Discovering God’s Perfect Will

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This morning, I got up early. I was excited about getting to do a baptism, and so I was up early and rummaging around through the garage. My wife asked me what I was going to do with this, and I told her, I said, well, it’s cold in that water probably, so I figured I’d just plug this in, switch it on, and throw it in there.

She looked at me and said, what? I said, no, I’m just kidding. I’m going to use it as an illustration.

No, really, what are you going to do with it? I’m using it as an illustration. How many of you know what this thing is?

Somebody tell me what this is. It’s a heat gun, okay, not a hair dryer. Believe it or not, the instructions, I believe, actually say, do not use this as a hair dryer.

This is a heat gun, and I bought this actually last winter when we were living in Oklahoma and had an ice and snowstorm about the same time y’all had one here, and got frozen pipes. Woke up one morning with no water and said, we’ve got to do something about this because we can’t live very long without water. We were melting snow on the stove in order to do things around the house.

we went and got this and it’s a really neat tool I’ve had no use for it since but it was a really neat tool 1500 degrees this thing gets up to that’s pretty neat that you know if you could do it right that could dry your hair pretty fast it’s a really neat tool but it comes with all of these pesky instructions on what to do and what not to do with it apparently if you use it as a hair dryer and since it’s in the book I’m guessing somebody’s tried this if you use it as a hair dryer you’d probably set your head on fire. If you use it on the wrong kinds of pipes, you can actually melt some of your pipes.

And for some of the uses, if you don’t use it the right way, you just hold it in one spot and hold it there, you could set your wall on fire on the inside, not even on the outside of the wall, but set the inside on fire, or you might not even know it until your whole house goes up in flames. Why would anybody want one of these? It’s a dangerous piece of equipment.

It’s a dangerous piece of equipment if not used properly. But it also gives us this little book that ruins our fun sometimes with the heat gun, that if you follow what it says in this little book, you can do all sorts of useful things. We were able to, this was part of what enabled us to thaw our house out and have water again.

Now we had to go out there and dig the snow and ice off of the ground over the main line and then heat up all the pipes and just hope the heat would work its way through, and we eventually thawed out the house. Apparently you can heat up certain kinds of materials to where they’ll bend and you can work with them. Apparently, you can’t even remove paint from surfaces.

I guess you have to move it back and forth so you don’t get anything too hot, but you can do a lot of useful things with this tool if it’s done the right way. See, the manufacturer knows what this is capable of and knows the best way to use it, knows what it’s for and how to accomplish what you need to do. And as a result, there’s a lot of use that can come from this thing as dangerous as it may be if used incorrectly.

Folks, the choices that God gives us are much like that heat gun. That the choices and opportunities that we have on a daily basis, depending on whether we use it according to the manufacturer’s specifications, whether we use our lives according to the instructions, there can be a lot of damage that can come as a result, or there can be a lot of benefit from following the instructions. This morning, we’re not finishing up the series, but we’re finishing up the different aspects of God’s will.

If you’ve not been with us, we’re in the middle of a series called Discovering God’s Will. Because a lot of Christians are under the impression that God’s will either cannot be known, God’s will for my life cannot be known, or if I can know something about God’s will, I never can be completely sure of what God wants for me, or I may not be able to find it. It may be hard to find.

If I need to find it, I may have to struggle. And folks, a lot of times, a lot of Christians misinterpret God’s will as being something mystical like a Ouija board that we have to fight with and struggle with and interpret. And in a lot of ways, God has made His will very plain and very clear for us to follow because it’s His will and He wants us to follow it.

And we’ve talked in the last two weeks about two aspects of God’s will that really it’s a mistake if we spend a lot of time looking for Him. And I know that sounds horrible to say it’s a mistake to spend a lot of time looking for God’s will. But we’ve talked about God’s sovereign will and God’s permissive will that we’ve seen in Genesis chapter 1 and Genesis chapter 3, respectively.

Now, so that there’s no confusion in terms, because a lot of people teach on God’s will and use words differently. I want to define what I mean, so we’re all clear. When I say God’s sovereign will, I mean the things that must happen, because God has willed it, it must happen.

With God’s permissive will, I mean the things that might happen, from our perspective, might happen, because God has given us a choice that we can do this, but it’s not necessarily God’s best for us. And then there’s God’s perfect will, the things which should happen. That’s what we’re going to talk about today.

You see, God has a sovereign will. God is a sovereign God. And when God says, I’m going to sovereignly will something, you can take it to the bank.

You can be assured that it’s going to happen. But we make a mistake, as I explained last week, to assume, as some people do, that because God has a sovereign will, that means He sovereignly wills everything. And we talked about the interpretation of Genesis chapters 2 and 3 that says it was God’s will that man eat the fruit of the tree.

It was God’s will that man sinned. It was that that was God’s sovereign will. The idea that God sovereignly wills everything.

When God revealed earlier in chapter 2 that he did not want Adam to eat from that fruit, and that meant either it really was God’s will that Adam not eat that fruit, and God’s sovereign will wasn’t so sovereign because God’s will was disobeyed, or God said it’s my will that you not eat this fruit, while secretly it was his sovereign will that Adam ate the fruit in it. That leads to the idea of God deceiving Adam, and I’m not comfortable with that view from the Bible. But what we have is God’s sovereign will that sometimes He sovereignly wills things, and then sometimes God sovereignly determines that He’s going to allow us the free will to choose.

And I won’t pretend to be an expert on exactly how all of that comes together at all times. To my mind, it’s very difficult to understand how that always works together, but I see both aspects in the Bible, and so I believe it. And what we see is God gives a free will, a free choice, and with that free choice comes two possible outcomes.

One is God’s permissive will and one is God’s perfect will. God’s perfect will, the things that should happen, is where he says, this is what I want you to do. I’ve commanded you to do this.

Do this or else, and it implies that there’s a choice over here, that if you choose not to do God’s best, then there’s this other option of disobedience. But folks, we only have the option of disobedience because God allows it. If God sovereignly willed to end our free will tomorrow, it’d be gone.

But he doesn’t. He gives us the opportunity to choose because God did not create us as robots, But he created, not out of need, but out of desire, to have an intelligent being that would choose to love him and serve him. And so below his sovereign will, there’s this free will on our part, that we have the opportunity to follow God’s perfect will to our benefit, or follow his permissive will to our detriment.

God’s permissive will, as I said last week, are the things that can happen. God will allow us to disobey. God will allow things to happen as consequences.

But it doesn’t mean that it’s his best, because he’s given us his perfect will, the things that he says should happen. And so it’s a mistake to look for God, to spend too much time focusing on I need to know God’s sovereign will. God doesn’t always have to reveal his sovereign will to us.

He’s God. He can do it without our approval or knowledge. And he will reveal things to us like creation, like the end times, like the crucifixion, things that he said these will and must happen.

But God has sovereign will we don’t ever know about. And God has sovereign will that we don’t need to know about, because he’s God. God also has this permissive will that it’s a mistake to spend too much time trying to find God’s permissive will because that’s like saying, God, show me your permissive will, is like saying, God, show me how bad I can be and still get away with it.

Lord, let me see how far you’ll let me wander before you rein me back in. So to spend too much time seeking God’s sovereign will, to spend too much time seeking that is saying, God, I’m not going to obey you, I’m not going to live my life, I’m not going to serve you until I know how all of this is going to end And His permissive will, seeking that, says, God, let me see just how disobedient I could be. What we need to spend our time seeking is God’s perfect will.

God’s perfect will. And what I mean by that, again, is the things that should happen. The things that God has revealed in His Word and revealed to us that this is my plan for you.

And we’re going to talk in the next few weeks, after we talk about what God’s perfect will is, how we find it. And it’s not as difficult as we sometimes are led to believe. Sometimes we may have to dig a little bit.

God may expect us to actually be interested in looking, but God’s perfect will is out there because it’s His will for us to do. He tells us here’s what it is. Now, folks, if you’re looking for God’s perfect will in the sense that you want to know, God, what do I need to do in this specific situation?

If you’re asking God which stocks to invest in, I can’t stand here with absolute confidence and tell you that God’s going to tell you His perfect will for what stocks you’re supposed to invest in. As a matter of fact, if it’s God’s will for you to lose money, you may not want to know what God’s perfect will is for what stocks to invest in. God, what should I order for lunch today?

What’s your perfect will? We may be getting a little too specific, but there are principles that God has revealed that we are to live our lives by, that if these principles are applied, we can know how we’re supposed to act and behave and respond in most situations of life. And we can know God’s perfect will, and it’s not as hidden and it’s not as mysterious as we tend to believe it is.

Let’s look at Genesis chapter 2. Thus the heavens and earth were finished and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.

And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made. Verse 4, These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created. In the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, and every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew, for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.

But there went up a mist from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground. And the Lord formed, verse 7, man out of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there he put the man whom he had formed.

And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And a river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from thence it was parted and became into four heads. The name of the first is Pisan, that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold.

And the gold of that land is good. And there is bdellium and onyx stone. And the name of the second river is Gahan, the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia.

And the name of the third river is Hiddekel, that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria, and the fourth river is Euphrates. And so basically here it tells how God had, On the seventh day, he looked at his creation and he saw that it was good and he rested. And the Bible says he blessed and sanctified the seventh day.

Then it goes on to talk about God creating plants. It goes on to talk about God planting this garden and creating man. And folks, contrary to what liberal theologians and scholars will tell us, this is not a second creation account.

That somehow God got it wrong in the first place and then later on came and redid things. It’s not an account, as some will tell us too, that Adam had a first and second wife. What this is, is the very simple idea of God in chapter 1 giving us an overview of Him creating the universe in six days, and then creating rest on the seventh day.

God invented the nap. Thank you, somebody got that. God creating the universe in six days, and then going back and looking at a very specific part of it, and saying, we’re going to go back and take a closer look.

If I were to stand up here and preach to you an overview of the whole Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, and I know some Sundays it may feel like that’s what I’ve done, But if I were to preach to you a whole survey of the Bible in general, including the major highlights, and then go back and say we’re going to focus now on the life of Christ, you wouldn’t assume I’m telling you about two different Christs, one in the overview and one in the closer focus. That’s what he’s doing here. When this is written, he’s giving us an overview of the entire creation of the universe in chapter 1, and then says now we’re going to go back and refocus on the story where God has created man and put him in the garden, setting the stage for chapter 3 in the fall, which we discussed last week.

And he talks about planting the garden. And verse 15, And the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat of it.

For in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone, for I will make him and help meet for him. So God has not only retold how he’s created Adam, and it’s not a second story of him creating plants and animals, But after he’s already created those things, of him planting this specific garden and putting the man in and giving him the directions for what he’s not supposed to do, you can have this whole garden.

You can eat from any of it except for this one tree. Don’t eat from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil because in the day that you do, you’ll surely die, he says. And then he says it’s not good for the man to be alone, setting the stage for his creation of Eve.

And having been at things like camp, I can attest that this verse is very true because men without the influence of women often, well, it’s just not good. I will make him and help meet for him. And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every fowl of the air and brought them unto Adam.

Again, not saying he just now created them, but having created them, he brings them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. And Adam gave names to all cattle and to the fowl of the air and to every beast of the field.

But for Adam there was not found and helped meet for him. So God has already said, I’m going to create a helpmeet for Adam. And God brings in all of the animals for Adam to name and Adam to work with.

And that’s not that God intended that the animals would be his companions and then realized that wouldn’t work and God had to go to plan B. No, God just had not carried out the next step of his plan yet. And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept and took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh instead thereof.

And the rib which the Lord God hath taken from man, made he a woman and brought her unto the man. Now, people question that passage from time to time. Oh, the Bible can’t literally be true because how do you make somebody, how do you make another person out of a rib bone?

Well, folks, how do you make a person out of the dust of the ground? How do you make the matter in the universe? He’s God.

He can do it. If we can grow, oh, this was so disgusting years ago when I saw the pictures of it. If we can grow a human ear on the back of a mouse and not have any problem believing that we can do that, Why is it so hard to believe that God could create Eve out of a rib bone?

God didn’t even need the rib bone. But it says, And the rib which the Lord God had taken from man made he a woman and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.

She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife and they shall be one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

And they were not ashamed because they didn’t yet have the knowledge of good and evil that they would get in chapter 3. But what we see here is what God intended, what God’s best was for man. We see God’s best here revealed for Adam, this walk that he had in the garden.

As we go, if we went back to chapter 3, went on to chapter 3 like we did last week, we’d see that the Bible talks about the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. It was not something, I don’t imagine, something that was a one-time thing because God was so very, from what we see in the text, God was so very casual about it. There wasn’t a big announcement.

God’s just walking in the garden. Now, how that works when the Bible indicates that God the Father doesn’t have a body of flesh and bone, I don’t understand. But then again, He’s God.

He can do what He wants. If He wants to walk in the garden without a physical body, He can do it. We question far too much about what God can and can’t do.

So God walked in the garden this time, and I kind of assume from the text that it was a habit he had, that he spent time there with Adam and Eve. And we see this idea of Adam and Eve living in this earthly paradise and having fellowship with God, a close relationship with God. And folks, that was God’s perfect will for Adam.

That was God’s perfect will for Eve, that they would walk there together. But we can’t say that it was God’s sovereign will that he forced them to walk there and be good little children because that’s not what happened. That didn’t last very long at all.

Instead, because, as I said before, God created, because he desired to create, beings that could intelligently choose to love and serve him, there was also created the possibility of intelligent, and that word is up for debate, but intelligent beings who could choose to disobey and not to love him. But his perfect will here is revealed to Adam that it was to walk with God and have this fellowship with him in this earthly paradise. And as I said before, God’s perfect will, the first thing that we need to know about God’s perfect will this morning, is that God’s perfect will entails the things that should happen.

So much of God’s will expressed throughout the Bible is God’s perfect will. There are times when God says, I’m going to make this to happen, and it does. He tells the prophets, I’m going to destroy such and such city.

He tells the prophets, you’re going to win such and such battle. He tells the prophets, I’m going to restore Israel at such and such time. And in so many cases, he doesn’t give an or what.

He just says this is going to happen, and that’s God’s sovereign will. But most of what we see expressed in the Bible in the way of commands that the people should do something or else, it’s God’s perfect will. When God says, I want you to do this, and it’s not given as you are going to do this, you will do this, but he commands us instead not to be too much of an English geek or grammar geek, but it’s a difference between declarative statements and imperative.

Declaring, saying something is going to happen, often expresses God’s sovereign will in the Bible. Imperative, meaning you need to do this, it’s a command, often expresses God’s perfect will, what should happen. And God’s perfect will entails the things that should happen.

God created the world when he created it, he called it good. If you read back through chapter 1 when he’s creating things, at the end of these days he stops and says, and it was good. The Lord said, let there be light, and there was light.

And the Lord saw the light, and it was good. He created these things and they were good. And that creation culminated in the seventh day where he rested.

And the Bible says he actually blessed and sanctified that day. The very day he blessed and sanctified. In chapter 2, when it starts out, this creation where God walks with man in paradise and has a perfect relationship with them and a perfect fellowship with them was part of this creation that he made that was good.

And God’s instructions, if they had been followed, would have ensured that that goodness would have continued. Because God’s perfect will expresses God’s best for us. His glory and our ultimate good.

If they had followed His instructions, the perfect will that He expressed to them, the commands that He expressed to them, if they had followed these things, it would have ensured that creation would have remained perfect. That creation would have remained good as God had created it. But from our standpoint, God’s perfect will, by virtue of it being His perfect will and not His sovereign will, is not guaranteed to happen.

Now, I don’t mean by that that God is caught off guard by our actions. And yet another thing I don’t completely understand, God allows without causing some things to happen. Allows us the free choice and yet knows before all of it began what was going to happen.

Try to wrap your mind around that sometime, it’ll give you a headache. God’s given us the free will to choose, and from our standpoint, nothing as far as perfect or permissive will is set in stone, and yet God is not caught off guard by any of it. He knew before He created the first atom, not atom, but atom, how all of this was going to turn out.

But like His permissive will, it depended on a choice. See, there’s no choice with the sovereign will. He says it, and it’s done.

Permissive will or perfect will is a choice that God gives us. But there’s a difference between permissive and perfect will, because perfect will, God’s perfect will, expresses his best for us. Expresses his best for us.

It may not always seem at the time like this is the best thing for me. This is what I want to do. But as far as our ultimate good, God’s perfect will expresses his best for us.

If you remember from last week, chapter 3, Eve looked at the tree and saw that it was good for food and pleasant to the eyes and all these things. And I’m sure in that split second, in that moment, it did not seem like God’s perfect will was his best for her. Because we’re human beings and we know better.

And that tree, it’s so beautiful and looks so delicious. Surely God would want me to have that tree. And in that split second, it didn’t seem like God’s perfect will was for her to abstain from that fruit, but it was.

It was for her ultimate good. And God’s perfect will entails the things that should happen. They should have followed God’s will.

They should have freely submitted to God’s will and said, Yes, God, this is your best for us. And so we’re going to do it. And yet they didn’t.

And yet we don’t on a daily basis. The second thing this morning is that God’s perfect will, as I’ve already said, promotes God’s best for us. promotes God’s best for us.

Look at the three things. There may be more, but what I’ve seen in there, three things that God expressed as His perfect will for Adam and Eve. The first was that Adam was to abstain from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

We see that in verse 17 where he says, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it. Cursed is the ground for thy sake. In sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life.

I’m sorry, that’s chapter 3 I’m looking at. I thought that sounded off, but it still fits. Genesis chapter 2, verse 17 says, But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it.

For in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die. It’s okay that I quoted the wrong verse because they tie in together. They both talk about God saying, do not eat the fruit of this tree.

Not because God is a killjoy, but because of the consequence that came as a natural result of eating that fruit. That they would die. And that day they died spiritually, and that day they began to die physically.

And as a result, every member of the human race is in a sense spiritually stillborn and physically dying from the moment we’re born. He said they would die. He told them, my best, my perfect will is for you to abstain from the fruit of this tree.

And it was God’s best. Because if they had abstained from the fruit, they would have continued on in that earthly paradise. And yet they didn’t. But God’s will was for them to abstain from that fruit.

And that was God’s best for them. That was what was going to benefit them the most. That was what was going to bring God glory and bring them the most good. The second thing was that Adam was to possess and care for the garden.

We see this in verses 15, starting in verse 15. And the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And then verses 19 and 20.

And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every fowl of the air and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them. And whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof. And Adam gave names to all cattle and to all the fowl of the air and to every beast of the field.

But for Adam there was not found and helped meat for him. God gave him the job, not of just sitting around the garden. I don’t care how wonderful paradise was.

That would get boring after a while, just sitting around the garden doing nothing. We all think we might enjoy a vacation where we sit around a tropical beach and just sun ourselves. You know, you see people with the fruity drinks, of course, non-alcoholic drinks.

But we just enjoy sitting out on the beach and just doing nothing. But I’m here to tell you that would get boring after a while. That would get tedious after a while just sitting there.

God’s best for him was not for him to just sit there, but it was for him to care for and have the garden. That was God’s best for him. Because not only then did he reap the benefits of the garden, but he had something to do with his time, something to accomplish, something to work toward.

And God wired us that way. God wired some of us that way more than others. The need, the drive to do things and to accomplish things, or at least have our mind occupied.

And Adam was to serve the Lord together with Eve. We see that in verse 18 in the final verses of the chapter. And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone.

I will make him and help meet for him. And then verses 22 and 23, He takes the rib and creates Eve. And in verse 24, Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall be one flesh.

So God, in this chapter, at least from what I see, expressed three things that were His perfect will for Adam, that he would abstain from the fruit of the tree, that one tree, that he would possess and care for the garden, and that he would serve the Lord together with his wife. That sounds like a pretty good deal. I mean, imagine a world where all you had to do each day was avoid one temptation, one physical temptation where you actually had to physically reach out and do something. You just had to avoid that one thing.

You were to work to accomplish something that you cared about deeply, serve the Lord together with your wife or your husband as it may be, having perfect fellowship together and perfect fellowship with the Lord. Folks, that sounds like a pretty good deal. That was God’s perfect will for Adam. That was what God wanted for Adam.

That was God’s best for Adam and for Eve. It was God’s perfect will. But always with the perfect will, there’s the chance to disobey.

And there’s the permissive will that we talked about last week. And we know what Adam chose to do. He chose to throw aside this best. Folks, when God gives us instructions, when God gives us commands in the Bible and says, this is my perfect will for you, Folks, it’s always God’s best for us that we obey that.

As I said before, it may not seem that way, and we’re going to talk about some of the things that the Bible says is the will of God, God’s perfect will for us, that may not seem in the short term to be such a good thing. It may seem to be pretty bad for us. But folks, when we follow God’s will, when we obey Him, it always, hear me on this, it always leads to reward.

Maybe not here on this earth, but there’s always a reward in faithfulness and obedience. We may have to go through some other stuff too, but it’s always God’s best for us. The trials, we talked about this some in Sunday school this morning.

The trials sometimes cause us to grow. Sometimes cause us to grow closer to the Lord. Folks, we don’t know because we can’t see from God’s standpoint, but we can rest assured that when God reveals His perfect will to us, that it’s His best for us and we’d be better off to follow it.

Because from His perspective, it’s always best for u