New Salem Baptist Church

Knowing the Will of the Lord

February 4, 2024

¹⁵ Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, ¹⁶ making the best use of the time, because the days are evil. ¹⁷ Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.^[1]

When we considered this passage two weeks ago, I focused upon the phrase, “making the best use of our time.” We looked at some other passages of Scripture to learn how we could make the best use of our time. Since you have been practicing these things for two weeks now, what are some of those uses of time?

• the apostles’ teaching
• fellowship
• the breaking of bread
• prayers
• being thankful
• prepare ourselves to defend the faith

If we are doing these things, we are making the best use of our time.

This morning I wish to address verse 17: “Do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.”

What is the will of the Lord? Believe it or not the idea of discovering the will of the Lord has become a controversial issue today. As with many doctrines of the Bible, there is disagreement about what constitutes the will of God. Simply put, there are two schools of thought on how to understand the will of God.

One group says that there are three senses in which the Bible refers to the will of God. Another group says that there are only two senses in which the Bible refers to the will of God.

Both groups agree about two of these meanings.

There is what some call his revealed will. As the name implies, it is the will of God as revealed in Scripture. This has also been called his moral will. A more technical name for this is his prescriptive will. An example of this is found in Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians.

³ For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication: ⁴ That every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour;^[2]

There is also his secret will. This is something that is not usually revealed in Scripture. I say “usually” because God does make exceptions. God has a plan or a purpose and he reveals this sometimes through prophecy. He will open the door and allow us to peer into what the future holds. But he does this rarely. This is also called his non-moral will; although there is sometimes a moral dimension to his hidden will, godly behavior is not what primarily characterizes it.  A more technical name to this is his decretive will. An example of this is found in Paul’s introduction in his letter to the Corinthians.

1 Paul, called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, and our brother Sosthenes, ^[3]

God decreed that Paul was to be an apostle before he was even born (Gal 1:15). But until Paul was called by God no one knew that he was going to be an apostle. It was part of God’s hidden plan.

So, both groups agree about these aspects of God’s will. But one group says that there is a third sense in which “the will of God” is used. The third sense is God’s specific will for individuals. For example, God has a will regarding who you should marry, what career path you should choose, and what job you should take when there is more than one available to you.

Those who believe in only two senses of God’s will say that God does have a will about who you will marry, what career to choose, etc. but that these sorts of things are part of his hidden, decretive will and are not discoverable. We ought not to seek to learn about God’s decretive will.[4]

That’s not to say that there are not moral dimensions to learning on how to make good decisions about important matters. For example, in choosing a marital partner we ought to give primacy to the character and moral commitments of our prospective mates. We ought to consider their fitness for motherhood or their commitment to work and their ability to provide for the household, for women and men respectively.

So, a person who held to only the two aspects of God’s will would say with respect to choosing a husband or wife for example, that once they pass the tests of being a follower of the Lord Jesus, of having good moral character, etc. then you are free to marry who you wish. There is a certain feeling of freedom in this position. As long as our potential decisions cohere with the Lord’s moral will then we are free to make our decisions in accordance with our desires.

I am not even going to decide between these two positions. I neither object to nor defend the notion of a specific, individual will. However, I want to make a common- sense observation that, I think, will make these opposite views of God’s individual will less striking and pretty much inconsequential.

Even if one espouses the view that the so-called individual will is just a part of God’s decretive will (secret will), they would have to admit that if we are faced with a decision between two or three courses of action (and have the freedom to choose any), it is obvious that God may have a preference of one.

For example, if you are seeking a job and have three job offers, God knows how you will interact with the boss at each job. He knows how much or how little that job will bless you, how much you will like it, and everything about it. Knowing these things it must be clear that God would prefer one of those jobs for your benefit.[5]

So, why not seek God’s preference? And, if we seek it, why wouldn’t God reveal it to us? This is not to say that he will always reveal it to us. He may very well decide not to reveal his preference for various reasons. Maybe to teach us to exercise wisdom in decision-making. Or, to teach us to know the Scriptures better.

Nevertheless, I believe we ought to seek God’s will in our important decision-making. But we ought not to worry about whether God will reveal his preference to us. Those who take the “three-wills” position sometimes become a slave to waiting for God’s speaking before they do anything and then they often will not make a decision! On top of that, they do not even know how God will communicate his will to them.

To that end I wish to teach you how to discern God’s preferences for you. Another way of saying this is discerning God’s guidance in our lives.

Some Christians go through life paying little attention to God’s will. They avoid the big sins because they know they are supposed to. But they have little or no concern for God’s guidance. This is not the way the people of God lived in the Bible. Others experience anxiety because they are fearful that they may not discern God’s will in key areas of their life and they will miss the blessing.

Both of these pathways are wrong. It is a grave error to seldom or never seek God’s guidance, but it is also unhealthy to think that one may miss God’s guidance because we did not seek it hard enough or well enough.

Let me give you an assurance. When it comes to your own life, guidance is God’s responsibility, not yours. God himself takes the initiative in guiding the person who is open to being directed by him. The Bible shows us that the Lord takes the responsibility to guide us in spite of our confusion and ignorance.

Many times, God intervenes unexpectedly and gives a person guidance even when no request has been made for it! God goes out of his way to make sure a person has the knowledge of his will so that they can be in the best position to accomplish it.

Moses was tending sheep for his father-in-law when God called him to deliver his people from slavery in Egypt (Exodus 3). Saul was looking for lost donkeys when he thought that a “man of God” might be able to tell him where they were. He finds Samuel and Samuel anoints him as king over Israel. Gideon was beating wheat on his father’s farm when an angel came to him and commissioned him to deliver Israel out of the hands of the Midianites.

God desires to guide. This is profoundly seen in John 10.

            10 “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber. ² But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. ³ To him the gatekeeper opens. The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. ⁴ When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. ⁵ A stranger they will not follow, but they will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.” ⁶ This figure of speech Jesus used with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.

⁷ So Jesus again said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. ⁸ All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. ⁹ I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. ¹⁰ The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. ^[6]

Verse 3: “The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.” The shepherd speaks first. Then the sheep hear the voice. He leads them. Sheep are some of the dumbest animals. A friend of mine had a few sheep that his parents kept penned up in a spacious, fenced in area. They also had a Doberman that did not like the sheep. Whenever any of the sheep would back up to the fence he would bite them, usually getting a fair amount of wool for his efforts. But they were so stupid that they never learned not to back up to the fence. They kept doing it and kept getting bitten. My friend simply marveled at their stupidity. That is the way we are. We, in some respects, are like stupid sheep. We keep getting bitten but we haven’t learned to stop backing into the fence.

Verse 4: “…he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice.” Jesus goes before us! Then we follow him.

Verse 9: “If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture.” The context in these passages is eternal life, but there is more here than just that. The phrase “going in and out and finding pasture” is a Jewish expression of the time, meaning a life that was secure and safe. It means that we, the sheep, enjoy both freedom and security.

What is a shepherd? A shepherd is one who guides the sheep to food and shelter.

Christ not only guides us in spite of our confusion about his will, but also guides us in spite of our waywardness. Sheep are also wayward animals.

We have an assurance. God himself takes the initiative in guiding the person who is open to being directed by him. And that leads us to a necessity.

Secondly, we must be open to being directed by him. We must be willing to do God’s will in any decision that confronts us. Apart from such a willingness we will either not discover his will, not understand his will, or not be able to fulfill it if we tried.

In seeking God’s guidance we may think our main goal is to figure out what God’s will is. We should try. But our main problem is our will, not our mind. We must be ready and willing to do his will. If we really don’t, God is probably not going to show us.

Throughout the Bible, when people were called to a task, they were already doing God’s will when the call came. Then, after God reveals his will, they go and do it. Jonah is the exception to the pattern.

If we have an assurance that God will guide us and we are willing to do what he reveals, how then do we learn what God’s will is?

I am going to give you four steps, drawn from Scripture, that will be very helpful in receiving God’s guidance.

[1] Ask for it. Prayer plays a vital role in guidance. We should ask for the revelation of God’s will for us. But, more than this, we should ask for the willingness. Our problem will be more with our heart than with our head. This is why I listed the necessity of being willing first. But we can fool ourselves! We can think that we are ready to do God’s will but we really are not. Our own desires are sometimes so strong that we may not be as willing to do God’s will as we think we are.

There was an old Scottish woman who went from home to home across the countryside selling thread, buttons, and shoestrings. When she came to an unmarked crossroad, she would toss a stick into the air and go in the direction the stick pointed when it landed.

One day, however, she was seen tossing the stick up several times. "Why do you toss the stick more than once?" someone asked. "Because," replied the woman, "it keeps pointing to the left, and I want to take the road on the right." She then dutifully kept throwing the stick into the air until it pointed the way she wanted to go!

We might be more like that old woman than we suspect. We ought to pray that we are willing to do God’s will. Sometimes God will give us the desire of our heart. But sometimes he will lead us in another way.

[2.] Search the Scriptures. Most of the guidance that we will need will be found in the Scriptures. Why is this so? Because most of God’s will has already been revealed and that is his will for your living in accordance with the moral principles that he has laid out. Our problem is that we are not familiar enough with the word of God to allow it to guide us sufficiently.

Even the non-moral decisions that we must make (what job to take, where to live, who to marry) are affected by biblical principles to some degree. When I say search the Scriptures I do not mean praying, then opening your Bible and picking out a random verse. One might call this the Dartboard Method.

There was a young man who was seeing a young lady named Grace. He wanted to know if God wanted him to marry her. So, he prayed for guidance. He then closed his eyes, opened his Bible, and put his finger on a verse. It was 2 Corinthians 12:9.

He opened his eyes and read, “My grace is sufficient for thee.” So, he went ahead and married her. Wrong way to choose a lifelong partner!!

[3.] Listen for the unusual ways that God speaks. God has spoken in unusual ways and these ways are recorded in the Bible. I am purposely going to say little about this because these ways are not normative. They occur. But none of these ways should be expected or even sought simply because these are not the ways that God uses very often to communicate his will. There have even been great men of God who have done marvelous works for God far exceeding what any of us have done or even what anyone we have known has done, yet have never heard from God in any of these ways.

• the voice of God. (this includes the still, small voice or “thin silence;”) However, this means can be tenuous. Is the “still, small voice” we think we hear really from God or just our own desires coming to the surface?
• A dream
• A vision
• A prophet
• Lots

It is possible that God may communicate to you in one of these ways. But do not expect it. Merely be open.

[4.] The normative way that we are to make decisions and receive God’s guidance is by exercising wisdom. This is why James tells us to ask for wisdom if we lack it. The primary way we should be making decisions is by thinking things through. That is, by being informed of what God’s revealed will is (by familiarity with his word) and then exercising logic and reason to make a decision.

We see the apostle Paul doing this, observing his circumstances and then using reason to come to a decision. Paul seems to do this more often that receiving some kind of supernatural guidance. We do not have time to review all of the passages that show this. But you may wish to read them later: Romans 15:18-24; I Corinthians 16:5-9; 2 Corinthians 2;12-13; Acts 18:19; I Tim 3:1-13; Titus 1:5-9. Jesus himself used logic when reasoning with his antagonists.

[Conclusion] The will of God is precious. His will is the best will. It is good for us!

• Be assured that he wants us to know his will and he takes the initiative to let us know. There is no need to worry.
• We ought to pray both for a yieldedness to his will and to know what it is. Even if it is only a 2-minute prayer, ask!
• Search the Scriptures
• Be aware that there are unusual ways that God may communicate his will, but neither seek nor expect him to use those.
• Use wisdom to make your decisions. If you use wisdom, you will find God’s guidance.

“Lord, help us to desire thy will and help us to know thy will. Then give us the strength to do thy will. We ask this in the name of our Lord Jesus!