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

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 &A's and the the call -in shows where people that have their questions about God and Jesus and the

Bible and 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 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. Okay, 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, let's say, 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 good

Yeah, that's how I've often heard it described permissive will decretive will

Permissive and what was the other one? permissive Yeah, his perfect will

Okay, so this I think is a little more simple. So we're gonna have some verses to To test out.

It's okay. 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 happen 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 gonna 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 him into slavery

It's not the will of God to do evil But in another ask 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 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 a pretty clear statement that whatever happens

God is saying 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 A 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 foreordained 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 foreordained, you know

He's the Lamb of God foreordained 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

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 to 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 don't confuse them about the hard stuff well, you start out with the basics, but 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 counsel of God the whole

Bible? That's gonna 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 And 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 Yeah Yeah, right

Right Yep, so the Old Testament is the

Bible too Okay be 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 be the nature of God's will

God. Yeah, but sure That you know the two great commandments

You know, I mean how I I have a hard time with 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

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?

Do I do it? always Yeah something

Difficult, right? well, 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 We know how it is that children don't always obey their parents, right?

But 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 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 if we're sincere

Marcus well, as I was thinking about these two of the difference and I did struggle with some of these to See which they fit into but one thing became very clear to me.

That is that God's command and will is something that I continually fall short and And It's a great goal.

It is my goal But of course I live a lot more within his sovereign will and Romans 8 it's been particularly helpful to me and some very personal situations that I'm going through And of course the most famous one perhaps is

Romans 8 28 28 That says and we know that all things work together for good to those that love

God To those who are the called according to his purpose. I can honestly say that I do love

God Yeah, I fall short right as commanded will because I'm supposed to love him with all my heart and soul mind and strength and there's still little parts

That don't do it. It's not what I want. Yeah 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 put 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 good alright, 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

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

Charles Wesley or John Wesley, right? I think they're both on the same page

But John Wesley who is the founder of the Methodists and then a man named?

Charles Finney who sort of created the revivalist Crusade influenced

Billy Graham, so Charles Finney and 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 Reliable teachers who continue to teach that 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 that's not the gospel 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 is 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 and 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 sinned 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 let's continue on Because I've heard over the past couple years

Pastors talk about the gospel and then they start talking about the first Great commandment and the second love your neighbor like that's the law

That's that's not the gospel. You don't want Jesus judging you by that Okay 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 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 gonna get to that sinless perfection state and Maybe I shouldn't say this but you know,

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 a perfect otherwise, they wouldn't be teaching it

Marcus You should just sin less

I am further and further away from sin less than I ever used to think that I was

Yeah I'm further away from being like Christ and I was even though it has been my lifetime prayer ever since a

Small child to be like Jesus. That was my bedtime prayer 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 and I don't mean to criticize

John Wesley he was a Committed preacher of the gospel us, 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

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, you know all things including evil and he works it out for the good

For 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 it's because God has not

Revealed it to us So that's the sovereign will of God any questions comments on this

Okay, all right, sorry The commanded will the commanded will

I don't mind going backwards Joyce that's okay. All right Alright, yeah

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 all 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 bow shall 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 Ten 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 Yeah, well it gets a little more challenging when you read a verse and this is what we're gonna do now

We're gonna read a verse and you're gonna 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 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 anymore, right? Yeah, you need to be faithful in the little things before God is gonna entrust bigger things

Okay, you're ready to To be examined which is which the sovereign will or the commanded will?

Love to even if you're not ready too bad. We're doing it right now 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

And Somebody had commanded will I bet 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? Okay, it is

God who is at work in you both to will 100 %

Well, if you bring it up, yeah I just didn't want to derail the conversation right from the start.

That was the main thing But It's talking about Our wills are very strong things, right?

Yeah, so man has a will 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'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 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.

Mm -hmm Yeah, and this is 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 what 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 and 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 Because I do know people who are of this frame of mind is maybe

They don't Have Christ in their life, but they're they'll say well,

I'm a good person. I do these good things Yeah, it's not for God that they're doing it but to identify their own thought of what good is

Right. Well, I think God well, he's the creator and he is built

It's built in to the creation that if you do good Good things will happen like it someone could sort of outwardly to a degree

Obey the Ten Commandments or at least the second half and things are gonna go better for you If you're not lying to everybody and you're not stealing and you're not murdering people

You're gonna 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 Man's will Jeremiah 17 9 just as we're talking to 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 Right because of our heart our lusts.

That's where fights and wars come from Right. Yeah, and we need to be realistic about this that yeah all sin come 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 I 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 4 3

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 4 verse 3

That might not be what they're looking for but That is true.

Okay number 3 2nd Corinthians 6 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 7 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 will

Right because how would you even know? All right, Philippians 1 6

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

The way I look at it that there 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 has to be watered

But once it's there, you know, God is going to grow it into a tree a bush.

He's gonna bring it to completion 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 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 People are watering in their life

What's gonna 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 now 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

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 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

And all if that answers your question So if you here's the thing if you take the

Ten Commandments 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 Responds to the

Word of God versus the unbeliever and I think that that says says it all 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 Any remarks on that before we move on yes

Marcus Yep good

And again the contrast being his faithfulness versus our unfaithfulness

We fail all the time that is commanded will he never fails At what he's supposed to do.

Yep. He always does it. Yep. Amen very 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 this we've got another page

We'll get one more one more lesson in this for sure See response to God's will

How should we respond to God's? sovereign will

Proverbs 3 5 & 6 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 1st Peter 4 19 therefore those who?

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 Wednesday a

Bible study on the radio on the book of Ruth and Naomi remember her husband and her two sons died and she said

God's hand is Heavy against me of God she basically comes out and says God is against me, you know

Call me Mara because which means bitter because she felt that God She didn't come right out and put it this way, but she like God did this to me

God is against me that seems to be how she felt which it's understandable to feel that way so did

God actually do that to punish her or anything like Yeah, who knows?

I mean it's in this Sovereign will I guess but not necessarily but sometimes we will see something that happens something happens to us and we wonder

God why God why and Then you remember that God Conforms his people to the image of Christ through what?

Suffering you know the times where you're going through hardship and pain and those are the times where God is

Pruning you as some people say or those are the times where God is really conforming us

It's not necessarily a punishment. That's the thing when something bad happens Sometimes it's pretty obvious if I smoke cigarettes for 40 years and I get lung cancer.

I don't know. It's pretty obvious. It was my fault, but You know sometimes when bad things happen

It's Not necessarily God punishing you it's God allowing it to grow you and shape and mold you into the image of Christ But we don't we don't really know all the time

So it's a mystery Marcus Well, we sometimes think that George's story is you know

Singular or extreme, but I believe that the principle applies and again

And We don't necessarily like the fact that I think that God sometimes Brags about us he likes that he likes to you know the devil.

He likes to prove to the devil that That we really love him, and this is why this is why

You know our faith is what pleases him without faith. It's impossible to please him

So this is this is how we please him we trust him even through suffering even through unfairness even through Unjust accusations and persecutions and things that we don't deserve

But in the large scheme of things there's so many things You know God didn't really deserve to have to lose his son or to give his son

And Jesus didn't deserve to be crucified and Yeah, it's just And you know life is so short compared to eternity that All the suffering because of course like you know my friend

Giles suffers a lot And we just keep memorizing all these verses about suffering and and boy.

There's gonna be no one happier than Giles Sure Sure and one last point and then we'll close you think of something that happened

Early on in the church. There was great persecution remember the persecution that arose after Stephen was

Martyred what did that do what did that persecution do persecution would have been perceived as bad? but it caused the believers to flee from Jerusalem and to spread out and that brought the gospel to The areas around them so God worked it out according to his will all right.