The Ministry in the Will of God, Part 3
Romans 15:30‑33
For tonight, let's go back to Romans chapter 15. And I'm doing my best to finish this chapter. We've been looking at verses 22 to 33 which really is just a narrative of some of the plans of the Apostle Paul that are in his heart, but it is loaded with some key insights into the matter of doing the will of God, ministering in the will of God. And I suggested to you that from verse 22 through 33 the key phrase that sort of unlocks that whole passage is in verse 32. It is "by the will of God," that little phrase, "by the will of God," was a phrase that was more than just a part of verse 32, it was a part of the whole life and ministry of the Apostle Paul. It was the will of God that controlled Paul's life. He was a servant, not living for his own design, not living to fulfill his own desire, but living to do the will of God. And that is a very basic and rather obvious element of Christian living. Anyone in any service rendered to Christ seeks to do the will of God if indeed they're on target as they ought to be.
Paul could conceive of no higher duty, no nobler pursuit, no greater joy, no richer privilege than to do the will of God. And very much like David, in fact the parallels between Paul and David are rather great. There are many parallels and I have through the years sort of chronologed some of them in my mind and when I hear Paul committing himself to do the will of God, I hear the echo of what David said when he said in Psalm 40 verse 8, "I delight to do Thy will, O my God, yea Thy law is within my heart." He was committed to that same thing.
By the way, that statement by David in Psalm 40 and verse 8 is also a Messianic sentiment repeated by the Lord Jesus Christ in Hebrews 10:5 through 7. It was the delight of David to do the will of God. It was the delight of the Messiah Christ to do the will of God, it is equally the delight of Paul to do the will of God and should be our delight also. And when you look at the testimony of Paul you see throughout his life and ministry this commitment to do the will of God. And we've been looking at that and I'll just give you a little bit of a reminder.
In the opening of 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians and 2 Timothy, he introduces himself as an Apostle by the will of God. The will of God was that determining factor in his call to ministry. On the Damascus Road when he first met Jesus he asked the question. . . what will You have me to do? What will You have me to do? It was always from the very beginning his desire to do what it was the Lord wanted him to do. And later on in that same experience on the Damascus Road he was met by a man named Ananias whom God used to communicate to him and as it's recorded in Acts 22:14 Ananias told him the God of our fathers has chosen you that you should know His will. He was chosen as a unique vessel to know the will of God, to do the will of God, to pass the will of God along to those who would come after him.
The commitment to doing God's will continued as Paul was called out of Antioch in Acts 13 and he was called along with Barnabas to go evangelize the Gentiles and he went eagerly. He went anxiously because he knew that was the expressed will of God through the moving of the Spirit of God on those that prayed and fasted.
Further, the rest of his life was ordered by this idea of the will of God. When he wrote to the Romans, you'll remember, back in chapter 1 verse 10 he started out by saying, "I want to come to you and I will come to you by the will of God," if God wills. When he wrote to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 4:19 he said, "I will come if the Lord wills." The high point of spiritual commitment for everybody he records in Romans 12 where he says that we are to present our bodies a living sacrifice, holy acceptable unto God, and we are to be not conformed to this world but transformed by the renewing of our minds that we may know and that we may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. The goal of our life then is to know and perfect in our own lives the outworking of the will of God.
He said on another occasion that the generous gift the Macedonians had given to him, in 2 Corinthians 8:5, was given by the will of God. He called Christians to understand in Ephesians 5:17 what the will of the Lord is. He said, "Be not unwise but understanding what the will of the Lord is." In Ephesians 6:6 he called on us to do the will of God from the heart. He prayed for his own disciples in Colossians 1:9 to be filled with the knowledge of the Lord's will. And his friend Epaphras in the same epistle, chapter 4 verse 12, prayed continually for Christians to be perfect and complete in all the will of God.
It wasn't just Paul. The writer of Hebrews carries the same thing. The writer of Hebrews says that after we have done the will of God, chapter 10 verse 36, we will receive the promise of glory. And James says you ought to say if the Lord wills we will live and do this or that. In other words, it's presumptuous to assume anything unless you say "if the Lord wills," James 4:15. Peter said, "So is the will of God that with well doing you may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men." And Peter added to that in 1 Peter chapter 4 verse 2 that we are no longer to live in the flesh to lust, but live to the will of God.
So it is all through the New Testament basic to Christian living that as John says in sort of summing up our little look at these various writers, "He that doeth the will of God abideth forever," 1 John 2:17. Doing the will of God then is basic. And I just run that by you so you'll recapture the essential character of this concept of doing the will of God.
All right, what does it actually mean? How does that sort of flesh out in our ministry, doing the will of God? Well we've been looking at what Paul tells us here and we're going to go back to it but before we do I want to mention something that might help you in sort of defining things a little more clearly.
When we say "the will of God" we could be speaking of anyone of three dimensions because the will of God is sort of packaged in three dimensions. Number one, there is the sovereign will of God. Now by that I mean there is that absolute unalterable inviable will of God that never changes. Now that sovereign will of God relates to God's control of history, to His absolute outworking purpose in history which is unwavering and perfectly carried out to fulfillment without variation. That is the will of God that determines the direction of the history of the universe, the history of the world, the history of mankind. This will is revealed and in part is revealed, some of it may not fully be revealed but there is in the Word of God the revealing of what the plan of the ages is, so generally this will is revealed and will always be accomplished. This is the sovereign will of God. And there are many passages that refer to that sovereign will of God which is unalterable and undeniable and will come to pass. God will do what He predetermines to do in the course of history.
Secondly, there is the moral will of God. Now the moral will of God has to do with God's desire for obedience to His expressed standard of righteousness. The moral will of God is b bound up in every command in the Bible. When God says you ought to do this, you ought to do that, you ought to do this, and not to do that. . . that expresses His moral will. His moral will like His sovereign will is revealed in Scripture. But unlike His sovereign will it is not always done. You and I do not always do the will of God in this regard. We are not always faithful to fulfill the moral will of God, that is the expression of God's will that comes through His commands in Scripture.
Now the third dimension of God's will and the one we're focusing on here is God's personal will, that is His will for an individual believer's life, the detailed plan that God has for an individual Christian's life ministry. This will is not revealed in Scripture. For this we must listen to the voice of the Spirit of God. For this we must take into consideration the options and circumstances that we find ourselves. So the sovereign will of God is revealed and fully accomplished. The moral will of God is revealed and not always accomplished. The personal will of God for every individual is not revealed in Scripture and may or may not be accomplished, depending on the obedience of disobedience of any given Christian.
Now it is this area of the personal plan of God for the life of the believer that is Paul's concern here, the area of personal will, knowing the place of ministry, the place of service that God would have you and God would have me. Seeing the guiding moving hand of the Holy Spirit at work in our lives, this is his concern in this text.
Paul certainly was committed to all three aspects of God's will and they do intersect and they do interface but here he is most concerned with focusing on God's working in the unfolding of his own ministry. He was in the flow of doing God's will for his own personal life and ministry.
Now in that third dimension we learn from Paul some important ingredients. One who is in the flow of God's personal plan for his life, one who is in that flow has a ministry marked out by certain elements, and we've been looking at those elements.
Number one was the element of precision in verses 20 and 21. We've talked about that in detail, we won't go back to it. One who functions in the will of God has a precision to his ministry. There is a very clear structured design and direction for the ministry of one who is moving in the will of God.
Secondly, another key that marks a ministry in the will of God is providence. We saw that in verse 22. There is a sense in which God's sovereign will intersects at this point and He controls the circumstances to bring about the expression that is very personal for the individual believer. One who functions in the will of God is committed to providence, to the moving of God in the circumstances of life, as well as precision--a clear focus on the gifts and callings that God has given.
The third element we saw is the element of planning. One who serves in the will of God is involved in planning. Even though we trust in God's sovereignty, even though we look to God for direction and guidance and the moving of all the circumstances to bring about His will, we still involve ourselves in careful planning. And commitment to sovereign will does not preclude planning and dreaming and setting goals. The one who labors in the will of God can function in attention, attention between God's absolute sovereignty and our own planning and our own hoping and our own goal setting. And that tension has to be there.
The fourth principle that unfolds out of this passage in this wonderful insight into Paul's heart is the principle of priority from verses 25 to 28 as we saw last time. Paul says in spite of my dreams, in spite of my plans to go to Spain, in spite of my desire to come to you and get supplies and money and people and go on to Spain to evangelize an area that's never been evangelized, to take Christ where He's never been, as it were, to go where Christ is not named, where no church has been established, aside from the fact that that's my calling and aside from the fact that that's my dream, there is a priority in my heart that I must care for and that is this matter of taking an offering of money to the Jerusalem church for the relief of the poor saints and the conciliation of the Jewish-Gentile factions in the church.
So we see here that one who functions in the will of God though he is a planner and a dreamer of sorts and has goals and desires, he still is able to commit himself to the present priority. And there's no lame duck service. He's able to finish the task he has begun.
And then fifthly last time we said there is the element of prosperity. For one who functions in the will of God there is prosperity in verse 29. He says that when I do come to you I know I'll come in the fullness of the blessing of Christ. He knows because of past experience. He knows the condition of his heart is one of obedience therefore he receives the blessing of God in his life. Later he did come to Rome and he did enter into a blessed ministry. Even though he was a prisoner he had a tremendous impact and when he wrote while in Rome as a prisoner the epistle to the Philippians, in chapter 1 he talks about his bonds and his afflictions and all of his troubles and all of the other difficulties that were being heaped on him by critics on the outside who were condemning his ministry because he was in prison, in spite of all of this he said Christ is being preached and I rejoice and I'll keep on rejoicing. And over in chapter 4 he continues to rejoice. He writes, "Rejoice in the Lord always and again I say rejoice." He says, "I know how to be abased, I know how to abound, everywhere and in all things I'm instructed, to be full and hungry, to abound and suffer need, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." He says, "My God shall supply all your need according to His riches and glory by Christ Jesus." He's learned that. He knows that. He is, even though a prisoner, in a state of blessing and praising God and rejoicing for the goodness of God to an obedient servant.
So he knew that he would prosper in the spiritual dimension when he functioned in the will of God. Precision, providence, planning, priority and prosperity are all elements of ministry in the will of God. They are the principles that mark out the person devoted to pleasing the Lord. Now all of those are positive. I want to go to a negative one tonight. And that's our sixth principle in verse 31, this is where we'll pick up our text.
This is a negative one and it is the principle of persecution. It is also true that someone serving effectively in the will of God is going to experience persecution. Notice verse 31, we'll come down to verse 31 and back up to verse 30 in a moment. He's asking in verse 30 for people to pray for him and the reason is in 31, "That I may be delivered from them that do not believe in Judea and that my ministry, or my service, which I have for Jerusalem may be accepted by the saints."
Now the first line is what I want you to grasp, "That I may be delivered from them who do not believe in Judea." The word "delivered" is a very interesting word, rhuomai, means to be rescued, to be rescued out of a dangerous life-threatening situation. I want you to pray for my rescue. I want you to pray that I will be delivered from a very dangerous situation.
It was not uncommon for Paul to face danger. In fact, it was a way of life. He was in danger most of the time. He continually asked for prayer because of that. In writing to the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians chapter 1 verse 8, "We would not, brethren, have you ignorant of our trouble which came to us in Asia that we were pressed out of measure above strength insomuch that we despaired even of life, we had the sentence of death in ourselves." In other words, whatever happened in Asia was nigh unto the end of Paul. "But we trust in God who raises the dead, who delivered us from so great a death and continues to deliver in whom we trust that He will yet deliver us. You also helping together by your prayers."
So he says to the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians 1:8 to 11, you pray too because we're in great danger day after day after day and you need to pray that God in His grace will deliver us. In chapter 4 of 2 Corinthians he says, "We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; perplexed but not in despair; persecuted but not forsaken; thrown down but not destroyed; always carrying about in our body the dying of the Lord Jesus." We always are on the brink of death, he means by that, dying for the cause of Christ.
So what he is saying in verse 31 indicates to us that it marks a person in the will of God really moving ahead for the glory of God that they're going to be persecuted because they're invading the kingdom of the enemy. Now he had no idea at the time of the writing of Romans what was to come from those who do not believe in Judea, Jews who resented him, he had no idea at this particular time what they would do to him. But it was very predictable that they would be hostile toward his message.
He was confrontive, he was direct, he spoke the truth of God, he said what needed to be said without pulling any punches for the sake of compliance with an existing attitude. And because of his tremendous confrontive ministry he endured a great amount of persecution. And he knew inevitably on his way back to Jerusalem, remember now, with the money to give the Jerusalem saints, he knows that there will be a negative reaction to his arrival on the part of the Jews who hate him. And the Jews in Judea hated Paul because of his renouncing of Judaism. Remember at one particular time he was their hero. He was the guy representing the Jewish establishment going around killing Christians, imprisoning Christians, and persecuting Christ. And now he is the ultimate traitor. He is the turncoat. He's become one of them that he once persecuted. He has abandoned in the mind of the Jews Judaism. He has abandoned his heritage. And he is vocally proclaiming the lordship of Jesus Christ, vocally proclaiming the gospel, heralding a new message, speaking about a new covenant saying the old covenant is passed