God's Will Is Not Secret

Selected Scripture

Let's have a word of prayer as we begin our study tonight.

Father, with indeed a heart of anticipation I approach a needful subject. Thank You for the sensitivity of the staff who have asked me to speak to this particular theme because they're so many asking these questions. May Your word become clear, Father, may it not be the word of men or a man but the Word of God. Sharp and powerful, life transforming, in that anticipation we pray. Amen.

The subject we want to speak about tonight is knowing the will of God. This has been a favorite study of mine for many years and I have had the privilege of writing a little book on the subject that's been out for quite a number of years now, I think about six. But it's a question that comes up again and again so the staff felt that I should speak to the subject on this particular Sunday night, taking a break from our series of Daniel Studies. And I want to speak in a very practical vein so that we'll get a clear understanding of what it really means to know God's will for our lives. That is a major question in fact; I would dare say that in my life that's probably the most commonly asked question, How do I know what God wants me to do? In Psalm 143 and verse 10 David prayed a prayer that must be the desire of every Christian. David prayed this, "Lord, teach me to do Thy will." That's very basic, I think, to the life of a believer. Because being a Christian is the affirmation of the Lordship of Christ. Being a Christian is an act of initial submission to the control and leadership of Christ. And so doing His will certainly follows that kind of a submission. Our blessed Lord Himself set the example. No other but Christ has the perfect servant's heart. No greater pattern or model for obedience to the will of God could ever be pointed to than Christ Himself. For from the very beginning in His incarnation He made it clear that He has come to do the will of Him that sent Him. And even when that took Him to the agony of the anticipation of the cross as He in the garden poured out in prayer to the Father the feeling of His own soul even at that crisis moment He never wavered from the commitment for it was there that He said, "Not My will but Thine be done."

The early church had a similar kind of commitment. For again and again and again did they pray, Thy will be done, it says in the book of Acts. This was the pattern of life, for Christ, for the early church. The Apostle Paul prayed that prayer in so many words, Thy will be done. Peter is so many words, Thy will be done. It is a way of life for a believer. And in case you have forgotten, think back a few weeks to Matthew 6 verse 10, "Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come," what? "Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven." That is one of the essential petitions in the life of every believer for that prayer is the model of all praying. We are to pray consistently, "Thy will be done." Doing the will of God from the heart, as Paul expresses in Ephesians 6:6 is basic then to the Christian's life.

In fact, I would dare say that unless there is a desire in you to do the will of God it is at least questionable whether you are a Christian at all. John 7 indicates that for one who is a believer there will be a desire to know the Father's will. Paul operated by the will of God. In Romans just to give you a couple of Scriptures, chapter 1 verse 10 he says, "Making requests if by any means now at length I might have a prosperous journey by the will of God to come unto you."

In other words, everything in his life was framed within the context of the will of God. At the end of Romans in the 15 chapter in the 32 verse he said, "In order that I may come unto you with joy by the will of God." It was a way of life to him. And then there is an expression, I think, that's so very special at the end of the book of Colossians in chapter 4 and verse 12 where Epaphras who is one of you, a servant of Christ, greeteth you always laboring fervently for you in prayers, and what is the objective of his prayer on behalf of the Colossians? "That you may stand perfect and complete in all the will of God." The great heart of the Apostle Paul expressed in the message of Romans chapter 12 was that, "We may know what is that good and perfect will of God." Peter states that the distinguishing mark of a Christian is a preoccupation and a centering of his life on the will of God. I Peter chapter 4 verse 2, "That he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lust of men but to the will of God." It is the distinguishing mark, then, of a believer. Modeled for him by Christ and if we say we abide in Christ, I John 2:6, we ought to walk as He walked. And He walked in submission to the will of God. Is that your desire? It should be if you call yourself a Christian.

Now at that point we interject a question, What is the will of God? Let's assume that we're committed to it. Let's assume that as believers we desire to do the will of God. The next question that arises is can we know the will of God? And there are people who question this. Some people think that the will of God is a very allusive thing; it's kind of like the brass ring on a merry-go-round. If you get it that's kind of neat but if you don't you still get a ride. And you can live your Christian life without it. Other people think the will of God is sort of a mystery, it's sort of a foggy, hidden, secretive thing, God is sort of like the universal Easter bunny who stashes it somewhere and runs around saying ‑ You're getting warmer, as we frantically try to find it. Some people think the will of God is a trauma, it's something like running down the road and falling and your nose lands on a map of India and you say ‑Yes, Lord, India it is, or whatever. But people have strange ideas about the will of God. Some a rather mystical visionary dream orientation, others as if God needs to speak with them out of heaven, some feeling it's a traumatic event and most, I think, who believe those kind of things ultimately winding up with the sense of frustration and feeling that they never found God's will at all and they'll have to wait to get to heaven to know the fullness of the meaning of life. But I believe we can know God's will. Let me tell you why.

I don't think God wills things for us that he doesn't make available to us. That's to me a very basic thought. If God has a will for my life, then He will reveal it to me if I'm in the right place to receive it. God does not purposely frustrate Himself. And so people say ‑ I don't know what school I should go to or I don't know what job I should take, I'm in the midst of making a major decision or I don't know what girl to marry I've got six that are in line and I'm cutting them down. I'm going to make a cut this week and we'll make another cut next week and see who's left, but I don't know which one, see. Or how do I know whether I ought to move to another house or how do I know what I ought to do with this problem person in my family or what I ought to do to harmonize myself better with my wife or my husband. How do I know what God's will is? The answer to that question is that God does have a will and if He does have a will that He wants you to know, He'll make it available to you. I really believe that God is in the business of openly, overtly and clearly manifesting His desires for us. You can know that. You go all the way back to Genesis chapter 1 and verse 14, you will read in that very, very primitive account, the very first chapter in the Bible, right at the very beginning of creation, this statement; "And God said, Let there be light in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years."

Now the stars and the moon and the sun are not just for days and years, they're not just simply to identify calendars they are for signs and for seasons. And the Hebrew word seasons doesn't mean winter, summer, spring and fall. The Hebrew word for season there, the specific word means ‑ an assembling of the people or a gathering of the congregation.

In other words the stellar bodies were literally to be used by God to establish certain gatherings of the people. And if you study the Old Testament you'll find out that all of the festivals and all of the feasts and all of the holidays of Israel were identified by where the heavenly bodies were at a certain time. They were all in relation, for example, of the vernal equinox or the full moon. That's why in Colossians it tells us that now that we are in Christ and we are in the new covenant there is no longer any need to keep a feast or a new moon. Our calendar for Easter and Christmas is established by the movement of the stellar bodies. God has established signs.

In Psalm 104:19 He appointed the moon for gatherings of the people. From the very beginning God was making manifest certain things. And encoupling the stellar body movement with His revelation to His people, religious festivals were established. God revealed His will in a very, very clear place where all could see it. We think about how God revealed His will throughout the Old Testament and we know so many, many cases where He revealed it externally.

For example, there was the miracle of the sign of the covenant with Abraham, the birth of Isaac, a very outward tangible indication that God was going to keep His promise. And then later on when it came time for Isaac to have a wife, the servant Eliezer was called. And Abraham said ‑I want you to go and find a wife of his own people. And Eliezer it says placed his hand inside his thigh; he put it near the procreative area and made a vow that he should find him a wife of his own people. And you remember what the sign was? Go to the well and wait there and as the maidens come at the close of the day the one that offers you water and water for your camels, she's the one to pick. A sign. Very outward. Very clear. Very specific. And then as the children of Israel were led through the wilderness it was a pillar of fire and a cloud. And then there was Gideon in Judges chapter 6 in the battle against the Midianites and there was a sign ‑ the fleece was wet and the ground was dry and the ground was wet and the fleece was dry. And that was a sign and God was showing His will. And then there was fire on Mount Carmel. And then there were those acts of Isaiah and Jeremiah where they literally dramatized very visually what God was going to do. You see, God has always revealed Himself in a very clear way. And in the Old Testament commonly He did it through very visible outward, physical phenomena.

Now when you come to the New Testament you see this as well, don't you? We see signs in the New Testament. The gospel of John is a series of 8 great miracle signs. In fact, you might be interested to know that the word miracle is never mentioned in the gospel of John one time. Truly, this beginning of miracles, I take it back, that's the only time it's mentioned. The rest of the time it's a sign, a sign, a sign. Because they are signs pointing in a very physical way to Christ. And in John 20 verse 30 and 31 it says in that specific text; "The things that Jesus did were signs and He did many other signs in order that we might believe‑that He is who He claimed to be." And then of course, with Peter, there was the sign of the sheep in Acts 10. And then there was Paul's conversion, an outward, dramatic, miraculous sign of blindness, the glory of God. And then in II Corinthians 12:12 the signs of an apostle.

You see, in times prior to the completing of the word of God, God demonstrated His will in a very outward, physical dramatic way so that no one could miss it. But as the miracle ages have passed how do we know God's will now? Well, we have in our hands the word of God. The whole purpose of the miracles was to point to the Word of God, to the prophet of God as he spoke the word of God. Once the compellation of the divine revelation was finished, it then becomes the source of God's will. So, today I don't believe we look for miracles, I don't believe we find in the New Testament injunctions for us to seek, to find God's will in the stars or to find God's will in some phenomena or to find God's will by some providential arrangement of circumstances which we ascertain as a divine act. I believe we go at this point to the Word of God. And I think substantially we can find the will of God in the Scripture.

I want to suggest to you the things that are the will of God from Scripture. Simplifying and reducing it down. Number one ‑ God's will is that you be saved. God's will is that you be saved, that's where God's will begins. In II Peter chapter 3 verse 9 it says this; "The Lord is not slack concerning His promise." Now the critics may say He is and that's the thrust of this chapter, the critics may say Oh, God isn't going to do anything, where is the sign of His coming? All things continue as they were from the beginning, everything's been going along the same way, all this stuff about judgment, all this stuff about doom that we've been hearing, all of this stuff that's going to supposedly come upon the false teachers, why we've never seen any of this. All things continue as they were from the beginning. Peter's reply is this, "It is not because the Lord is slack concerning His promise like men are, it is not because there is a gap between what He says and what He does, it is because He is long suffering toward us not willing that any should," what? "Perish but that all should come to repentance." It is the will of God that men be saved, redeemed not perish. I call your attention to Matthew chapter 18 and the words of our Lord there in verse 11, "For the Son of man has come to save that which was lost, how think ye? If a man have a hundred sheep and one of them be gone astray doeth he not leave the ninety and nine and go into the mountains and seek that which is gone astray? And if so be that he find it, verily I say unto you he rejoiceth more over that sheep then over the ninety and nine which went not astray. Even so it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish."

Now the reference in the passage primarily deals with children but it can be broadened because it is the heart of God who is not willing that any should perish. Peter broadens it for US. In I Timothy a word that speaks to the same matter in chapter 2, "For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God, our Saviour, who will have all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth." God wills that men be saved.

Now, that's where the will of God begins. I mean, if you're looking for the will of God apart from salvation you have no basis on which to look for it. You know, every time you see an athlete who wins a prize and they rather glibly say ‑ I want to thank God. I want to thank the Lord for this. You have to wonder whether they are Christians or not because if they're not Christians God didn't really have anything to do with that. It wasn't the expression of His will at all and even if it was they wouldn't know that. For the natural man understand not the things of God. Salvation is basic to enter into the family, to acknowledge the Lordship of Christ is when the will of God is first revealed.

In Mark chapter 3, 1 just want to show you an illustration of this same thing, in Mark chapter 3 and verse 31, Jesus was teaching in a particular house and it says; "There came then His brethren and His mother and standing outside they said unto Him, calling Him." Jesus was crowded and crushed in the house, as was often the case. "And His mother and His brothers wanted Him."

Now it doesn't tell us why, it doesn't tell us whether they had a need or whether they thought he was being overtaxed or whether there was some particular family problem or whether they were on the way to somewhere but the multitude sat around Him and they said to Him; "Behold, Your mother and Your brethren outside seek for You." And He gave amazing response. He said, "Who is My mother and My brethren?'' And they might have looked at Him like He was a little bit off His rocker if He didn't know who they were, "He looked round about on those who sat about Him and said, Behold My mother and My brethren." He identified the people around Him as His mother and brethren because He says in verse 35, "Whosoever shall do the will of God the same is My brother, My sister, My mother." And there He is saying you really come into My family when you do the will of God. And, of course, that initial step is salvation. God wills that men be saved. And when they respond to that and enter His family then they become the brothers and sisters and mothers of Christ. This is God's will. So much is it God's will that He came into the world to die. We have things we will but we don't will them to the extent that we would die for them. But God did. The incarnation, the crucifixion revealed the commitment of God to the expression of His will. God's will is that men be saved, that's where it begins. And I don't make any assumption, really, in the church. I know that there are people who are not saved, I know there are people here tonight who have never opened their heart to Jesus Christ, I know that. And I say to you, the will of God for you is not that you perish, the will of God for you is not that you go astray forever, the will of God for you is not that you be cut off from eternal life. The will of God for you is not that you spend forever in hell; the will of God for you is that you be saved. So much was it His will that He died for our sins and not for ours only but for the sins of the what? The whole world, that's His will. God says Paul, who is rich in mercy for His great love where with He loved us even when we were dead in sin has made us alive together with Christ. By grace are you saved through faith that not of yourselves it is a gift of God, not of works lest any man should boast. The will of God expressing His love and His mercy is that you be saved. That's where it begins. You say ‑ I'm already saved and I still stumble. Let me take you to a second point.

Ephesians chapter 5, God's will is not only that you be saved but according to Ephesians chapter 5 it is that you be Spirit filled. Spirit filled. In Ephesians 5 we find in verse 16 the statement, "Redeeming the time because the days are evil." And the idea here is that we don't have much time. There's a pressure coming in these evil days even in the time when Paul penned this. And we must redeem the time. And on that basis, he says: "Wherefore, be ye not unwise."

Now unwise is just a nice word for stupid. Without information or knowledge, uninformed, ignorant ‑ Be not stupid or uninformed but understanding what the will of the Lord is. Now you hear people say ‑ you know, I don't know what God's will is. All right, stupid, we'll help you. That's really what Paul is saying. And I have to put myself in that same category as well. I've struggled with that. Now, Paul ‑ you say ‑ how dare you. I'm searching. I'm banging on doors and putting out fleeces and I'm doing all kinds of stuff. But I don't know the will of the Lord. Well, you shouldn't be stupid; you should know the will of the Lord. And if you just read the next verse you'd find out what it is. "Be not drunk with wine in which is excess but be filled with the Spirit."

Now God's will is to be filled with the Spirit. Not drunk with wine which is excess. You remember when we went through Ephesians 5 we talked about the fact that those people got drunk because they believed it induced communion with the gods. The pagans in Ephesus believed that drunker they got the more they ascended to a high, open communion with the gods, much as drug addicts think they reach a higher level of spiritual consciousness, they believe the same thing. And the Apostle Paul says if you really want to commune with God don't get drunk with wine, be filled with the Spirit.

Now what does it mean? You say ‑ does this mean I've got to get the Spirit? I had a fellow come to me in Dallas and say ‑ You know? I read your book on the Charismatic movement, I read the chapter on spirituality and he said You know, I chased around for so long trying to get the Holy Spirit, finally somebody told me I already had Him. If any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of His, Romans 8:9. What ‑ even the cruddy Corinthians who committed every conceivable sin are told by Paul ‑ Don't you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit? We've all been made to drink of one Spirit, I Cor. 12:13. So, all believers possess the Spirit of God. That's not the issue. We don't need to seek what we already have. You say ‑ Well, if we all have the Holy Spirit shouldn't we have power in our lives, shouldn't we really move out in our lives? That's right because Acts 1:8 says you shall receive power after the Holy Spirit has come upon you, the word power is dunamis or dynamite, you should be literal dynamite. Most of us look at our lives and say ‑ I think I'm a dud. I keep lighting the fuse and nothing happens. Why, if I have the Holy Spirit, don't I go anywhere? Why, if I have all things that pertain to life and Godliness, II Peter 1:3, why, if I'm complete in Him, Col. 2:10, why, if I have this power does nothing happen? And the question is simply answered because you're not filled. It's one thing to have the Spirit resident; it's something else to have the Spirit dominant. Let me give you an illustration of it. Pleeroo the word filled is used in the gospels to speak of total control, for example, in John 16:6 it Says "Sorrow hath filled your heart." In Luke 6:11 it says, "They were filled with madness." In Luke 4:28 "They were filled with wrath." In Luke 5:26; "They were filled with fear."

You see, mostly in our lives we can balance those things off. Like, for example, sorrow, we have a little sorrow and a little joy, a little sorrow tipped this way and a little joy tipped this way and we try to balance it if something real bad happens we try to thing happy thoughts and everybody tries to boost us up, when something horrible, total disaster a terrible injury, a death or whatever ‑ voom goes the sorrow side and we're filled with sorrow, that's the meaning of the word. And in our lives basically, the Spirit of God is there and there's a little for the Spirit and a little for us and a little for the Spirit and a little for us and we kind of balance things off with the flesh but there comes a time when we yield all to the Spirit and we're filled with the Spirit and the scale topples on His side. According to Romans 6 it's a question of yielding yourself in obedience to the Spirit of God. We are to be yielded to the Spirit of God in order that He may fill us.

I want to illustrate it with an illustration I've used many times in teaching this but I think it will get it across to you. Peter is the classic illustration I want to use. Now Peter basically knew one thing, if he didn't know anything else he knew he wanted to be where Jesus was. One time Jesus tried to send him away and he said ‑ Lord, to whom shall I go, You have the words of eternal life. The Lord could never get rid of Peter, I know there were days when he walked down the road and stopped and Peter ran into the back of Him. Peter followed Him. He was always around. He was one of the inner‑three, I'm not sure he got elected; I just think maybe they couldn't get rid of him, whatever. But Peter wanted to be where Christ was and there is a very, very obvious reason why. Because when he was with Christ he found an incredible resource for his life.

For example, Matthew 14 the disciples are out on the water and a storm is kicking up in the sea of Galilee and they're getting a little panicky, all they're trying to do is just go a little ways from the hill where they had been in the little village, it shouldn't have been a problem but the storm came up and the swirling wind that gets inside that little valley there between those cliffs on the east and the hills on the north and the west, really got the thing swirling. And I've experienced that in some of my trips there and the boat was out in the middle and they were really in a state of panic and then all of a sudden as they looked off silhouetted against the moonlight here came someone walking on the water.

Now that, if you weren't already pretty well done in that would tend to do it, to see someone walking on the water. And, of course, you remember what happened, they cried out ‑ "Is it You, Lord?" That's the only possible explanation they could come up with. And He responded in the affirmative and immediately without a thought of anything, Peter jumped out of the boat and started walking on the water. Now he had been a fisherman all his life and had never done that. He knew he couldn't walk on water. Cognitively he knew that. You say ‑ Well, why did he do something like that? Leap out of the boat, fire out across the white caps? Well, I believe it was because he had this consuming desire to be where Jesus was. He got out there a little ways and started feeling his oats, you know, like he was pretty good and started checking out what he was doing and then he began to sink. The Lord had to pick him up and then they walked back together to the boat.

Now I can just imagine how Peter, you know, must have approached the boat. Hi, guys, you know, just very cool and casual as he strolled across the water with the Lord. Peter learned a great lesson. He learned that when he was near Jesus Christ he could do the miraculous, he could reverse the elements, he had power over nature. Later on in Matthew chapter 16 the Lord was quizzing the disciples about who He was and He said; "Who do men say that I am?" And they said, "Some say You are Elijah or Jeremiah or one of the prophets." And He said, "But who do you say that I am?" And all of a sudden Peter's mouth started moving independent of his brain and he said, "Thou art the Christ the Son of the living God." And the Lord said to him, and He must have been smiling, "Flesh and blood didn't reveal that to you, Peter, My Father in heaven did." And Peter learned a second great lesson, when he was in the presence of Jesus Christ he could not only do the miraculous he could say the miraculous too.

The next time we see him in our little analogy he is in the garden, Jesus has been taken captive and that terrible thing that occurred in John 18 where the soldiers had taken Jesus to be tried in a mockery of a trial and to be executed. And he was down in that initial phase of that situation in the house of Annas, Peter was outside and he was standing by the fire a far off. And you know what happened? When he was a far off he was a coward. On three occasions what did he do? Denied Christ.

Now what's amazing about that is if you just back him up just a few hours when the soldiers came to take Christ he grabbed a sword and started wailing away at the first guy in line. The Bible says he chopped the ear of Malchus, but you know he didn't go up to Malchus and say ‑I'm going to get your ear and just do that, he wanted his head. Malchus reacted, ducked, he only got an ear. But in effect he was saying ‑ I'll take the whole Roman army, there may have been as many as 500 soldiers from Fort Antonius and he was going to start with the first guy in line and work his way through the troops. You say ‑Well, he's got to be nuts. No, because he was standing next to Jesus Christ and I'm sure in the back of his mind was this ‑ Lord, when these guys came marching in here and You said Your name, they all fell over, like dominoes. Crash.

Now, Lord, if I get into trouble, would You do that again? I mean, I know he felt that the Lord was there and he had a miraculous courage. He could do and say the miraculous and he had almost a sense of invincibility. But the next time you see him he's warming his hands by the fire and a little girl asks him if he knows Christ and he denies. Two other occasions he denies and he curses. You say, ‑It's inconceivable, Peter, this is inconceivable. You walked on water, controlling and overriding the nature of the elements of nature. You who opened your mouth and God speaks. Peter, you with the sword are going to fight the whole Roman army. What happened? What happened was he got separated from Jesus and no sooner did he get separated then he lost it all. Well, Jesus died and rose, appeared to the disciples three times and one extra time to Peter and after that ascended into heaven.

You say, Oh, man, with the Lord in heaven we might as well throw Peter under six feet of dirt. I mean, if he bailed out at 75 feet what good is he going to be when the Lord is in heaven. And you know what happens? The next time we see Peter after the Lord is in heaven the first thing he doe