"Your Will Be Done"

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Preacher: Ross Macdonald Scripture: Matthew 6:10

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As we now finish the third petition of the Lord's Prayer and as we break away from this third petition beginning with verse 11 next week we'll see that the attention shifts from,
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I'm having some audio difficulties, the attention will shift from the
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Lord being the ground, the focus, the point of contact of the beginning of the
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Lord's Prayer to then the needs of the disciple being the content, being the focus of the Lord's Prayer.
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I hope I don't have to project for 50 minutes but I'll try. So when we understand the nature of the
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Lord's Prayer, again as we've said even last week, we begin with this emphasis on God.
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God's glory, God's kingdom, and as we'll see this morning God's will being done.
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And that has to support, as it were, become the foundation of everything else that follows.
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And so we don't begin our prayers with daily bread or the things that we need, we begin our prayers by addressing
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God and who He is. As we gathered on Thursday evening it was very encouraging again to remind ourselves of helpful acronyms like ACTS and begin just with adoration before we confess and thanksgiving before we make our requests known to God.
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And Jesus Himself is teaching us how to do this. In other words, if we began the
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Lord's Prayer with verse 11, we'll already have a skewed understanding about our relationship to God and to the world and our relationship to God and to our neighbor.
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We have to allow who God is and what God is doing to become the very ground and foundation of all that our prayer lays hold of.
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And so I hope as we move on from the third petition this morning to the fourth petition that we won't soon forget what we've seen.
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When you pray, do not use vain repetitions as the heathen do, for they think they'll be heard for their many words.
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Therefore, do not be like them. For your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask
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Him. In this manner, therefore, pray. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.
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Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. So that's what we're looking at this morning.
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Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. God's will relates very closely to God's kingdom and God's name being hallowed.
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You could put it this way, God's will is that His name would be hallowed. God's will is that His kingdom would arrive in its consummated fullness.
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And so when we understand the nature of these first three petitions, we see how interrelated they are. God's glory, we could say.
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God's kingdom, God's will. These things must be held together. God's glory is
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God's reign. It is God's kingdom. That is glorious. He's the glorious King within a kingdom of glory and that's
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His will that His kingdom would be glorious. Or if we begin with the kingdom, God's kingdom is glorious.
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It accords with His perfect will or God's will being a glorious will that brings about His reign.
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These things all relate to one another. We cannot keep them isolated. And as with the kingdom as we saw last week, so also with God's will.
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This is something already and not yet. We're going to use other terms that theologians use to help us understand the tension of God's will.
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But there is something already about God's will and there is something not yet. Just like the kingdom.
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The kingdom is present. Jesus says if I'm casting out demons by the finger of God, then surely the kingdom has come upon you.
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And so the kingdom is here, the kingdom is now, and also the kingdom is not yet. If we don't have an exceeding righteousness over against the
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Pharisees, we will not enter the kingdom. There's something future oriented about the kingdom. God's will refers to His divine purposes for His people.
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God's will also refers to His purpose, His redemptive purpose being accomplished throughout the world.
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So this is a prayer not only that His will will be realized in the lives of His people, it's much more than that.
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It's not less than that, but it's much more. It's that the fullness of God's will will be accomplished and heaven and earth would be one.
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That's why Jesus says on earth as it is in heaven. We'll unpack that a little bit.
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T. A. Carson speaking on this passage, he says the arrival will be the perfect accomplishment of God's will.
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Not that the will is not present, not that the will is not being accomplished presently, but something is veiled about it.
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And of course there is resistance, there is treachery, there is rebellion against God's will, and yet in these mysterious twists that are veiled to us,
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God is even working through the evil that men do. If we begin with God as king from Genesis as we said last week, the kingdom of God is the storyline of Scripture.
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You can't get from the first few pages of Scripture without understanding that as a major theme. It takes you from Genesis 1 and 3 all the way to Revelation 22.
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But we also understand something about the nature of how God, though His kingdom is at war in conflict with a rival kingdom, is nevertheless still a king.
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His will is still sovereign, so His will is always being accomplished, and yet how it's being accomplished is veiled.
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And you can't even leave the book of Genesis without that being taught. That's what we saw throughout the life of Joseph, isn't it?
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Joseph, when he finally confronts his brothers who had effectively murdered him by throwing him in the pit, leaving him for dead, sending him away from his father's presence, his father's house, to an unknown fate.
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And when there's that final climactic reconciliation and the brothers are mournful thinking, now it's our turn, now our brother will take vengeance on us,
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Joseph says, you meant it for evil, God meant it for good.
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So you can't even leave the first book of the Bible without recognizing that God's will is being accomplished, not only in the lives of His people who seek to be obedient, but even the most disobedient, even
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Satan himself cannot but accomplish the Father's will in the world.
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And so we understand there's language here that theologians have wrestled with.
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Scripture presents the will of God really in two distinct ways. There's always variations on this, but effectively we talk about the will that has veiled, the secret will, the will that says, you meant this for evil,
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God meant this for good, and we call that His decretive will, His will of decree, that which
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He has decreed, that which He has ordained to pass, involving, as our
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Confession says, first and secondary causes, agency of voluntary and therefore responsible agents that nevertheless can never counteract but only accomplish what
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God has willed, what God has decreed. Everything that happens is what He has decreed.
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God is in the heavens. He does whatever He pleases. What pleases Him is often veiled from our sight, and what pleases
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Him often we would imagine would be the very thing that would displease Him. It doesn't please
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Him in terms of His holiness, it doesn't please Him in terms of His desire, but it pleases
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Him in terms of His ultimate purpose, which accords with His holiness, which accords with His goodness, which accords with His wisdom.
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So for example, Isaiah 53 says of the Son, of the
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Messiah, it pleased Him, that is, it pleased God to crush
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Him. Now we can't imagine the Father was taking any form of delight in the crucifixion of His Son.
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Far from it. It pleased Him to crush Him in accord with His redemptive purpose, and so all of the prophecies, all of the ways that Jesus' death was prefigured, we recognize that though this grieved the
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Father, nevertheless He was pleased according to His perfect purpose, His redemptive purpose.
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That's the decretive will. And then we also make a distinction between the will of decree, that which must come to pass, and His preceptive will,
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His will of precept. And that would be the will that is revealed to us. He has shown us what is good.
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He has taught us His ways. We have His revealed Word, and so His Word is
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His precept. This is His desire. We can say this is what God desires of His people. It's what's in His Word.
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We can meet with one another and we can exhort one another. Why? Because God has given us His will, that is,
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His preceptive will. He has told us how we ought to walk, how we ought to react, how we ought to behave.
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And so we understand there's a difference between those secret aspects of God's will that are unveiled and, or that are veiled, and then
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His unveiling of what He desires for His people. And so God reveals
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His will, it's a rule for our actions, and yet even within that revealed will there's a secret will that's being worked out in our lives and in the world around us.
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Jesus teaches His disciples to pray that God's will would be done on earth as it is in heaven.
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Now what does that ultimately mean? Well you ask the question, how is God's will done in heaven?
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How is God's will done in heaven? I think we could say it's certainly not done with any hesitancy.
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If the saints and the angels on high are surrounding the glorious splendor of the presence of God, you know, in a realm without the taint or the shadow of sin, without the veil of or the canopy of the flesh in the world around us to deny that sight and presence of God, then certainly there's no reluctance, certainly there's nothing sullen, certainly there's nothing pharisaical about the way
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God's will is accomplished in heaven. Certainly there's no one that sort of like, you know, three trillion years on, hey
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Bill, how's it going today? You know, it's okay. As I was reflecting with a brother a few nights ago, we think of heaven as the final end of redemptions, we haven't properly begun with creation and we tend to think of that as simply a sort of ethereal state where we hold harps and dwell on clouds.
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It's just clouds. What's heaven like? Cloudy. A lot of clouds. Clouds and harps.
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Mostly clouds. That's not what Jesus teaches his disciples to pray. His desire is for the kingdom to be consummated, that kingdom encompasses heaven and earth, such that God's will is done on earth just like it's done in heaven.
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Heaven and earth, as it were, effectively becoming one. There's no longer this gap, this distance, and within that,
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God's will is performed, not reluctantly, not with a hint of sorrow, but effortlessly, instinctively, joyfully, without reserve, with fullness of gladness.
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This is how God's will is performed in heaven. This is not how God's will is performed on the earth. Jesus says pray for that day.
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Pray for that to be so. And of course, the reason it's not this way on earth, the reason there is this tension between heaven and earth, is because of the opposition of man, the rival kingdom, and the prince of the power of the air, all the things we saw last week.
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Which is why Jesus goes from praying that the kingdom would come, to praying that God's will would be done on earth the way it's done in heaven.
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This is what the kingdom coming will accomplish. No longer will man have a rebellious will against God, shaking his fist in a rage against the one who's enthroned above.
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No longer will the nations conspire and plot in vain against the one who sits on high and laughs and holds them in derision.
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But rather, the nations themselves will stream to Zion, bringing glory to God, as all the tribes and tongues of the earth share in the song of the redeemed.
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And so while we're in this world with a rival kingdom, in the state of treasonous conflict, we recognize the kingdom is advancing, and with it,
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God's secret will is being worked out as his revealed will is being taught and heralded.
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And one day, the distance between the secret will and the revealed will will be consummated and realized forever.
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In other words, my understanding is when that day comes, there will no longer be a will of decree that is isolated and held apart from the will of precept.
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It will all be open. It will all be infinite. We will finally comprehend all that God has done, and we will understand all of his ways.
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There will be no secret will in order to accomplish his purpose of redemption. When redemption is accomplished, the secret will is realized as the revealed will.
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What had remained veiled is now fully open to discovery.
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These are things that even now angels long to look into. And on that day, when
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God's will is done on earth as it's done in heaven, there will be no potential place to say, oh, but Lord, what's going to happen now?
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And what are you doing with this? And how is this meant to be? We will rather understand perfectly the secret will as the revealed will.
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The revealed will as what had been the secret will. You see? The will of decree, the will of precept.
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But in the meantime, and where I want to go in the sermon this morning, it's not so much elaborating upon that day for what mind can truly fathom it, but rather focusing on the fact that right now on earth,
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God's will is not done as it's being done in heaven. And Jesus says, pray, orient yourself to God's glory and God's kingdom in such a way that your heart cry is for God's will to be done in your life, in your place, in this world, in the same way it's being accomplished in heaven.
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Without effort, without reserve, without hesitancy, with no sorrow or regret or remorse, with no taint of sin.
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Pray that you would accomplish God's will in this way. Now this is what disciples do.
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I've been focusing on what it means to be a true -hearted disciple. Here's a great working definition of a disciple.
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There's a lot more than this. Disciples are those who do the will of God.
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They don't resist the of God. They don't abandon the will of God. Though it be a cross to bear, disciples are those who do the will of God.
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Let me give you an example. This is how Jesus, in one place at least, defines what it means to follow
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Him, what it means to belong to Him, what it means to be a part of His family. Do you remember at the very beginning of Mark's Gospel, Jesus' family seemed to reject and even question
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Him. Maybe to save face in the community, they're sort of distancing Himself and they're seeking to reclaim
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Him. By the way, His mother and His brothers, according to the Gospel of Mark. They seek to reclaim
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Him and sort of keep Him in bounds. Stop going to teach. You're causing a lot of controversy. And so some have come as He's teaching and there's a crowd around Him and they're saying, your mother and your brothers are looking for you.
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Stop talking so much. Stop making a stir. Just come back home and kind of stay behind walls.
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Jesus, we read, looked around in a circle at everyone who sat about Him and He said, here are my mother and my brothers.
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For whoever does the will of God is my brother and my sister and my mother.
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So all these followers have come and they're sitting at the feet of Jesus, receiving
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His message of the kingdom of God, receiving His teachings about repentance and faith. And Jesus says, this is my family.
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These are my brothers and sisters. These are my mothers and fathers, speaking in an earthly sense.
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And who are they? There are those who do the will of God. That's who belongs to me,
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Jesus says. That's who I belong to. Those who do the will of God. And this is something that Jesus Himself bears out as an example for those that He belongs to and those that belong to Him.
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Jesus is the model of the one who came fully to do God's will. What is Hebrews 10, quoting this psalm?
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It is written of me in the book of Scrolls, behold I have come to do your will. Jesus teaching
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His disciples repeatedly how to accomplish the
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Father's good purpose, how to trust the Father, how to bear the cross faithfully, though His disciples constantly fail to understand the will of God being worked out in the
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Messiah's life, constantly misunderstand the nature of His kingdom, are very quick to abandon
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Him when it gets really hot in the furnace of affliction, and yet Jesus stays faithful to the will of God.
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Even when He was a 12 year old boy and His parents couldn't find Him and He was in the temple precinct, and they finally come and they see a group of men who have given their lives decade after decade to studying the
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Torah, and they're sitting there marveling, they're absolutely floored at the wisdom and knowledge of this young man who
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Luke says was growing in wisdom and stature and in favor with men and with God. And when
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Mary chides her son, and you know what it's like if you've ever had a child in a large store and you lose sight of them, you can almost sympathize with poor
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Mary, that the panic she must have felt in the city of Jerusalem and a 12 year old that she couldn't find.
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And when she chides him, Jesus is confused. Do you remember what He says? Don't you know
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I'm always about my father's business? He's 12 years old. And He says, don't you know everything
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I do is about my father's will. I'm always seeking to do the work of my father.
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Wherever I go, I'm seeking to accomplish his purpose for me going. I have come to do his will.
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So you have the perfect model in the Lord Jesus of a life wholly devoted to the will of God. And He says, those who follow me, those who are my brother and my sister and are not ashamed to be their
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Lord, these are they who do the will of God. And of course to do
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God's will, we have to look to Jesus in this way. We realize we don't just look to Him as an example as the writer of Hebrews says, we look unto
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Jesus as the author and perfecter of our faith. And so He not only exemplifies the way we accomplish
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God's will and what that requires, which we'll get into, but He also writes that out in our lives.
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And by His Spirit, He perfects it. In other words, He brings it about in our life. And so you ask the question, am
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I a follower of Jesus? To go with our theme, our pursuit this year, am I a true hearted disciple?
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Well you can ask it in this way. Am I concerned to accomplish the will of God? Is my life marked by a sincere desire to follow
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His ways? Can I say with a full throat like the psalmist, I delight to do thy will,
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O Lord. Or is most of my life pockmarked with a sort of melancholic refrain, help me to do your will,
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God. Not quite like the psalmist. Is your life gripped by a desire to serve yourself, which only restrains the will of God and the demands it puts upon you.
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Ian Hamilton on these Sunday nights has done so well to point out the cost, counting the cost of being a disciple.
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Why? Because when you say, I follow Him, I belong to Him, I confess Him, there are demands placed upon your life.
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And that means that these demands are about bringing the will of God to bear in and through your life.
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And if you seek to serve Him, you will accomplish His will. But where you seek to serve yourself, you will restrain
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His will. You will hinder His purposes. You read the
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Gospels and you see this borne out. Sometimes Jesus' disciples do more damage than the Pharisees and the scribes who are trying to capture
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Jesus. Sometimes it's the disciples who restrain Jesus' mission.
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At least they would if they could redirect Him. You remember Mark 8, the sort of triumphant revelation of Jesus as the
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Messiah. Finally, enough light has gotten into that pitch -black cave of Peter's awareness that Jesus is the
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Messiah. Who do you say that I am? Jesus asked Peter. The Son of God.
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Blessed are you. Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.
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And if Peter ever felt like he had risen to the heights of acceptance and admiration, it must have been that moment.
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And the very next words out of his mouth after Jesus reveals that the
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Son of God, the Messiah, must suffer and die and be buried for three days. Jesus says, surely not,
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Lord. We're not gonna let that happen to you. That's the one thing that cannot happen.
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And Jesus says, get behind me, Satan. When it comes to Jesus, never has the saying been more true.
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You're either with me or against me. And Jesus recognizes that His disciples and their calculus of how they ought to live their lives would very quickly abandon the cross that He has to trust
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His Father is bringing about a good purpose. And so we recognize that by the mercies of God, being a disciple means, as we've been exhorted from Romans 12, to present our bodies as a living sacrifice, wholly acceptable to God.
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Jesus says, whoever does the will of God like that, that's my brother, that's my sister, they belong to me.
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Whoever shirks the will of God, whoever seeks to serve themselves and restrains and hinders
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God's revealed purpose for their life, there's no brother, no sister, no heir of me.
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So you ask the question, am I controlled by God's will or am I controlled by my own will, by my self -will?
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Am I stirred by the will of God as it's revealed, as it's revealed perceptively in His Word, and as that veiled decree is revealed providentially in my life from blessings to trials and from trials to blessings?
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That is, God's will being revealed before you. And you take His preceptive will and you apply it to that providence.
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How would you have me walk? How would you use this time of humility in my life to bear fruit so that many may understand your ways and bring glory to your name?
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It's a life, in other words, that's in submission to God, that's all it means. To live a life where you're seeking to walk in the will of God is to live a life submitted to God.
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That dirty word, submission, the word that even Christians don't like to talk about much, which is in fact the crown jewel of the
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Son of God, that when He came to earth He was in perfect submission to the will of the
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Father. What is in the world's eyes shameful, the
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Son makes glorious. A life in submission to God, a life in submission to God that accords with what
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Jesus says about His disciples. They must hate even their own lives, not just all their relations or all their worldly goods or all that their life could amount to, but yes, even their own lives if they would follow
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Him. And you read of people that live in this very way.
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We shouldn't romanticize them, but we also shouldn't deny the power of their testimony.
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I was reading of John and Betty Stamm who were involved with China Inland Mission back when the
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Revolutionary Party began to break through and begin to round up foreigners. And all of a sudden for the first time the offices of CIM and others who were there by attachment were facing a very stark and unknown future, what's going to happen to us?
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And of course the ships were at the dock ready to bring them to safe harbor and John and Betty Stamm, they had a three -month -old girl, they were stationed in Jingdezhen, China.
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The uprising came to their city, they wrote a letter, and this was the letter they wrote.
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This was John Stamm writing, he says, my wife, my baby, myself are in the hands of communist bandits, we don't know if we'll be released.
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We pray that Christ will be magnified in our bodies, whether by life or by death. And they were never released, they were killed.
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They had counted the cost and they hated even their own lives and their desire, if you notice, their desire perfectly accords with the
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Lord's Prayer, doesn't it? We don't know what the will of God is. Pray that we'll have the faith to accomplish
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God's will. It's why we're here in Jingdezhen province to begin with. Pray that God's will would be done.
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We're a part of his kingdom advancing and if the cost of that kingdom advancing and his sovereign unfolding providence in our lives means even our death, pray that his name would be hallowed.
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We want him to be magnified whether we live or we die. That's a living illustration of Matthew 6, 8, 9, and 10, right there.
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That is a life in submission to the will of God. And God's not calling all of us to be
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John and Betty Stamm's, but if you're following Jesus, he is calling you to be submitted to his will, to take what he's unfolding in your life by his providence, that is, his decree being worked out in your life and in the world around you, and to take his will of precept, in other words, his word, all that he has revealed to you, and to apply that so that you're walking by faith and not by sight, walking in submission to the
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God that you seek to serve, the God that you know and love. That's what it means to be a Christian, a life in submission to God, a life bent toward his will, not toward my own.
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So it is with every true servant of Christ. Jesus says if you put your hand to the plow and you look back, you're not worthy.
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He recognized that there's a cost, but he doesn't say you're not serious, which is maybe the initial reaction.
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If you put your hand to the plow and you look back, you have hesitancy, you play the part of Lot's wife, he doesn't say, well you're just not serious, come back when you're serious.
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No, he says you're not worthy of the kingdom to play so fast and loose, to treat so cheaply the will of the redeeming
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God. You're not worthy, Jesus says, if you're not willing to submit your life and everything that you are, everything that you have, so that you're not turned back, or you're not easily discouraged, or you don't slide out of the narrow way.
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You don't hark into the the ears of unconverted people as sages, as those who will bear wisdom, but rather you act like Nehemiah, I can't come down,
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I'm doing a great work, I've got no time for you. I'm about my father's will, I'm about my father's kingdom, I'm about hallowing my father's name.
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That's what it means to be a Christian. In other words, Jesus is only interested in disciples, not who initially take up the cross, that's important, but those who taking up the cross will never cast it away.
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The Christian life begins in many different ways, and for many people in this room, the
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Christian life has many fits and starts, but it hardly matters how the
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Christian life begins. What matters is how the Christian life ends. It does not matter how the race begins.
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If there was a false start, if there was a stumble, if there was a misunderstanding, if there was a penalty and you were being shoved off the side, none of that really matters.
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All that matters is how the race ends. Jesus is looking for his disciples to grow in the grace and knowledge of him in such a way that his will is being accomplished in their life.
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As his providence and sovereignty is unfolding before them, they're applying his will, they're walking by his word, they're abiding in him.
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This is what it means to advance his kingdom and hallow his name. This is what we pray for when we pray, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
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You think of Jesus again, not just at age 12, but at the very end of his earthly ministry, how he was perfectly submitted to the
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Father's will. As he says in John 8 that we saw some weeks ago, I always do the things that please him.
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I always do what pleases my Father, and that's evident in John 10.
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He speaks of his death as a cup. Are you able to drink the cup that I'm about to drink? And then when we actually come to Gethsemane and we see him sweating blood, he's now holding that cup in his hands as it were, about to drink it to the dregs.
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And Jesus, in a very helpful moment for his disciples, shows us that he was in fact human.
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He wasn't doing things in some supernatural mythical way. He walked in our place as one of us, as a man, the
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God -man. And we see perhaps the veil of his divinity giving way to the reality of his humanity when holding that cup, he's trembling, sweating blood and saying, please take this away from me.
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That's his prayer. I don't want to do this if there's any other way.
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If there's any other way, you're the God who can do all things. You made everything there is.
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Palm trees and crab apples and the Gulf of Mexico, Gulf of America. You made everything that is out of nothing.
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Nothing is too hard for you to do. You can accomplish anything you seek to do. So if there's any way
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I don't have to drink this cup, take it from me. He's lived his whole life in perfect submission.
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And now he's come to the thing that he has bent himself toward, tilting his face toward Jerusalem.
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And he's on the Mount of Olives overlooking the place where he's about to be slaughtered. And he's about to descend, not just into the city as it were, but he's about to descend into the very depths of the grave, into the depths of hell as it were.
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And the weight of that is causing his capillaries to burst. And he's sweating blood and trembling. He says, if there is any other way, take this from me,
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Father. But as he teaches us to pray here in Matthew 6 10, he doesn't close his prayer with that.
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He closes his prayer saying, nevertheless, not what I will, but what you will.
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When Jesus is teaching his disciples to pray, your will be done. It's not something he fails to accomplish in his own life, even when he's at pains, even when he's suffering, even when he's begging his
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Father for an alternative. He submits himself and says, may your will be done through my life, through my death, through my suffering on this earth, just like your will is done in heaven.
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Jesus is a model of submitting to God's will. And he teaches his disciples that our focus in life cannot become our focus in prayer.
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Life is not about getting what you want. You have toddlers and that's a lesson they have to learn, right? You see them, you know, kicking puddles and looking sorrowful.
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I really wanted this. And you always say as a good parent, well, life's not about getting what you want.
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Well, prayer is not about getting what you want either. What is Jesus teaching us in the Lord's prayer?
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The frame of your prayer is about what God wants, not what you want. Now, hopefully, you're growing in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ to such a degree that what you want is what
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God wants, which is why James can really harp on that fact. You ask and you'll receive, as long as you're not asking amiss.
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The problem is we often ask amiss because we think amiss and we're living amiss. We're living for ourselves, seeking it to accomplish our will, rather than seeking what
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God would want and trying to align our will with God's will. So prayer, like life, is not about accomplishing our will, obtaining our desire.
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It's about accomplishing God's will, obtaining what He desires.
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And that means that you face providences and trials and bearings of the cross that are very difficult and painful, and that's why
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Jesus Himself teaches us to pray this and shows us by His life how He'll go to the very depths and He's the author and perfecter of those who will follow after Him.
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And so that even when His followers are in anguish or in terror or in the depths of depression, they can be taught by His Spirit to pray, not my will but your will be done.
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You put it this way, all of us have a will for our lives. I've talked with some of you,
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I know some of you have a six -month plan or a two -year plan or this or that hope, but even those
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I don't know as well, we all have a will for our lives, don't we? You all have something you're hoping will come about, something you're seeking to obtain, some will that you're hoping to accomplish.
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You have a will for your life. It would be odd if you didn't, you know, but think this is good and I think this is even good in a godly way and this is what
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I really want. All of us have a will. If we think of will as a plan, everyone has a plan for their life.
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Our plan often involves success. Our will for our lives is successful, right?
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Does anyone ever plan to be unsuccessful? Our plan is ease.
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Does anyone ever plan to make things more difficult than they have to be? We're like squirrels.
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I've heard you catch a squirrel by putting a trap on a stick leaned against a tree because they'll always take the laziest path to the tree.
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They can climb trees perfectly. But if they can go at an angle rather than upright, they'll do that and that's like us.
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We often get snared by the evil one because we're always looking for the path of ease and sometimes the path of ease is the wrong path.
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As we sang, my God ordains what errors right and that was one of the lyrics. You set me on the proper path.
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The proper path often doesn't look very proper, does it? It looks pretty narrow and thorny. It doesn't look like Bypass Meadow.
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So we have a plan for our lives. We often plan for our lives to go in a successful direction, in an easy direction.
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God has a plan for our lives too. God is ultimately concerned with our happiness, with our joy.
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Not so much in this life, though he intends to give us many glimmers and sparks of joy, but he's willing to allow us to suffer in this vapor of life in order to accomplish and give as an inheritance a joy that can never be depleted, a joy that can never be taken away.
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And in order to accomplish that, God's plan for our lives will often mean we're not successful, not in the ways we'd want to be, and it's not easy, not in the ways we want things to be, which is to say
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God's plan is usually different than our plan. God's will for your life is very often different than your will for your life because your will for your life doesn't package into it the desire for humility to train your obedience or suffering to train your patience, but that is
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God's desire for your life, you see. My plan for my life rarely factors in the need for suffering that I might be more patient or humility that I might be more obedient, but I am assured by what
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God has revealed that is his purpose for my life. Thomas Watson, and he does a marvelous treatment on this.
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I'm only just using a sentence, but he's well worth reading. And he says, all of God's providences are to make you a doer of his will.
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Whatever he's allowed, however painful, however miserable, however hurtful, eyes of faith help you to look at that and say, you have allowed this to be.
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You have allowed this to wound me. You have allowed this to be my anguish, the reason
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I soak my pillow with tears, the reason I'm losing sleep, the reason I feel isolated and alienated and alone.
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You've allowed all of this so that I would accomplish your will. So we often go to prayer and we're saying, get me out of here.
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I have a plan. Get me out of here so I can get on with my plan. And God's saying,
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I have a plan too. That's why I brought you here, so that I can accomplish my plan, my will for your life.
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As Watson says, every providence of God is to make you a doer of his will. Watson puts it this way.
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He says, the Creator makes use of every season to bring about a harvest, right?
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We know that. It's springtime now. We're starting to see buds pretty soon. We're all going to be sneezing and drooling because pollen is going to be clouding the air.
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And then eventually that full harvest will come and it will turn to fall in the winter. We'll ice things over until the spring thaws it again.
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And we see the providential seasons that God sustains. And if we map that on to our lives, as James tells us to be patient as a farmer, this is how
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Watson puts it. He makes use of every season in order to bring about a harvest. He has a purpose in winter, but the purpose is not winter.
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He has a purpose in the fall, but the purpose is not the fall. He has a purpose in every season, but the purpose of every season is for a harvest.
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And so every providence of God in your life, as Watson says, is meant to bring a harvest of obedience.
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Every providence in your life is meant to bring about this heart cry, help me to drink the cup you've given me so that your will is done.
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Because my will is not good, my will is not wise, my will does not lead me to paths of everlasting joy, but your will does.
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So help me to accomplish your will. Help me to trust you. And that's what it comes down to.
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Essentially to pray in this way, it calls upon your faith. Do you actually believe that God is all -powerful and that His providence is perfectly custom -tailored to everything that you need in order to sustain a life of faith and holiness?
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Do you believe that when you pray to Him? Do you trust Him? I don't think you can pray meaningfully, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, your name be hallowed, your kingdom come, if you're not truly trusting in God.
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And what is prayer without trust? It's no prayer at all. It's just words spoken into space.
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We talk about the one who prays with doubt, as unstable as the seas. Praying with faith gives us that stability, that solitude.
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It marks us out as those who actually walk in the ways of God. Why? Because we trust Him. Psalm 125, it's so helpful on these very points.
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Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, they can never be moved. And so trusting in the
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Lord allows you not to move when life is shaking all around you.
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Whereas even the most stable, organized, accomplished, and successful life, apart from that trust in God, though it's on a relatively, you know, stable path of ease, will be convulsing and shaking and trembling all the way through.
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It's because we know Him that we can trust Him. It's because we understand who He is and what
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He's bringing about. You understand He has a good purpose. You read the story of Joseph, you look through the examples of God's providence and His faithfulness and His care, and you recognize this is a
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God whom I can trust. This is a God who I adore. This is a God who I love. I know Him, therefore I trust
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Him. And so my prayers to Him, my communion with Him, it's not formal. It's not distant. It's not ritual.
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It's personal. Lord, I see this circumstance. I see this trial from Your hand.
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Accomplish Your will in it. Magnify Your name in it, Lord. Help me to grow in Your grace and in Your knowledge.
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Help this to be more trust, that I might be like the mountain that does not move but abides forever. That's what the believer is meant to be compared to.
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Absolutely solid, absolutely stable, not because of who they are, not because of how they feel, but because of who
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God is. God is in the midst of her, therefore she will not be moved.
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That's what God says of His people. God, the one who can never be shaken, because unlike us,
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He's not figuring out things as they happen, trying to make sense of where did this come from and where is this all going.
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God is not that way. Every step of the path, every hair of our head numbered, every breath we draw measured, every burden we bear calculated, every temptation we encounter purposed.
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How could we not trust Him? Why would we want to trust our own will?
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Why would we put so much energy and effort into accomplishing our purpose in life, when as the preacher of Ecclesiastes would tell us, all that effort and all that energy and all that planning, for nothing.
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You die like an animal. You might make it to the very top, you might be king over a kingdom, and you'll die like the peasant in your realm.
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And so it doesn't matter what you do in this life, but it does matter how you finish, how you end the race.
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And here we're encouraged, brothers and sisters, to trust in the Lord with all of our heart. What does the psalmist say? Lean not on your own understanding.
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In all your ways, acknowledge Him. Why? So that we can do His will, just like saints and angels do
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His will, without hesitancy, without reserve, without questioning, without, well, let me see if it's worth the risk.
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So with this trust in God, we understand how Jesus walked with His Father. Why was Jesus able to walk in this way?
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Again, not because of some mythical, supernatural prowess. He did it as the last Adam.
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He did it with the fullness of the Spirit of God. And He did it by trusting in the
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Father, as we must trust in the Father. He did it by bearing His cross, as we must bear our cross, because no servant is greater than his master.
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With this trust in God, we're able to follow the Lord Jesus, we're able to understand what occupied the Lord Jesus. Not just a perfect trust in the
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Father, but a perfect delight. His delight was His trust. His trust was
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His delight. And where we see that as an increasing desire in our lives, that we're willing to lay down our plans, to loosen our grip on the things we're trying to seize, to open ourselves to the will of God and the providences that come our way, it's a sign that we really are growing in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ.
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It's sufficient grace that makes us capable, that gives us the capacity to live a life of faith.
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It's all sufficient grace. And so you recognize that the will of God, as it's revealed, is calling us to many different things.
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In fact, if you just look up that language, that the will of God, that again is born by a perfect trust in God, and then it's following Jesus with that faith and with that delight, following His example, feeding upon Him, taking up His means of grace, being nourished by the
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Spirit that He sends to indwell us. And all of this leads us to accomplish God's will in our lives.
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Now, if you just take that phrase, the will of God, Scripture talks about in many different ways. Now, all of Scripture is the revealed will of God.
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All of it is profitable. All of it is to be taken up and used. You put it this way, if you want to do
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God's will, you should know God's will. Read your Bibles. You can't do what you don't know.
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You encounter people that are like, well, you know, I just think, you know, I think God is actually okay with this. Well, He didn't say that.
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You need to know what He said if you want to do what He said. Otherwise, you're just guessing and hoping and well -wishing.
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So the revealed will of God, of course, is all of Scripture. But even within the Scripture, the Apostles at various times can make an exhortation or a rebuke or a reminder, this is what
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God is willing for you. And recognizing that even in a church or even in your family or your marriage or just in your own individual life, there's a season where an aspect or a precept within God's Word is particularly glowing, particularly emphatic for you.
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Just give you several examples. So 1 Thessalonians 4. Finally, brethren, we urge and exhort in the
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Lord Jesus you should abound more and more just as you receive from us how you ought to walk and to please God. If you know what commandments we gave you through the
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Lord Jesus, and this is the will of God, your sanctification. You see what
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Paul's doing there? He's gonna say it in the next chapter. He's gonna say this is the will of God again in a different direction.
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He's not saying it all boils down to this. He's just saying right now where you are there in Thessalonica, let me tell you what
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God's will is for you. Stop walking in the ways of the Gentiles. Start walking in this way of sanctification.
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That is God's will for you. We taught you how you ought to walk. Now walk in it. That's God's desire for you.
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That's what he's saying. And Peter says the same thing. He says Christ suffered in the flesh, 1 Peter 4, and so arm yourselves with the same mind because the one who suffers in the flesh has ceased from sin.
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In other words, tribulation and persecution have this purifying effect that he should no longer live the rest of his time in the flesh for the lusts of men but for the will of God.
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We've spent enough time of our past life doing the will of the Gentiles. You see what Peter's putting in parallel there?
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The will of the Gentiles is the lusts of men. And he's saying God has saved you in such a way that now you're no longer going to walk or run in the will of the
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Gentiles and the lusts of men, but now you're going to walk and run in the will of God. And what does the will of God often look like?
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Well, Peter says, what did it look like for Christ? Christ suffered in the flesh that he might bring about the will of God.
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And so Peter says, don't reject or deny suffering. Don't count it a strange thing when you suffer.
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Realize this is God's will for you. This is so that you'll accomplish his will in your life. And a body that understands that, a church that understands that, it really accomplishes the next chapter in 1
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Thessalonians. We exhort you, brethren. Warn those who are unruly.
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Comfort the faint -hearted. Uphold the weak. Be patient with everyone. See that no one renders evil for evil to any, but always pursue what is good both for yourselves and for everyone.
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Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing in everything. Give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.
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So you see that all of God's Word is his will. And yet in a particular season or in a particular circumstance, we find that there's some aspect of God's Word that is particularly of import.
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This is the will of God for you. You sit down with a brother or a sister, you see people going through, and you almost can say,
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I think this is what God is seeking to do. I think this is what God has for you. This is what God desires in your life right now, facing this.
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Do you see? You can truly sit next to one another and say, this is God's will for you. And when you're saying that, you're usually saying it because it's not the will that brother or sister wants.
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I don't want this will. And what you're reminding them is this is God's will. It has a good purpose, a better purpose.
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It's God's will for you. You can try to run away from it.
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You won't get far. You wouldn't want to get far if you understand who God is. A lot of what we do is just say, trust
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God. Trust Him. And you can only trust Him when you recognize He is the one in control of it.
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He's the one working it out. Remember what Paul told the Philippians, it's God who works in you both to will and to do
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His good pleasure. So you recognize He really is the author and perfecter of your faith. He's actually working in you to will
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His will, to do His will. So you lay hold of that in prayer.
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You lay hold of that in your life of faith. God, I don't even want this. I'm trying to throw the cup away and it boomerangs back into my hand.
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And I recognize it's You. You're working in me to bring this about. You're working in me to do what
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You desire. So Lord, help me not to resist it but to lean into it. Help me not to withstand it but to actually further it.
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Help me to so trust You that though every step is painful with this cross, I bear it in submission to Your will because Your will alone is good and holy and right.
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Whatever You ordain is right. When you recognize it's
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God who's willing, who's working, that He does this in a certain way.
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You've got to occupy your life of faith, occupy your prayer life. How does God bring about a new will within us?
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How does God work for us to will and to do His good pleasure? One of the things
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He does is He removes the darkness and enmity of our minds. Romans 8 says that the carnal mind is enmity against God.
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There's this emphasis on the mind. The carnal mind, the thinking, the remembrance, the awareness, the conscience.
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The carnal mind is that enmity against God. It's not subject to the law of God. It never could be. It could never submit itself to the will of God.
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It could never seek the will of God. God has to counteract that. God has to do something within that. Paul says the same thing in Ephesians 2.
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He says we all once conducted ourselves in the lust of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind.
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We were by nature children of wrath like the rest. You see again that the sort of HQ of evil desire is the darkened mind, the mind at enmity with God.
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Colossians 1, you once alienated enemies in your mind by wicked works. Why doesn't it just say enemies by wicked works?
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He doesn't say that. Enemies in your mind, your darkened mind, your inability to comprehend, to know, to trust, to seek, to desire the will of God.
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In fact, your desire to oppose the will of God, to do your will in all of its self -destructive and neighbor destructive ways.
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So again, the mind, the mind, the mind. That's why he says the Ephesians, be renewed in the spirit of your mind.
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So this renewal, this shedding of light actually brings about this transformation of our affections, that the mind is enlightened.
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Now we know the one we did not know. Now we see the one we ignored. Now we adore the one we rebelled against.
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Now we desire the very things we resisted. That's a result of God's light enfolding our mind and the overflow is our affections.
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How beautiful you are, how lovely you are, how hideous I am, how ugly my walk has been, how greatly
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I desire you, how much, how much I just want a glimmer, that I could just hold your doorknob and just, just for a day, it's better than a thousand days anywhere else.
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So now the affections are beginning to turn that granite aircraft carrier of our will.
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Enlightened mind, warmed affections, now the will begins to turn. All of this is what
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Paul says in Romans 12. Remember in Hamilton last Sunday night, oh the depths.
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Therefore, from this place of adoration, therefore I beseech you brethren by the mercies of God, present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God.
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What is a presentation of sacrifice? If you're sacrificing yourself, if Jesus is the penultimate sacrifice.
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What is that? It's submission, perfect submission.
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It's prefigured in Isaac, submitting himself to the altar stand, trusting his father.
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You present your bodies a living sacrifice. In other words, you voluntarily submit yourself to the will of God, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.
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Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed. How? How am I going to be transformed? How am
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I going to stop seeking my will, clutching after my plans, seeking the paths of ease and prosperity?
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How can I actually submit to God's will, to God's purpose, to God's sanctification, to what
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God is seeking to produce? He says, by the renewing of your mind. And what's the effect of that, the consequence of that?
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If you're not conformed by the world, but you're transformed by the renewal of your mind, what will happen? You will prove what is good and acceptable and the perfect will of God.
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So how are you going to live out God's will? How are you going to pray this prayer meaningfully?
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Well, you have to follow the example of Jesus in trusting God and seeing everything who ordains is right and recognizing his faithful providence.
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And as you do that, you recognize your mind is being renewed. You're being transformed because the way you think about God and you think about life and you think about even difficult providences or past wounds, past traumas, all of that begins to be folded over into his perfect wisdom.
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Submitting yourself to that, with that renewed mind, you begin to prove what is his good and perfect will.
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You recognize it's him who's working in you to do that. It's how he works. This is another way that Jesus just talks about abiding in the vine.
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It's another way that Paul says it's the yet -not -I outlook. I mess things up.
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The yet -not -I is the best part of me. I make a dog's breakfast of everything.
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The yet -not -I within me works it all out to the glory of God. But by the grace of God, I am what
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I am, and his grace toward me is not in vain. I labored even more than them all, but not I, it was the grace of God within me.
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And so again, I ask the question, is your life marked by a sincere desire, a compulsion to obey
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God? To obey God is simply to do his will, to do what he desires.
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Is your life marked by that? Can you say with a full throat like the psalmist, I delight to do your will, O God?
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Or is your life dominated by a sincere desire, a compulsion to serve yourself?
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And whether you realize you're doing it or not, to restrain God's will, God's purpose. Well let me let me close,
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I want to close with this, because I recognize and I was reminded of a brother at the prayer gathering of the all -important distinction between legal obedience and evangelical obedience.
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In other words, a more pharisaical obedience that's wrought in the flesh, it's performative, it's usually done to soothe the conscience or try to provoke others for a place of posture or stature, then there's just gospel obedience.
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Enjoying the grace of God, being cleansed in the fountain of the Lamb's blood, and serving him as a reaction to that grace, as a response to his mercy, rather than as a way to obtain it or earn it.
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And I realize we have troubled consciences when I ask, is your life marked by a sincere desire to accomplish his will? Or is it more dominated by you trying to accomplish your own will, even against his good purposes, even against what he's revealed?
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And we can all feel the sort of ouch with him there. In profound ways
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I live for myself, in profound ways we serve ourselves, in profound ways we kick against the goad, and we reject the providence that God is seeking to bring about to its good end.
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But does that mean you're not a disciple, you don't belong? Does that mean you indeed have put your hand to the plow and you've looked back and Jesus will have nothing to do with you?
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Well, let me encourage you. This is a little insight from Thomas Watts and he says, we can't obey all of God's will legally, but we can obey it evangelically.
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We can't obey all of God's will legally, only Christ could do that. All that the law required to the very depth of its perfections,
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Jesus obeyed. We cannot do that, only he could do that. There is a day coming when redemption will be consummated and we'll be able to be as Jesus is.
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Praise God, we'll no longer struggle with obedience, we'll no longer try to muster up the things that seem so out of reach in sanctification.
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We will be as he is. But in the meantime you may be said to be a disciple of Jesus, seeking his will for your life, bearing the cross, faithfully following the example of your
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Savior and trusting in God. When, if you're not doing God's will, you're mourning the fact that you cannot do
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God's will. When it's the desire of your soul to do
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God's will and you find yourself falling short and it's the sadness in your heart.
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That's something that doesn't come from the world, the flesh, or the devil, that comes from the Spirit of God. And this is what
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Watson says of that, what a child of God lacks in strength he makes up for in desire. And sometimes you prove what is his good and acceptable and perfect will, not because you're doing it, but because you're mourning the fact that you've fallen short of it.
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And that is a way of proving what is good and acceptable and perfect. And that actually becomes the fuel of the prayer, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth, in my life, as it's done in heaven.
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I can't wait for that day, Maranatha, Lord, but in the meantime, help me. Watson elaborates on this a lot and the doubter responds in this way, no, the kingdom of grace hasn't come yet.
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And I find, in fact, the kingdom of sin is strong within me and if I had faith it would actually purify my heart, but all
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I find in my heart is worldliness and pride. And Watson says, well, the best of saints have corruption.
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The life of sin doesn't stop until death. And the Lord has even allowed indwelling sin to continue.
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Why? To humble you, to make you prize Christ. And yes, you find corruption stirring, but don't presently unsaint yourself.
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In other words, don't say, I don't belong to Jesus, just because you feel that sin is an evidence of your lack of spiritual life.
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The fact that you mourn for it shows spiritual life. It shows the fruit of a love to God. And where that sorrow leads to a combat with sin, what you see as a fetter on your leg is, in fact, a crown upon your head.
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And this is all from the Spirit of grace within you. Yes, sin within you is a poison which you are sick of and you're availing yourself of Scripture to expel, but if we condemned all those who have indwelling sin, and even had sin that sometimes prevailed, we would blot out the best saints in the
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Bible. The doubter responds. You get the sentence. Here's Thomas Watson. He's counseling someone who's struggling, and they're, yeah, yeah,
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I know, but you don't understand. And so the doubter says again, well, where the kingdom of grace comes, it softens the heart, but I find my heart frozen, congealed into hardness.
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I can't even squeeze out a tear. Flowers don't grow on a rock. How could there be any grace in this rocky heart?
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And he says, well, there may be grief where there are no tears. The best sorrow is a rational sorrow. If in your judgment you esteem sin to be the most dreadful evil, you have a disgust against it which is rational, even that God will accept.
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Listen to this. A Christian may have some hardness in his heart, but not have a hard heart.
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A field may have tears in it, but we still call it a field of wheat. Just so in the best heart there's a mixture of hardness, yet because there is some softness, some melting,
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God sees it as a soft heart. When you pray for God's will to be done, and you're praying for God's will to be done, recognizing how far short you have fallen, how you've kicked against it, and you begin to wrestle with, how could
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I even be a disciple? I have a hard heart. There's so much sin indwelling me. Take the encouragement of Reverend Watson.
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The fact that you mourn it, the fact that you pray it with vigor, the fact that you desire it so strongly is evidence that you belong to the kingdom of God, and in fact, lean into that sorrow and let it fuel your prayer and your desire.
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Let it adorn the gospel in your life. You have a Savior who accepts you by His own blood, not by your performance, and so from that very place of gospel obedience, you will not only pray with meaning, with sincerity, your will be done.
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From that place of humility, from that place of gospel grace, you will actually begin to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ.
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You will begin to accomplish the will of God in your life. Amen? Remember that it is
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God who works in you, both to will and to do His good pleasure. It is
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God who's begun this good work in your life. It is God who will see it through to that day. It is
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Jesus Christ, your Savior, who shed His blood for your soul, who is the author and the finisher of your faith, and so run to Him as you pray your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
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Let's pray. Father, thank
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You for Your Word, Lord. Lord, we pray that as is said,
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Lord, You would afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. That Your people,
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Lord, we would have sorrow in our hearts for the ways we fail to bring about Your will. When we fail to see with faithful eyes
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Your perfect providence, and we fail to make Ebenezers and look back and recount
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Your faithfulness, and use that as a way of orienting and navigating our way forward in total commitment and submission to Your will.
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And forgive us, Lord, we fall so far short of Your revealed will, Lord. We know what
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You have taught us. We know the things we ought to do, and we feel the tension that Paul confesses in Romans 7, where the very things we know we ought to do we do not do, and the things we ought not to do we do.
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Lord, who will deliver us from this body of death? It is You. It is You who died, You who rose again,
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You who by an all -sufficient grace continue to work in us Your perfect will, renewing our minds, cleansing our consciences from guilts and fears, giving us a holy boldness to enter into the throne room, and to give us a heart song,
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Lord, and saturate our hearts with the sorrow that makes us long for Your will to be done in our lives and on this earth as it is in heaven.
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Forgive us, Lord, we are a fickle people, a sinful people, an unclean people, Lord, for we so often seek to obtain and bring about our purpose.
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We're very quick to neglect or give little attention or effort to Your purpose. May that not be,
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Lord. May we lay hold of Your providence, apply Your revealed Word, take those bloody steps bearing the cross that You see fit to give us, knowing that You have a perfect reward awaiting.
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You have a day fixed of consummation where You Yourself will wipe away the tears that even now as we pray
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You bottle. We pray, Lord, that as we seek to walk in this faith we would trust
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You, and Lord, that trusting You our lives would be more and more conformed to the life of our
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Savior. We pray, Lord, in all things that Your name would be hallowed, that Your kingdom would come, and Your will would be done on earth as it is in heaven.