely untrue. We have never suggested it, implied it, or even considered it seriously, and would suggest to those who do consider it seriously

00:14:10.000 - 00:14:31.000

that they might examine themselves for some kind of national paranoia. Now our reason for withdrawing from the councils is rooted in the fact that we think they have a rather myopic view of the ecumenical movement, that their protestations put to shame what they actually do,

00:14:31.000 - 00:14:52.000

that they lack the expertise to make the proclamations which they frequently make, that they have become, rather than an agent of reconciliation, an agent provocateur within our society. And one more criticism, and this one the one that has relevance to this text,

00:14:52.000 - 00:15:17.000

that they have failed to announce to men that the kingdom of God exists in Jesus Christ and that the kingdom of God is not going to be won or accomplished by the works of mankind. The Council of Churches talk repeatedly of style of life and style of living, and they talk about the importance of education and the importance of feeding the hungry

00:15:17.000 - 00:15:33.000

and the importance of making medical facilities available all around the world and what intelligent man would differ with any of those suggestions. Would any of us here say that education is unimportant? Would any of us here say that the hungry should be permitted to die in the midst of their hunger?

00:15:33.000 - 00:15:47.000

You don't need to convince a hungry man that he has to eat. You don't need to convince those who are dedicated through the use of their talents to the raising of more abundant crops or to the advance of medical knowledge or to new processes of education.

00:15:47.000 - 00:16:05.000

You don't have to convince those people about the importance of what they're doing. They understand the importance of it, and they bring a compassion to their commitment to it, and they're ready to make these things available to all of those upon the face of the earth who have needs. That's not the problem.

00:16:05.000 - 00:16:31.000

The problem exists within the hearts of men. Education, more food, medical advance would never have solved the difficulties of Biafra or the Vietnam War or the race of Czechoslovakia because these problems at their roots are centered in the perverted hearts of men, hearts of men.

00:16:31.000 - 00:16:54.000

And in the midst of this perversion, the councils have stood for men joining together to bring the kingdom of God on earth, and men standing together cannot bring the kingdom of God on earth unless those men in and of themselves have experienced the kingdom within their own hearts. Jesus Christ is the kingdom.

00:16:54.000 - 00:17:09.000

Jesus Christ announced in his ministry, "The kingdom of God has come into the midst of you." And he referred to himself, "To be in Christ is to be in the kingdom." The kingdom existed 2,000 years ago. The kingdom exists today.

00:17:09.000 - 00:17:22.000

The kingdom will live forever. But it is not a territory. It is not an attitude. It is not a social program, no matter how truistic or noble that program might be.

00:17:22.000 - 00:17:47.000

It is a commitment to that one who is sovereign God. No collection of bad eggs will make a good omelet. And the truth of this prayer is this, that in our seeking the will of God in our lives, we must seek to be changed, that his will become our will.

00:17:47.000 - 00:18:09.000

And in being changed ourselves, we go out into the world to change the world. Yes, we go into a closet to pray and there meet God, but every closet has a window. And after praying, we look out and see the world, and it's in the world that we live out the kingdom which exists within us.

00:18:09.000 - 00:18:38.000

And Christ says to us, "Pray that God might be the Lord of your life, and that you might obey him with the same diligence as an angel in heaven." It is, you see, a very personal prayer. And it is a very risky prayer to ask God to take over complete sovereignty in your experience.

00:18:38.000 - 00:18:48.000

You notice the position in which Jesus puts it in the prayer. He does not ask us to pray this prayer first. He lays a foundation. He says, "First, remember who God is, Father.

00:18:48.000 - 00:19:04.000

And then secondly, remember to pray that God will always be as he has been, that the love of God we have known before we will continue to know always. Pray that God will hallow his name." And then, having prayed these two prayers, "My Father and my Father, love always as thou hast loved,"

00:19:04.000 - 00:19:32.000

in this context, we can go on to pray, says Christ, "Take control of our lives. Own us. Order us. Mold us. Mend us. Break us. But take control of our lives." There's a fellow named Larry Evers who was a rather successful actor in New York.

00:19:32.000 - 00:19:50.000

He decided that he wasn't serving God as he should be, and so he became a clown. And now he travels about the United States. Hotels put him up on a complimentary basis. And he gets toys and flowers and things of that kind from dealers in towns.

00:19:50.000 - 00:20:09.000

He visits hospitals and homes for crippled children and orphanages. He looks upon children as the symbols of the suffering of the world. And he ministers to them. He just pours himself out in a ministry of entertainment and of word and of testimony to these children.

00:20:09.000 - 00:20:34.000

He's given up everything he possesses to be a clown for the sake of Jesus Christ. Now, you say to me it would take a real clown to do a thing like that, to so totally turn himself over. But is Larry Evers a clown? Douglas MacArthur said to us at the end of the Second World War, "I need 10,000 missionaries in the Far East."

00:20:34.000 - 00:20:48.000

We didn't send them. So now instead of sending missionaries, we send Marines. A missionary costs $10,000 a year. A Marine costs $1,000 a day.

00:20:48.000 - 00:21:00.000

Who's the clown? MacArthur said send Bibles. We didn't send them. So now we send bullets and bombs. Who's the clown?

00:21:00.000 - 00:21:16.000

MacArthur said to us then, "These people need the gospel." We didn't take him seriously. So now we go with guns. Tell me, who's the clown?

00:21:16.000 - 00:21:34.000

In 1928, when the Communist Third International was being conducted, the Russians came over and selected 150 outstanding young Cuban students and took them to Paris and paid for their four-year education at the Sorbonne, one of Europe's leading universities,

00:21:34.000 - 00:21:55.000

and then took them to Moscow for two years of graduate study and then returned them to Cuba. That was in 1928. That was before Fidel Castro's mother and father had even met each other. But those same 150 persons now occupy all the positions of leadership and authority

00:21:55.000 - 00:22:14.000

within the Communist government, which has captured that tiny state. They did that in 1928. I want to lay something on your hearts. Phil Germain a few minutes ago talked about some elective opportunities in our church school,

00:22:14.000 - 00:22:29.000

and one of them is an opportunity for people to discover whether it's God's will for them whether they should be teaching in our church school or not. They're not asking anybody to sign up as a teacher. They're asking people to commit themselves to eight weeks of study

00:22:29.000 - 00:22:52.000

to discover whether it's God's will for them to teach or not. Now, if you're complaining about the difficulties with which young people are confronting us in this time, and if you are sufficiently sensitive to the movements of our world and of our society to recognize that tomorrow the situation appears like it's going to be worse and not better,

00:22:52.000 - 00:23:13.000

and if in the light of these realities you cannot bring yourself to the place where you're sufficiently willing to surrender your will to God so that you can at least engage yourself in finding out whether God wants you to teach or not, then who's the clown?

00:23:13.000 - 00:23:32.000

Of course, I will not delude you. When you pray this prayer, when you make this act of commitment, you're opening yourself to suffering and hardship. When Jesus prayed that God's will be done in his life, it cost him a cross.

00:23:32.000 - 00:23:45.000

Jesus has promised the same thing to each and every one of us, that if we pray this prayer, that is, the prayer of discipleship, we will be taking up our cross daily. He does not seek to delude us.

00:23:45.000 - 00:24:06.000

He lets it all hang out. And having done so, we must recognize that there will be a cross in our future if we pray this prayer. And not only must we recognize it, we must take it up gladly. That doctor who went into a field hospital tent during the Second World War

00:24:06.000 - 00:24:36.000

and said to a young boy whose arm he'd just amputated, "Son, I'm very sorry you had to lose your arm." And the boy replied, "Sir, I didn't lose my arm. I gave it." Just so we don't lose ourselves to a cross. If we're praying to God, "Thy will be done in my life, here on earth, just as it is in heaven,"

00:24:36.000 - 00:25:02.000

we're stretching out our arms and asking for it. But in the moment that we ask for the cross, we make a marvelous discovery. We discover that it's not the way of tragedy, but the way of triumph. For you see, when you take the cross of Jesus Christ to yourself,

00:25:02.000 - 00:25:26.000

when you commit yourself totally to the sovereignty of his Father, all other slaveries disappear from your life. When I had surgery last September, when they wheeled me down to the operating room, which was quite a job, there was a Dr. Walker, who was my anesthesiologist.

00:25:26.000 - 00:25:38.000

And he walked over and he shook my hand. He gave me a nice smile. He's a fine Christian man, an elder in that community. And I said to him, "Are you going to be able to give me a local?" I had requested a local anesthesia.

00:25:38.000 - 00:25:54.000

He said, "My word, to give you a local, we'd need a needle that long." He said, "No." I said, "I'll tell you what. You just leave everything to me." And he smiled.

00:25:54.000 - 00:26:10.000

And I'd known him for a long time. So I just closed my eyes and left everything to him. And you see, in that moment of commitment, in that moment of just surrendering myself to him,

00:26:10.000 - 00:26:29.000

all fears and anxieties and tensions and being uptight just kind of disappeared away. In making myself totally obedient to his instructions, I rid myself of all these other slaveries. And that's what happens at the Cross.

00:26:29.000 - 00:26:45.000

And something else, too. You discover that your goal is assured. I don't know if you've been in the new Haunted Mansion down at Disneyland or not, but haunted houses really upset me.

00:26:45.000 - 00:27:03.000

And the first time I went through it, I went through it with a member of our church, so I had to look like it was all, you know. But you get in one of those cars, and there's a voice that whispers in your ear,

00:27:03.000 - 00:27:17.000

"Do not close your door. I will close it for you." And this door closes right before your eyes, you know. And then you go hurtling off into the darkness. But of course, it's all very entertaining,

00:27:17.000 - 00:27:31.000

and in the end, you come out right where you should be. That's a crude, but I think an accurate, illustration of what it is to accept the sovereignty of God in your life. You sort of get into a cart,

00:27:31.000 - 00:27:40.000

and the door closes behind you, and there's no steering wheel, and there's no brake, and there's no pedals,

00:27:40.000 - 00:28:05.000

and you kind of go hurtling off into the darkness. But in the end, you know you'll be right where you're supposed to be. And on the journey, you'll have an absolutely marvelous time. So what Jesus is saying to us here, my beloved people, is this.

00:28:05.000 - 00:28:21.000

Put your hand into the hand of God. Make yourself so small that God can carry you. And you will hear him say, "There will be pain.

00:28:21.000 - 00:28:31.000

There will be suffering. There will be sorrow. There will be a cross. But I will always have your hand,

00:28:31.000 - 00:28:48.000

and I will always lift you up." And my brother and sister in Jesus Christ, to be able to go through life on the shoulders of God, that's not tragedy.

00:28:48.000 - 00:29:19.000

That is triumph. Our Father, our Savior, our blessed and comforting Spirit,

00:29:19.000 - 00:29:42.000

take command of our lives. We surrender them to thee, even though it means a cross. May we walk with thee

00:29:42.000 - 00:29:56.000

and talk with thee and know in all of our days that we are thy known.