Discovering God’s Will from His Word

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Transcript:

We’re going to be in Psalm chapter 119 tonight. Psalm chapter 119. And Benjamin has already asked me, well, first of all, he asked me if I wanted to color with him.

And I said I would love to color with him, but I was fixing to go up and preach. And then he asked me why I have to preach so long. And that’s before I’d even started.

So I’ll try to take that into consideration. Psalm chapter 119. We’ve been talking about how to find God’s will.

And I won’t review it tonight because everybody here tonight was here this morning, so you’ve gotten the whole thing. But we spent the first three lessons talking about the different aspects of God’s will, and then we began looking at how do we find God’s perfect will, because we know it’s God’s perfect will that we want to find for our lives. It’s what’s God’s best for us, it’s what’s going to bring Him the most glory, and what’s going to be for our good in the long term.

And so far, having talked about obedience last Sunday night and surrender this morning, we really have talked about attitudes that we carry with us as we go into the search for God’s will. An attitude that says, I’m going to go back and see anywhere where I’ve neglected God’s will, and I’m going to do what I know. You know what?

Before I search for God to give me something new, I’m going to go back and see if there’s anything old I’ve neglected to do. I’m going to do what God’s already revealed to me. And then this morning talking about coming into the search with an attitude of saying, I don’t know, God, what your will is for me, but even before you tell me what it is, I’m going to just commit to you ahead of time.

I’m going to do whatever you tell me to do. Tonight we switch gears a little bit and say we get away from the attitude, not that we neglect the attitude, not that we get away from an attitude of submission and obedience, But we turn a little bit from talking about the attitude to the actual how do we find God’s will. And it would be a mistake, I believe, to start anywhere but with God’s word.

A lot of people look for God’s will in a sign, look for God’s will in how they feel, look for God’s will in a multitude of counselors. And folks, none of those things are wrong in and of themselves. I believe that sometimes God can speak to us through our circumstances.

I believe sometimes God can speak to us through godly counsel and people around us. I believe sometimes God can even speak to us through, you know, we don’t want to base our whole understanding and relationship with God on feelings. But sometimes God can just give you a feeling down in your spirit that, you know, we don’t like to call it feelings.

So a lot of times we’ll say an unction. They’re not all that dissimilar. God can sometimes just give you a feeling down in your spirit where you know this is right and this is wrong.

But folks, it would be a mistake to base our search for God’s will or our understanding of God’s will on any of those things or anything else really, apart from starting, beginning and ending our search for God’s will in his word. His word is his primary vehicle, for lack of a better word, that he uses to reveal his will for us. Now, as I said, God can speak through circumstances.

God can speak through promptings of the Holy Spirit. God can speak through feelings. All of those things are fine as far as they go.

But God will never reveal something to you. God will never reveal something to you that contradicts what he’s already revealed to us in his word. So there’s times when somebody says, well, I just feel like it’s okay for me to do this.

I felt like it was, I heard this in college, I feel like it’s okay for me to go out drinking with these people because I’m trying to win them to the Lord. What does God’s word say about drunkenness? Now we can debate, we can debate and people do debate, you know, what the word says about going and having a drink, but yeah, I saw you, you were getting drunk with these people.

God’s word is very clear on drunkenness. What does God’s word say about abstaining from all appearance of evil. God will never reveal to you that it’s okay for you to do something that he said in his word no to in talking with somebody who was having an affair, an adulterous affair.

I feel like it’s okay because, you know, God just wants everybody to be happy. God showed me he just wants everybody to be happy. Okay, I don’t know what God you’re praying to who showed you that, but the God of the Bible will not take such an uncompromising and, you know what I’m going to say, an intolerant stance against the sin of adultery and then tell everybody, well, it’s okay for you because I just want you to be happy.

And we could go down the list of all sorts of sins. I’m not just here to pick on drunkenness and adultery. We could go down any number of it.

You know what? Thanksgiving is coming up this week. We don’t ever talk about gluttony in a Baptist church, do we?

I don’t know if all or any of you know the comedian Mark Lowry, who travels with the Gaithers, but I saw a video of him this week talking about the size of all the Baptist preachers he grew up hearing, and how gluttony was never preached on. He said, these preachers, he said, they would eat so much, it was like they were trying to give God a challenge at the rapture. I thought, that’s true.

You know, it’s the sins that we don’t, It’s the sins that don’t take place in our fellowship that we tend to harp on. But I’ll say, you know, sometimes I just want a fifth slice of pumpkin pie. I don’t need that.

And I think that’s probably gluttony. You know what? Is it okay just because I feel like, well, it’s one time a year.

God wants me to be happy. You know what? Eating 7,000 calories in one day is probably a sin.

whether I feel like God’s revealed it to me that it’s okay or not. So, you know what, I’m telling you that, not to pick on you, enjoy Thanksgiving, enjoy the bounty that God has blessed us with, enjoy it in moderation. I’m just telling you that because it’s easy to write that off and say, well, we’re just picking on the sins we don’t like.

You know, it can be a sin that I like too, like eating a lot. But God’s not going to say it’s a sin to us and then reveal to me separately. No, no, it’s okay for you.

God will never, ladies and gentlemen, if you take nothing else from tonight, begin and end your search for God’s will at God’s word because he will never reveal something to you that’s in contradiction to what he’s already revealed in his word. Okay, so we’re going to look at a little bit about what God’s word says about itself, what King David, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, had to say about the word of God, and what we can learn from it today in our search for God’s will. Because God’s word will reveal his will to us.

It will confirm his will to us. It will keep us on the straight and narrow when what we think is God’s will is really not. God’s, I wish I’d brought this with me today.

I didn’t think about it until just now. I preached a message, not this one, but I preached a message a few years ago in Arkansas on the need for an objective standard. And I believe God’s word is that objective standard.

And I had some of the deacons come forward that Sunday morning and I handed them spools of thread or twine, whatever I had available, and scissors. They didn’t know what they were going to be doing up front. But I said, I need each of you to cut out a yard of string.

I think it was a yard. I said, I need you each to cut out a yard. How do we measure?

Just know whatever you think a yard is going to be. And just let them, based on what they thought a yard was, we’ll cut that off. And I may have even given them two or three tries to do it.

And so we had a few people up there, each with a few cuts of thread. You know, not one of them was a yard. Not one of them was exactly a yard.

We had some that were a foot and a half. We had some that were six feet long. Seems like nobody knew exactly what a yard was, just on their own.

And they could have stood there amongst themselves and debated and argued, what’s a yard? Which one of these really is three feet? Which of these is 36 inches?

Which one really is a yard? But it wasn’t going to be cleared up until we brought out an objective standard, which was the yardstick. And said, okay, which one of these measures up?

And none of them exactly did. Some of them got close, but none of them exactly measured up. So we don’t know what a yard is just from our own opinion without that objective standard.

God’s word, ladies and gentlemen, is that objective standard. So when the world says what’s right, what’s wrong, who’s to say? I got so sick of hearing that question in philosophy classes at OU.

Who’s to say? Well, you know, it doesn’t matter what I say or what my opinion is. It doesn’t matter what you say or what your opinion is.

There is an objective standard. And so when the world looks at us and says, well, who’s to say that’s wrong? God?

Yeah. It’s not because I said it. is not even because the church said it or because Christianity with its collective voice says it.

It’s because God’s word says right and wrong. And that’s the objective standard that we adhere to. So he says in Psalm chapter 119, starting in verse 97.

So you could be at the beginning of chapter 119 and still need to turn a couple pages. Longest chapter in the Bible. Starting in verse 97, it says, Oh, how I love thy law.

It is my meditation all the day. He loves God’s law. He is excited about God’s law.

Folks, I don’t know that any of us get that excited about God’s law. I don’t know that any of us get that excited about the word of God. I hear stories of believers in China and other closed countries where just to get a page out of the Bible is cause for weeping and celebration and they can’t wait to get their hands on it and read it and copy it down.

And sometimes this book can sit on our shelves gathering dust for the whole weekend between church services. But he says how I love thy law. It is my meditation all the day.

This is not Eastern meditation where they say empty your mind. I know I talked about this a few months ago. Eastern meditation says empty your mind and become nothingness and become one with the universe.

Meditation, according to the Bible, is to fill your mind with God’s word. Is to fill your mind with something, to think on it constantly. You know those times when you worry and fret about a potential problem, maybe even a problem that hadn’t even happened and probably won’t happen, but you just get consumed with a problem or a question, and you just mull it over in your brain, and you think about every possible scenario, and you become consumed with it?

I think that’s the closest we get to what the Bible describes as meditation, because we run something through our minds so much that it just consumes us. That’s what we need to be doing with the word of God. He said, this is my meditation all the day.

Thou through thy commandments has made me wiser than mine enemies. Just by giving King David commands through his word about what to do and what not to do, he says, you’ve made me wiser than my enemies for they are ever with me. I have more understanding than all my teachers.

That’s a pretty tall statement. I have more understanding than all my teachers. and what that tells me is there are a lot of people who talk about God’s word and I hope I’m not one of these and if I’m not I hope I never become one of these but there are a lot of theologians and a lot of scholars and a lot of teachers who talk about God’s word but they never really ingest they never really internalize God’s word it’s always a thing out here to be studied and thought about, but never one to be taken to heart.

And there are a lot of people with wisdom about the Bible, but they don’t really have God’s word in their hearts. And David, I’m sure, had some of the finest teachers of the law that there were to be found. He was the king of the country.

I’m sure he had some of the finest teachers, some of the most educated, eloquent men teaching him God’s word, but somebody alone with God’s word can study it and have more of God’s word in their hearts than all the scholars around them if they have not taken time to put it to heart. I get confused sometimes whether it was John Wycliffe or William Tyndale. Both of them were involved in the translation of the Bible into English.

And both of them suffered immensely for it. And one of those two men, I believe it was Tyndale, but don’t throw stones at me if I’m wrong, said that his intention was to get the word of God into the hands of the common man in England instead of them having to go by what the experts told them to be able to read and study God’s word for themselves, to understand it for themselves. And his goal was for a common plowman, he said.

Just a farmer out there pushing his plow in his fields to know more about the word of God than the leaders of the church or the state. Folks, you can have a lot of knowledge about the Bible and lofty titles and still not really have a heart knowledge of God’s word. And so he had more understanding even than his teachers because he had taken hold of God’s word and taken it to heart and made it part of him.

I understand more than the ancients because I keep thy precepts. Here again, he says something similar. The ancients, the wise men of old, they knew a lot about scripture, but David said, I have learned these things and I’ve taken them to heart and I’ve lived by them.

And I’ll take somebody who lives according to what little he knows over somebody who knows a lot and doesn’t live it any day. I have refrained my feet from every evil way that I might keep thy word. He said, because of all this that he’s learned and understood about God’s word, he has kept his feet away from going down evil paths.

He has avoided sin and temptation as much as possible. So that I might keep thy word. Because he loved God’s word, loved God’s law, and said, I want to keep that.

I don’t want to disappoint God. I have not departed from thy judgments. We’re in verse 102.

For thou hast taught me how sweet are thy words unto my taste. Ye sweeter than honey to my mouth. Think about the thing that you just love to eat.

The thing that just tastes better than anything in the world. When we were in New Mexico several weeks ago, Charla and I kept eating at a place called Blake’s Lauderburger that I had eaten at several years before. Those poor people don’t have Whataburger over there.

And so they have this, which is about as good. I don’t know that I could pick between the two. And I still wake up craving it.

We ate there so many times during our trip there that I said we might as well be sponsored by them. But we saw a sign one day, guys, that they were selling something called a pumpkin pie shake. And I am not a big shake person, but I am very much.

That was my example earlier, five pieces of pumpkin pie. I’m very much in favor of pumpkin pie. And we were eating there one night, and not only did they have the sign that they were selling those, But they had a video behind the counter, like a scrolling commercial of how they made these.

They put a big slice of pumpkin pie in every shake. And so we’ve got to get one of those. And oh my goodness, that might be the best thing that I have ever tasted.

And I thought I would give them, I would pay a lot more money than I did for that pumpkin pie shake. And I still wake up craving in the morning those pumpkin pie shakes. That is, as I said, quite possibly the best, at least dessert, that I’ve ever had.

I loved it, and I crave it, and I want another one. And I’ve already checked online, and the nearest Lauderberger is 352 miles away, sadly. From my door to theirs, 352 miles.

I have a craving for that. That’s the way he felt about God’s word. He said it’s sweeter than honey to the taste.

God’s words were an object of craving and desire. He just, the way I feel about those pumpkin pie shakes, or you feel about something that you just love. I know my mother loves dark chocolate and raspberry.

Some people just crave things. That’s how he felt about the Word of God. I know that most of the time we don’t feel that way about the Word of God.

But I think if we got into it more, if we began to study it more and began to take it to heart more, even without that craving, we would eventually get a craving for that. You know, drug abusers develop something called a tolerance in some drugs, where in order to get the same feeling, they have to ingest more and more of it, and they crave it. Now, I don’t mean this in a disrespectful way at all, to compare the two.

But we ought to be the same way with the Bible. The more we take in, the more we have to have. The more we have it, the more we crave it.

Folks, he’s indicating here that he’s just, if I can say it this way, he’s addicted to God’s word. Through thy precepts I get understanding, therefore I hate every false way. He says, as I read your word, I understand more about who you are and more about what you want me to do.

He said, and I begin to hate the ways that I used to walk. I hate the natural inclination in me to go the other way. I hate the effects of it.

God’s word will make us want to turn to God and away from sin. It says in verse 105, one of the more familiar verses of scripture to a lot of people, thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. Now we have recently moved, and I still don’t know where all the furniture is by memory.

And it gets dark at night, I mean, as you would imagine. It gets dark at night. And I have more than once injured myself on an errant couch or ottoman or something.

And so I’m glad for, and I’m still learning where the light switches are, I’m glad for that cell phone that sits next to my bed where I can pull it out and the iPhones now have a flashlight on them that you can turn on. And I can actually see where I’m going and I can see where I need to be going and see what I need to avoid. That little lamp is a wonderful thing, especially in a very dark place.

Folks, his word is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path in a very dark world. Shows us where we need to be, shows us where to avoid, shows us how to avoid injury to ourselves. And he says in verse 106, I have sworn and I will perform it that I will keep thy righteous judgments.

He said, I’ve made you a promise and I’m going to do my best to keep it that I’m going to follow the commands that you’ve given me, the word that you’ve expressed, and the will you’ve revealed to me. Now, folks, just in the next few minutes, I want to share with you three thoughts from this passage about how we can discern God’s will from His word. First of all, we need to know that the Bible imparts spiritual truths that deepen our understanding of God and His will.

If you want to know more about who God is, you don’t go to the tabloids, you don’t go to Oprah, You don’t go, folks, you go to God’s word. If you want to know who God is, he’s revealed in his word. Now the Bible does teach that we can look around at the world around us, the light of creation.

We can look inwardly at the knowledge that’s there of right and wrong. We can look at the light of conscience and we can know that there is a God. But nature and that little voice inside of us in and of themselves are not enough to actually know God.

We can know that there is a God, but we don’t know him through those things. A lot of people have responded to, throughout history, have responded to the light of creation, the light of conscience, and they’ve turned to gods that they created. Philosophical systems and any number of things.

We don’t know who God is apart from what he’s revealed to us. And he revealed himself in the person of Jesus Christ, and he reveals his nature and his thoughts. He reveals those things in his word.

And we read his word, and we get to know him. We get to know who he is. I believe everything that’s in here is important because it tells us something.

Now, it may be hard to figure out, but it tells us something about who God is. I wrestled with this for a little while, thinking about some of the begatting and the numbers of people in the book of Numbers. And even that, there may be more to it than this.

But the simplest explanation I’ve arrived at is what all of those historical records tell us about the character of God. Now, they’re important because they form part of the historical record and those things. But what they tell us about the character of God is that God is intimately involved in the affairs of his people.

God knows each one of us. As he says, he knows the hairs on our head. We’re not just a group to God, and we’re not just a bunch of numbers, but God sees us and God knows each of us.

Folks, we read through God’s word, and every page will tell us something about the person and character of God. And he’ll tell us what his will is as well if we look hard enough. David explained that his understanding of the truth came from one place.

It came from God’s word. Now he talks in this passage, he talks about God’s law. He talks about his commandments, his testimonies, his precepts, his words, his judgments.

All of those things are variations on the word for scripture. That’s not an accurate way to say that. All of those are words that point back to the scripture, that describe the scripture.

And so he’s looking at God’s word, at his scripture, and he says that they made him wise. They made him wiser than his enemies. They made him wiser than his own teachers.

And folks, if we want to know God, if we want to know who he is, if we want to know how he thinks, how he operates, and what he wants us to do, why would we seek wisdom anywhere else? when we have it on the word of King David, that he said, I read this and this made me wiser than anybody who was trying to help me or anybody who was trying to hurt me. We have God’s revelation available to us today.

We have the same scriptures that David had and plus some others that God revealed after David’s time. And so if we want to know more about God and his will, it only makes sense, ladies and gentlemen, to turn first and foremost to his word. What does he say here?

His word won’t steer us wrong. Now, you’ve got to be careful. You’ve got to know a few basic things about what you’re reading.

You know, everything in the scriptures is not given to us as an example, a positive example. You know, just because you read that King Nebuchadnezzar did something, or you read that Judas did something, or you read that Herod did something, just because it’s in the Bible doesn’t mean that’s what you should go do. If you know even a little about the Bible, you know that’s the case.

But we look through the Bible and we read it as it’s intended to be read and interpret as it’s intended to be interpreted, and it will not steer us wrong. God will never lead us into sin. God will never lead us into temptation.

God will never lead us into a disobedient lifestyle. And so if we want to know about God, we want to know who He is, we want to know what His will is for us, we look at His Word. I will tell you, I can’t remember all the specifics right now, but I remember when I was trying to discern God’s will for where I was supposed to go to college, and I argued with God I wanted to go to a Christian school, and that’s evidently not what he intended, but I was praying hard.

I was not at the point that I talked about this morning of having no will of my own. I very much had a will about where I wanted to go, but I kept praying, God, what’s your will? What do you want to happen?

And I kept coming back to the story of Gideon in the book of Judges. Kept reading the story of Gideon. Folks, I can’t tell you now all the details or what I saw in there, but I do remember very clearly reading the story of Gideon and believing based on principles that I saw in there, okay, God wants me to go to OU.

I’m not happy about that. Nothing against OU, but I wanted to go to OBU or CBC or SNU. That was not my will.

But I remember reading in there and realizing at the time, based on principles I saw in there, God wanted me to go there. And there was nothing inconsistent with his word about that. God led me, and I can look back on it now and say, okay, God led me exactly where I needed to be.

God gave me opportunities to minister to other students there. God gave me opportunities to be challenged in my faith and strengthened in my faith as a result. And God did some wonderful things while I was there.

And so I can say, you know, even in something specific, in a specific question like that, like where am I supposed to go to college? What job am I supposed to get? You’re probably not going to find a spot in the Bible, as far as I remember and can understand, where it says, Brother Shank, you’re supposed to go to work at this place on such and such date.

I don’t think that’s in there. But you’ll find principles where God’s Word will direct your choices and your steps. It’ll tell you what you need to know about Him and about His will.

Second of all, the Bible not only imparts spiritual truth, But the Bible illuminates, not illuminates, but illuminates, shines light on pitfalls to avoid. The Bible, ladies and gentlemen, will help us to see unseen sin and trouble that we need to avoid. It’ll help us to see and avoid things that are outside of God’s perfect will.

And by turning to the Bible in order to seek God’s will, we’re shown what practices we need to avoid. There are things that as I’m reading through the Bible, I think from time to time, oh, I didn’t realize that was wrong. Oh, I didn’t realize I shouldn’t have said that.

And I’m not being, I’m not trying to justify wrong things. It’s not like I’m going to look in the scriptures and say, oh, I didn’t realize I wasn’t supposed to murder anybody because I hadn’t seen it there before. But little things, as God shapes us over time to be more like he wants us to be, read through his word and you’ll see areas where he points out you’re wrong here and you need to fix this.

Oh, wow, I haven’t seen that before. I am wrong here. I do need to fix this.

Oh, there’s danger ahead in this. God’s word talked about this. I’ve seen this exact thing play out in God’s word.

He says, in verse 101, I have refrained my feet from evil, from every evil way that I might keep thy word. How did he know what was evil? Because God’s word told him.

I have not departed from thy judgments For thou hast taught me how sweet are thy words unto my taste, yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth. Through thy precepts I get understanding, and therefore I hate every false way. How did he know what he was supposed to avoid?

How did he know the paths that he could take that he was supposed to hate, that he was supposed to shun, that he was supposed to run away from? He knew it because he read God’s word. He knew it because of the law, the commandments, testimonies, precepts, words, and judgments that he talks about.

He knew it because God’s way showed him. And so the Bible is very much like the light that I talked about earlier, where you’re in a dark house, an unfamiliar place, and the Bible shows you where the furniture is, metaphorically speaking, like a flashlight. You can see where the furniture is that you’re going to trip over.

You can see where those stupid Legos are that just really hurt when you’re not wearing shoes. You can see where all of it is, because the Bible shows you what things to avoid just like a flashlight would. Third of all tonight, we’ve got, first of all, the Bible imparts spiritual truth that deepens our understanding of God and his will.

Second of all, the Bible illuminates the pitfalls to avoid. And third of all, the Bible instructs us in righteousness. When we say, okay, I know, I know who, I’ve learned from his word who God is.

I know what things I’m not supposed to do. It’s not just enough for us as believers to say, well, I know what’s wrong and what I shouldn’t do. We’ve got to fill up that time and that space in our lives with something else.

We’ve got to fill that up with doing what he does want us to do. It’s not enough for us as believers to say, well, I’m going to avoid sinning. We need to know what he expects us to do and go and push forward in that and grow and learn and try to improve.

And so his will isn’t for us just to avoid sinful practices, but to actively pursue righteousness, to actively pursue growing to be more like Jesus Christ. When we seek to do God’s will, the Bible will show us, will tell us how to do it. And that’s why he says, thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. I’ve sworn I will perform it, that I will keep thy righteous judgments.

You know, there’s a tendency as believers to want to say, okay, well, I don’t drink. I don’t smoke. I don’t say bad words.

I’m not running around having an affair. I must be doing all right. Or we could name off any list of sins.

So I’m not doing those things. I must be doing all right. But folks, the question is, what are we doing?

Not what are we not doing, which is important too, but what are we actually doing? Where are we being obedient? Where are we pushing forward and trying to grow to be more like Jesus Christ?

Are we using that lamp that he’s given us to sit around and look at the darkness around us and say, thank goodness I’m not tripping over that ottoman, or are we using that light to actually go somewhere? Are we carrying that light through the dark room? Are we carrying that light as we go forward someplace else?

He said, I have sworn and I will perform it. His righteous judgments, I’ll keep thy righteous judgments. I’ve made a promise and I’m going to do it.

I’m going to pursue the things that you want me to pursue. Again, it’s not enough that we just avoid doing wrong. If we want to know God’s will and know what’s right and know the things that we should pursue, the things that we should run as hard and as fast as we possibly can after.

The Bible will tell us what those things are. The Bible will tell us what those things are in a general way, as I keep going back to some of the things that the Bible says are God’s will, our salvation, our sanctification, thankfulness, perseverance, a good witness, some of those things that God’s word says, this is my will for all of you. This is what I want from all of you.

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