March 22, 2026: On Earth as in Heaven - Matthew 6:10

As we preach our way very slowly through the Lord's Prayer, we're

coming to the midpoint, and I am joyfully engaged in finding this

a very refreshing midpoint, and I hope that you will experience

the same as we go through this text together.

Obviously, we're mostly in Matthew 6 where this verse

resides, but this morning will be in the passage you just heard

in Isaiah 6. So you can find that and put a

bookmark there. But I'll also be in Colossians

3. So Isaiah 6 and Colossians 3.

Briefly to review. We've looked at the invocation

our Father in Heaven, reminding ourselves that we pray to a

loving Father who has adopted us by his grace and that there is

intimacy and access because He is our Father.

But we never forget that he is our Heavenly Father, the maker

of everyone and everything, who's not only willing to handle

our prayer requests, but Abel because he is all knowing and

all powerful. He's our Heavenly Father, and so

we approach him with both intimacy and awe as we make our

request to God. And our Lord's Prayer is very

beautifully framed in a first half and a second-half.

The first 3 petitions are dedicated to God for His name,

for His Kingdom, for His will. It's important for us to pray

for God's priorities and God's agenda first before we enter

into our own petitions about our own needs.

We seek first the Kingdom of God.

Last week we looked particularly at this petition, the third one

in that list, your will be done. And we looked at how the Bible

speaks about the will of God. There's only one will in God,

but God. But the Bible speaks to us about

in a couple of different ways about this one will, His secret

will by which all things come to pass.

This is also known as His will of decree, but also His revealed

will, sometimes called His will of command or His will of

desire, by which He communicates His will to His creatures and

expects to be obeyed. Though His secret will cannot be

thwarted, His revealed will most certainly can and has been

rebelled against. And that third petition asks

that God's revealed will, His will of command or will of

desire, will be obeyed by His humans.

We observed last week that this does not mean that God has some

sort of secret singular plan for our lives that we need to

somehow guess at when making important decisions.

God cares far more about our Christ likeness than He does

about the countless non moral decisions that we make

throughout our lives. The emphasis in that third

petition, thy will be done, is on obedience to His moral will,

to his commands, to Holy Scripture.

And that third, that third petition, your will be done, is

emphasized and modified by the final clause that you see up

there on earth as it is in heaven.

And that's what we'll be looking at today, friends.

We need a transcendent vision, something to lift our gaze up

off of our suffering and our chaos, to give us hope and

meaning in our lives. This need for transcendence is a

universal human longing, and it's powerful, so powerful that

it animates art and music, religions, and all kinds of

other human endeavors. Humans longing for the

transcendent. Now, thankfully, because of

God's common grace to us, much of that culture making is good.

Tragically, however, much of that transcendence inspired

culture making is bad, very bad because it's misplaced in

horrible idolatries that are animated by by greed, selfish

ambition, perversity, and false worship.

Now here in the middle of our Lord's Prayer, between the three

petitions about God and the three petitions about our own

needs, we have this little phrase on earth as it is in

heaven. Theologian Ji Packer notes that

this phrase obviously doesn't stand alone.

It's a modifier and it's modifying what comes right

before it. Thy will be done on earth as it

is in heaven. However, however, that phrase on

earth as it is in heaven is also functioning as a kind of

interlude between the first and second-half of the prayer.

He calls it a refreshing halftime in the midst of the

work of prayer. So first, let's ask ourselves

some questions and try to do an exposition on what does this

mean? What does this phrase mean?

Now, exegetically, this phrase on earth as it is in heaven, is

an adverbial clause. Now you people who love English

grammar are getting a little excited, right?

Let's let's diagram the sentence.

The rest of you are like, do not make me diagram a sentence.

I get it. I understand.

It's modifying and telling us the manner in which God's will

is to be done. We're praying that God's will

will be done as it is in heaven. Think for a minute for with me

how God's will must be done in heaven.

When God, Jesus the Holy Spirit dispatches angels to a specific

task, how many do you think are just like watching TV?

And they're like just a minute. Let's wait for the next

commercial break and then I'll go do your the job You gave me.

Lazy messengers, lazy angels. It's impossible to imagine.

No, we imagine a host of heavenly agents willing and

eager to do God's will. Quickly.

We tell our kids, remember, to delay is to disobey.

We expect prompt action, so we can imagine that these angels

swiftly move to accomplish God's will, but we also expect them to

do excellent work, that they don't mess up the messages that

they're supposed to give or botch the help that they're

supposed to deliver, that they do their work with excellence.

But besides swiftness and excellence and quality, we would

also expect that the angels and angels in heaven do God's will

with a happy heart. We'll talk about our kids now.

Obey with a happy heart that there is an ardent love for God

and for his glory in the heart of these angels, so that they do

his will willingly, not with dragging feet and murmuring

tongues. So we can think about God's will

being done on earth as it is in heaven, with swiftness, with

quality, with the correct motive, that is love for God.

But if you're diagramming, you should also note that the

punctuation in your English Bible is not in the original

manuscripts. I know, that's a shocker, isn't

it? In fact, all the words are just

jammed together. There's not even spaces in

between the words in our oldest manuscripts.

The punctuation in your Bible is not inspired.

It's interpretive. It's important to know because

there's sometimes some decisions to be made on earth as it is in

heaven probably modifies your will be done, but it can also

modify all three of the petitions just like this, and

it's helpful for us to think that through for a minute.

Commentator RT France writes it this way.

The final words, as it is in heaven, are, as in heaven, so on

earth, can be seen to apply to all three of the preceding

clauses. In heaven, among the angels,

God's name is already honored, His kingship acknowledged, and

His will done. And the prayer is that this

heavenly state of affairs may also be reflected on earth.

To pray such a prayer is, of course, to be committed oneself

to honor God's name, accept His kingship, and to do His will.

And I think it's helpful as a mental exercise as we're praying

this prayer and thinking this through.

And so we can come to those petitions and think about how

God's name is always glorified and honored in heaven.

And that's what we want it to be like here too, that His

authority is always recognized and honored in heaven.

And that's how he wanted to be here too, especially among his

people, and that his will will be done.

He will be obeyed and not just here there, but here as well, as

we said, with swiftness and excellence and an ardent heart.

Now, as I mentioned earlier, on earth as it is in heaven also

can be read as a theological statement.

Ji Packer reminds us that the Lord is teaching His disciples

to pray. And after the hard work of

praying these petitions, these God centered petitions, Packer

sees that the Lord himself, in teaching his disciples to pray,

is reminding them that God is sovereign, that God's will will

be done on earth as it is in heaven.

It's a promise, It's a reminder. And that's why he calls it

refreshing, invigorating. Here's the juicy quote that

we've been leading up to. Ji Packer writes this while

petition exhausts, that is, praying the petitions is hard

work and tiring praise invigorates.

While petition exhausts praise invigorates.

And for Jesus to interpose between two spells of arduous

petition. That is the 2 tables of

petitions, 2 spells of arduous petition, a moment to pause and

praise in heaven. Father, your will is done.

Hallelujah. This is a spiritual equivalent

of refreshment at halftime, whereby the strength for the

battle of intercession is renewed.

Here Jesus teaches the precious lesson that praising energizing

energizes and renews praying. Hear him and I can stand before

you and testify in this long semester of 16 weeks working our

way through the Lord's Prayer. I did experience the Lord's

refreshment when I got to this particular phrase that he can

energize us with praise, with heavenly vision so that we can

go forward. And that's why we're in Isaiah 6

this morning. Considering how a view of heaven

can motivate A radical obedience.

Let's hear it again, my friends. Isaiah 6 verses one through 8.

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting

upon a throne high and lifted up, and the train of his temple

filled, and the train of his robe filled the temple.

Above him stood the seraphim. These are angels, each had six

wings. With two he covered his face,

and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew.

And one called to the other, saying, Holy, holy, holy is the

Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his

glory. And the foundations of the

threshold shook at the voice of him who called, and the the

house was filled with smoke. And I said, woe is me, for I'm

lost, for I'm a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst

of a people of unclean lips. From my eyes have seen the King,

the Lord of hosts. He is undone by this vision, by

the magnitude and immensity of his own sin.

Woe is me, then the gospel. Then one of the Seraphim flew to

me, having his hand, having in his hand a burning coal that he

had taken with tongs. Safety first with tongs from the

altar. And he touched my mouth and

said, Behold, this is touch your lips.

Listen, friends, your guilt is taken away, and your sin atone

fall. And then I heard a voice of the

Lord saying, Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?

Then I said, here I am, send me. Isaiah's despair at this

heavenly vision turns to a highly motivated volunteerism to

get after being God's mouthpiece.

God tells him it's not going to be easy.

The people aren't going to listen to you.

It's going to get worse and worse and worse.

And yet Isaiah is motivated by this heavenly vision to obey and

live a faithful life. And now, my friends, all these

centuries later, you have his magnum opus in your Bible, the

book of Isaiah with all its messianic prophecies and its

heavenly visions for you and for me, that we too may get a

glimpse of the glory and therefore have the radical

obedience that comes with it because of his grace to us and

the gospel. So how do we pray it?

How do we pray it? In this section each week, I've

been reminding before I give any applications.

Reminding How do we pray it? We always pray in Jesus name by

the Holy Spirit. He is the one through which His

work and His person makes our prayers possible.

He is our intercessor and it's by His Holy Spirit that our

prayers are animated that we can even say our Father in the 1st

place. We cannot lose sight of the Holy

Trinity as we pray this line also it's not an individual

prayer only. It's also a corporate prayer.

Our Father, we pray as the church your will be done on

earth as it is in heaven. Now how do we pray it?

What is what are some practical way things that we can think

about as we come into this particular modifier in this

section of the prayer. Now, there's a a couple of

things that we want to say. First, I want to say we need to

pray it with heavenly mindedness.

You see how in the middle of the prayer we're thinking about

heaven. We think about how God's will is

perfectly dispatched in heaven. We're having a moment of heaven,

of heavenly mindedness. This is a big and important

biblical theme. We don't have time to go through

much of it this morning, but the Bible recommends to Christians

to be heavenly minded. Now, some people think that

that's a problem. Perhaps you've heard this

phrase. He's so heavenly minded that

he's no earthly good. Some of you have heard this,

made immensely popular by the late, great Johnny Cash, who

wrote a song about it. The rift goes this way.

Come heed me, my brothers. Come heed one and all.

Don't brag about your standing, or you'll surely fall.

You're shining your light, and shine it you should.

But you're so heavenly minded you're no earthly good.

If you're holding heaven, then spread it around.

There's hungry hands reaching up here from the ground.

Move over and share the high ground where you stood.

So heavenly minded you're no earthly good.

It's a warning about a type of self righteousness that wants to

preach the gospel but doesn't care about anybody.

An appropriate warning about heavenly mindedness.

Now cash didn't make it up. It actually goes even further

back. Many attribute the saying

heavily, so heavily minded, no earthly good to Oliver Wendell

Holmes, senior in the 19th century.

Christians so heavily minded, they're no earthly good.

GK Chesterton and CS Lewis push back on this a little bit, as

they rightly should. Because the Bible does commend

to us being heavenly minded. That's a good thing, CS Lewis

writes in Mere Christianity, quote hope is one of the

theological virtues. This means that a continual

looking forward to the eternal world is not, as some modern

people think, a form of escapism or wishful thinking, but is one

of the things a Christian is meant to do.

It does not mean that we are to leave the present world as it

is. If you read history, you will

find that the Christians who did the most for the present world

were just those who thought most of the next.

The apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the

Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, and

the English evangelicals who abolished the slave trade, all

left their mark on earth precisely because their minds

were occupied with heaven. It is since Christians have

largely ceased to think of the other world that they have

become so ineffective in this. Aim at heaven and you'll get

earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you will get

neither. We must be heavenly minded.

So we've already talked about one problem, perhaps a problem

of self righteousness. But you're probably just as

likely, maybe even more likely, to meet a problem of cynicism.

The problem of cynicism related to heavenly mindedness may be

illustrated by Zechariah. You're used to hearing Zechariah

preached around Advent time. Remember, this man, after

decades of infertility, is cynical.

He lacks hope. He's in the holy of holies.

He may even have a rope around his ankle to pull him out in

case something goes wrong in there and he's met with a

vision. Gabriel comes and talks to him

and gives him good news about the fact that he's going to have

a son. And Zechariah said to the Angel,

How shall I know this? For I'm an old man and my wife

has advanced in years, and now the angel's going to give him a

little lesson on heavenly mindedness.

And the Angel answered him. I am Gabriel.

I stand in the presence of God and I was sent to speak to you

and bring you this good news. And then there's a discipline

pronouncement verse 20 of Luke 1 And behold, you will be silent

and unable to speak until the day that these things take place

because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled

in their time. Poor Zechariah, disappointment

is encased his heart that when the Angel Gabriel is in front of

him, he's still having trouble with heavenly mindedness.

Says, how can this be? I'm too old.

So we have the problem of self righteousness.

We always have the problem of cynicism, but where is a proper

way? And this is delivered to us in

Colossians chapter 3. Colossians chapter 3.

Colossians 3 · chapter mention Colossians 3 · chapter mention

The heavenly mindedness that Paul expects from us is the only

way forward. Colossians chapter 3 beginning

Colossians 3 · chapter mention

in verse one. Christians, if you have been

raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where

Christ is seated at the right hand of God.

Think about heaven with me for a minute, where Jesus Christ, who

is raised is seated at the right hand of God.

Set your minds on things that are above, not on earth, things

that are on earth, for you have died and your life is hidden

with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life

appears, then you also will appear with Him.

Christian, fill your thoughts with heavenly mindedness.

Consider the resurrected King of the universe who's sitting on

his throne. Consider how He is able and

willing to do everything and more than we ask or imagine,

consider this. Load your heart and mind up with

a gospel in the future. Hope that we have now.

We can understand what Packer means about this being

invigorating, rekindling. I don't know what you're facing.

I don't know how bleak it might be.

We need a vision of heaven, and when we have this heavenly

mindedness, it will, like Isaiah, kindle a desire to obey.

They will kindle a desire to obey.

And here we can contrast Zechariah with Mary.

Same Angel comes to Mary and says, what's going to happen to

her? And she responds by saying,

Behold, I am the servant of the Lord, let it be to me according

to your word. What is she saying?

Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Colossians chapter 3 goes on. Now that we have the gospel, our

Colossians 3 · chapter mention

minds, and we have a vision of Jesus in the heavens, the

resurrected one in whom we have all hope.

Now we can have the radical obedience to do 2 things.

One is to take off the negative stuff, get rid of sin, battle

with sin by the Holy Spirit and the Word of God, and positively

to put on virtue. Let's look at it together.

Colossians, chapter 3. Verse 5 This is the negative

Colossians 3 · chapter mention

stuff, the stuff you're supposed to get rid of, put to death.

Therefore, what is earthly in you?

Sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire and

covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these, the wrath

of God is coming in. These you 2 once walked when you

were living in them, but now you must put them all away.

And he gives another list, anger, wrath, malice, slander,

obscene, obscene talk from your mouth.

Do not lie to one another, seeing that you put off the old

self with its practices and have put on the new self which is

being renewed in knowledge after the image of its Creator.

Verse 12, it's going to go on to tell us what to put on.

Put on then, as God's chosen One's holy and beloved

compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience

bearing with one another. And if one has a complaint

against another, forgiving each other.

As the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.

And above all these, put on love, which binds everything

together in perfect harmony. Now you may think you should

just try really hard to put on all the good stuff, but Paul's

not going to let you do that. He front loaded all this with

gospel hope, and he's going to remind you of the resources in

Christ to do this. Verse 15.

And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed

you were called in one body, and be thankful.

So the peace of Christ, verse 16, let the word of Christ dwell

in you richly teaching and admonishing one another in all

wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs or

Thanksgiving in your hearts to God.

Verse 17 And whatever you do in Word or deed, do everything in

the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father

through him that your will be done on earth as it is in

heaven. Praise God, praise God.

So as we're concluding, we need to be heavenly minded.

Visions of heavenly realities, present and future, propel us to

radical obedience and a life of praise.

I've been concluding by inviting you to pray with me out loud,

the Lord's Prayer. If you don't know it, that's OK.

You can just listen and perhaps learn to memorize it as time

goes on. When we get to the part where

we're not sure what to do about debts or sins or trespasses,

we'll say trespasses. As I said, that's how my grandma

taught me. It's hard to spray it otherwise.

So will you pray with me, Our Father, who art in heaven,

hallowed be thy name, Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done

on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day Our Daily

Bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those

who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but

deliver us from evil, for thine is the Kingdom, and the power

and the glory forever. Amen.