back to indexLearning to Follow God’s Will
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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 00:00:16.040 |
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 00:00:36.440 |
Seeing more of God is essential to following His will in our daily decision making. 00:00:45.640 |
Go back and listen to that episode if you skipped it or if you missed it because today 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. 00:01:02.560 |
He was confident in his decision because he was following the trajectory of God's revealed 00:01:09.600 |
This is a clip taken from an old John Piper sermon preached way back in 1982. 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 00:02:02.760 |
Because Jesus himself said, "Whoever does the will of my Father is my mother and brother 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 00:03:47.260 |
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 00:04:12.160 |
We can know God's will and we can maintain confidence in his help to do it if we're familiar 00:04:27.880 |
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 00:05:05.160 |
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 00:05:47.780 |
And you could add to that the trajectories of his work that he has been doing in your 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 00:06:17.220 |
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 00:06:57.460 |
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 00:07:29.260 |
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 00:07:59.300 |
Abraham determines the will of God for the future by tracing out trajectories that he 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. 00:09:03.340 |
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. 00:09:40.420 |
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 00:10:00.020 |
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, 00:10:19.180 |
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. 00:10:48.420 |
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 00:11:24.700 |
And Abraham was left to trace out the trajectory for his own behavior from what God had revealed 00:11:36.740 |
So following the trajectory of God's will for us and his revealed word gives us confidence 00:11:43.100 |
So we will only make good decisions in life to the degree that we follow the trajectory 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." 00:12:15.900 |
So it's in seeing the trajectories of God's revealed word that enable us to make confident 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 00:12:49.380 |
Well, speaking of following God's will, what do we do when we cannot do everything? 00:13:00.820 |
I'm your host, Tony Reike, and we are rejoined in studio with Pastor John on Friday.