If you're saved, spirit-filled, sanctified, submissive, suffering, and saying thanks, do you know what God's will is? Whatever you want. Just go do whatever you want. You say, You're kidding? No, I'm not kidding.
No, you say, What do you mean? I can't just go do what I want. Yes, you can. Because if that's how you're living, guess who's in charge of your wants?
So go do what you want. Welcome to Grace to You, the Bible teaching ministry of John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson. It's pretty common for people to make minor decisions, and even important ones, based solely on their feelings. At other times, people can feel anxious, even paralyzed about making any decision at all.
Well, when it comes to deciding what you should do, and especially when you want to be sure that your decision is what God wants you to do. How do you go about that? Today on Grace to You, John MacArthur helps you find out what it is in his lesson titled Knowing and Doing God's Will. This lesson was my choice as John MacArthur's most memorable sermon, and that's also the title of our current series. It's a collection of messages by John chosen by staff members as their favorites.
And now here's John to help you recognize and do God's will. 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? The question is a compelling question. How can I know what God wants me to do? Let's take the first thing we know is God's will.
God's will is that you be saved. God's will is that you be 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 for 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. 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. Second, Turn to Ephesians 5. Ephesians 5, the second point in the will of God.
We're showing you what the will of God is that is revealed, and then I'll show you how to know the part that's not revealed in Scripture, the part that applies specifically to you. And you're going to love that when we get there. Ephesians 5.
So then do not be Foolish, another word for stupid. Do not be stupid, but understand what the will of the Lord is.
So, if you don't understand the will of the Lord, what are you? That's right. Stupid. That's what it says. Paul doesn't mince any words, does he?
Mm-hmm. You say, well, what is it? What is it? Here it is. Verse 18.
Here it is. Don't get drunk with wine, that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit.
Now, let me give you a context for this. This is so ridiculous. Believers coming out of pagan religion had experienced the worship in the Greek mystery religions, and within the framework of that worship was the idea that if you wanted to commune with the gods, You could commune with the gods through the means of drunkenness. We would go to the temple of Acchus. I've been there.
And the. in the ruins uh way back in uh east of Damascus. The great Bacchanalian feast. And what they would do is they would go in there and they would get involved with priestesses in sexual orgies. And then they would eat in a gluttonous fashion so that there was a massive hole in the middle of the hall where they would vomit in and then go out and eat again.
And then they would at the same time drink. All the columns there have vines and grapes celebrating Bacchus, the god of drunkenness. And so this was the way you got yourself into a state by sexual orgies and gluttony and drunkenness in which you were elevated to commune with the deities. Paul comes and says, Wrong. If you do that, you're not going up, you're going down.
That's dissipation. And what is dissipation? It's a synonym for disintegration. It's the very opposite of elevation. It's a destructive kind of thing.
If you want to commune with God, if you want to go up, if you want fellowship with God, to know the heart and mind of God, then don't do that. do this be filled with The spirit. That's what produces communion with God. That's what produces intimacy with God. That's what produces the knowledge of the mind of God.
All Christians possess the Holy Spirit. Romans 8, 9, if you don't have the Spirit, you're not a Christian. If you are one, you do have the Holy Spirit. 1 Corinthians 6, 19 and 20, your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. 1 Corinthians 12, 12, and 13, we have all been made to drink of that one Spirit.
What we need then is to be filled with the Holy Spirit. That is really indicating the idea of. total control. The word filling is the word play rao. Let me give you a little.
A little insight into what that word means. To be filled is not static. It's not the idea of filling up a glass as such. It's best illustrated by looking at its use in several gospel illustrations, and I think you'll see it very clearly. For example, the word plei ra'ah was used in John 16, 6.
Sorrow filled the heart.
Now, I was talking about sorrow dominating a person, sorrow taking control. Luke. 6.11 says that they were filled with madness. Luke 4, 28, filled with anger. Luke 5, 26, filled with fear.
In each case, the word is indicating a dominating emotion. Literally, the loss of any sense of balance and equilibrium. When you say somebody is filled with sorrow, you mean that that sorrow is not any longer able to be mixed with the joy that helps us maintain our balance emotionally. When you say someone is filled with madness, you say they have gone off the deep end. Boom, the scales are tipped completely on the one side.
When you say someone is filled with anger, we say they lost it, they blew their stack. lost their temper. When we say someone is filled with fear, we say they're in a panic. There's no way to see any balance left in their emotional stability. And you know, basically we go through life and there are things in our lives that make us happy.
There are things in our lives that make us sorrowful. And they're there all the time. And we just sort of keep a balance. You know, when you're going through life and you start to look at the sorrowful things and you concentrate on those, the scale starts to tip and you try to cheer yourself up and think about all the good things that are happening. And you basically balance your way through life.
And the same is true with anger. There are plenty of things you could get upset about and mad about. Then you think of all the things you ought to be thankful for and you maintain your balance. And there are things that could frighten you. If you think about earthquakes and fires and floods and drive-by shootings and car crashes and plane crashes and on and on and on and cancer and heart disease, you could go through life in a total panic.
But you don't do that. You think about your kids, you think about your grandchildren, you smell a flower, you have a good meal, you kiss the person you love, and you balance your life. Until The person you love dies and you're filled with sorrow. Or until you walk in your house one day, and there's a guy there with a gun, and you're staring down the barrel of the gun, and you can't balance your fear anymore. Or you're flying in an airplane and all the engines go out.
And you're saying these things Don't glide. And your heart's in your throat. That's the word fill. It's control. It's no longer to keep the balance.
And you live your Christian life, sad to say, most people do that way. There's a balance. The Holy Spirit over here and me over here. And we're just keeping this thing as level as we can. I went to church a couple times last month.
Sunday morning, I stayed for the whole deal. I didn't leave early. Holy Spirit, you got to be happy about that. I read the Bible twice in the last month, and I did a few good deeds. And over here, I got a few things for myself.
I've given you a few, I'll take a few. That's it. To be filled with the Spirit means you're gone. You're gone. You don't have any will.
You don't have any goals. You don't have any ambitions except those that belong to the Holy Spirit, right? That's to be filled with the Holy Spirit. It means to be dominated, controlled. By the Holy Spirit.
Total control. Scale tipped completely in the favor of the Holy Spirit. The idea is to be totally under the control of the Holy Spirit. It simply means you're dominated by the mind of the Spirit.
Now, how can that be?
Well, it's not just some ecstatic experience. It's not some supernatural cloud that comes into you and does certain things. To be dominated by the will of the Spirit, to be dominated by the mind of the Spirit, is to be dominated by the Scriptures. I can't say it any more clearly than that. It's not ecstatic, it's not some emotional thing, it's not some transcendent thing.
To be controlled by the Spirit simply means that you obey the Word of God because the Word of God is revealed by the Holy Spirit, isn't it? Who's the author of Scripture? All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, by the breath of God, the Spirit of God. Holy men of old were moved by the Holy Spirit. And of course in Ephesians.
Chapter 5, you know this passage. It says, be filled with the Spirit, and then it tells you what happens. You speak to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs and sing and make mellow in your heart to the Lord. You start to praise and praise, and when you're filled with the Spirit, you praise and praise and praise because you're dominated by the Holy Spirit. And then you give thanks.
You give thanks for everything that's come to you through the Lord Jesus Christ. You give thanks to God the Father. And then you submit to each other in the fear of Christ. And if you're a wife, you submit to your husband. And if you're a husband, you love your wife.
And if you're children, in verse 1 of chapter 6, you obey your parents. And if you're parents, you don't provoke your children to anger, but you raise them in discipline and instruction of the Lord. And if you're an employee, you're obedient to your employer in verse 5. And if you're an employer, verse 9, you take care of your employees. All relationships are affected by it.
First of all, you praise God. You thank God. You submit to one another. You're what you ought to be as a wife, what you ought to be as a husband, what you ought to be as a child, what you ought to be as a parent. And even outside the home in your social relationships, you are what you should be.
It affects every area of life. That's being filled with the Spirit, Ephesians 5. Turn to Colossians 3. Let me show you a parallel here. Colossians 3.
Verse 16. You're going to see the same things here. Teaching, admonishing one another, psalms, hymns. Spiritual songs, verse 16, Colossians 3, singing, thankfulness in your hearts to God, exactly what is said in Ephesians 5. Exactly what is said.
Verse 18, wives. Are going to be submissive to their husbands. Verse 19, husbands are going to love their wives. Verse 20, children are going to obey their parents. 21, fathers, including parents, are not going to exasperate their children.
And then employees in verse 22, and then employers in chapter 4, verse 1. All that very same category and the very same. Outcome. Accept one difference. Go back to verse 16.
Doesn't say, be filled with the Spirit and this will happen. It says, let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, and this will happen. Listen carefully. If the effects are the same, then the cause is the same. Right?
If the effects are the same, and they are in Ephesians 5 and Colossians 3, if the effects are the same, the cause is the same. In one place it says, Be filled with the Spirit, in another place it says, Let the Word dwell in you ritually. Conclusion, those are the same. To be controlled by the Spirit To literally be dominated by the Spirit is no different than being controlled by the mind of the Spirit, which is revealed in Scripture.
So what is God's will for your life? God's will is that you be saved and that you be spirit-filled, which means under the constant control of the mind of the spirit expressed in the word. Thirdly, Turn to First Thessalonians chapter four. This is practical, very practical. 1 Thessalonians chapter 4.
Now we've said God's will is that you be saved. God's will is that you be spirit controlled or spirit filled. Thirdly, look at chapter 4, 1 Thessalonians. Verse 3.
Now listen to this. For this is the will of God. How about that? Wasn't this Hard to find as you thought, was it? Right there all the time.
This is the will of God, your sanctification. What does that mean? Holiness, purity. Separateness from sin. That's God's will.
That's God's will. What do you mean by that? What do you mean? That's a big category. I'll tell you what I mean.
That is, verse 3. that you abstain from sexual immorality. Woo principle number one. God's will is that you stay away from sexual sin. Did you get that?
Stay away from sexual sin.
Somebody says, how far away? That's a fair question. Far enough away to be holy. Far enough away to be unspotted. Far enough away to be unstained.
Far enough away to have no... Fought. Being Fed. In your mind. Stay away from it.
That's a negative. Stay away from it. There's a positive in the next verse, verse four. Also, each of you should know how to possess his vessel or body. In sanctification and honor.
Principle number one: stay away from sex sin. How far, far enough away to be unstained by its influences at all? To be apart from any illicit thought. Secondly, handle your body so it honors God. That's the positive.
The negative is stay away from sex sin, the positive is use your body to God's glory. Don't do what would dishonor him, and do what would honor him. Third principle. In verse 5, don't operate in lustful passion like the pagans who don't know God. Don't act like the world around you.
Don't get sucked up into the kind of life the world around us lives. Don't act like godless heathen people. Don't behave like they behaved. That is not. what God wants out of you.
You cannot succumb to the culture. And how do they behave? How do the godless behave? They behave on the basis of lust. They want it, they take it.
And then they justify it. You can't live that way. You cannot live based upon the way the godless live. They live according to their own lustful passion. It's what it says.
You can't live that way. That's not God's will. Stay away from sex sin. Handle your body so it honors God. Don't act like the godless heathen and fourth.
Don't cross a line, that's what transgress means, and defraud. your brother in the matter. Don't ever take advantage of another person. Sexually. Don't you cross that line?
Don't take advantage of someone else. You are defrauding that person of their virtue. of their holiness. of their purity. Don't do that.
That's God's will. Sometimes a couple comes in and want to Marital counseling and Typically the first question we ask is, are you having a sexual relationship? Because if you are, how would you ever know whether God wanted you to get to marry each other? How would you know the part of God's will He hasn't revealed when you're not even obeying the part He has? God's under no obligation to show you His will on a personal level when you won't obey the will that He's revealed on the pages of His Word.
That's pretty serious, verse six. You should do this, verse 6, because the Lord is the avenger in all these things. You want to have trouble in life? Just get under the vengeance of God. And he says, we told you this before, and we solemnly warned you.
And this is one of those kinds of things you can't say once. I told you, I told you, I solemnly told you, and I'm telling you again: don't live like this. Because God is the Avenger. Why? Verse 7 repeats really what was back in verse 3, because God has not called us for the purpose of impurity, but in sanctification.
And somebody's going to say, well, I don't have to take that from you. Fine, take it from God. Verse 8: He who rejects this. He who rejects this is not rejecting man, but the God who gives his whom. It's Holy Spirit.
The will of God, be saved. If you're saved, he gives you the Spirit. If He gives you the Spirit, then He expects you to be holy because you have the capacity by virtue of the strength of the Spirit to be holy when you're controlled by the Spirit through the controlling power of the truth. in you You're in this church. That's why we teach you the truth and teach you the truth and teach you the truth to give you the mind of the Spirit so that the Spirit of God can control your life.
The God who gave you the Holy Spirit to do just that expects you to be sanctified.
So what is God's will? You be saved, spirit-filled, sanctified. You can start asking what Who I should marry, what job, what school, what this, what this, what. When you have begun to obey the will of God that has been revealed. Then you can ask God for what part he hasn't revealed.
But there's a fourth, and I'll just mention this because time has gone. Submission. Submission. First Peter 2. It's very clear again.
It says in 1 Peter 2: submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every human institution. to the king and the governor, those who punish evildoers. And praise those who do right. And by the way, biblically, government has one dominating function. Government, as we know it in America and the rest of the world, is way beyond what God ever intended for government to do.
But what government was instituted to do was to punish evildoers and reward people who do well. That's essentially what it was. It was for the sake of the protection of people, so you weren't living in a society of the survival of the fittest.
So he says, you need to submit to government because it is ordained by God, as Romans 13 says, verse 15, because this is the will of God, that by doing right, you will silence the ignorance of foolish men. If you are submissive to the society, we don't expect that it's a godly society, it's not a Christ-honoring society, neither was the society that Peter was addressing in his day. You submit to the institution of government. And you silence those who criticize Christianity. It's a sad thing today.
So many Christians are caught up in all this lobbying and all this government stuff that they are a discredit to Jesus Christ because the world begins to view us as just another political party instead of those who have a redemptive message.
So, if we want to shut the mouths of the critics, then we need to live godly lives. And part of living a godly life is being... Submissive. Part of why I wrote this book, Why the Government Can't Save You, to get Christians Back on the Right track. But it is God's will that we live godly lives in an ungodly society.
And we submit to the authorities when they hold up the standards of right and wrong. In other words, we do right in our society.
So be saved, be spirit-filled, be sanctified, and do what's right. as a citizen in your society and submit to the authorities. There's a fifth S in my little outline, suffering. You're in 1 Peter. You can look at chapter 3, verse.
It is better if God should will it so that you suffer for doing what is right. Yeah. And let me tell you folks. This is really important. If you're going to do the will of God, being saved, spirit-filled, sanctified, and submissive.
There is a collision at some point. Because if you're living this kind of life, you will collide. with the people around you who aren't living that kind of life. And what will happen is Persecution will come.
some level of suffering will come. Could be a fiery ordeal, as it says in chapter 4, verse 12. I mean, it could be something very, very serious.
So We could suffer. Down in chapter 5, verse 10, we may suffer for a little while here in this life according to the will of God. And we know that God uses that suffering to perfect us and to shape us and to humble us and to help us be more prayerful and more trusting in Him and to also demonstrate His grace to us. But what it's really saying, folks, is don't compromise. Because the way you can mitigate your suffering is by compromising, right?
It's hard to live your Christian life in your family, so you compromise. It's hard to live your Christian life in your school, so you shut your mouth and you compromise. Hard to live your Christian life with your friends, so you compromise, or at the job, or wherever it is, and so you compromise. The will of God is that if you suffer, you suffer for doing what is right. Just keep doing what is right, believing what is right, proclaiming what is right, and if you have to suffer, you suffer.
So what is God's will for your life? That you be saved, spirit-filled, sanctified? Submissive, living righteously in the society, and that you be willing to suffer because you will not compromise the truth. That's God's will for your life. You say this is not helpful.
I still don't know where I am here. You don't understand. I have to make a decision by tomorrow. What are you telling me?
Well, I got one more S. Saying thanks. 1 Thessalonians 5.18. In everything give thanks, for this is the. Will of God concerning you.
Is that one hard? That's not hard.
So be saved, spirit-filled, sanctified, submissive. Uncompromising, willing to suffer, and say thanks for everything. No bitterness, no complaining, no ingratitude, no disappointment. Accept every single thing that comes into your life as that which God has brought for your good and His glory, and have a thankful heart. That's it.
That's what God says about His will. You say, but what about me? Are you ready for this? If you're saved, spirit-filled, sanctified, submissive suffering and saying thanks. Do you know what God's will is?
Whatever you want. Do you like that? Do whatever you want. Go do whatever you want. You say you're kidding?
No, I'm not kidding. No, you say, what do you mean? I can't just go do what I want. Yes, you can. Because if that's how you're living, guess who's in charge of your wants?
You see, that's Psalm 37:4. Delight in the Lord. He's your delight. You're consumed with delight in him. You want his will from the heart.
You're doing all those things, and he will give you what? Why? Because he's in control of them. Because the desires that you have are the desires that he has.
So what do we want? People say to me, You know, why did you come to Grace Church? I wanted to. I didn't hear a voice except my wife. She said, go there.
But I didn't hear any supernatural voice. I came because I wanted to come. I've never heard any voices. I just do what I feel I want to do. And I feel that the wants fit within the framework of living a godly life and that God is planting the want.
When it says he'll give you the desire of your heart, it doesn't mean that he will give you what you want. It means he will cause you to desire what he wants.
So I'll do what you want. Your heart's right. Is that good news? Is that freedom? But you gotta Be obedient.
to the established pattern. Let's pray. Father, thank you. Thank you that when we start out. As it says in Genesis 24:27, I being in the way the Lord led me.
Once we get rolling in the direction that we We desire you will take over and lead us. and bring us to that perfect place. of your will. Help us to do what we know you've revealed. in order that we might rejoice in being free to do that.
which is particular for our lives. And as we move out, To follow the desires that you've planted there. Guide us. into that perfect place of fulfillment. We will praise you in Christ's name.
Amen. Boom. You're listening to Grace to You, the Bible teaching ministry of John MacArthur. Our current study pulls together messages by John that our staff selected as their favorites. It's titled John MacArthur's Most Memorable Sermon.
And, friend, as John MacArthur explained today, you really can know God's will for your life. And to help you dig even deeper into how to go about following the will of God. We'd like to send you a free booklet by John called Found God's Will. All you have to do is ask for it. Request your copy when you contact us today.
Call us at 800-55 GRACE or request Found God's Will from our website gty.org. This booklet gives clear principles for making even difficult decisions with confidence. Again, Found God's Will is yours free of charge. Just request your copy from us at gty.org or you can call us at 800-55GRACE. And I encourage you to tap into the many free resources available at gty.org.
It's really a Bible study library at your fingertips. You'll find QA sessions and blog articles, daily devotionals, and of course more than 3,600 sermons to download both in print and in MP3 format. You can also get our free Grace to You app and listen to John's sermons on your mobile device and your smart TV. All of that and more is free at gty.org.
Now, for the entire Grace DU staff, I'm Phil Johnson with a question. How do you explain the gospel to someone who is steeped in philosophy and intellectualism from the world? John MacArthur's lesson tomorrow puts worldly wisdom in perspective. Be here as we continue our brand new study called John MacArthur's Most Memorable Sermon. With another half hour of Unleashing God's Truth, one verse at a time, on grace to you.
