Discovering God’s Perfect Will

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We’re going to be in Genesis chapter 2 this morning. Genesis chapter 2. It has been a major theme in my preaching in the last few years.

The idea that my knowledge and understanding of God, while it’s still very much incomplete, has grown by leaps and bounds since I had children, because God describes himself so many times in scripture as a father, And so when I, as a father, realize, oh, this is why we do this, this is how I react to my children, it gives me a little bit better, and I say a little bit better because I’m still human, I don’t completely understand the mind of God, but it gives me a little better understanding of why God interacts with us the way he does. And I say this, excuse me, I say this this morning coming to the concept of God’s perfect will for our lives. God has a will that is what he intends for us to do, what is ideal for us, what’s best for us, and it’s what he tells us that we need to do.

I mentioned earlier, and some of you heard, that I had the honor of officiating my sister’s wedding yesterday. And I think most of you know, but it’s June Beeson’s grandson, who she married. I had the honor of officiating their wedding yesterday, And Madeline was the little flower girl, and Benjamin was the ring bearer.

They very wisely, the piece of wood that he carried in, they very wisely tied two fake rings to it, and it was more of a symbolic thing, rather than let him keep up with the rings. I thought that was a good call on their part. But they were up on stage, and I had to make it very clear to them during the rehearsal and during the wedding what was expected of them.

Now, Madeline, y’all have met them. I love my kids. They’re both wonderful.

She’s a little more compliant than he is. She’s also a little more likely to just completely have a meltdown when you get on to her, or she even thinks she’s being gotten on to. Benjamin, on the other hand, is what we like to call a live wire.

And he just, there’s a wrought iron bench on the stage. Just really needed them to sit there. That’s all they had to do.

and had to make it very clear to him. I need you to cooperate. I need you to walk calmly down the aisle with your sister.

You do not grab the bucket of the flower petals and bang her in the head with it. You do not knock the bench over. You do not hit her or pinch her while you’re up there.

You do not get up and run around the stage. When we’re not on stage, you don’t run around the church. I tell them, do not run.

As a matter of fact, don’t run indoors, period, unless we’re in the gym. Although that’s a bad thing to say when the gym is set up for wedding reception. But in general, they know they’re not to run around indoors unless we’re in a gym or someplace like that.

Don’t run around. Don’t be crazy. Don’t scream.

And I and several other adults in the family made it very clear to them, and him in particular, what the expectations were, what we needed. In short, what my will was for his behavior. See where I’m going with this?

What my will was for his behavior during the wedding. And I had to threaten him. I had to threaten him.

He and my sister are very close, always have been. And I had to tell him, if you don’t behave, you don’t get to be in Chi Chi’s wedding. That’s what he calls her, by the way.

She’ll be mad, but she’s not going to be mad at me. And that upset him. Laid out the consequences.

Here’s what’s going to happen. If you’re going to run around and be crazy, I mean, with a child, you can discipline them. You can tell them this is what you’re going to do.

At a certain point, if they just decide they’re not going to do it, sometimes they just are not going to do it. Okay, but here’s the consequence. On the other hand, you do what you’re supposed to do.

At the rehearsal dinner, there’s cake. He loves cake. At the reception, they didn’t have cake.

They had cookies because my sister loves cookies. There’s all these wonderful things that are going to happen. If you’ll just cooperate and we get through this and we have a nice wedding, there’s this wonderful reward on the other side.

That was the ideal circumstance. And you know what? For once in my life, it actually worked.

I was like, who is this child? There were other kids in the wedding party who were running around and doing things. And my kids did not behave perfectly, but they were manageable.

There were other kids in the wedding party running around, and I’d get on to Benjamin for doing stuff with them, and then I’d watch, and there were a couple times where somebody’s trying to get him to do something that he knew he was not supposed to do, and he would say, I can’t do that. My daddy doesn’t want me to do that. Yes.

Yes, it’s sticking a little bit. And after calling him over there so many times saying, I’m going to whoop you, or this is your last chance, I called him over there, and he’s like, no. No, it’s okay. Come here this time.

And I told him, I said, I’m proud of you. I saw what you just did. And I’m proud of you.

And you’re learning. And I know that you’re a good boy. I know you’re capable of doing this.

This is all daddy wants. Not perfection, but just do the things you know you’re supposed to do. And you know what?

They were good. And we had a nice time and a nice wedding. And they got, you know what?

I let them have more cookies than I would normally let them have in a month. They had a great time because they went along with what, I’m imperfect, I’m a fallen person, but I’m still their daddy. And they went along with what my will was, not just because that’s what I wanted, but because I knew that’s what was best and that’s what was best for them.

And they went along with that and they did that and the results were good for them. It was the ideal. What we’re going to talk about today as far as God’s will is God’s perfect will for our lives. God has a will where he says, this is what I want you to do.

And it’s going to be what’s best for you. Now I want to give you the little caution up front. God’s perfect will is not always going to be the most fun option that we can pursue.

We know that. Doing things God’s way is not always the most fun. It’s not always the most enjoyable.

It’s not always the most painless route that we can take. But it is the ideal route given to us by a God who sees all of human history and sees all of the future the way we see this snapshot in time where we are. And he knows how everything is going to turn out.

I believe he knows how everything could turn out. And God has said this is the best option for you spiritually. This is the best option for you in general is to obey me and to do my will as I’ve revealed it to you.

Now, I talked last Sunday with you about two other aspects of God’s will. One being we looked at Genesis chapter 1 and talked about God’s sovereign will. God is sovereign all the time.

And sometimes in his sovereignty, he says, this is just the way it is and the way it’s going to be, whether you get on board or not. He didn’t ask for our vote. And he says, this is my will.

This is the way it’s going to be because I said so. And there really is no choice. There’s really nothing for us to do but say, yes, Lord, and get out of the way.

He’s going to do what he’s going to do. Then last Sunday night, we looked at Genesis chapter 3, and I talked to you about God’s permissive will. remember where they ate the fruit in the garden and began to blame each other and God allows us sometimes when God says I want you to do this he reveals his perfect will like we’re going to talk about this morning and says this is what I want you to do there’s a choice to be made there whether we’re going to obey or not God has endowed us with free will and as I told you last week God is so sovereign that he can endow his creatures with free will and his sovereignty not be threatened to bit by that because ultimately he’s still going to have his way.

But he allows us sometimes the freedom to choose whether to obey or whether to disobey. But even when we disobey, God says, I’m only going to let you go this far. And I gave you the example of the book of Job, where Satan had to come and ask God’s permission before he could even touch Job.

We see the example that we looked at last Sunday night in Genesis chapter 3, where God says, okay, I’m going to allow you the freedom to disobey here if that’s what you’re so inclined to do. But he didn’t just let them disobey as much as they possibly could. No, there were limits.

At some point, God stepped in and said, okay, now you need to start answering. Now the party’s over. Now you need to explain yourself.

Now, you know what? You’re out of the garden. You’re out of this paradise I’ve created.

You don’t get to just continue to eat from that tree and eat from the tree of life. You don’t get to continue to disobey. God sets up boundaries.

That’s his permissive will. Now, I saved God’s perfect will for the third installment of this series because we’re not really, when we talk about, I want to know God’s will for my life, we’re not really looking for his sovereign will. That’s going to happen whether we look for it or not.

That’s not a bad thing to understand, but that’s not what we’re really looking for when we say, what’s God’s will for my life? We’re also not looking for God’s permissive will. Our goal should never be to see how close we can get to the cliff before God reigns us in.

or before gravity corrects the situation. Gave you the example of going down the side of the gorge last Sunday night. Gave you the example last Sunday night of going down the side of the gorge, not that the gorge happened last Sunday night.

You want to stay on the uphill side of the road as you’re driving down. You don’t want to get as close as you can get to the downhill side of the road. Folks, we don’t want to see where God’s limits, where God’s boundaries are.

We don’t want to see, well, how disobedient will God allow me to be? When we talk about God’s will for our lives, it’s important to understand what the sovereign will is, what the permissive will is. But when we talk about what is God’s will for my life, what is God’s will for me in this moment, what does God want from me, what we’re looking for is God’s perfect will.

Now we’re going to look today in Genesis chapter 2 this morning and see what God’s perfect will is and how it operates. And then tonight, tonight and then the next two Sundays, we’re going to look at five different areas that I see in Scripture that will help us to discern God’s will. So if you ever find yourself in the situation where you say, what is God’s will?

What does God want me to do? Okay, we’ve looked at these different aspects of God’s will, and we’re zeroing in that it’s God’s perfect will that we’re actually asking about. And then we’re going to talk about how the Scriptures say we can find it.

It is out there to be found. It is not, as I said last Sunday, it’s not some kind of voodoo thing that we just have to discern through science. I remember about three years ago, I was supposed to go somewhere.

And I’d been on the fence whether I was supposed to go do this or not. I don’t even remember what it was. But should I go to this meeting or whatever it was, or should I not?

And that afternoon, our washing machine exploded. And I was on the phone to my mother as well. I lived in Arkansas.

I was on the phone to my mother, griping and complaining. Pastors are not too spiritual to gripe and complain. I raise it to an art form sometimes.

I was griping and complaining on the phone, and my mother said, well, maybe it’s a sign you’re not supposed to go to that meeting, that it’s not God’s will for you to go to that meeting. And I said, or it could be a sign that it’s not God’s will to put a stuffed giraffe the size of a child in the washing machine. My mother has a lot of wisdom about these things, but I’ll also say I don’t think we should have to run around looking at every little thing as a sign.

Oh, the light turned red. It’s a sign that God wants me to stop what I’m doing as far as teaching Sunday school. No, sometimes it’s a sign that God’s will is for you to stop there before oncoming traffic comes.

What I’m telling you is we don’t need to get so wrapped up in trying to interpret every little thing. Well, is this a sign from God? Is it God’s will for me to do this?

Maybe I should see what the setting is on the coffee maker this morning, and that’ll tell me what God’s will was. Oh, I heard somebody say the word Zimbabwe on the news. Maybe it’s a sign that it’s God’s will for me to go as a missionary to Zimbabwe.

You know what? God’s will, I don’t believe, is meant for it. I don’t believe God means His will to be so tricky for us to figure out.

If it’s His will, He wants us to do it. And if He wants us to do it, He’s going to make known to us what He wants us to do. That’s not to say that he can’t speak through circumstances, but as we’re going to see tonight and the next few weeks, there are some ways that he’s already spelled out.

Here’s how, here are some ways that you can know. But this morning we’re going to look at Genesis chapter 2 and see what his perfect will even is. It says first of all in verse 1, Thus the heavens and the earth were finished and all the host of them.

And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made and rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it because in that he had rested, because that in it he had rested from all his work, which God created and made. And just as a little aside, I was working with Benjamin on Awana’s last week on this idea of God resting on the seventh day.

And it finally occurred to me, I’ve always wondered why God rested. He’s God. I can’t imagine he gets tired.

And it finally occurred to me that, I mean, aside from the reason I’ve always taught, he was setting the pattern and setting aside a day of rest and a day of worship and these things for us. God saw all these things were good, and I have to imagine he took a day to just sit back and admire his own handiwork. And so the seventh day he rested.

It says in verse 4, These are the generations of the heavens and 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, and the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to until the ground. So right now we’re looking at sort of partway through the sixth day.

It’s a recap of what was told in Genesis chapter 1. But it stops there midway through the sixth day and gives us a little more detail. God’s created all this stuff on the earth.

He hasn’t caused it to rain yet, but there’s nobody there yet to until the ground. There’s nobody to take care of it. And verse 6 says, But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.

And the Lord God formed the man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. So we see what he did here at the end of creation, the end of the sixth day, he created somebody in his own image, created God. And the Lord 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, excuse me, pleasant to the side 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 Havala, where there is gold.

And the gold of that land is good. There is bedelium and onyx stone. And the name of the second river is Gihon.

the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia. And the name of the third river is Hittikel. That is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria.

And the fourth river is Euphrates. As we look at this, the geography doesn’t quite make sense to me. That all these rivers.

. . But folks, I don’t question the biblical account.

What I realize is the flood in Noah’s day changed where everything is. and I don’t completely understand how all that works but I don’t see why if somebody was making up the Bible why they would make up those details. The details are where you get caught in a lie.

My only explanation for this is God revealed this is how things were set up in the beginning. This really is where he put the Garden of Eden and then stuff got moved around with Noah’s flood with that worldwide cataclysm. And the Lord God took the man and put him in 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. Okay, so God has begun to reveal his perfect will to Adam.

He says, I’ve given you this wonderful garden. I want you to live here. I want you to take care of it.

I want you to stay away from this one tree. These are all things that I want you to choose to do. Inherent in this also is that God is going to have a relationship with Adam.

We even see this later on in chapter 3 where we looked at last week. I realize we’ve gone backwards here. That was on purpose.

But God was in the habit of walking through the garden with Adam and Eve. Again, something else I don’t understand because God the Father is not typically presented as having a body of flesh and bone. But somehow, somehow God walked in the garden with Adam and Eve.

He had this relationship. He had this fellowship with them. and so he put him here he said you’re gonna you’re gonna you’re gonna worship me you’re gonna work in this garden you’re gonna take care of it you’re gonna live off of it you’re gonna enjoy it you’re gonna stay away from this one tree and the Lord said it is not good that man should be alone I will make and help me 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 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 every beast of the field. But for Adam, there was not found a help meat for him. And the Lord caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam.

And he slept and he took one of the ribs, one of his ribs and closed up the flesh instead thereof. And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, he made 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 so we see here God’s perfect will for Adam and Eve.

We see what God intended and to an extent what God intended for the human race, even though he knew that we would choose to disobey. God says here, my perfect will is for you to live in this paradise, to take care of it, the plants, the animals, to take care of all of it, to enjoy it, to live from its bounty, to worship me, and to help and love each other. I don’t know about you, but that sounds like a pretty good deal. But he said also, here’s one other thing.

I want you to stay away from the fruit of this one particular tree. And you know what? I don’t want to be too hard on Adam because I might have been a little tempted myself.

Oh, there’s one thing I can’t have. It must be really good. But at the same time, I would think, God has only given you everything.

Isn’t that enough? I mean, God’s perfect will for Adam and Eve really was perfect. How many people dream of living in a tropical paradise?

I mean, not me exactly. I don’t like the heat. But I’m sure it being a perfect paradise, it probably didn’t feel that hot either.

They’ve been given this beautiful garden. I mean, I’ve seen some nice gardens that people have planted. I can’t imagine what a garden would look like that was planted by the hand of God.

I’ve been given this beautiful garden. All these foods to eat and enjoy. All these animals around that I believe before the fall weren’t ferocious.

And a wife that God created specifically for him. And their job was just to take care of it and enjoy it and to serve God. God says, that’s my perfect will for you.

You know what? That really was ideal. That’s what we were created for. that’s what God created us for and God says this is this is the best that you could possibly have do this my way yes it may not be fun that you can’t have that one tree that you want but this really is the best you could possibly have and that that relationship is so that that fellowship with God that all of this centers around is so ingrained into who we are it’s so wired into our DNA that I think all of the other pursuits of mankind that lead man away from God are an attempt to fill what this relationship was intended to be.

They’re attempts to fill the void when this relationship is ignored. I try to reconcile the idea that God created us to long for him, created us to love him and worship him, with God also saying that there’s none who seek after him. And the way I reconcile that is to say that we are created with human beings, we are created as human beings with something lacking, a longing that only God can fill, and we’re searching after something that can satisfy that longing, and yet man is so depraved that we’ll try to fill it with everything but God.

And so we don’t seek God to fill that. People look for solace in relationships. They look for solace in money, in things, in alcohol, in drugs, in all sorts of things, anything that they can try to fill that emptiness.

And God says, this is what I’ve given you. This is my best for you. This is the best way to do it.

And honestly, what he gave them sounds like a pretty good deal. They should have stuck with it. They should have obeyed him. You know, I can turn that back on myself every day and say in any given situation where I have not obeyed him, you know what, I should have obeyed him.

So I’m admitting that about myself. I hope it’s not hypocritical to look at Adam and even say they should have obeyed him. That was his perfect will for them.

And God’s perfect will, ladies and gentlemen, entails the things that should happen. He created the world. He called it good.

He blessed it. He sanctified it. And then he gave them these instructions.

Live here, take care of it, enjoy it, and serve me. And if they had done that, they would have gone on forever in a perfect paradise. We would live, I believe, in the garden.

If somebody else hadn’t come along and messed it up by now, we’d be living in this perfect paradise as well, I believe. But you know, even though God said this is what should happen, this is what should happen, this is what I want for you, this is what I’ve created you for, and this is what I desire for you, what makes this different from God’s sovereign will is he didn’t say, and this is what I’m going to make you do. At this point, God allowed us the freedom to choose.

He allowed us the freedom to choose. And they could have chosen his perfect will. They could have chosen to obey.

When there’s a command, there really is a choice to obey and reap the reward or to disobey and suffer the consequence. And God said, here’s your command. Here’s what you’re being told to do.

And what should have happened was obedience. What should have happened was them continuing on doing the things that God had revealed to them. And when we find God’s perfect will, when we pray and we study and we seek God and we say, what is your will for me?

And God shows it to us. God says, this is my will for you. He’s telling you what should happen.

He’s telling you what his best is for you. And sometimes when we pray about something and say, God, is this your will for me. And we think, oh, that sounds so wonderful.

That’s exactly what I want. God, is this your will for me? And he says, no, we feel so disappointed when what we’ve got to realize is as good as that was, if God says no, folks, imagine he’s got something even better over here prepared.

Again, in the short term, it may not sound like the fun option. It may not sound like the most painless option. It might not sound like what we want to do, but God sees things differently from the way we see them.

And so when he tells us what his perfect will is, he’s saying this is what should happen. This is what I want you to do. But still, he gives us the freedom to choose.

So my first point this morning is God’s perfect will entails the things that should happen. Not things that he makes to happen, not things that he allows to happen necessarily, but things that God says, this really is what you should do. You have a choice here, and this is the one you should take.

You should choose obedience. Second of all, God’s perfect will promotes God’s best for us. Promotes God’s best for us.

God will take care of his children. God will take care of his children. God is not necessarily all that concerned with our happiness as his first priority.

I get tired of hearing when somebody wants to justify doing something wrong. God just wants us to be happy. I don’t remember reading that in the Bible.

I’m sure God does care a little about our happiness, but God is way more concerned with our holiness than with our happiness. And God’s best for us is not always what makes us happy in the short term, but he will take care of us. He will do things that bring him glory and bring us the best that he has to offer.

Just a few ways that this perfect will of his promoted God’s best for them, for Adam and Eve. He wanted Adam to abstain from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and live. Because he told him, he warned him, you know, if you eat from that tree, you’ll die.

You’ll die. now there was physical death but there was also the immediate spiritual death that began to happen they would die spiritually they’d be separated from god by their sin and we could look at that and say well god you don’t want me to have any fun you don’t want me to do this this or this over here that I that I just know is is what would make me happy and god says you don’t see what’s behind door number three you don’t see what’s on the other side of that choice you’re wanting to make And so by telling him, don’t do this thing that was going to hurt him. I mean, make no mistake.

God hates sin. God hates sin because it’s against his nature. But a part of the reason why God hates sin, ladies and gentlemen, is because it hurts his creation.

It hurts us. Sin will destroy us. And so by telling Adam, stay away from that.

Don’t do this. It’s going to hurt you. God was trying to protect Adam.

God was trying to protect Eve. God was saying you don’t want to taste the spiritual death that you’ll find if you taste from that tree. Also, he told Adam to possess and care for the garden.

We see this in verses 15, 19, and 20 where it talks about him dressing the garden. It talks about him taking care of the animals, name the animals, care for them, that sort of thing. God said, here, I’m giving you something to do.

I don’t know if you’ve ever had one of those times where you think, I just really need a vacation. I’m tired of everything I have to do. I’m tired of it.

I just want to take a vacation and do nothing. And then you get on that vacation and you think, I can’t stand this. I need to be doing something.

You know what? God created us to be productive. And it drives me crazy if I don’t accomplish something every day or don’t feel like I’ve accomplished something every day.

God gave Adam a purpose. I mean, it would be nice to lay around in a hammock in his tropical paradise all day, but God gave Adam a purpose. He could enjoy garden and still have a reason to get up in the morning.

And so God said, I want you to take care of this garden. I want you to take responsibility for it. That was God’s best for him.

Adam was to serve the Lord together with Eve. We know this is going to be good for him. Again, God created us to have this close walk, this close fellowship with him.

And God said, I want you to do this. I want you to have this fellowship with me, and I want you to do it together. Yesterday at the wedding, I had written out everything word for word that I was going to say, and I never do that.

And the little joke I told them was when I get up to speak, I like to be as surprised as everybody else what I’m going to say. Some preachers write out every word they’re going to say, and I would just feel like I was up here reading to you and how engaging is that. You should see my notes.

Usually it’s about three sentences and Bible verses underneath it. Anyway, I told them I wrote out everything I was going to say, and then it was completely inadequate. I didn’t use it at all.

And instead the verse, instead Hebrews 12, 1 and 2 kept coming to mind. And I talked to them about that passage. Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin which doth so also, excuse me, I didn’t jumble it yesterday.

And the sin which doth so easily beset us and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. And the challenge I gave them right before the vows was to tell them, because I talked about this passage really talks about the Christian life as a whole, but a Christian marriage is a big part of that Christian life and building your family on the foundation of the gospel. And I said part of the Christian life and part of a Christian marriage is pursuing Jesus.

And so I left them with the challenge and told them that if they remembered no other advice I gave them, And this is what they needed to hear, that if they would both run full throttle toward Jesus, just run as hard and as fast as you can toward Jesus, that you won’t grow apart. As you grow closer to Christ, you’ll grow closer together. And in serving Him together, you’ll find joy.

And

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