Learning to Follow God’s Will
00:00:00.000 | Welcome back to the podcast.
00:00:05.840 | We started the week looking at the key to following God's will.
00:00:09.380 | And last time, in Monday's episode, Pastor John closed with a very great point on Colossians
00:00:15.040 | 1.9.
00:00:16.040 | There we saw that Paul was asking God to pour out His Holy Spirit so that the Spirit would
00:00:21.080 | remove the dimness of our ability to see God for who He really is, so that we would have
00:00:27.200 | spiritual wisdom that experiences preferences and makes choices that are in harmony with
00:00:33.640 | God's beauty.
00:00:36.440 | Seeing more of God is essential to following His will in our daily decision making.
00:00:42.760 | That was Monday in APJ 1807.
00:00:45.640 | Go back and listen to that episode if you skipped it or if you missed it because today
00:00:50.120 | we put that principle into practice.
00:00:52.320 | And we do so by looking at an example of one man who proceeded with a major life decision
00:00:56.520 | with confidence knowing that he was following God's will.
00:01:01.080 | He knew it.
00:01:02.560 | He was confident in his decision because he was following the trajectory of God's revealed
00:01:07.680 | will.
00:01:09.600 | This is a clip taken from an old John Piper sermon preached way back in 1982.
00:01:15.800 | Here's Pastor John.
00:01:17.800 | Now, Jesus taught us to pray every day, "Thy will be done on earth as it is done in heaven."
00:01:30.440 | Therefore everyone who confesses Jesus as Lord makes it his aim day by day, consistently
00:01:40.640 | and heartily, to do the will of God the way that the angels do it in heaven.
00:01:49.360 | And if we're not making it our aim to do the will of God day by day, then it is very likely
00:01:58.720 | that we do not belong to Jesus.
00:02:02.760 | Because Jesus himself said, "Whoever does the will of my Father is my mother and brother
00:02:12.720 | and sister."
00:02:15.160 | In other words, the family resemblance in the family of God is not so much perfect performance
00:02:25.600 | of the will of God, but rather persistent purposing to do it day by day.
00:02:33.280 | The mark of the child of God is not that we always hit the bull's eye of God's will, but
00:02:39.920 | that we always aim at the targets appointed by the Father day by day.
00:02:49.960 | The great aim of the church is to do the will of God on earth the way it's done in heaven.
00:02:58.760 | And for many of us that means a constant struggle for two things.
00:03:03.440 | On the one hand, to know what the will of God is for our personal lives.
00:03:09.100 | And on the other hand, to maintain a strong confidence that God will give us the strength
00:03:15.680 | that we need to do it and run interference for us so that all obstacles will be removed.
00:03:23.000 | Now in Genesis 24, verses 1 to 9, I think we've got an incident from Abraham's life
00:03:30.480 | that shows us on the one hand how he discovered God's will and on the other hand how he kept
00:03:37.200 | his confidence strong that God would always be running interference when he held close
00:03:45.480 | to God's will.
00:03:47.260 | And I think the reason stories like this are put in the Bible for us is that we might learn
00:03:53.720 | one, how to know his will, and two, how to keep that confidence in God's help strong.
00:04:01.880 | So in advance, let me tell you what I think the main point to be learned about these two
00:04:07.600 | things is from this text.
00:04:10.000 | I think the main point is this.
00:04:12.160 | We can know God's will and we can maintain confidence in his help to do it if we're familiar
00:04:23.680 | with the trajectories of his word.
00:04:27.880 | Now in this day and age, I hope everybody knows what trajectories are.
00:04:33.160 | The last 25 years we've heard that on the television.
00:04:38.960 | A trajectory of a rocket is the path that it will follow on the basis of its shape and
00:04:50.000 | speed and weight and direction so that you can know in advance what the trajectory or
00:04:58.160 | the path of that rocket is going to be if you know enough about the rocket and how it's
00:05:03.480 | moving.
00:05:05.160 | Now I think that's the way it is with knowing God's word and finding out God's will.
00:05:12.740 | The Bible simply does not give you a radar screen or a blueprint of your life tomorrow.
00:05:22.980 | It leaves so many questions unanswered about what you should do.
00:05:28.900 | And the intention, I think, of God is that you are to be able to find out God's will
00:05:36.900 | tomorrow by becoming very familiar with the trajectories of God's word that you know from
00:05:46.780 | the past.
00:05:47.780 | And you could add to that the trajectories of his work that he has been doing in your
00:05:54.220 | life up to this time.
00:05:57.300 | If you become familiar enough with the weight and direction and the shape and speed of the
00:06:01.780 | word of God, then you'll be able to trace out the trajectory of God's will for you and
00:06:09.340 | maintain strength in his help.
00:06:15.540 | Now let's see how that worked for Abraham.
00:06:17.220 | I think maybe if we look at how Abraham did it that we might become better at it.
00:06:24.700 | Sometimes God spoke to Abraham directly, told him exactly what to do face to face.
00:06:30.820 | But if you read the story, you realize that those times were few and far between, decades
00:06:39.340 | between the times we read of God speaking to Abraham.
00:06:43.220 | Most of the time, Abraham, like us, was left to trace out trajectories from what God had
00:06:50.540 | said in the past into the future so that he'd know what to do with his life, what steps
00:06:56.460 | to take.
00:06:57.460 | That's what's happening, I think, here in Genesis 24, 1 to 9.
00:07:02.940 | There are three trajectories from God's word that combine into one line of God's will for
00:07:11.980 | Abraham here.
00:07:13.820 | The first trajectory is this.
00:07:17.860 | Isaac must have a wife.
00:07:20.340 | The second trajectory is this.
00:07:22.500 | The wife may not be a Canaanite woman.
00:07:25.660 | And the third trajectory is this.
00:07:29.260 | Isaac may not return to the land from which Abraham left to get a wife.
00:07:36.820 | Those three trajectories merge for Abraham into a line of decision, and the decision
00:07:45.900 | he is convinced is God's will, and the decision is this.
00:07:50.100 | I will send my trusted servant to get a wife for my son from among my own kindred in my
00:07:56.380 | own land.
00:07:59.300 | Abraham determines the will of God for the future by tracing out trajectories that he
00:08:05.820 | has learned from the past word of God.
00:08:10.500 | And then he's confident, absolutely confident, so confident that he says in verse 7, "God
00:08:19.180 | will send his angel before you, and you shall take a wife for my son."
00:08:26.700 | From which I infer, once we know the will of God, we can have tremendous confidence
00:08:33.940 | that God is going to work for us to clear away all obstacles to its success.
00:08:42.060 | Many of you have had that kind of experience.
00:08:45.620 | Now we want that to happen in our lives, don't we?
00:08:49.460 | I don't think there's probably a person in this room who wouldn't say right now in your
00:08:54.700 | own heart, "I want every day to know clearly God's will for me.
00:09:01.580 | I want to know.
00:09:03.340 | I want to have questions answered about marriage, children, job changes, major purchases, schooling
00:09:13.620 | decisions, the use of my leisure time and what to do with it, special ministries and
00:09:20.220 | whether to get involved and how deeply involved, church affiliation, Bethlehem or another one,
00:09:26.500 | percentage of our income to give to the church and to give to World Vision and to give to
00:09:31.380 | World Relief and to give here, there and everywhere.
00:09:34.180 | I want to know God's will."
00:09:35.900 | I think all of you probably would say that.
00:09:40.420 | And you want confidence that he will work for you once you have hit upon the will.
00:09:46.860 | That if he tells you it's his will to give 15% of your income to Bethlehem, he's going
00:09:51.780 | to work for you and make that 85% stretch vastly farther than the 100% would have ever
00:09:59.020 | reached.
00:10:00.020 | That's the kind of faith we want once we hit upon God's will.
00:10:05.220 | We want to be led and led in triumph, as Paul said.
00:10:10.860 | Now scriptures like Genesis 24 are given to help us maintain that insight and that confidence,
00:10:18.020 | I think.
00:10:19.180 | And so I want us to look at it even more closely.
00:10:23.380 | The reason that I call these three things in Genesis 24 trajectories and not commands
00:10:32.460 | is because God never commanded Abraham explicitly that his son must have a wife, that his wife
00:10:39.420 | could not be a Canaanitess, and that he may not return to Mesopotamia.
00:10:45.620 | He never said that.
00:10:48.420 | The only way Abraham could determine that, so far as we see from scripture, is by tracing
00:10:54.800 | out trajectories from things God did say to him in the past.
00:11:01.140 | And he had said things that pointed in that direction.
00:11:04.780 | God had, as it were, launched the rocket of his will.
00:11:09.340 | And now and then he allowed the clouds at Cape Canaveral to clear for Abraham, and Abraham
00:11:16.540 | could see the kind of rocket it was, the direction it was going, and how fast it was going, and
00:11:21.820 | then the clouds came back over.
00:11:24.700 | And Abraham was left to trace out the trajectory for his own behavior from what God had revealed
00:11:32.540 | of the rocket's path and nature.
00:11:35.740 | Yeah.
00:11:36.740 | So following the trajectory of God's will for us and his revealed word gives us confidence
00:11:41.220 | in our daily decision making.
00:11:43.100 | So we will only make good decisions in life to the degree that we follow the trajectory
00:11:47.500 | of God's revealed will to us in his word.
00:11:51.500 | And as Pastor John goes on to state a little bit later in the sermon, "The reason there
00:11:55.500 | are church people who are basically secular, like everyone else, except with a religious
00:12:00.540 | veneer is that they devote 99% of their time absorbing the trajectories of the world and
00:12:07.860 | 1% of their time absorbing the trajectories of the word."
00:12:13.760 | So that's the flip side of this principle.
00:12:15.900 | So it's in seeing the trajectories of God's revealed word that enable us to make confident
00:12:21.780 | real life decisions.
00:12:23.780 | This clip is from his sermon.
00:12:26.300 | It's titled, "He Will Send His Angels Before You," preached on August 8th, 1982.
00:12:30.580 | If you have a sermon clip to share, email me.
00:12:33.620 | Give me your name, hometown, the sermon title, the timestamp of where the clip happens in
00:12:37.940 | the audio, and make a note of what stands out to you.
00:12:41.300 | Put the word "clip" in the subject line of an email and send it to me and ask Pastor
00:12:45.480 | John at DesiringGod.org.
00:12:47.380 | That's an email address.
00:12:48.380 | AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org.
00:12:49.380 | Well, speaking of following God's will, what do we do when we cannot do everything?
00:12:57.300 | How do we prioritize a busy life?
00:12:59.820 | That's up next time.
00:13:00.820 | I'm your host, Tony Reike, and we are rejoined in studio with Pastor John on Friday.
00:13:04.980 | We'll see you then.
00:13:05.500 | [END]
00:13:06.000 | [BLANK_AUDIO]