Knowing the Will of God

How can I tell by looking at the law of God, or the Word of God, or the commandments of God, whether I should be a butcher, a baker, or a candlestick maker? I can't flip open the Bible to 2 Timothy and point my finger down at the text and it says, And thou, R.C.

Sproul, should be a butcher. There actually is a passage in Scripture that answers that question for us. No, it doesn't tell us whether we should be a butcher, a baker, or a candlestick maker.

It tells us something far more valuable than that. Here's R.C. Today we're going to begin a series called Dealing with Difficult Problems. And before we get started, let me make mention of a friend I had in seminary who was one of my classmates a hundred years ago in Pittsburgh, who while he was attending seminary was engaged on the side with an educational television studio there in Pittsburgh, experimenting with a new format of video specifically designed for children. And this man's name was Fred, Fred Rogers.

And so in terms of my wardrobe for this series, I'm taking a cue from my seminary classmate, Fred Rogers, who always found it to be a wonderful day in the neighborhood. Well, we're going to start this series by looking at the first question or problem that Christians face, which is the question, how do we know the will of God for our lives? I haven't really kept track of the questions that people ask me in terms of theology and spiritual things, but I am convinced that the question I hear more frequently than any other question from earnest Christians is exactly that question, how can I know what God's will is for my life? And it's a question that is not born, I don't think, of idle curiosity, but out of an earnest desire of people to make sure that what they're doing with their lives, with their vocations, their careers, their marriages, and all the rest, that they be in accordance with the will of God.

But whenever I do get that question, how do I know the will of God for my life, I always answer it by saying, you know, that's really not an easy question because the whole matter of God's will from a biblical perspective is a complicated thing. And the reason for the complication is this, that the Bible speaks about the will of God in more than one way. In fact, it speaks about the will of God in several different ways. For example, in the New Testament we have two different Greek words, both of which may be translated by the English word will. And it would be nice to say that when you have the one Greek word it means one kind of God's will, and when you have the other Greek word it means the other kind of God's will, but even that doesn't work out because both of these distinct terms are capable of many nuances of meaning. But sometimes when we hear about the word will of God, it refers to the counsel of God or to the plan of God or to the desire of God, just to mention a few. But when we look at it from a theological perspective, then we get involved in the whole business of making the fine distinctions of which every theologian has a license to make. And one of the first distinctions we make with respect to the will of God is the distinction between what we call the revealed will of God and the hidden will of God. In technical terms, we talk about the deus revelatus and the deus absconditus. Now, those are just fancy words for these different concepts here.

Let's begin at the end. The deus absconditus refers to the hiddenness of God. We speak of the English term abscond, when somebody embezzles the funds from the banks and then flees and hides, absconds with the money. He goes into hiding. The deus revelatus, of course, simply refers to that which God has revealed. In the Old Testament, we hear the Scriptures say, the secret things belong to the Lord our God, but that which He has revealed belongs to us and to our seed forever. That is, we understand that God has revealed many things to us through the pages of sacred Scripture, as well as in nature, but He hasn't revealed everything that He knows.

There are things about God, about His plans, about His operations of the universe and His government of the things of men that He has not chosen to unveil to us, and they remain hidden. Now, so often when people come to me and say, how can I know the will of God for my life? I'm suspicious there, and I stop them and say, now are you asking me about knowing the hidden will of God? Because if you are, I have to kind of bring you up short here for a second and say the simple answer to the question of knowing the hidden will of God is, A, you can't know the hidden will of God because it's hidden, and second of all, it's none of your business. If God wanted to make it our business, He would then, of course, reveal His hidden will.

That's where Calvin once made the observation, where God closes His holy mouth, I will desist from inquiry. And also we recognize in the Old Testament that there were very strong prohibitions that God gave to Israel against fortune-telling, soothsaying, practices of the occult and of magic, which in many cases was driven by people's desire to know the future before it unfolds. And in fact, this was an attitude of unbelief in the sense of the people were not willing to trust God for the unknown future apart from what God did promise with respect to the future. They wanted to be more specific. They wanted to know their horoscopes.

They wanted to know what their destiny or fate was going to be tomorrow. But again, we have to be careful that in our desire to know the will of God, that we don't cross the line into dabbling with things that God has prohibited us from being engaged with. We are not to play around with fortune-tellers and magic and occult practices. Second distinction that we find in theology that is often confused is the distinction between what we call the active will of God and the passive will of God. Now sometimes these categories are stated in another way, in fact a little bit more technically, in terms of what we call the decorative will or the permissive will. And it's important to get a grasp of the difference between these two because when we're talking about the active will of God or the decorative will of God or sometimes even called the sovereign will of God, what we're engaged in at that point is a discussion of that will of God by which God sovereignly and absolutely, by the strength of His own power, brings to pass whatsoever He will. When God creates the universe by the sheer power of His command through a divine imperative, He says, let there be light, and the lights come on. Nothing can resist the decorative will of God. It is that sovereign will of God, which by the sheer force of necessity, because it is His decree, that it indeed must come to pass. Now all that we need to know about the decorative will of God is unfolded for us in the pages of sacred Scripture. We know that it was by the determinant counsel of God, by His sovereign plan from the beginning of time, that Christ should come in the fullness of time and should give His life as a sacrifice for us. That was not a cosmic accident, nor was that an afterthought in the mind of God, but it was part of His divine decree.

He decreed it, and He brought it to pass. Now when we get to the passive will of God, which is sometimes called the permissive will of God, then we sometimes run into some serious problems of confusion. In fact, there are many theologians who choke on the word permissive with respect to the will of God, don't like to use it at all, because it seems to suggest that here we are engaged with things that take place completely outside the scope of God's providential government.

But what is in view here by this distinction between the active and the passive is there are certain things that God does where He actively involves Himself directly in the affairs of men and in the course of human history. And yet there are other times when God remains passive and allows, as it were, certain things to come to pass. For example, when He gives His law to us, which we'll talk about a little bit more in a few moments, when He says, Thou shalt not steal, this is not an expression of His decorative will that must come to pass because, in fact, people can and do steal. We have the ability to resist the commandments of God. Now when we do disobey God and resist His will at that point, then we can only do that if He indeed lets it happen.

Now the danger of the term permissive is really twofold. If we say that I sin only by the permissive will of God, it may be misconstrued to mean that God has granted His moral permission for me to sin. Well, He never grants permission for us to sin in that sense.

When we go to our parents or we go to our boss and we ask permission to do this and to do that, we're also asking for their blessing, for their sanctioning of whatever it is that we're trying to do. The fact that God permits us to do certain things does not carry with it the implication that He sanctions those things or that He places His blessing upon those things. All we mean when we speak of the permissive will of God is that He does not intervene to stop us from doing things that are contrary to His law. Now the other danger that we have with this term, the permissive will of God, is that we sometimes think that because God is passive that He's utterly uninvolved, as if there are things that go on in our lives and in this world totally outside the scope of God's government and providence, that He remains passive. He's a celestial spectator. Maybe He's rooting that things will go well on this planet, but He's helpless to intervene to stop things that are happening, and He's up in heaven wringing His hands as He's watching the drama unfold.

No. Remember that when we speak about the passive will of God or the permissive will of God, we're still talking about the will of God. It is the permissive will of God or the passive will of God. Now what do I mean by that?

Well, let's take a concrete illustration. Suppose you're walking down the street and you're contemplating robbing a bank, and it is your plan, it is your will, it is your intent to carry out this pernicious activity. And you go in absolute defiance to the sovereign commandments of God. You're in direct disobedience to Him, and you're not afraid of Him at all. But at the same time, we realize that if God so chooses, He has both the power and the right. He has the authority and the means to stop you in your tracks. He can vaporize you at any second, because in Him we live and move and have our being, and we can't draw a breath of air in this world apart from the will of God. He raises people up.

He brings people down. Now if God is pleased to suffer long with our abstinence and our disobedience, He still is exercising His will in a certain sense. Whenever God is passive or permissive, He is passive and permissive because He chooses to be passive and permissive. So in one sense, I can't do anything apart from the will of God.

It doesn't mean that He's coercing you, coercing me to do what I'm doing, but since He could stop me from doing anything that I decide to do, if He lets me do it, He lets me do it because it seems good to Him to let me do it. He chooses to stay out of the picture. And when God chooses to stay out of the picture, in fact, He's in the picture by the very virtue of His making that decision. Now, I've mentioned already the decreed of will of God, and I want to speak of another distinction that we make that's a very important one. And for those who are earnestly concerned about the practical application of the question, how do I know the will of God from my life, this is the one we really need to focus on because this is called the preceptive will of God. The preceptive will of God refers specifically to the commands of God, the precepts, His law. This is the will of God for your life that you have no other gods before Him. This is the will of God for your life that you not make unto Him any graven images.

In other words, when God expresses His law to us, His law is an expression of His will for His people, and He is legislating His commands by which He binds our consciences and imposes absolute obligations upon us. Now, usually when people come to me and they say, how can I know the will of God for my life? They're struggling with questions like, should I be a butcher, a baker, or a candlestick maker? They want to know, should I marry Sally or should I marry Marge?

They want to know, should I live in Boston or should I live in Chicago? These are the kinds of decisions that we wrestle with in this world and in this life. And usually what I say in response to that is, I understand that you're concerned about these things, and it's perfectly fine to be concerned about these things, but if you really want to know whether you should be a butcher, a baker, or a candlestick maker, and if you really want to know whether you should marry Sally or Marge, or should live in Boston or Orlando or Chicago or wherever, the best way I know for you to get an answer to those questions is by searching the Scriptures and by focusing your attention on the preceptive will of God.

Why? When we look in the Old Testament and we see how the saints of the Old Testament also struggled with these same questions, where did they turn for personal guidance? What was the light for their feet and the lamp for their path except the law of God? And that's why the psalmist would declare, Oh, how I love thy law, because the saint in the Old Testament realized that the law of God flowed from his character out of his goodness that defines not only the goodness of God but also defines what is pleasing to God. And if you're concerned about pleasing God, where do you look? You look at his precepts that tell us what things are pleasing to us. Well, how can I tell by looking at the law of God or the Word of God or the commandments of God whether I should be a butcher, a baker, or a candlestick maker? I can't flip open the Bible to 2 Timothy and point my finger down in the text, and it says, And thou, ours, these, broil, should be a butcher.

No. But the Scripture gives us wisdom and principles by which we are called upon, for example, to make a sober evaluation of our gifts and talents. We are not to think more highly of ourselves, the apostle says, than we ought, but to judge soberly. And in that sober judgment and seeking the counsel of others, we are to find what our gifts are and in seeking an understanding of our gifts and talents and recognizing that all of our gifts come to us from God and recognizing that those gifts and talents will give to us a sense of vocation where we will begin to discern the call of God upon our lives. Now, we read in the Scriptures something that is difficult, not difficult to understand but difficult to apply when we're struggling with the question, What is the will of God for my life? The Bible answers that question in an ultimate sense directly and simply. This is the will of God, even your sanctification.

Let me say it again. This is the will of God, even your sanctification. If you know what God wants from your life, He wants a life of obedience. He wants a life of sanctity. He wants a life of consecration to Him. That is the overarching principle by which everything else is to be measured. And Jesus Himself put it in exactly those terms when He said, when He said, Seek ye first.

And the word that our Lord used there is the Greek word protos. And here the force of that word, first, is not simply first in sequential order, but rather first in order of priority, first in order of importance. Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and then what? Then all these things will be added unto you. In other words, what Jonathan Edwards says, I think is correct, that the seeking after the kingdom of God and of His righteousness should be the main and central business of our lives. If we fix our faces as flints towards that goal of seeking the righteousness of the kingdom of God, we'll never have to worry about the will of God for our lives, because this is the will of God, this is the will of God, our sanctification, our conformity to the image of Christ. What God wants, what His will is for you, what please is God is your obedience. Let's put our attention there and let the rest up to the providence of God.

I think we can see there how liberating that biblical counsel is. That's Dr. R.C. Sproul from his series Dealing with Difficult Problems. We're featuring this series this week here on Renewing Your Mind and six lessons.

R.C. teaches us how to understand suffering and how to deal with guilt, anxiety, and anger. We'd like for you to have this entire series, six sessions in all, and it's contained on a single DVD.

You can give your gift and request the series online at renewingyourmind.org, or you can call us at 800-435-4343. Just because we're Christians doesn't mean we're immune to difficult struggles or that we won't have times when we don't understand what's happening in our lives. Sometimes we are completely overwhelmed by circumstances, and in those moments, we can be tempted to question God's plan, to question His goodness. It's then that we need to look to God and His Word for answers.

Dr. Sproul's series on Dealing with Difficult Problems is a helpful guide to point you in the right direction. It's our pleasure to send it to you today for your donation of any amount to Ligonier Ministries. Request the six-part set when you call us today. That number again is 800-435-4343. Our web address where you can reach us is renewingyourmind.org. Well, Jesus said that He came that we may have life and have it abundantly. So how do we square that with what He also said, that in this world we will have trouble? We hope you'll join us as Dr. R. C. Sproul continues his series Dealing with Difficult Problems tomorrow on Renewing Your Mind. you