Kennystix's podcast
What Is the Will of God and How Do We Know It?
The following resource is from desiringGod.org. Our scripture reading this morning is from Romans 12 chapter 1 and 2, page 947 in the pubidal if you need the pubidal, page 947, Romans 12 chapter 1 and 2. I appeal to you therefore, brothering, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that by testing, you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. May God bless the reading of his word. Let's pray together. It's not about us, Father, as though you should do things our way. It's about Christ and his glory and his honor and his fame, and so I pray that you would come now and take away selfishness, self-exaltation, self-aggrandizement, a fear of self-denial. Help us, Lord, I pray to see you for who you really are, infinitely worthy, valuable, precious, a treasure beyond all human treasures so that if we were appointed to die today, it would be good, I pray that you would cause us to be able to say from the bottom of our heart to live his Christ and to die his gain because it's more of Christ. So Jesus, stand forth from your hiddenness in heaven by your spirit now and illumine the eyes of our hearts to know you, to treasure you, in your great name we pray, amen. The aim of Romans 12, 1 and 2 is that all of bodily life, everything you do with your bodies, all of life be worship. See that? Present your bodies as living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. The goal of these two verses is that you find the way of life at work and at home that makes Christ look as valuable as He really is. That's what worship is. Worship is an expressing a display of the worth of all that God is for us in Christ. So when you're bodily life, what you do with your hands, your feet, your arms, your tongue, your eyes, your ears, when all of that becomes worship, it becomes a way of displaying the value, the worth of Christ. So that's the point of these verses, Paul wants to build on eleven chapters of theology and turn your life into doxology. So it sounds like doxology, it looks like doxology, smells like doxology, and if you don't know how to do that at work, if your work feels like the kind of work where that is absolutely inconceivable idea, two possible problems. One is you have the wrong job, but that's probably not the case. It's probably that verse two isn't happening to the degree that it should. Verse two is the means by which verse one comes about. Your life becomes a worship to God, it becomes a manifestation of the worth and value of Jesus when you're not conformed to the world in all their values, but you're transformed by the renewal of your mind so that the will of God becomes precious to you and a joy to you and you find yourself living a lifestyle of love and sacrifice and Christ exalting standards that cause the world to recognize His reality and His beauty and His value. So it's probably not that you're in the wrong job, it's just that we have a lot to do in order to pursue what it means to be renewed in our minds which is where we were last week. And it says, be transformed, verse two, by the renewal of your mind, Christians know it means I'm already new. Second Corinthians 5, 17, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, period, he is a new creation, and then we also know that the Bible builds on that rock solid reality of our identity in Christ and says, now, become what you are. For example, verse Corinthians 5, 7, cleans out the old leaven, picturing leaven as sin, that you may become a new lump, picturing the lump of dough is your life, as you really are unleavened. Isn't that amazing, clear, become what you are? You are unleavened, sinless, perfect, accepted, loved, home in Christ. Now, become that in your practical bodily behavior so that people will see the worth of Jesus Christ to you, or Colossians 3.10 says it this way. You have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after its creator. You have put on the new self, you're there, you're home, you're new, you're in Christ, you're accepted, you're loved, you're justified, acquitted, vindicated, verdict, not guilty, it is finished. Now, be renewed according to who you are in Christ. The last part of verse two now tells us more about the process that I'm just describing. Let's read verse two again. Don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind. Now here comes the purpose which we're going to spend our time on today. In order that, by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. The reason for having a new mind is so that you will be able to discern, approve, embrace, follow the will of God. Now I gave you a two minute summary of this message last week and so you may remember that I said there are at least two, I think I'll just leave it at two, biblical meanings for the phrase the will of God. We need to decide which of them is intended in verse two of Romans 12. It's really crucial that we understand this difference between two meanings for the phrase the will of God, knowing the difference between these two kinds of the will of God in the Bible, will be a key to unlock one of the biggest mysteries or the biggest perplexities in the Bible, namely that God is absolutely sovereign over all things and disapproves of many of them. That's a very puzzling paradox. It governs and controls all that is and manifestly in the Bible hates much of what happens. That's an insoluble and I think contradictory situation unless the term the will of God in the Bible has more than one meaning, which it clearly does and you'll be able to see it as I just take you to the various texts. So we want to handle on how to manage this paradox or mystery that God forbids things he brings about and God commands things that he hinders from happening. That in one sense something is the will of God and in another sense that same something is not the will of God. Without this category of thought, I don't think you can make sense out of the Bible, the God of the Bible. So let's look at these two kinds of willing. Here's number one. Let's call it either the sovereign will of God or his will of decree. It means God's sovereign control of everything that comes to pass. It's one of the clearest teachings of the Bible. Let's look at some verses. I think I'll just quote them. You can jot them down and look at them later, but you know them, most of them. Matthew 2639, Jesus is in Gethsemane and he prays like this, "Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will." Matthew 2639, "What does as you will mean?" The kind of will of God is that. Well, it means his plan for Jesus to be crucified. If there is no other way, Father, if that is the infinitely wise way, the infinitely loving way, the infinitely just way, do what you must do, and he did it. And here's the crucial thing to observe. It was shot through with sin, and could not have happened without sin, to sin to kill the Son of God, to sin to mock the Son of God, to sin to whip the Son of God with stripes prophesied in the Old Testament, to sin to be expedient and watch your hands and hand them over, and yet we all know from Acts chapter 4 verse 27, "Truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place." The script was written for this night, and this good Friday in Isaiah 53 in great detail, and in Psalm 22, and in many other passages, the script was written. The will of God is a fixed, determinate purpose to bring about the death of his Son, Isaiah 53 10. It was the will of the Lord to bruise him, and it was full of sin, which means we must have a category of thinking that says God can ordain that sin happen without being a sinner. If you don't have that category in your mind, you can't handle the cross and the prophecies. God ordains that there be sin in the particulars of the death of his Son, because he couldn't have been crucified without it, and he is not himself a sinner in ordaining that sin be. Here's another example, 1 Peter 3.17, "It is better to suffer for doing good if that should be God's will than for doing evil. It is better to suffer for doing good if that should be God's will than for doing evil." Think about that. Peter knows it might be God's will that Christians suffer persecution when they don't deserve it, which means his will might be that sin happened, right? You can't have Christians persecuted without sin, because persecuting Christians is sin. If it be God's will that we suffer when we don't deserve it, then so be it. Here's another example. This is Paul's sweeping statement from Ephesians 1, 11, "In him Christ, in him we have obtained an inheritance having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will." I don't think that excludes anything. Absolutely nothing is excluded from that phrase, all things. And of course, I could take an hour. I could take an hour unfolding dozens of other texts like Matthew 10, 29, "Not one sparrow falls to the ground apart from your father." That's how detailed his providence is in the world. Or Proverbs 16, 33, "The lot is cast in the lap, and every decision is from the Lord." Every roll of the dice in Reno is from the Lord. Nobody wins, and nobody loses without God's decree. Or Proverbs 16, 1, "The plans of the heart belong to man, and the answer of the tongue is from the Lord." Or Proverbs 21, 1, "The king's heart is like a river in the hands of the Lord. He turns it wherever he wills. And on, and on, and on the Bible goes to say, "There is a meaning for the will of God. Everything is the will of God." He's God. He never says, "Oops!" He never rings his hands. He's never perplexed. He never says, "Oh, that was not even in my mind." Contrary to what some preachers preach, listen to Daniel 4.35, takes your breath away. He does, according to his will, among the host of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth, and none can stay his hand or say to him, "What have you done?" Daniel 4, verse 35, "He does, according to his will, in heaven and on earth, none can stay his hand as though our vaunted self-determining will could frustrate the living God." And nobody can say to him, "What have you done?" That's one meaning for the term "will of God." His sovereign will, his will of decree, according to which everything happens. Here's the second meaning. Call it his will of command, his will of command. And I mean his command to us and what we ought to do. The first is the will of decree. It's everything that happens. Whether you believe in it or not, you do it. The will of command can be broken, frustrated, denied, and it is broken every day, even in our lives. Now, here are the texts from which you can see this. This is the one most people think about when they think of the will of God. Jesus, Matthew 7, 21, "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord, will enter into the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who's in heaven, the one who does the will of my Father.'" Not everyone comes in, but the one who does the will of my Father, which means many don't. So the will of God is not done in this sense. There's another one, 1 Thessalonians 4, 3. This is the will of God, your sanctification that you abstain from sexual immorality. There's a concrete, practical statement about what God wills, your holiness, your sexual purity, and that will is broken every day. In this church and in the world. So there's a will of God that is not happening, 1 Thessalonians 5, 18. Give thanks in all circumstances for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. This giving is God's will for you in all circumstances. That doesn't come to pass in many people's lives. His will is frustrated, his will is denied, his will is broken, his will falls to the ground. Just John 2, 17, the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever. Some do and some don't. So here's my conclusion. It makes a person, a theologian, is not a college education and not a seminary education and sure not a doctorate. What makes a person a theologian is seeing things like that in the Bible and getting on their knees and thinking until they see harmony and unity coming together at the root of their being. This won't let it go, any scripture go, ponder, pray and say keep me faithful to the whole counsel of God. Don't let me run off in one direction and ride that happy horse and don't let me run off in the other direction and ride that happy horse. Let me get it all together as much as a human brain can get it together, help me to be faithful, to hold in tension what has to be kept in tension. I want to be true to the Word of God. And my conclusion is the will of God in the Bible has two meanings, not rocket science. On the one hand it sometimes means God's absolute sovereign control over all things which can never be broken and never frustrated and sometimes it refers to what you ought to do because he commands you to do it, don't kill, don't steal, don't commit adultery and you can break that will. You can disobey it. And so we need to ask from text to text now, which of these two is being spoken of. But before I do that in Romans 12-2, let me pause here and try to help you feel why what I just said is precious beyond words to know and believe. I don't think it is possible to handle deep hurt and great loss in your life without these two categories. I think knowing God a sovereign and in control corresponds to a need that we have and knowing God as a God who commands and commends and entreats his will which can be broken corresponds to a profound need that we have and to know him in both of these ways can get us through situations that if we try to choose the one or the other will leave us very vulnerable. Let me try to give you an example. Suppose that you were abused as a child, I mean really badly abused, sexually abused, physically abused, and it has wrought havoc in your life, begins to come out and begin to deal with it, and somebody asks you, do you think that was the will of God, which is a very common question and a good one, do you think that was the will of God? Now my prayer, my earnest prayer, is that after this sermon you will be able as strange as mysterious, as painful, as perplexing as it may sound to answer that question biblically in a way that doesn't contradict the Bible and it would go like this, no it was not the will of God because God commands that we not abuse each other and he hates it when we abuse each other, he commands that we love each other, that was not the will of God. Indeed, when it happened it unleashed a kind of grieving and anger and quenching of the Spirit of God. I get all three of those words from the Bible in particular texts that the Holy Spirit himself experiences, and after that lands on the person, you look at you funny and I thought you went to Bethlehem, I thought you wanted these sovereigns, God people, and you, without any anger, without any defensiveness, you say, I am, and it was God's sovereign will, and the reason I know that it was is because there are a hundred ways he could have hindered it, and for reasons I do not yet fully understand he did not hinder it, and thus ordained in his infinite wisdom that it come to pass. And I will see in due time how he works it all for my good, it's hard to see right now. And that's okay, you don't need to see it all at once. Now here's my point when I said these two things are needed to weather losses and pain and hurt. I think deep in every soul is a desperate need that God be strong enough, sovereign enough, and in control enough to take me in the midst of my loss and pain, and get me through it, and work for good, even in the wills of myself and the people around me, and if I surrender the sovereignty of God and the mighty power of God over me and them, I don't have the very thing I've got to have to stand on to get through this horrible situation. And yet, I've got to have a God who understands me, he feels with me, he is, let's use these two images. Jesus is an absolutely sovereign high King, Lord of Lords and King of Kings, and nothing comes to pass in this world apart from the dispositions and the decrees of King Jesus. And Jesus is a sympathetic high priest, Hebrews 4, 15, who comes in alongside us, and because he has already commanded, this should not happen to you, he's able to be angry about it, he's able to be grieved about it, and he's able to speak in terms of being quenched about it. And I think the way we're wired as human beings in his image, we've got to have both of those truths. You try to choose between those truths, I just want the nice, tender God without the sovereignty peace, or I just like the sovereignty peace and I'm not into intimacy and tenderness and warmth and relationships, you won't make it, you won't make it, or at least you'll distort the Bible so bad that your source of strength to get through won't be God. So for those reasons, I think what I just unfolded in the two wheels of God isn't just related here, it's related to everything you walk through, but let's go and finish applying it to verse 2 of chapter 12. Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that by testing you may discern what is the will of God. Now which is it? And the answer I believe is the will of command, not the will of decree. The will of God in this verse means the second one. What God commands, what God declares to be our duty and there are a couple of reasons why I think that. One is that God doesn't expect you to know his secret sovereign will in the future. If you have a desire to know the details of the secret sovereign future will of God, you don't need renewal, you need a crystal ball. And nobody who gets his messages from a crystal ball needs to be renewed. They just need some demonic tuna. And when this verse says that we've got to be renewed deeply transformed, changed, it's not talking about divination. Divination does not require transformation. There's a world of difference between people who lead their lives. Constantly hoping and expecting messages to pop into their head about which way to go, which card to buy, which person to marry, a world of difference between living your life that way in Romans 12, too. Don't be conformed to the world. Be transformed by a deep renewal so that you perceive the will of God, assess things according to the will of God. Here's my second reason for thinking it does not refer to the sovereign will of God in verse 2, namely the phrase "by testing you may discern" means discern and embrace. Not just like the devil tests and discerns. The devil does that. He says, "Now, what's the will of God here?" He says, "Well, he knows it very well. He knows it way better than we do." And he hates it. He absolutely hates it. And once you not to do it, and this verse is not something the devil can do. By testing you may discern and embrace, but there are things about the sovereign will of God you shouldn't embrace because they're sin. You should not discern and embrace as worthy of your approval and emulation, the sin of the world, all of which is ordained by Almighty God. And so it just won't work. It won't work to call verse 2 the sovereign will of God. Here's the biblical paraphrase of verse 2. It comes from Hebrews 5, 14. I just read this verse, you lay it on top of Romans 12, 2. Solid food is for the mature. For those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good and evil, read that again because that's a biblical paraphrase from another book of what this verse means, I believe. Solid food is for the mature. For those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good and evil and then embrace the good, which is the will of God, acceptable, perfect. Okay, close with part of what I said last week at the beginning, three stages, three expressions, experiences of the revealed or the will of command. If I'm arguing that discern the will of God in verse 2 means discern the will of command, discern your duty, how does that look? Three stages, number one. God's will of command is revealed finally and decisively, only in the Bible. Only and decisively, very important words because we are coming to verses three through eight where spiritual gifts are going to be talked about, including the gift of prophecy. I've got all that in my mind as I'm articulating what I'm saying right now. God's will of command is revealed with final and decisive authority only in the Bible and we must have a renewed mind in order to see it. Because if you go to the Bible without having a renewed mind, you will find a way to distort any vade, self-denial, love, purity, the command that Jesus be supremely satisfying. We must have the Holy Spirit illumining, transforming, making us humble. Remember last week the Holy Spirit brings us Christ exalting truth and from inside he works truth-embracing humility. That's just got to happen. Are you going to the Bible? You're going to blow off all kinds of things or twist them so that they fit your own self-exalting passions. So step one is the Bible is God's revealed will, the will of command, and it's the only place where it is expressed with final and decisive authority. Here's a text to support that claim, 2 Timothy 3, 16, "All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training, and godliness." In order that, the man of God might be competent, equipped for every good work, not some. Like some good works, you got to get messages in order to do. I won't be able to figure out the will of God here unless I get a message. This text says the Scriptures are inspired to make the Christian competent equipped for every good work. Second stage. First one is Bible. We need renewed mind to understand it and apply it. The second stage is the application of biblical truth to new situations that are not explicitly addressed in the Bible, and there are, of course, millions of them. The Bible does not tell you which person to marry or whether to marry. The Bible does not tell you which car to drive or buy or rent. The Bible doesn't tell you to whether by home or not, which home to buy. The Bible doesn't tell you where or if to take a vacation. The Bible doesn't tell you which cell phone plan to buy. The Bible doesn't tell you which brand of orange juice to drink. There are 10,000 decisions you must make that are not explicitly addressed in the Bible. So what do you do? If you want to obey the will of command, my answer is you must have a renewed mind. That's what the text says. Be transformed by the renewal of your mind that you may prove how to eat, how to drink, cars to drive, houses to live in, missions to go on, lifestyles to choose from, friendships to cultivate, conversations to have and not to have, 10,000 decisions not written in the Bible and yet informed by all the teaching of the Bible into this new mind so that you think with the mind of Christ and assess things the way Christ would assess them so that the decisions that are made really are flowing from the revealed will of God in the Bible as it transforms your mind. Lastly, the third stage, the one I mentioned last week, which is the one that for years has I suppose dictated the way I preach, dictated the way I do my devotion, dictated the way I think about the Christian life more than anything, namely 95% of your life is un-premeditated. I'm just picking 95% out of the blue, you pick a number, 95% of your life is un-premeditated. Thoughts, attitudes, actions are spontaneous, they just are spillover and the Bible is keenly aware of this and addresses it like this. Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. The good person out of his good treasure, substitute the person with the renewed mind. The good person, the person with the renewed mind out of the good treasure brings forth good and the evil person out of the evil treasure brings forth evil. I tell you, on the day of judgment, people will give an account for every careless word. The ones you didn't think about at all, namely most of them. It's got to be that way. You cannot stop before every sentence and ponder the use of your verbs and nouns. It's impossible to communicate that way. You must just keep talking. And if you were standing out here, you'd say, "Where is all that coming from?" Because I'm not thinking in detail about which sentence to use and which adjective to use and what tone of voice to use and what these gestures should keep going. Your life is spillover, 95% of the time your life is spillover. And you may ask, "Well, why are you calling that part of the will of command?" Because it sounds like the will of command would be, "I'm hearing a command, I'm thinking about it, and then I'm doing it." And I'm calling it the will of command because you get in the Bible commands, "Don't be angry, don't be prideful, don't covet, don't be anxious, don't be jealous, don't envy." And you don't think of any of those, nobody decides to be prideful. Now see, I'm humble, but I really like to be prideful, so now I will make a decision to become prideful. Or I'm not feeling any envy right now, but I see somebody has something, I think I'll start feeling envy. Or I don't have enough and covetousness would be one way to respond, I think I'll respond with God. Nobody lives like that. These things happen to you and you are guilty because they're coming out of your heart. And we're guilty for the corrupt condition of our hearts. So when I said this last point governs my preaching, my devotions, my way, it's this. I don't by and large live my life by lists. You try to live your life by lists, either the list will be ridiculous in its shortness compared to the 10,000 things you do each day, or it will be so long you die. There's only one way to live the Christian life, don't be transformed, sorry, don't be conformed, but be transformed by the renewal of your life. So our only hope, life is too spontaneous. You just can't live it by list. You can't live it even by the 10 commandments because 95% of the time you're doing stuff without reflecting on whether it breaks any commandment. You're just doing stuff. My biggest challenge is Piper, be new, be new, get at the core of my being. If there's any stuff, jump, pride, left down there that's just causing the stuff to come out, unbidden and unplanned, get at me down there, Lord. That's the only hope, isn't it? No, concluding exhortation, immerse yourself in God's word, saturate your mind with it. I don't know any other way. I'm 58, two years ago I said to the staff at a January meeting at age 56, I want to give my life to memorizing like I've never memorized before. I'll say that even stronger right now. I'm into mega Bible memorization just for me. You don't even need to know about it but that's there and here's the reason. I see my mind failing for one thing and I'm desperate not to lose the word of God and I don't know any other way to saturate, transform, shape, alter, bring my mind into conformity to the mind of Christ and by memorizing and meditating upon his word. So I don't think you have a chance of a snowball in hell to be holy and avoid that kind of language if you don't meditate on the word of God a lot. So immerse yourself in the Bible. Get serious about a renewed mind. Let's pray. Thy known way Lord, have thy own way, thou art the potter, I am the clay, mold me and make me. After thy will, thy will of command, the biblical will, the revealed will, the sermon on the Mount Wheel, the Ten Commandment Wheel, the Ephesians 4, 5, and 6 will. While I am waiting, yielded and still, I hope the Lord puts it in your heart to pray that as we sing it. Thank you for listening to this resource from DesiringGod.org. If you found it helpful, we encourage you to enjoy and share from thousands of resources on our site, including books, sermons, articles and more, available free of charge. DesiringGod.org exists to help you treasure Jesus more than anything else, because God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.
God wills all things. But that does not mean he wants all things in the same way.