Lesson # 13 God's Will & Guidance (Fundamentals of the Faith by John MacArthur)

God's Sovereign Will and the Memory Verse

So, this is lesson number 13, final lesson of John MacArthur's Fundamentals of the Faith. This is on the subject of God's will and guidance. The memory verse was Ephesians 5, 17, which says, so then do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.

So, this section starts out with this statement, God is sovereign and has a purpose for all of his creation. He has a plan or will for each of us, though we often make his will more difficult to respond to than it really is.

In this lesson, we will explore God's will and how we are guided into it. So, I think this is one of the most common questions, at least it used to be when I would hear pastors talk about Q &As and the call-in shows where people would have their questions about God and Jesus and the Bible.

God's Sovereign Will in History and Providence

And this was the most common question being asked, what is God's will for my life? And can you know God's will for your life? God doesn't give you specifics, obviously, in the Bible, he doesn't give specifics about what career field you should go into or what city to move to, what college to go to.

He may lead you in other ways, which is part of this. But as far as the Bible, what is God's will in scripture? If somebody asked you and they said, well, how do I know God's will for my life? What would you say?

What's some basic advice? Pray on it. We would probably say, you know, read the Bible and pray about it. Get into the word and pray about it because there are many things that are revealed. God's will for our life is our sanctification.

That's one of the main things said in the New Testament. But here it says the Bible portrays two aspects of God's will. His sovereign will and his commanded will in God's sovereignty. He has a plan that covers all aspects of creation and time.

He also has a commanded will that he legislates to his people. Okay. So the sovereign will of God, in other words, is, can be a mystery. And then his revealed will are the commandments. For example, the commandments given in scripture.

So is it God's will? Here's something real basic. Is it God's will for you to lie and to steal? No, we'll see, you know that. But some of these other things can get a little more complicated. Now have you ever heard this described in a different way because John MacArthur's breaking it down and I've heard different ways of describing it, but basically two aspects of God's will sovereign and commanded will.

Has anyone heard anything different?

I'm used to the permissive will and his perfect will.

That's how I've often heard it described. Permissive will, decretive will, permissive and what was the other one? Permissive and perfect. His perfect will. Okay. So this I think is a little more simple.

So we're going to have some verses to, uh, to test out. It's okay. Uh, bless you. We'll have some verses we'll read and we'll say, okay, is this the sovereign will of God or the commanded will of God?

That's on the next page. But just as a way of explaining this further, a, the meaning of God's will. Number one, God's sovereign will. God's sovereign will involves his ultimate complete control over everything.

And of course there are some professing Christians, legitimate Christians who don't actually believe that God is really controlling everything. There's, you know, the, the debate of the sovereignty of God and the free will of man and all that, which we don't need to get into this morning.

But suffice to say that there would be people who see this a little differently, I think. But here it says God's sovereign will involves his ultimate complete control over everything. Nothing happens that is not in God's plan.

History is really the unfolding of God's purposes, which happened exactly as he planned. Okay. Any comments or questions on that? Okay. At the very least, I think all Christians would agree that God knows what's going to happen before it happens, right?

And God, in theory, he could change it so that it happened differently if he wanted to, right? I think all Christians would agree with that. So whatever happens, ultimately at the very least, God either wills it or at the very least he allows it.

And he works that out according to his purposes. You take the example of Joseph being sold into slavery. Obviously that is not God's will. He did not want the brothers to despise Joseph and sell them into slavery.

It's not the will of God to do evil. But in another way of looking at it, God used all of that to bring his will about to save many lives in Egypt. So there's kind of two ways to look at it. So look up each of the following verses and write out the key thought about God's sovereign will.

And the two verses were Isaiah 14 verse 24 and then Ephesians 1 11 B and you remember what the B, a and B stand for a is the beginning of the verse and B is the second half of the verse. Okay. So Isaiah 14 verse 24 says, surely just as I have intended.

So it has happened. And just as I have planned, so it will stand. And who's speaking there? God. Okay. So that, that's pretty clear, pretty clear statement that whatever happens, God is saying I'm, I'm in control of it.

All right. And then Ephesians 1 11 B says who works all things after the counsel of his will. So at least in one sense, anything that happens, it is the will of God. But then in another sense, if somebody does something like Joseph's brother, selling him into slavery, that was not God's commanded will.

That's not what God wanted them to do. It was the wrong thing to do, but God allowed it to happen. Willed it to happen. You could say to bring about his purpose works all things after the counsel of his will.

So we understand that. Any questions on that challenges to it? Because I can just imagine, yeah, there would be some churches, some church traditions that would really bristle at this idea of the sovereignty of God, because they think that it makes God the author of evil.

If something bad happens and you say that was God's will in their mind, that saying that God's will is that evil be done. That's not what's being said, obviously. Okay. Isaiah 46 9 and 10 I am God and there is no one like me.

My purpose will be established and I will accomplish all my good pleasure. I forget if it's mentioned here or not, but in the book of Acts, it talks about how the crucifixion of Jesus was predestined or for ordained.

So we would all agree that the crucifixion of the son of God is the most evil thing ever done by the hands of men. And yet it says it was for ordained, he's the lamb of God for ordained from the foundation of the world.

So this is a deep, deep subject. Number two, it says God's commanded will. God's commanded will is revealed through the Bible as laws or principles. It is that aspect of his will to which men are held accountable.

God's Commanded Will in Scripture

Okay. So we looked at God's sovereign will. Now this is his commanded will a, according to the great commission, Matthew 28 verse 20, what are new believers to be taught? What are new believers and really all believers to be taught, but this is the great commission.

We make disciples, okay? We get people converted to Christ. We baptize them. The next step is to teach them all that Christ commanded. So a new believer should be taught what? Just the basics. Don't confuse them about the hard stuff while you start out with the basics, but, uh, believers are to be taught all that Christ commanded.

So that's the will of God, right? Is it the will of God that Christians be taught the whole council of God, the whole Bible? That's going to be partly what the sermons about later, how Jesus in the sermon on the Mount, he said, I did not come to destroy the law or the prophets, but to fulfill.

So a lot of Christians have the idea that the old Testament is kind of, you know, there is a sense where the old covenant is obsolete. Hebrew says that, but in their mind, a lot of Christians think that the old Testament is almost like irrelevant that Jesus came to do away with that.

Or if you try to quote a verse in the old Testament as being authoritative, they're like, well, that doesn't count. That's the old Testament. Well, not exactly. So we should teach the whole Bible. And when Jesus made that statement, of course, the only Bible there was, was the old Testament.

But yes, Larry.

Paul wrote in 2nd Timothy that all scripture is profitable and then for doctrine, for teaching, for instruction and all these things. And all scripture at the time was what did Paul have? He had the Old Testament.

He had the law. He didn't have Peter's writings and Luke's writings. Yeah, right. You know, he had the Old Testament, he had the prophets. Yep.

So the Old Testament is the Bible too. Okay. B, God gave two great commandments. List them below. Matthew 22, verse 37, you shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.

And then Matthew 22, verse 39, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Okay. So that is part of God's commanded will. So we know that part of God's will, but there's a lot of things that are going to happen and why they happen that we don't really know God's will.

Okay. So the, this is B, the nature of God's will. Yeah. Go ahead.

Sure. That, you know, the two great commandments, um, you know, I mean, how I, I have a hard time loving God. How do I do it? I mean, that's, you know, I don't, I'm not obedient all the time and I struggle with that, you know, and to, to keep his commandments and obey and do them.

It's, it's, I'm not saying that I just break them all the time. Yeah. It's something that I should, to show my love for God, I need to be obedient. Right. And that's something hard. You know, how, how do I do it always?

Yeah. You know, it's something, it's difficult.

Right. Well, and I think that the, the way it's described in scripture is helpful where God is our heavenly father and we are his children. And of course, God is a good father. He's perfectly just, and his love for us is perfect.

But, uh, we know how it is that children don't always obey their parents, right? But, uh, a child who really loves their parents will want to obey, but they don't always do it. They don't do it perfectly, certainly, but that, that's sort of the analogy that we show our love for God, not because we have this feeling within ourselves.

A lot of churches these days, the, the, the ministry, the methods, it's very emotion based, uh, and the commandments are kind of left, left off to the side, but really in scripture, we show our love for God by obeying God.

And we, obviously that comes from the heart. Uh, if we're sincere, Marcus.

Well, as I was thinking about these two and the difference, and I did struggle with some of these to see which they fit into, but one thing became very clear to me, and that is that God's command and will is something that I continually fall short and, um, it's a, it's a great goal.

It is my goal. Uh, but of course I live a lot more within his sovereign will and, uh, Romans eight, it's been particularly helpful to me in some very personal situations that I'm going through. Um, and of course the most famous one, perhaps it's Romans eight, 28, eight, 28.

That says, and we know that all things work together for good to those that love God, to those who are the call according to his purpose. I can honestly say that I do love God. I fall short of his command and will, because I'm supposed to love him with all my heart and soul and mind and strength.

And there's still little parts that don't do it. It's not what I want. So I don't quite, I don't quite measure up, but again, all things work together for good. Another translation say God causes all things to work together for good.

He has taken my mistakes, my, my shortcomings, my disobedience, my rebellion, he has taken those things and still worked, worked through them to book me that every once in a while being in the right place at the right time.

So that's, I'm beginning to understand his sovereign will more.

All right, let's turn to Matthew chapter 22 because we have two testimonies that we just heard of Christians saying that I, I fall short. Of course, that's really the testimony of every believer, right?

Every human being. Yeah, well, it should be. Anyways, I've been studying church history and there are two pretty significant figures of recent church history. Recent is in the last few hundred years. Uh, Charles Wesley or John Wesley, I think they're both on the same page, but John Wesley, who is the founder of the Methodist and then a man named Charles Finney, who sort of created the revivalist, uh, um, crusade influenced Billy Graham.

So Charles Finney and, uh, John Wesley both believed in sinless perfection. They believed that Christians could reach a state and should reach a state where you literally never sin anymore. And you know, how many people teach that today?

It just seems so foreign to us. I don't know any, uh, reliable teachers who continue to teach that. Uh, but let's look at Matthew 22. A lot of people think this verse here, where Jesus talks about love the Lord, your God, you know, the great commandment, the second is like it.

Love your neighbor as yourself. A lot of people think that's the gospel. Well, that's not the gospel. Uh, notice what it says, Matthew 22, starting in verse 34. But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, then one of them, a lawyer asked Jesus a question, testing him and saying, teacher, which is the great commandment in the law.

So as Jesus about to talk about the law or the gospel, he's talking about the law. This is, this is not the gospel, but he says, you shall love the Lord, your God with all your heart and with all your soul.

And with all your mind, this is the first in great commandment, which every single one of us, every single human being falls short of this. Nobody keeps the first command. Some keep it better than others, but nobody keeps the first commandment of the law, right?

All have sin and have come short of the glory of God. And the second commandment is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. How many people truly love their neighbor, love others as much as they love themselves?

See, this condemns us. This is not the gospel. This really, if we take an honest look, this condemns us because we're not, as you guys said, we're not living up and because we do not live up, that's why we need the gospel.

So that's kind of what the sermon on the Mount is, is really about. But let's continue on because I've heard over the past couple of years, pastors talk about the gospel, and then they start talking about the first great commandment and the second love your neighbor.

And like, that's the law. That's not the gospel. You don't want Jesus judging you by that. OK, be the nature of God's will. Does everyone agree with that? You knew that, right? Now, once we believe the gospel, God gives us a new heart.

We want to obey. And then we do love our neighbor. We do love God. But as long as we're alive in this flesh, the flesh is sinful. Long as we're here on Earth living in this sinful flesh, we're never going to get to that sinless perfection state.

And maybe I shouldn't say this, but John Wesley and Charles Finney, to even teach that, I believe it's false doctrine. So to even teach that showed you that they weren't sinlessly perfect. Otherwise, they wouldn't be teaching it.

Marcus. Yeah, you should not use that word as one word, but use it as two. The word sinless. You should just sin less. And as at my age and as I hopefully am being sanctified and hopefully and prayerfully am becoming more like Christ, I recognize that I am further and further away from sinless than I ever used to think that I was.

Yeah. I'm further away from being like Christ than I was, even though it has been my lifetime prayer ever since a small child to be like Jesus. That was my bedtime prayer. To be a better boy like Jesus, in whose name I pray, was the way I prayed all my life.

Yeah, the more you grow, the more you realize those other little things that you well, you weren't even aware of them before, but now they seem bigger the more you grow. And I don't mean to criticize John Wesley.

He was a committed preacher of the gospel, but I just think that that one thing is wrong and it seemed to fit in here. Be the nature of God's will. God's sovereign will and commanded will are better understood in light of their respective characteristics.

Comparing Sovereign and Commanded Will

Okay, so we're going to read from the column of the sovereign will of God. Number one, it's secret known only to God, except as revealed through history or revelation to cannot be resisted or thwarted.

Okay, so God, can the commanded will of God be resisted? Yeah, it's resisted every day, but the sovereign will of God cannot be resisted or thwarted. Three, it encompasses both good and evil. So God takes all things, including evil, and he works it out for the good.

Four, it's comprehensive, controls all aspects of life, time, and history. And then number five, the believer is not commanded to know or discover what God has not revealed. There are the secret things of God that we just don't know.

So there's things that God is planning to do in the world, and I believe the book of Revelation in particular lays out what God is planning to do in the future. But there's still some things that we just don't know.

And the reason we don't know is because God has not revealed it to us. So that's the sovereign will of God. Any questions, comments on this? Mark, look where I had one. Oh, okay. Oh, Joyce had her hand up there.

Oh, no, no, we moved on. Okay, all right. Sorry. The commanded will, the commanded will. I don't mind going backwards, Joyce. That's okay. All right. All right. Okay, the commanded will revealed, it's revealed in the Bible.

So if you want to know what the will of God is, that again, that would be my first advice. Hey, read the Bible. There's all these people. Oh, what's the will of God for my life? What's the what? Are you reading the Bible?

Yeah, because if you're not reading the scripture, stop asking if you're not reading scripture. So look to the word of God and then, yeah, pray about it and see what happens. But God's commanded will is revealed in the Bible.

Number two, it can be resisted or disobeyed. Right. Thou shalt not covet. And then you see something your neighbor brought home and you're like, oh, man, I really like that. Well, there you go. You just you just disobeyed the commanded will of God.

Okay. Three involves only that which is good and holy. That's the commanded will. So the 10 commandments, this is what God has revealed. It's right. It's good. It's just it's holy and we know it. And then number four, it's specific and provides principles for living.

And then number five, the commanded will of God. Believers are exhorted to know, understand and obey all that God has revealed. Okay. So I think we see the difference between God's sovereign will and commanded will.

Does anyone not see the difference or want clarification? Okay. It is sometimes difficult. We'll find out. Yeah. Well, it gets a little more challenging when you read a verse and this is what we're going to do now.

We're going to read a verse and you're going to say, okay, that's commanded will or that's sovereign will.

So this will get a little challenging. But Larry, you had your hand up. Yeah. I think it was in the sermon that John MacArthur did for the beginning here where he said that if you're unwilling to obey what you can read in scripture, God is not going to reveal anything more.

Yeah. You have to, the light that you're given, you have to be obedient to that light. Otherwise, you're not going to get any more.

Right. Yeah. You need to be faithful in the little things before God is going to entrust bigger things. Okay. You're ready to, to be examined, which is which the sovereign will or the commanded will to, even if you're not ready too bad, we're doing it right now.

Scripture Examples of Sovereign and Commanded Will

Philippians 2 13. It is God who is at work in you both to will and to work for his good pleasure. I'll read it one more time. It is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

This is what the sovereign will or commanded. Well, who says sovereign will. Okay. Who says commanded will somebody had commanded will I bet? Um, well I have the teacher's guide, so it makes it easy for me.

So, but this is the sovereign will of God. Does anyone want to maybe explain why? Why do you think this is the sovereign will?

Because it says, this is God's will.

Okay. It is God who is at work in you both to will because he's at work in us, but we're.

Still not, we're still not up to the a hundred percent. We're no, not getting any pluses. Yeah. I'm glad that he's at work in us. But again, and I know I could tell from the beginning that you don't want to talk much about free will or not.

Well, um, if you bring it up, yeah.

Well, our will, I mean, is Philippians one six in here too.

I just didn't want to derail the conversation right from the start.

That was the main thing. But one six is number five down, down in there, but it's talking about our wills are very strong things, right? Yeah.

So man has a will, uh, you know, we've talked about this before. I would argue man's will really isn't free because Roman says that the natural man is a slave to sin, and even when we're regenerate and have the Holy spirit within us, we still have to contend and mortify the sinful flesh.

So I just, I think in heaven, we will be free. I don't, I don't like the term free will only because we're not truly free. It makes it sound like man is morally neutral and we can kind of go either way, but we definitely have a bent towards sin.

So I, that's why I don't care for the term free will, but without a question, mankind has a will and because we have a will, God, God's will gets resisted because we want to do what we want to do. That's the thing with free will.

Yeah, we have it, but we use it to disobey God's will. That's, that's the problem.

Stacey. Actually, I think you just said it, but I was going to say, even though we have a bent toward the sinful flesh in us, we still have the free will to obey that. Or to resist that.

Yeah. And this was another thing that came up briefly in our church history series. There was a man named Pelagius. I think he was a priest in the fourth, fifth century. And he said that mankind has the ability within himself to do good, to will for himself to choose God.

And he said, man could do that without God's grace. Like we have it within ourselves because God says, be holy for I am holy. So we must have the ability to be holy. And we have it within ourselves who don't need the grace of God.

That was considered a heresy by the early church. Augustine fought against Pelagius and all the rest, but we do have the ability to choose God, but that's only in response to the grace of God. So we hear the gospel, we receive some measure of grace and we can respond to that, but we would never choose it for ourselves without God moving first.

Yeah. So how would you explain, because I do know people who are of this frame of mind is maybe they don't have Christ in their life, but they'll say, well, I'm a good person. I do these good things. It's not for God that they're doing it, but to edify their own thought of what good is.

Right. Well, I think God, well, he's the creator and he is built. It's built into the creation that if you do good, good things will happen. Like someone could sort of outwardly to a degree, obey the 10 commandments or at least the second half.

And things are going to go better for you if you're not lying to everybody and you're not stealing and you're not murdering people, you're going to have a better life if you obey these commandments. So I think people see the goodness in that, even if they don't do it for Christ's sake.

And then I think God can be working in people's heart without them even realizing it.

Larry. Let's think about man's will of Jeremiah 17, 9, just as we're talking, you have that bent towards sinfulness, the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked, who can know it? So there, you know, whatever we have going on inside of us, that the two natures as believers, you know, there's still that fight, you know, where we can be deceived or deceive ourselves because of our heart, our lusts.

That's where fights and wars come from. Right.

As James says. Yeah. We need to be realistic about this, that, yeah, all sin comes short of the glory of God. But we don't want to just keep staying on that again and again, because there are people, the more you obey and you get into the habit of doing the right thing, it becomes easier to do the right thing.

And there are a lot of people. Yeah, they're not perfect, but you look at their life and their works and their commitment to the Lord. And, you know, there are people in the Old Testament in particular where it said that they were a just man.

Like, you look at them, you really can't see anything on the surface. You can't see anything in their life that would say, hey, whoa, look at that. So you can, you can live an obedient life. We don't want to make it seem like, oh, it's impossible.

So what's the use? You know, we don't want to make it sound like that. Okay. Back to this, the sovereign will commanded will first Thessalonians four, three for this is the will of God, your sanctification that is, you shall abstain from sexual immorality.

Is that the sovereign will of God or the commanded will of God? Yeah, that's the commanded will. It's like, it's pretty clear what God is saying and you're supposed to know it because he's telling you.

Okay. So the first one was the sovereign will. You don't really know how God is working in you or what he's going to do, but this we do know. So if somebody does say, Hey, what's the will of God for my life?

Just tell them first Thessalonians four, verse three, that might not be what they're looking for, but, uh, that is true. Okay. Number three, second Corinthians six, 14, do not be bound together with unbelievers or as we are accustomed to saying with the King James and new King James, do not be what unequally yoked together with unbelievers.

So is this the sovereign will of God or the commanded will of God? Yeah, I mean, this is a very clear command now. Is it resisted? Is it broken? Yes. And God, can God still use that? I mean, I think there are Christians who have married non-Christians and then later on the non-believer got saved because they are married to the Christian.

So that wasn't God's will at first, but he used it for good. But this is clearly the commanded will of God. Okay. Matthew seven 21. He who does the will of my father who is in heaven. He who does the will of my father who is in heaven.

Well, that's definitely commanded. Well, right. Because how would you even know? All right. Philippians one six, Marcus mentioned this. He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ.

So which is this sovereign will or commanded will sovereign will. Okay. Why? Why is it the sovereign will? Okay. He, this is what God, what God is doing. So he who began a good work in you will perfect it.

You think of the parable of the sower, right? The seeds kind of gets thrown out. Some seeds fall on good ground in the stony ground and everything else. Uh, the way I look at it, that there are, there are seeds being planted, right?

And it might take a while for that seed to germinate and pop up. In order for it to pop up, it has to be watered. But once it's there, you know, God is going to grow it into a tree, a bush. He's going to bring it to completion.

Uh, but there's some seed that gets tossed out and it just never, never grows, never takes root, but the promise is that once it takes and once it starts to grow up, uh, God is going to complete that work and we never know.

There could be, there's a lot of people, a lot of seeds were planted in their life, so to speak. Uh, people are watering in their life. What's going to happen to that person? I don't know. It hasn't happened yet.

We don't, we don't really know. But for the person who knows Christ, God will complete that work. But then there are other people that it looks like there's something there. And then, you know, 10 years, 20 years later, you realize, no, that wasn't the case.

So we don't really know how it's going to work out. Jeremiah 29 verse 11. This one's pretty easy. I know the plans that I have for you declares the Lord. Sovereign will or commanded will. Sovereign will, of course, then I think about it, that verse doesn't even tell them what those plans are.

They have a plan for good and not evil. But anyways, in the book, it says sovereign will. So we'll stick with that.

Yes, Mark. Where does that leave the unbeliever in this?

Uh, it leaves the unbeliever in the dark. Of course, I guess we're all in the dark to some degree with God's sovereign will. But the unbeliever has the commanded will of God and they are, they are not, not only are they not following it.

They don't, they don't really have any desire to, at least not for the right reason, but all of that answers your question. So if you, here's the thing, if you take the 10 commandments, uh, if you take what is revealed in the word of God and you bring it to a believer now, maybe they weren't doing what they should, but a believer will respond to the word, right?

If you bring what the word of God says, what God has revealed to an unbeliever, they're like, why are you wasting my time? Right? So there's a totally different response of how the believer response to the word of God versus the unbeliever.

And I think that that says, says it all. Uh, now when a believer responds to the word of God, the same way the unbeliever does, then you have a problem, right? And you got to take that to the next step and all the rest.

But I think one of the things that confuses us today is there are so many false converts in the world that you see Christians and non-Christians kind of act in the same way and you're like, what's going on, but that's because there's so many false converts.

Um, any remarks on that before we move on? Yes. Marcus.

Because his sovereign will are all the things that he is doing and his commanded will are all the things that we're supposed to do. Yep. Good. And again, the contrast being his faithfulness versus our unfaithfulness.

We fail all the time that is commanded. Well, he never fails at what he's supposed to do. Yeah. He owns, does it?

Yep. Amen. Very, uh, simply put, but very clear and eloquently put. Thank you. All right. Anything before we move on? Okay. See the response to God's will. How are we doing? We've got another page. Uh, we'll get one more, one more lesson in this for sure.

Responding to God's Sovereign Will

See response to God's will. How should we respond to God's sovereign will? Proverbs three, five, and six trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding in all your ways, acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight.

So that's how we should respond to the sovereign will of God. Also first Peter four 19. Therefore, those who, uh, therefore those also who suffer according to the will of God shall entrust their souls to a faithful creator in doing what is right.

Okay. So he talks about those who suffer according to the will of God. If you ever had something happen and you're like, why God, why are you, why did you allow this? Why are you bringing this into my life?

Why are you causing that? You might ask that. I was, I started on a Wednesday, a Bible study on the radio and the book of Ruth and, uh, Naomi, remember her husband and her two sons died and she said, God's hand is heavy against me.

Oh God. She basically comes out and says, God is against me. You know, call me Mara, which means bitter. Cause she felt that God, she didn't come right out and put it this way, but she like, God did this to me.