Seeking for the help of the Lord,
I direct your prayerful attention to Ephesians chapter 5 and reading
from our text part of verse 17. Verse 17, understanding what
the will of the Lord is. The whole verse reads, Wherefore,
be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is. Ephesians 5 verse 17, especially
the latter part of it, The context here is understanding what the
will of the Lord is as to our walk and our conduct as believers. I want to consider certainly
this aspect of the will of God but also all of the will of God
in a few heads, because we're not to say that we conform to
the will of God in one aspect, but not in another. It is in all aspects. And throughout the Word of God,
and may we remember this, that it is only in the Holy Bible,
it is only in the Word of God, that the will of God is actually
shown and made known. We are not to be supposing or
speculating on the will of God. We are not to be doing things
and acting in a way contrary to what is revealed as God's
will. in the holy word of God. So if we are to understand what
the will of God is, we will be people that are persuaded that
God does have a will, and it is a will that concerns us, And
as regards our walk and our conduct, that we also should walk according
to that will, and having that knowledge, having a desire then
to understand and know from the Word what that will is. Some people, they say, well,
we believe in God, but we don't believe that we should be governed
by him. We can just do according to our
own will. Or that God has a will in some
things, but not in others. And in that way, they are not
consistent. They do not show that really
they know the nature of God at all or the position that his
people, his church especially have under him. I want to consider firstly some
of those promises that God has given to those that keep his
will, those that walk in his will. There are many, of course,
in the word of God. But just to name a few of them,
in the first epistle, General of John, and chapter two, we
have in verse 17, The world passeth away, and alas
thereof, but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever. What a beautiful promise that
is. When we see all that is in the
world, all perishing and all the troubles and the sorrows,
All those that are taken away from it, and we know that the
world itself shall pass away, but here are they that do the
will of God, and the word of God assures us that they abide
forever. There's one way of finding out
who, who are God's children, who have eternal life, who are
blessed with saving grace and being saved from the wrath to
come. It is those that do the will
of God. We think then in Matthew chapter
12, where the Lord had those coming to him and they were seeking
after his, or his brethren were seeking to see him, and the Lord
had this word in verse 50 to say to them. He said, for whosoever
shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven. The same
is my brother and sister and mother. He had had those of his
mother, his brethren, and they were standing without, desiring
to see him. And one person, they told him
of that. And this was his answer, who
is my brother and who are my brethren? He stretched forth
his hand toward his disciples and said, behold, my mother and
my brethren. For whosoever shall do the will
of my father which is in heaven, the same is my brother and sister
and mother. revealing of the relationship
between Christ and his people. His people, a very, very close
relationship, as close as a brother, as a sister, as a mother. And it is this that the Lord
highlights. May we value our relationship
with the Lord, more than even those close family
ties. And then we have in Hebrews 10, another promise of the Lord in
verse 36. In the previous verse, he said,
cast not away therefore your confidence which hath great recompense
of reward. For ye have needed patience,
that after ye have done the will of God ye might receive the promise."
And so again we have a doing of the will of God. and afterward
those blessed promises, eternal life and heaven and the blessings
of God. We might not understand the will
of God. We might not understand what
the Lord is directing us to. But if we indeed know that we
are doing the will of God, then What promises are joined to that? May our response be in this,
Lord, teach me to do thy will. Teach me thy will. Well, let us think then of the
will of God in three different ways. Firstly, his will in salvation. That is how men and women, how
we are to be saved. And then secondly, his will in
how a believer should walk. And this is the context here
in Ephesians 5. And then thirdly, his will in
providence. The things in our lives that
happen and the things that we need to make a decision about. Making that decision according
to the will of God. But firstly his will in salvation. When Paul writes to the Galatians. He sets forth the will of God
as concerning the work of our Lord Jesus Christ. In his opening
remarks to the Galatians in chapter 1, he speaks of our Lord in verse
3 and 4. He says in his salutation, Grace
be to you and peace from God the Father. and from our Lord
Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver
us from this present evil world. Then he says this, according
to the will of God, our Father. According to the will of God,
the Father, the Lord Jesus Christ, gave himself for our sins. And he gave himself for our sins
for this purpose, that he might deliver us from this present
evil world. That is, delivering us while
we are here. His prayer in John 17 was, Father,
I pray not that thou should take them out of the world, but that
thou wouldest keep them from the evil. And we read that by
the fear of the Lord, men depart from evil. His fear is an unctuous
light to all that is right, a bar to all that is wrong. But in
this aspect, in this verse, we have the salvation of God, the
will of God. The will of God was that his
beloved son should die a substitutionary death, that he should put away
the sin of his people by the sacrifice of himself. That is God's will. The Lord
Jesus Christ performed that will. His coming to this earth was
according to the will of God and to all the prophecies and
promises in the Old Testament, the Lord came. And in all his
life, here below, he lived obedient to the will of God. When he comes
to lay down his life, he says, no man taketh my life from me,
I lay it down of myself. This commandment have I received
of my father, I have power to lay it down, I have power to
take it again. And so the will of God was that
Christ should suffer. Now in Deuteronomy we have that
the secret things belong unto God and the revealed things belong
unto us and our children. There is a secret will of God. There is a revealed will of God. And there are those things that
are hidden from man that his revealed will might be performed. There are those things that are
revealed and we are not to think or to imagine what the Lord has
in his secret will, but obey that which is revealed. In the
crucifixion of our Lord we are told that he was delivered by
the determinate counsel and full knowledge of God. But we are
also told that he was taken and by wicked hands crucified and
slain. It was the will of God that Christ
should suffer. It was not the will of God, not
the revealed will of God, that those of his nation should crucify
him and wickedly disbelieve all of his works and words and ways. They were guilty, they were accountable,
responsible for what they did and they fell under Peter's sermon
at the Day of Pentecost, pricked in their heart as guilty for
what they had done. But we know, like in the case
of Joseph, that God's will, purpose will be done and Joseph's brothers
should never thought, well, we are doing the will of God in
so wickedly dealing with our brother, because this is the
way that God will bring us into Egypt. That was hidden from them. God had told Abraham that his
seed would go down into Egypt, but he hadn't told him when or
how and how it was to be brought about. And we are not to do evil
that good may come. We're not to think, well, the
end justifies the means, and though it is perhaps a deceitful
thing we're going to do, that God will make it work for good. Well, it is God's sovereignty.
He can, and he often does, make that which is evil work for good. but we are never to sin that
God's grace might abound and that His goodness be shown in
it. And especially this is in salvation. In salvation we are not to just
go about and think, well, we can just live as we like and
we'll just trust that we'll be saved at last. The will of God
in salvation is that the Lord paid the debt on Calvary for
His people's sin, that He, in His perfect life, wrought out
an obedience of righteousness for them, and then His will is
that everyone that believes on Him, that they should walk even
as He walked, that they should depart from sin, and wickedness
and evil, but that they should be trusting solely in what Christ
has done for their salvation and not in their works. The will
of God is that by grace ye are saved through faith and that
not of yourselves. It is the gift of God. Faith is the gift
of God. And so we would be very clear
on the will of God. It is not the will of God that
men by their good works can merit heaven. It is the will of God
that men, those sinners, should trust in the Lord Jesus Christ
alone for their hope of heaven and in Christ's perfect righteousness
to fit them to be there. It is the will of God that God's
people that do believe, that they repent, they are sorry for
their evil deeds, that they seek to walk in ways of righteousness
and godliness and a poor evil, and that they walk after the
spirit or spiritual things and not after the flesh, carnal things. Many over the history of the
church have struggled with the teachings on works. Martin Luther
struggled with works in the Roman Catholic Church. The Lord delivered
him. in showing him that it is by
faith that we are saved and not by works. But then he struggled
when he came to the epistle of James. Yes, he could understand
and was blessed through Paul's epistle to the Romans, but when
James spoke of faith without works is dead, then he struggled
with that. that the two are perfectly compatible. In the churches that we're written
to in the Revelation, it speaks about the works, the first works
and the latter works. And with God's children, they
know the place of the two. They are to walk. They are chosen
to walk. in good works, but they are never
to be trusting in those works for their salvation. But a person
that says, well, we have faith in Christ's death and sufferings,
but their works are living as if they were not guided by the
word of God at all, they clearly show that their faith is not
a right faith. We know that all have sinned
and come short of the glory of God, and that God's children,
they sin daily. If thou shouldst mark iniquity,
who should be saved? Who could stand? But there is
forgiveness with thee that thou mayest be feared. And we have
in John 1, if we confess our sins, he is faithful. and just
to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So it is not God's will that
those that are brought to true saving faith in Christ become
sinless and only if they are sinless they get to heaven. No,
it is God's will that he shall show them his grace is mercy
all of their days, as they're mindful of their sins in thought,
word, and deed. Their best efforts, their desires
to do good, their efforts to do good, it does make them to
be a people marked out as a holy and godly people. But as they
know that God demands perfection, They know that like the Apostle
says, in me that is in my flesh dwelleth no good thing. To will is present with me, but
how to perform that which is good I find not. And the sin
that works within, God's will is that his people value his
grace, his mercy all of their days. So may we be clear, in salvation,
really may we be summed up in this word, grace not works. Saved by grace and not by works. Again, we've only just touched
a little on this, Maybe as we read the word of
God, often think on this as the will of God is revealed and opened
up to us. His will concerning how he saves
sinners, how he saves his people, how their hope of heaven is to
be placed, what they are to be, what is that which The Lord looks
for, and the mark of his people, with the heart man believeth,
with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. The Lord saves his people, and
he saves them by giving them faith, and he saves them by grace. putting his fear in their hearts,
giving them spiritual life and blessing them with his keeping.
And to that end then he gives them a hearing ear and he gives
them a will to do his will. And so the Apostle Paul who is
writing our text and these letters to the churches When the Lord
met with him on the Damascus road, his inquiry was, Lord,
what wilt thou have me to do? Immediately there was a desire,
what was the Lord's will now for his life? How should he live? And so I want to look at our
second point, which is his will, God's will. in how a believer
is to walk in this life. In the words of our text, we
have this understanding what the will of the Lord is. And the context is this. how a believer is to walk. And so just from this chapter
alone, though we will look at maybe other passages as well,
we discern what the will of the Lord is. And in the following
chapter, chapter six and verse six, We read how that will of
God is actually done. Not with eye service as men pleases,
but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the
heart. Doing the will of God from the
heart. Paul, when he writes to the Romans,
he, in Romans chapter 12, in connection with this part
of our text. He describes what the will of
God is. He says in verse 2, Be not conformed
to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind,
that ye may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect
will of God." Now, he doesn't just say that you might prove
what is the will of God. He says, what is that good and
acceptable and perfect will of God? And he uses all of these
terms to describe the will of God. May we, when we think of
the will of God, And that revealed in the word of God, think of
it in those terms as being so good and perfect and acceptable. And so in the beginning of this
chapter, in verse two, the Lord's will is that we should walk in
love. And walk in love as Christ also
hath loved us. Then there's the other side.
This world is full, and our own hearts so akin to it, of all
uncleanness, fornication, uncleanness, covetousness. And he devotes
quite a few verses to this, very strong language and word, leaving
us no doubt that it is through these things that the wrath of
God comes on the children of disobedient. And so the will
of God is that his people should flee from those carnal, sensual
things. In fact, the apostle says in
another place, to be spiritually minded is life and peace, but
to be carnally minded is death. And so the will of God is that
we should keep our bodies holy and pure and abhor all that is
unclean. He then exhorts that it should
be, it is his will that in our fellowship that we are careful
that who we go with especially in the Church of God, in verse
11, have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness,
but rather reprove them. In the letters to the churches
we referred to before in the Revelation, seven churches in
Asia, there were several of them reproved that they had in their
fellowship those that taught evil or held evil or walked in
wrong practices. And so the will of the Lord is
that we are not to have, especially in a church fellowship, those
that are walking in darkness. Then we are told in verse 15
that the will of the Lord is that we walk circumspectly, that
is carefully, not just foolishly blundering along, but being wise
in what we do, how we act. And then in verse 16, redeeming
the time, not wasting the time, But sometimes it might be like,
in the present situation, we might find ourselves in a queue,
queuing up for fuel for the car, and might be there for half an
hour, and often sitting with the engine off, and we can redeem
that time, use it in the reading of the word, or hearing of the
word, And it is like the apostle when he had to wait at Mars Hill. And while he was waiting for
Timothy, then he saw them given to idolatry. Well, he didn't
wait and not preach that he used that time that he was waiting.
And he declared unto them when he saw they had an altar to an
unknown God, He declared unto them who that God was. And really
there's many times, as it were, we can squeeze into gaps time
that otherwise would be wasted. So the will of God is that we
use that which the Lord has given us, especially in time, in a
right way. We have a warning then in verse
18 concerning a drink wherein is excess, a warning against
that. And then in a positive way in
verse 19, speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual
songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord. And then he follows with thanksgiving. I think there's hardly another
revelation of the will of God right through the word, is that
the Lord would have us to give thanks. Again and again, these
exhortations are in the word, that in everything give thanks. And here it is in verse 20, giving
thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the
name of our Lord Jesus Christ. And then we have the will of
God in submission one to another. And the beautiful example of
the marriage state and the illustration of Christ, the heavenly bridegroom,
and the Church of God, His bride. And his will then is set before
us as to how we are to act one toward another and how we are
to act in the Church of God and as believers. Peter, in his epistles,
he teaches us the will of God, how we are to act under suffering. If it is the will of God that
we should suffer for well-doing, but not for evil doing. And we
think then in the path of prayer, where the Lord teaches the manner
of prayer. And it begins with this, though
it will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And we should,
in all of our lives, reflect what the will of the Lord is
that we should walk. The Lord does have a will for
his people. He does have a message for them. There are those things he wants
them to do. There are those things he doesn't
want them to do. There is a right walk. There
is a wrong walk. And that will is shown and revealed
in the word of God. His will in our lives, in our
homes and in the Church of God, especially in the Church of God. How we are to act, who is to
hold the offices, the qualifications of those office bearers. All
of these things, the Lord in His Word reveals what His will
is and under this second head really. It is what the Lord's
will is in what other things we do. Sometimes it's not what
we do, it is how we do it. It's not what we say, it is how
we say it. And so in the will of God, he
points us to all that we do is to be in the fear of God graciously,
soberly, righteously, that all evil speakings and clamour and
anger, all of those things of malice and bitterness, that the
Lord so clearly reveals it is not His will that His people
should walk like that. It is His will that they should
flee from that way of walking and of speaking. Go on to look
then lastly at his will in providence. What we mean in providence is
the things that happen in our lives. My life's minutest circumstance
is subject to thine eye. We mentioned Joseph before. In his life it was completely
taken out of his hand What was to happen? He obeyed his father. He went to his brethren. His
brethren then threw him into a pit, sold him to the Ishmaelites,
who brought him then to Egypt, who sold him to the captain of
the guard, who then employed him as a servant. Then he was falsely accused.
and cast into prison, and was there until the time that he
was brought out of prison to interpret Pharaoh's dreams. And you might say that all of
this was taken out of Joseph's hand. In not one step did Joseph
have to make a decision of what he should do in those major things. He was shepherded. It is then the Lord's will that
when these things happen, that we be submissive to his hand. We actually see his will and
see his purposes. We don't ascribe it to chance. We don't blame men for it. But we see God in control. And it is in that way that we
are to be submissive to his will in providence. But there are
some times that we ourselves must make a decision. There's choices that we must
make. And we don't expect that we find
written in the word of God to tell us what course to take at
school, at college, or what man or woman to take as a husband
or wife, or what house to buy, what place to live, or what place
to go and worship, we won't find explicit the word for us in the
word of God. But God does speak to his people
through his word. He does use the ministry of the
word. He does use providence. He teaches us his will in all
of those things. And when Abraham's servant was
sent to get a wife for Isaac, and he prayed at the well as
coming to the brethren of Abraham's brethren, of which he'd been
told to take a wife of. And his prayer was that God would
show the woman that was appointed to be a wife for Isaac. He knew that it wasn't just finding
any woman. One woman had been appointed
for him. And a good thing for us to remember
that our partners in life have been appointed even from eternity
by God, the homes that we live in have been appointed, the jobs
that we've worked have been appointed, and we may discern from that
very often as the Lord guides us what His appointment is, what
His will is. If we've been appointed to be,
say, a builder, then even as a child, there'll be that propensity
to be making things or working with things with our hands. If we were to be an accountant,
we would expect that we would like to work with figures and
have a mind that way and be more inclined to work in a desk job. We don't think where the Lord
would have one to be working as a gardener, that then he doesn't
give them the aptitude or liking to gardening or outside. That would not be a preparation
for that kind of an appointment. So being mindful of what the
will of the Lord is, that the Lord does have a will for his
people, we watch then. what the Lord is doing in our
lives, how he has inclined our hearts, the skills that he's
given us, and then the openings that are set before us, those
things maybe that have changed the course of our lives and things
that have happened, closed doors and open doors, and we watch
and You know, if we are tender and truly are asking the Lord,
show me thy way, I believe the Lord will never, never permit
us to make a mistake. There may be times we venture,
we venture very fearfully, very afraid, very uncertain whether
we're really doing the will of God or not. But I believe if
we've really laid it before the Lord, And our real desire is
to do according to his will. And according to the wisdom given
us, we've looked at the matter, studied the case, and we seek
to walk according to what is shown us in the Word. He won't
leave us to make a mistake. And so his guidance The Lord
does guide his people. May we remember that. He does
have a will for his people. May we remember that. And he
does make his people desire to know and to do his will. May we remember that as well.
May we trust in him, lean hard upon him, and venture. You know, we don't read in that
beautiful book of Ruth that Ruth is told that this is the will
of God, that you should leave Moab and that you should go to
Bethlehem. But she was given a real love
to Naomi, and I believe to her God too, and that love to her
then was what guided her and brought her in God's will to
Bethlehem. Her desire to provide for herself
and Naomi, to go and glean, to be diligent, brought her to Boaz's
field. And the Lord blessed her there. And so we see sometimes in the
word of God, The knowing of the will of God is as the Lord gives
us a love and a drawing and a constraining. And we walk then in his will. Who told Joseph of Arimathea,
a secret disciple, and Nicodemus, who was a frightened disciple,
came to Jesus by night to go and to take our Lord down from
the cross and to bury Him in the sepulcher. We don't read
of any direction that this was the will of God and yet how clear
we must know it was the will of God that He should be crucified
and buried and rise again the third day And yet here is these
disciples doing the will of God out of love. Out of love. Constrained to do it. And may
that be that we walk in that way before the Lord as well. May the Lord then guide us and
direct us. I want to finish with a couple
of verses from Hebrews 13. Hebrews 13 and verse 20 and 21. Now the God of peace that brought
again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of
the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant,
make you perfect in every good work to do His will, working
in you that which is well-pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ,
to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.