1 Peter 4:1-7 Therefore, since Christ suffered in flesh, arm yourselves also with the same attitude, because whoever suffers in flesh is done with sin. 2 As a result, they do not live the rest of their earthly lives for evil human desires, but rather for the will of God. 3 For you have spent enough time in the past doing what pagans choose to do--living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing and detestable idolatry. 4 They are surprised that you do not join them in their reckless, wild living, and they heap abuse on you. 5 But they will have to give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead. 6 For this is the reason the gospel was preached even to those who are now dead, so that they might be judged according to human standards in regard to the body, but live according to God in regard to the spirit. 7 The end of all things is near. Therefore be alert and of sober mind so that you may pray.
Introduction
God's Will
What do you love about God? I am guessing you love His mercy and grace - His patience, His forgiveness, His kindness. No doubt you love it that He is so wise. You probably love His righteousness and holiness, and His majesty and glory. But what about His will? We found last week that there are two aspects of God's will - His will of desire and His will of design. His will of desire is what He wants emotionally and what He takes delight in. His will of design is what He plans and carries out - His perfect plan for history. And most of us have no problem at all loving God's will of desire. God desires righteousness and holiness. He does not desire that anyone perish. His desires for us are like the desires of a loving father toward his children. We love that about God. But what about His will of design - the events that God sovereignly ordains?
1 Peter 3:17 For it is better, if it is God's will, to suffer for doing good.
1 Peter 4:19 So then, those who suffer according to God's will should commit themselves to their faithful Creator and continue to do good.
Sometimes it is God's will for you to suffer in ways that you do not deserve at all. That's not His will of desire? He doesn't enjoy doing that (Lam.3:33). It makes Him weep when He does it because He loves you so much and hates seeing you suffer. But He does decide to let it happen nevertheless. It is His will of design.
Last week I was calling it His will of decision - what He decides to do. But I think will of design is a little better – it is something God decides to do as part of His perfect plan.
What about the Sin?
That's a problem, because when people persecute you for righteousness, that is sin for them to do that, right? How can God will something that is sin? So if it is sin, how can Peter call it God's will? Answer – it is not God's desire for them to cause the suffering, but it is God's design for you to endure it.
So when someone persecutes you, sins against you, treats you unjustly; and Peter comes along and says, "It's God's will!" - how can I learn to love that will? If God's will of design involves me suffering, how can I love that part of His will? Many people hate that about God. In fact, they cannot even bring themselves to believe it is true.
When you ask the question, "How could a loving God allow such horrible things to happen to me?" there are two possible answers:
1) God would prevent it if He could, but He is powerless to do anything about it.
2) God is in full control over all things and planned for that thing to happen for a good purpose.
Some of you have had things happen to you that are so horrible you can't even bear the thought that it might have come from the hand of God, no matter what His purpose behind it may have been. No purpose would be good enough to justify that much suffering, so you would prefer to worship a powerless god than a God who would intentionally allow that kind of suffering.
So you develop a conception of God where He is not involved at all in evil things. And that belief leads to despair, because if that is true then there is no meaning to suffering. If you lost a loved one in a car accident because of a snow storm - there is no purpose. No sense that can be made of it. It is just meaningless, purposeless bad luck.
So all the suffering in your life is meaningless, and worse than that - you cannot trust God. You cannot trust Him to protect you, because sometimes things happen outside of His control. And you turn God into a rabbit's foot - just a powerless superstition.
If you try to solve the problem of evil by inventing a situation where God is not really in control, you are going down a road that will lead you into despair. And you are going the opposite direction of Scripture. Peter does not say that God just allows unjust suffering, or that God tolerates it - He says God wills it.
And Peter is not alone. This is the uniform teaching of God's Word from beginning to end.
Amos 3:6 When disaster comes to a city, has not the LORD caused it?
Lamentations 3:38 Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both calamities and good things come?
Isaiah 45:7 I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the LORD, do all these things.
1 Samuel 2:6 The LORD brings death and makes alive; he brings down to the grave and raises up.
When evil, sinful men came and stole everything Job had he said,
Job 1:21 The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away
Job 2:10 Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?
Job 42:11 ...they comforted and consoled [Job] over all the trouble the LORD had brought on him
Genesis 50:20 You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.
Acts 4:27 Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. 28 They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen.
God is in total, sovereign control over all things that ever happen, including evil things. Is He guilty of causing the evil? No, not at all. How can God be sovereign over everything and not be guilty of causing evil? I don't know how - I just know it's true. God controls everything at every moment. Nothing is random, nothing is purposeless, nothing is meaningless. Everything that happens comes from God's hand, and God never does anything for no reason. He is not capricious. The things He ordains to happen (which is everything that ever happens), all happen for a good reason - to accomplish His perfect purposes and design. And that plan is never derailed in the slightest by anything human beings do.
Psalm 33:10 The LORD foils the plans of the nations; he thwarts the purposes of the peoples. 11 But the plans of the LORD stand firm forever, the purposes of his heart through all generations.
Isaiah 14:24 The LORD Almighty has sworn, "Surely, as I have planned, so it will be, and as I have purposed, so it will happen. ... 26 This is the plan determined for the whole world; this is the hand stretched out over all nations. 27 For the LORD Almighty has purposed, and who can thwart him? His hand is stretched out, and who can turn it back?
The mightiest of all human efforts going up against the purposes of God are like a little piece of fluff hitting an iron wall. Those passages I read you are the tip of the iceberg. The control of God over all things is not debatable. But even if we did not have any of them, and all we had was the book of 1 Peter, still it is as clear as can be - many times it is God's will for evil people do evil things to you.
Now, is it possible to love that aspect of God's will? Yes, if the beauty and goodness of His perfect purposes and glorious plan and His reasons for the suffering, if all that were seen clearly, you would love it. If the misconceptions were cleared away, you would take great delight in it and it would make you exceedingly happy. And the whole point of this passage is to make that happen. Not only can you learn to love God's will of design, but you must. Peter is going to show us what is at stake, and it is a lot.
Learning to love the will of God when God wills unjust suffering is essential for overcoming sin in our lives. So let's take a look at what Peter teaches about this and see if we can be brought to a greater love for God's will.
Warfare
First let me remind you of where we left off last week. Toward the end of ch.3 Peter started talking about the great powers in the spirit world. And you can lump all those different kinds of spirits we talked about last week all under one generic heading: demons. And these very powerful spirits have declared war on us. We are engaged in spiritual warfare every hour of every day. Sometimes some of our Charismatic friends have been criticized for seeing a demon behind every bush. But there probably is a demon behind every bush. If you are struggling with some sin, is there a demon involved with that? Yes! Every temptation comes from the Devil through his demons. The problem with the spiritual warfare gurus - people like Neal Anderson or some of our more charismatic friends is not that they see demons being so pervasive and active. I think they are right about that part. Where some of them go wrong is in how to fight against those demons. Very often their way of fighting the demons is to attempt to bind them. That's a joke. When some big, powerful demon is doing his work, and some puny little human being comes along and says, "I rebuke you! I bind you!" that demon just laughs and goes on with whatever he was doing. Even if you say, "I bind you in the name of JESUS!" Some guys tried that in Acts 19.
Acts 19:13 ..."In the name of Jesus, whom Paul preaches, I command you to come out." ... 15 the evil spirit answered them, "Jesus I know, and I know about Paul, but who are you?" 16 Then the man who had the evil spirit jumped on them and overpowered them all. He gave them such a beating that they ran out of the house naked and bleeding.
If your way of fighting against demons is by rebuking them and trying to bind them in the name of Jesus, or cast them out , or send them to the abyss, or whatever - if that is what you are doing, if you are lucky they will just get a good laugh and then ignore you. If you're not so fortunate they will do to you what they did to the men in Acts 19.
We are told many times in Scripture to fight against demons and the Devil, but never once are we told to rebuke them or bind them. The Apostles were given the power to do that, but that power is always described as a miracle. It is in the same category as raising the dead. We can ask God to do it, but it is not something God has given us the power to do on our own. The greatest portion of God's Word devoted to spiritual warfare is Ephesians 6 - a whole chapter on how to conduct this warfare and not one syllable on binding or rebuking or casting out. 1 Cor.10 teaches us how to demolish strongholds, and not a word about binding or rebuking.
Arm Yourself with Insight
So if that is not the right way to do spiritual warfare, then what is the right way? We need to know because the consequences of being overcome by these beings are dire. It is a matter of spiritual life and death. Lose one battle to them and it can create horrible problems in your life that will last for decades. In some cases even for eternity. So, how do we fight? Does Peter give us any clue? Does he give us any idea, any subtle hint about how to arm ourselves in this conflict? Yes, he does.
Arm Yourself
4:1 Therefore ... arm yourselves
Not exactly a subtle clue - an explicit command: arm yourselves. That word means just what it sounds like - take up a weapon. Pack some heat. If you go into battle without this weapon you will lose. "What is that weapon? If it is not rebuking or binding or casting out or "power encounters" or any of that, what is it? I'll tell you this - it does not involve speaking to the demons or Satan. You do not say a word to them. That is not how this weapon works. "How does it work? What is the weapon, and how do I get my hands on it?" Insight. We already saw in ch.3, as well as other places in Scripture that one key weapon in the warfare is righteousness. Keep a clear conscience, obey the Lord Jesus Christ and that will keep you safe from demons. But how do you manage that? How do you hold on to righteousness? Through the truth of the Word of God. That is the other major weapon we are given. In 2 Cor.10, what weapon has supernatural power to demolish satanic strongholds? Truth - taking wrong thoughts captive and forcing them into obedience to Christ. We take up the sword of the Spirit which is the Word of God, and the belt of truth.
So we win this war through truth. But it is not just a surface knowledge of the truth. Do you see that word attitude in v.1? Your Bible might say resolve, or way of thinking. That word refers to knowledge that is ingrained deeply enough in your heart to where it controls your actions. There are some things that you believe to be true, but your understanding of them is so sketchy and foggy that they do not really have a governing influence on the way you live. That usually happens when you do not understand how that truth fits in with other things you believe. If you tell a little child that too much candy is not a good thing, he might nod in agreement, but that knowledge does not really govern his actions when he has access to a whole bunch of candy, because it is a piece of information that does not really fit with everything else in his experience. Everything he has experienced says candy equals pleasure. So this information about too much candy being a bad thing does not make any connection with his other beliefs.
Instead of being like a gear that fits into the machine of his thinking and turning with the other gears, it just sits off to the side by itself, which means it has almost no impact on his decision making or how he feels about things. But when you teach a kid about gravity for the first time, that information fits all the rest of the things he believes. He already believes that if you let go of something it drops to the ground, and if you throw something up it comes back down. So when you explain to him the first time about gravity, the more he thinks it through the more it fits in perfectly with all the other things he believes and has experienced. And so that knowledge about gravity is something he understands, and remembers, and for the rest of his life, all his actions and decisions take gravity into consideration without him even consciously thinking about it. That is what this word translated attitude or way of thinking or resolve means. Something you understand so clearly that you can see how it connects with other things you believe and it becomes part of who you are and governs all your decision making. So how about if we use the word insight to describe all that?
Insight about Suffering
Peter is telling us to arm ourselves with the same insight about suffering that led Jesus to the cross. Jesus had insight about suffering. He understood it. And He also understood the Father's will. He had such a thorough knowledge about suffering and God's will that when it came down to the moment of decision, His choices ended up putting Him on the cross - but without any sin. When it was a choice between sin or suffering, Jesus never once chose sin. How did He do that? Did He do it by utilizing His divine nature, getting a little extra boost from the fact that He was God? No. If that were the case then His example would be worthless to us. He did it in a way that would work for us too. He did it by means of developing a thorough and deep understanding and insight about suffering and the will of God.
So what was that insight? It was this: When it is a choice between suffering or sin, suffering is better because of how good the will of God is. Or to state it another way, it was the insight that realizes that one thing matters: the Father's will - nothing else. It was the insight that being in God's will is infinitely more rewarding than avoiding suffering. Being in God's will is far more satisfying and joy-giving than comfort or any temporal pleasure. The only way to true joy, true fulfillment, and real happiness is the way of God's will even when it passes through suffering. That is the insight. That is the weapon you have to arm yourself with in order to come out on top whenever you have a skirmish with demons. It is not a matter of binding and rebuking – it is a matter of having this insight.
Information vs. Insight
"That does not sound like any big, deep, profound insight. Choose suffering over sin? Better to suffer than to sin? God's will is better than temporal pleasure? That sounds like a bumper sticker. I have known that information since 2nd grade Sunday school." That's true - most of us have known this information for a long time. But there is a difference between having information and having insight. The thing that makes it deep and profound and life-changing is not that it is some new idea or some complicated, hard to understand principle; what makes it life-changing is when it goes from being information in your head to being insight in your heart. And that comes from drawing the connections between the principle and all the details of everyday life. If you do not understand those connections, the principle will not have an impact on your behavior. You sit here and write down the principle, "Better to suffer than to sin - God's will is better than temporal comfort" and you say, "OK, I've got it!" and you think you have it made, and you go out there into the world and the first temptation hits, and you tell your soul, "Remember, better to suffer than to sin" and your souls says, "Yeah right" and chooses the sin. And you are sitting there in defeat thinking, "Well, I guess that didn't work." You see, the information by itself will not be enough until it becomes an insight.
So how do you turn the bare information into deep insight that governs your thoughts and feelings and attitudes and behavior like your insight into gravity? How do you utilize this weapon in a way that actually gives you real victories over sin? Peter tells us at the end of v.1.
Practice Suffering
What you would expect Peter to say next is this: "arm yourselves with Christ's insight, because whoever has that insight is done with sin." But that is not what he says.
1...arm yourselves also with the same insight, because whoever suffers in flesh is done with sin.
What is it that you are supposed to arm yourself with? The insight. But what is it that actually keeps you from future sin? The suffering. If it is the suffering that keeps you from sin, why doesn't he just say, "Arm yourself with suffering"? To answer that, and to see how all this fits together, we need to understand how the suffering actually keeps us from sin.
How does this work? Is the statement at the end of v.1 true of all suffering, across the board? You just put your hand down on a table, smash it with a hammer, and now you're holy? No, we can all think of examples of people who have suffered and responded to that suffering in an ungodly way. (Every one of us who owns a mirror can think of someone like that.) Many people have turned against God altogether because of suffering. Suffering does not automatically make us more godly. It only works with the kind of suffering Peter has been talking about in the context, namely, suffering that is God's will. When you voluntarily undergo suffering, and your reason for doing so is because God's will seems better to you than the pleasure of that sin, that trains your heart to be more resistant to future sin. That turns the information into insight. When you do that, it makes all those connections in your understanding between the principle and the various details of daily life, and that is when it becomes a true insight that controls your behavior.
Practice Makes Permanent
It is like that great bearded theologian, Scott Nauman always says: "Practice makes...permanent." Not "practice makes perfect" - "Practice makes permanent." He tells that to the musicians so they understand that if you practice something the wrong way, you just get good at doing it wrong. Whatever you practice, that's what will stick.
And I think that's what Peter is saying here. You know the principle - when it is a choice between suffering or sin, suffering is better because God's will is always best. But getting that to go from being mere information to being a true insight that governs your behavior requires practice.
Must Be God's Will
"Are you telling me I have to practice suffering?" Yes, that is what I'm saying. We will never get the hang of it without lots and lots of practice. "So I'm supposed to just go out looking for suffering?" No. Remember, it only works if it is suffering according to God's will. If it is not according to His will it is of no value. And there are two ways to know it is God's will.
1) If it already happened.
2) If there is no way to avoid it without sinning (or without resisting God's guidance).
So if you just run out there and inflict suffering on yourself that is not even necessary, that won't do the trick because it won't be according to God's will.
Easy Temptations are Training Wheels
So how do you practice suffering according to God's will? It seems to me the best way is by resisting temptations throughout the day. "That's no good - I can't do that." One person said, "I can resist anything but temptation." And I know that is how it seems, but the reality is we all resist countless temptations every day. The reason it seems like you cannot resist temptation is because our focus always tends to be on those areas where we fail a lot. But where we can practice is in those areas where we do not fail a lot. This really opened my eyes this week as I was learning all this. It actually surprised me how many times in a day I have an impulse to do something, and I say, "No, I'm not going to do that. I feel like doing it, but I know God doesn't want me to do that right now, so I'm not going to."
For example, you are having hard day at work. And about 200 times during the day you feel like just walking out the door and going home. But you think, "No, God doesn't want me to do that," and you stay at work. You just resisted a temptation. "But that doesn't count - that's so easy. I have to stay at work or I'll be fired." That's exactly why it is a great place to practice. Practice on the easy ones. Easy temptations are training wheels for practicing this principle. So use your easy temptations to practice. "But isn't that what I'm already doing?" Possibly, but not necessarily. Just because you are resisting the temptations does not mean you are practicing this principle. To practice this principle there has to be a conscious thought process in which you resist the temptation specifically because of a delight in God's will. You do not resist it mainly because you want to keep your job, or because you do not want to get fat, or because you do not want to get in trouble with someone - you resist it because you prize God's will. That is what we need to practice. You look at the sin, you look at God's will, and you say, "I know God well enough to know that what He wills is always best. It is always the path to the greatest joy and fulfillment and peace. It is always better than anything sin can ever offer. And so I will suffer if need be in order to be in His will."
Each time you resist temptation you suffer a little bit, right? Because you miss out on whatever reward that sin was promising. Maybe it was promising you some physical pleasure. Now you do not get that pleasure. That is suffering for doing God's will. Maybe doing God's will means missing out on the satisfaction that comes from taking revenge. Now you do not get that satisfaction. That is suffering for doing God's will. You always miss out on something when you resist a temptation, otherwise it would not be a temptation.
Each time you do that with your eyes on the will of God, so that when it is all over you are thinking, "Man, I came out on the sweet end of that deal. I forfeited a little bit of temporal pleasure or satisfaction, but now I have a clear conscience and access to God's presence and the confidence that I'm in His will." That trains your soul to prize God's will above the pleasures of sin. And as a result, Peter says in v.2, you do not live the rest of your earthly life for evil human desires, but for the will of God.
Practice makes permanent, and the more you practice resisting the easy temptations with this method (using the insight about suffering that says God's will is always far better than any reward of any sin), the more that insight will become part of the fabric of your belief system so more and more it starts to govern your behavior without you even consciously thinking about it. And when the time comes when doing the right thing is going to result in real, serious suffering, you are ready. Practicing this will have the effect of unveiling the goodness of God's will in your eyes. And the more that is unveiled, the easier it will be to prefer it above sin in the future.
Unmask the World's Will
Now, in case you are still struggling to love God's will enough to prefer it above sin in those times when it involves suffering, Peter is going to help us by showing us the alternative. Not only do we want to unveil the goodness of God's will, but we also need to unmask the ugliness of the alternative.
3 For you have spent enough time in the past doing what pagans choose to do
Those last two words (to do) are not in the Greek. Literally it's For you have spent enough time in the past doing the will of the Gentiles. (Peter refers to unbelievers as Gentiles.) I do not think he means the will of the Gentiles in the sense of what the Gentiles choose to do. I think it is a contrast with the will of God. Instead of doing the will of God for your life, you used to do the will of the Gentiles for your life. Look at v.4 - they want you to join them in their sin. That is their will for your life. And Peter is about to unmask the ugliness of the world's will.
3 For you have spent enough time in the past doing the will of the pagans--living in debauchery, lust, drunkenness, orgies, carousing and detestable idolatry.
That is a list of examples of the kind of thing that happens when you prize temporal comfort and pleasure over the will of God. And it is an ugly list. These are sins that even the unbelieving world is mostly disgusted with.
Debauchery
The first word is debauchery - your Bible might say sensuality or unrestrained behavior. It is the Greek word aselgeia and it refers to the complete absence of any self-restraint. Total abandonment to the impulses of the flesh. We have lots of things that restrain our immoral impulses. Societal norms, the law, rules in the institutions we are involved in, the risk of being looked down on, or harming our marriage or other relationships, or losing our job. There are lots of different restraints. Lift those restraints and what happens is really ugly. You see that in a riot or a mob situation where many of those restraints are lifted and people do all kinds of horrible things. Aselgeia is when they are all lifted and you just go with whatever animal impulses you feel at the moment.
Lust
This refers to any kind of strong, sinful desire - especially sexually impure desires.
Drunkenness
Everything about a drunk person is disgusting and unpleasant. You act like a fool, you do a lot of harm, never any good, you smell bad, look bad, do bad things. And it pays off with vomiting and hangovers and liver damage and alcohol poisoning and enslavement to alcohol and many times death. And even the world can see that. There is no organization "Mothers in Favor of Drunk Drivers." No one ever says, "Yeah, our marriage really struggled until one day my husband started getting drunk. And ever since then it has just been wonderful." God has a special anger over drunkenness. It was one of the main reasons He finally allowed His people Israel to be carried off into captivity - because God was so angry about their drunkenness.
Orgies
Next in the list is orgies. That is just what it sounds like - an event where there is unrestrained drinking and sexual activity. The modern word for this is swinging (where there are a whole bunch of couples and partners are exchanged - wife-swapping, multiple partners, along with every other kind of sexual deviation). This would include places where there is open nudity - couples observing one another in sexual acts.
Carousing
This refers to a drinking party - any social gathering where the main point is the drinking, along with the rest of the kinds of things that would go on at a party like that.
Detestable idolatry
In that culture, the places where you would go to have these kinds of parties were pagan worship services. In our culture they might take place in a fraternity house, a swingers bar - in that culture it was in pagan temples.
Dissipation
So that is the list, and Peter sums it all up in v.4 with the word dissipation.
4 They are surprised that you do not plunge with them into the same flood of dissipation
Your Bible might say wild living or debauchery. This is the word used to describe the life of the Prodigal Son. The word is asotia, and it's a lot like that first word (aselgeia). It refers to the behavior that comes when you do whatever you feel like doing without thinking. When you do not think about consequences or right and wrong, you just sort of turn your brain off and obey the impulses of the flesh. Your flesh is always pulling you toward sin and a life of folly. And we are constantly resisting that because of various consequences. And asotia is when you put any thought about consequences out of your mind and just “let go.” You just stop fighting and give in, and let the flesh just carry you away.
Pretty repulsive picture, isn't it? It is the picture of someone strung out, hung over, vomiting all over the place, out of work, miserable, desperate. People who live like this are considered the dregs of society even by unbelievers. And Peter is doing that on purpose. This whole list (with the exception of the idolatry) is words that most unbelievers would agree describe disgusting, vile things.
But they are all the logical conclusion of living for immediate pleasure above God's will. If you are going to go the route of choosing sin over suffering, sin over God's will, then this is the direction you are going. Now, most people put limits on their debauchery. They restrain themselves from getting drunk or doing drugs or sleeping around because they want to keep their job or their marriage or whatever. But they are still living for this life and not the will of God. It is a little more disguised. Some are thinking about the next 20 minutes, others are thinking about the next 20 years, but both are focused on pleasure and comfort in this life above all. And so Peter just unmasks it for what it really is to show us that the only alternative to the will of God is the will of the world which moves in the direction toward a life of disgusting, self-destructive filth.
Enough!
So Peter says, "Haven't you spent enough time in the past living that way?" In your lifetime, haven't you already sinned enough? Nothing good has come from your sin; is there any reason to add any more? Did anything good come of it? It's enough. This is like when two kids are fighting or disobeying or throwing a fit and you finally say, "Enough!" That is what God is saying to us here: "That's enough!" You have spent enough time in the sewer, don't go back to that.
Think Direction
When you are tempted with a sin, it is always helpful to stop and think, What direction is this going to take me? Look at the end of that path and ask, "Is that where I want to end up?" And right away you think, "No, of course not. I'll turn around long before I get there. I'll just do this one sin this one time then turn back to God's way. I won't go all the way to the end of that path." If you don't want to go to the end, then why go that direction at all? If you're planning on turning around, now is the time because the farther you go down that path the harder and less likely it will be that you will turn around. If you are climbing a mountain, and your ultimate objective is to get to the top, why take a path leading downward? That is just all the more climbing you will have to do when you finally turn around. When you are tempted with a sin, ask yourself, "Haven't I already spent enough of my life in sin?"
Conclusion: The Beauty of God's Will
How do you defeat sin in your life? How do you come out on top in spiritual warfare? Arm yourself with the insight that God's will is better than the world's will - even when God's will is for you to suffer. And how do you turn that information into a real insight in your heart? Practice suffering. Practice on little, easy temptations all through the day. Train your soul to constantly be unmasking the ugliness of the world's will and unveiling the beauty and goodness of God's will. The will of the pagans starts out enticing but ends up ugly, and God's will is just the reverse. In the near term it looks ugly. It just looks like a lot of suffering and self-denial, and missing out on pleasure. From a purely temporal standpoint, the will of God looks ugly. Just look at your own life. Look at all the horrible, painful, excruciating things that it was God's will for you to go through. Look at the times of loneliness or abuse or confusion. Look at all the times it was His will for someone to let you down, or to hurt you in horrible ways. That has been His will of design in your life. How could you ever love that? The only way to love that is to have the insight that Jesus had about suffering in God's will. Did Jesus love the Father's will?
John 4:34 "My food," said Jesus, "is to do the will of him who sent me
The will of God, to Jesus, was like a perfectly cooked 10 oz rib eye with mashed potatoes, homemade rolls, and cherry pie for dessert.
Luke 10:21 At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure.
When Jesus saw which people God decided to hide things from and which people God chose to reveal things to, it filled Him with joy. He just loved seeing the Father's plan unfolding. He loved seeing the will of God in action. It was His food and drink; it's what kept Him going.
Where did that attitude get Jesus? Where did loving God's will of design get Him? In the grave. It led Him to Gethsemane and then Golgotha. It led Him to the place of being mocked, beaten, spit upon, unjustly accused, and wrongly convicted. It led him to spikes being driven through His hands and feet. How can Jesus look at that and love the Father's will?
"I can see how Jesus loved God's will because Jesus' suffering brought about so much good. But my suffering - that's a different story. In my wildest imagination I can't fathom what good could possibly come from the horrors that have happened to me." If that's the case - if you look at some terrible thing that happened to you and you cannot imagine how it could be a good thing, then that tells me one thing. It tells me that you are focused on the suffering and not on the God who designed that suffering. Your eyes are on the evil side of it, and as long as you are staring at the evil side of it you cannot conceive of the other side - the beautiful side.
"OK, so how do I see the good side?" Wrong question. The thing that will make you rejoice in your suffering is not when you can see the good that will come from it. What will make you rejoice is seeing the goodness of the God who willed that suffering. Jesus loved the will of the Father because He knew the Father. Remember when Nathaniel asked the question, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth"? Let me reverse that - Can anything bad come out of heaven? Can anything bad come from God? No. When God wills bad things to happen to you, the evil part of that does not come from God.
But what does come from God is a plan that is in your best interests, and that is supremely good, so good, that it outweighs all the evil that human beings add in.
The only way to love God's will is to love God. And the only way to love God is to understand that He controls all things, all things come from Him, and He only does good things. Keep your eyes on the goodness of His will, treasure it in your heart, and you will be done with sin.
Benediction: Romans 12:2 Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is--his good, pleasing and perfect will.
1:25 Questions
1. Have you fallen into the error of thinking that a particular trial can't possibly be a good thing unless you can imagine how it could be good? Discuss examples of ways something might be good but impossible for a human being in this life to see as good.
2. God is in control of absolutely everything, and God only does perfectly good things. Which of those truths is harder for you to truly believe?
3. Can you think of some "training wheel" temptations that you frequently face but that are relatively easy to resist, where you could practice preferring God's will and suffering over the world's will and sin?
