Knowing and Doing God's Will

Only those people who are saved, only those people who embrace the Savior, only those people who do the will of the Father, in the words of Matthew 12 and Mark chapter 3, only those who do the will of the Father by believing in the Son even have a capacity. to know the will of God. Welcome to Grace to You with the Bible teaching of John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson. How can you be sure your next decision is the right one?

In other words, how can you know God's will, even in the gray areas of life? Those are common and important questions. Thankfully, Scripture shows you how to answer them, and you'll see that today in John MacArthur's lesson titled Knowing and Doing God's Will. We're continuing our brand new series called John MacArthur's Most Memorable Sermon. It's a unique study that's composed of messages that have been chosen by Grace to You staff members.

And today's sermon, Knowing and Doing God's Will, was selected by none other than me. The first time I ever heard John preach, I was working as an editor at Moody Press in Chicago. John came to speak at Moody Bible Institute, and it was for a student chapel, but employees could go because it was a special week of chapel messages, and John was going to preach every day that week. And they passed out a sheet telling who was coming. It said John MacArthur Jr.

He's a fifth generation preacher from Sun Valley, California. I'd never heard of him. And it said on Monday he's preaching on How to know God's will for your life. And so I decided not to go. I told my office mate, I don't really have time to go hear this guy whose claim to fame is he's somebody's son.

I said, Somebody should tell Junior that everybody who preaches at Moody Bible Institute talks about God's will for your life. He's not going to say anything I've never heard. And minutes later, The girl who is now my wife stuck her head in the door and said, I'm going down to student chapel. Were you going to come? And I said, Yeah, I was just on my way.

That's how I heard John for the first time. And he preached this brilliant message on how to know God's will. that wasn't like anything I'd ever heard before. And You're going to hear it today. Let's get to the lesson, Knowing God's Will.

This is not a recording of the message John gave that day at Moody. This is a later version preached at Grace Community Church, but it's basically the same sermon. And I trust you'll see why I chose this lesson as John MacArthur's most memorable sermon. One of the most enduring questions that people ask, and this has been suggested to me by several people that I might address it, is the question: how can I know God's will for my life? It is an enduring question, and young people ask it, and not only young people, but it is asked repeatedly throughout our Christian experience.

You know, where do I go to school? Who do I marry? What is my career path? Do I take this job, that job, this opportunity, that opportunity? Do I buy this, sell this, do this with my children?

Do I homeschool? Do I put them in a Christian school? There's an endless string of decisions that are being made by people all through their lives. When am I going to retire, and what am I going to do when I do, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, that is not just the big decisions, it is those routine things that we face day in and day out.

And the question is a compelling question. How can I know what God wants me to do?

Now, there is a general confusion about this. There are some people who think that God is somehow reluctant to let us know His will because He gets some kind of strange pleasure out of hiding it. And so we go through life.

Sort of like we're in a divine lottery, hoping we can kind of get the lucky ticket. and that God is sort of dispensing scratchers and maybe yours says, you know, The right number, and maybe it doesn't, and God is somehow gleeful about the fact that it's limited to just a select few. Nothing could be further from the truth. There are other people who think that God's will is some kind of almost transcendental experience. You're running down the street in a rain and you somehow slip on the pavement, fall down, land in the gutter on a map of India.

And this constitutes the divine call, and so you rush off to sign up. to missionary work. There are others who are waiting for a voice. They're waiting for some kind of inner voice or some kind of external voice commanding them to do something. This is very, very common.

But God doesn't reveal himself audibly anymore. He has closed the canon of Scripture. The word of God is complete. It is the faith once for all delivered to the saints. God now speaks to us through his word.

Does he give us impulses? Does he direct us? Yes, he does. But we don't have any way to know that for sure. I don't have a red light in my head, as I told you some time ago, that goes on when it's God and goes off when it's me.

I don't have any way to know that. You do what you do. And maybe in retrospect you see the hand of God. But how can we know the will of God? We can't hear voices in our heads.

We cannot know that those impulses we feel are God moving us. We cannot wait for some monumental experience to occur before we sort of get insight. How can we routinely, day in, day out, know God's will? Let me take you to the place you have to start, Matthew chapter 6. In Matthew chapter 6, Jesus is instructing his disciples about how to pray.

It's very familiar territory. And he says, pray, verse 9, then in this way. This is what I want you to pray for. This is the routine kind of praying. This is the daily kind of praying.

Pray like this: Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Now this is a mindset. And the mindset is I am concerned that God's name be honored. I am concerned that God's kingdom be advanced, and I am concerned that God's will be done.

So if you want to know God's will, this is where you start. You start by praying for it. By praying for it. Yes? You want to know God's will?

Pray for it. Pray Your will be done. on Earth.

Now that doesn't mean simply in the broadest possible sense that God would fulfill his will. And Encompassing all of time and eternity and creation. It isn't just that God would fulfill His will on behalf of the church or my local church or the group of people that I Most often socialize with or my family or my marriage. It's a personal thing. I am saying, God, I want your will done.

That is the initial and necessary mindset. that establishes a person In the will of God, you have to want that. You never even get to. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts and don't lead us into temptation, which are those personal things with regard to ourselves, until you have passed through the gate of your will be done. That is to be our daily position.

That is to be our mindset. We want to be in the place of God's will. We want God's will done through our lives. And of course, the Lord Jesus set the example, the perfect servant who, when facing the worst possible scenario, a painful death on the cross, At the hands of uh of those he had come To preach to, and at the hands, if you will, of God, his own Father, facing that painful death on the cross, he said, Not my will but yours be done. You remember in the garden, he was saying, If there's any way that I can bypass the cross, if there's any way that I can escape having to drink this cup, let it happen.

Nevertheless, not my will but yours be done. That is the essential mindset. If you are still concerned with your will, your way, your plans, your fulfillment, you really have little or no hope of fulfilling the will of God. Jesus earlier, before he ever got to the garden in anticipation of the cross, much earlier in his life said, I have come to do the will of him who sent me. Paul, who followed Jesus' example and himself stood in the face of potential death.

said, the will of the Lord be done. That's where we have to begin.

So you want to know God's will for your life? Then you have to want God's will above everything else, whatever that will might be, whatever it might involve. It has to be, in a sense, the mortification or the slaying of your own agenda, your own will, your own desires, your own longings, your own hopes, dreams, plans, and ambitions. That's where you have to start. I can promise you that if you do not have a from the heart commitment to the will of God, you will not experience it in its fullness.

The Apostle Paul a number of times in his writings used the little phrase, by the will of God, by the will of God. For example, Colossians 4.12 talks about by the will of God or in the will of God. Peter even Talks about that. He says in his epistle, 1 Peter 4, that we are to live for the will of God rather than the desire of the flesh. There are two competing issues in your life: one is the desire of your own flesh, what you want, the way you want it, when you want it, how you want it.

And there is the will of God. You either live according to the will of God or according to the will of your own flesh. And so, as we begin to talk about the will of God, we have to start with that foundation. Are you willing to do the will of God from the heart, whatever it involves, whatever it means? That is where you begin to take the steps necessary to experience the will of God.

As long as you are still holding on to your will, your agenda, your plans, your ambitions, your purposes, there is a conflict there that will not yield. The will of God.

Now Let me just define the will of God for you so we know exactly what we're talking about. If we were to take this comprehensive concept of the will of God, we could break it into three categories. First of all, there is the will of purpose. Or theologians might call it the will of decree. There is a will of God that is bound up in His eternal plan.

That is referred to in a number of places in the Bible. I'll just give you one illustration: Jeremiah 51:29. It says, for every purpose of the Lord shall be performed. There is a will of God that is his purpose that he does accomplish. It is not something he wishes that doesn't happen.

It is what he purposes that does happen. It is that will of God that is essentially expressed in Romans 8, 28. All things are working together for good to them that love God and are the called according to his purpose. It is the will of divine purpose. He purposed to create man.

He purposed to redeem man. He purposed to save those that the Father chose. He purposed to elect the nation, Israel, to be the transmitting nation of his law and his gospel. He purposed to set that nation aside in unbelief, but someday to restore that nation and save them. He purposed to send his son into the world to live and to die and to rise again and to send to the right hand and to send the Holy Spirit and establish the church.

He purposed that the church would go into the world and preach the gospel. He purposed that the church would be the collected, redeemed, who would be raptured. And then he has purposed there will be a time called the tribulation, which will end with the return of Christ, the establishment of a thousand-year millennial kingdom, which becomes the fulfillment of all the promises to Abraham and David. And the end of that time, the destruction of all the unconscious. Ungodly men and demons, and the establishment of the new heaven and the new earth, which is the eternal state.

The sweeping plan of redemption is God's will of purpose, and every purpose of the Lord shall be performed. To show you that, look at Ephesians 1. It's worth examining briefly. In Ephesians 1, 9, We see the phrase, He made known to us the mystery of His will. He has a will here.

And it is the will of that eternal plan and purpose, which was mystery before he revealed it. He has revealed it to us. And here it is. According to his kind intention, which he purposed in him, meaning Christ. All right, now we're looking at the will of purpose.

This is the God's will, which was hidden, is now revealed, which he purposed. to express his kind intention toward us in Christ.

So therefore, it is the purpose of God to be kind to sinners and redeem us through Christ. Verse 10 says, It is a dispensation or administration. that includes or fits into a scheme that culminates in the fullness of the times. What is that? That is the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things upon the earth.

So that's the big picture from God's intention, which he purposed before time began in Christ through the whole redemptive plan into the fullness of times, which is the summation of everything in the glorious millennial kingdom and the eternal new heavens and the new earth. That is his will of purpose. We share in that, verse 11, we have obtained an inheritance because we have been predestined. He planned at the very beginning that we would receive an inheritance at the very end. And he did this, verse 11, according to his purpose.

And he works all these things after the counsel of his will.

So there it is said at least three ways God has a will of eternal purpose which He is working out. That refers to his eternal plan. The second Element of God's will is his will of desire. Let's call it his will of desire. In the first, the will of purpose, everything God purposes happens exactly the way He purposed it.

In the second category, His will of desire, God wills things that do not happen. God wills things that do not happen. And this too is mysterious to us. This element of his will is not fully explained to us in Scripture. But there are things that do not please God.

They do not please him. For example, God says, I have no pleasure in the death of whom? of the wicked. He desired Jerusalem to be saved, Luke 13, 34, and they were not. He does not desire that any should perish.

That all should come to repentance. That is a limited one. We'll say more about that in a few moments. But it is also true That God says to Jerusalem, how oft through the words of Christ I would have gathered you, but you wouldn't. The Old Testament, God says to the prophet, Why will you die?

The New Testament, come unto me, Jesus said, All you that labor and are heavy laden, and I'll give you rest. When Jerusalem didn't repent, Jesus wept. There is a desire on God's part. that doesn't get fulfilled. God doesn't find any pleasure in sin.

An act of sin. God doesn't find any pleasure in perpetual sinning, and listen to this: He doesn't find any pleasure in. eternal sin, which is essentially what hell is. It is Beings, angels, and people existing forever in a state of sinfulness and permanent hatred of God. And yet he allows it.

That's the mystery. Why does he allow it? because it suits his own glory to allow it. It suits his own glory. To manifest His nature in wrath and judgment.

against those who refuse the gospel.

So there is his will of purpose which always comes to pass. There is a will of desire which goes against the grain of his own pleasure. But the one that we're talking about is that third category. It is God's will of command. It is God's will of command.

There is an element of God's will in the scriptures. That embodies the commands that he desires his people to obey. He wants us to obey them. He gives us freedom to obey them or disobey them. That's what we're talking about.

What is God's will for my life? Not in the sense of His eternal plan. What is God's will for my life if I am His, if I belong to His, if I am one who has been chosen by Him and predestined, one selected to belong to Him, what is His will for my life? That's the question. for the living of my life here.

That will which relates to his commands for life here. There aren't any commands in eternity because there's only obedience and nothing else. What does he want from me? All right, I'm going to tell you. But first I'm going to tell you this.

God does want something from you. He has a will for your life.

Now, if he has a will for your life, I think it's pretty obvious that he would like you to know it. Would you agree to that? Can we at least make that rational link? God does have a will for your life in terms of the will of command. He does have a purpose and a direction.

for your life here and now in this world. And if he does have a will, he would like you to know it. If he would like you to know it, then it is conceivable that he would have revealed it in the clearest possible place, right?

So the question then remains, where would you look to find it?

Well, you only have one place to look. Christian faith is limited to one book, and that's the Bible, and that's where we're going to go. Yeah, you say, well, wait a minute, there's no chapter about me in there. There's no chapter in there that says, well, who I'm supposed to marry, or where I'm supposed to go, or what I'm supposed to do, and all of those.

Well, yeah, you'd be surprised. You're here. You're here. It's not first Albert. or third Elizabeth, but it's here and I'll show you.

First of all, the compelling question is this. Has God revealed his will in Scripture? Answer: yes.

Now, if he has revealed his will in Scripture, And you aren't doing his will revealed in Scripture, then what gives you the right to think you can demand from him his will that isn't revealed here? Basically, that's the issue. You don't have any hope of knowing His will for you specifically that isn't revealed unless you're obeying His will, which is revealed.

So, let's start there. If you move along with us through some of these passages, you may see this little outline. I put it in a couple of the footnotes in the MacArthur Study Bible, hoping it would be helpful. Let's take the first thing we know as God's will. God's will is that you be saved.

God's will is that you be saved. God's will expressed, as I noted earlier, in 2 Peter 3, verse 9. And I want to define that passage a little bit for you. Here is God's will expressed toward those who are His. Verse 9, the Lord is not slow or slack.

About his promise, as some count slowness or slackness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish, not willing for any to perish, actually. but for all to come to repentance. God is not willing that you perish, but that you come to repentance. God wills that you be saved.

Now, this is a very interesting verse. We'll just briefly look at it. The context is judgment. Look at verse. Seven.

Talks about the heavens and earth, the present heavens and earth, are reserved for fire, for the day of judgment, the destruction of ungodly men. And down in verse 10, the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and the heavens are going to melt, pass away with a roar, elements destroyed with intense heat, the earth and its works burned up.

So we're talking about a final judgment here. Final judgment. And Peter understands that this is coming. But the question that remains is why does God not bring judgment? Why does he allow things to get worse and worse and worse?

Why doesn't God step in? I mean, you know, we're watching our watches and our calendars, and we're saying it's time to come and end the misery and end the sin and end the effrontery to your holiness. God, why don't you move? Time is going by needlessly. Is the Lord slow?

Literally, is he loitering? Is he just? wasting time? Is he just slack? And we're reminded in verse 8 that the Yeah.

The divine creator of the universe doesn't operate on time. One day is a thousand years, and a thousand years is one day. What seems like a long time to us is no time at all to him.

So he doesn't operate according to our timetable or our clocks and our calendars. Just keep that in mind. The fact that God hasn't fulfilled the promise of judgment, the fact that he hasn't come and destroyed the universe, is because he is patient toward you. Or as the other alternative text says, toward us, one and the same. And that is because he doesn't will any of his own to perish, but he waits until all that have been chosen come to what?

Repentance.

So the reason God hasn't Shut down the world, the reason he hasn't come in destructive power. is because Not all of his own have yet been saved. God's will is that sinners be saved. And he who promised is faithful, he will fulfill his promise of judgment, but he waits patiently until the any. Who are his own, the you and the us and the all come to repentance and can be saved.

The delay is not because he's loitering, it's because he patiently waits. For his own. To be saved, it is God's will. That you be saved. You can't even enter into the category of experiencing God's will if you're not saved.

It only belongs to those that are saved. Let me tell you very simply: if you're not a Christian, if you're not saved, if you haven't confessed Jesus as Lord and Savior, repented of your sins, and embraced Him, There isn't any will of God for you except one thing. God wills that you perish forever in eternal hell. That's it. The rest really doesn't matter.

Doesn't matter.

So if you haven't been saved, don't Ask the question, what do you want from my life? If you are not going to enter into faith in Jesus Christ, you aren't even capable of knowing or experiencing the will that God has for those who are saved.

Now look at 1 Timothy 2. 1 Timothy chapter 2 and verse 4. Verse 3 introduces God as the Savior, God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. This is all who are His, all whom He has. chosen all whom he has decreed or purposed to be saved.

God desires them all to come to him. As I said. There is no pleasure in God in the death of the wicked. He hates sin. He hates its consequence.

He doesn't desire people to remain wicked forever in eternal hatred of him in hell. But he allows that to happen. He endures, it says in Romans, he endures vessels fitted for destruction. But he will wait. to fulfill his desire.

that his own would come to the knowledge of the truth and be saved. Only those people who are saved, only those people who embrace the Savior, only those people who do the will of the Father, in the words of Matthew 12 and Mark chapter 3, only those who do the will of the Father by believing in the Son even have a capacity. Yeah. the will of God. Those who do the will of God by believing in the Son, embracing the Son.

According to 1 John 2, 17. Have. Eternal life.

So that's the first element of God's will. If you want to know God's will, then be saved. Embrace Christ as Lord and Savior. You're listening to Grace to You with the Bible teaching of John MacArthur. Our current study is titled John MacArthur's Most Memorable Sermon, and the focus of today's lesson, Knowing and Doing God's Will.

And, friend, for even more help in knowing God's will for your life, we'd like to send you a booklet by John MacArthur called Found God's Will. Whether you're considering where to go to school or whom to marry or the career you should pursue, this booklet spells out the biblical principles for guiding your life's decisions. To get your free copy of Found God's Will, contact us today. Call us at 800-55 GRACE. Or request your copy of Found God's Will from our website, gty.org.

Again, the booklet is free to anyone who asks. Request Found God's Will when you visit gty.org. or when you call 855 GRACE. Also at gty.org, you can listen again to today's lesson, Knowing and Doing God's Will. And there you'll also find dozens of other topical studies as well as hundreds of sermons that you've never heard on the radio.

And in fact, all of John's sermons, over 56 years' worth, are free to download in audio and transcript format at gty.org. The website is also the place to purchase John's New Testament commentaries, the MacArthur Study Bible, the systematic theology called Biblical Doctrine, and much more. Our web address again, gty.org.

Now for the entire Grace to U staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Remember to watch Grace DU television this Sunday on DirecTV Channel 378. And I encourage you to be back next week to hear more messages chosen by Grace TU staff members as John MacArthur's most memorable sermon. Join us for another half hour of Unleashing God's Truth one Verse at a Time on Monday's Grace to You.