Taylor, Tom: Critical Issues in Christian Life 1991-08 ~ Learning Gods Will ~ Heb 10v 32-end

This morning I'm reading in Hebrews chapter ten, Hebrews chapter ten, and I'm reading the section that begins at verse thirty two and goes to the end of the chapter, Hebrews ten thirty two to the end of the chapter. I'm reading out of the Bible, which is in the Pew, which is the New International Version, and if I'd been really sharp, I'd have gotten a page number, but I didn't do that. So you struggle along, you can find it like I'm doing, and it's Hebrews chapter ten, Make the pages thinner these days. Hebrews chapter ten, picking up at verse thirty two and reading to the end of the chapter. Remember those earlier days after you had received the light, when you stood your ground in a great contest in the face of suffering. Sometimes you were publicly exposed to insult and persecution. At other times, you stood side by side with those who were so treated. You sympathized with those in prison and joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property because you knew that you yourselves had better and lasting possessions. So do not throw away your confidence. It will be richly rewarded. You need to persevere so that when you've done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised. For in just a very little while, he who is coming will come and will not delay. But my righteous one will live by faith, and if he shrinks back, I will not be pleased with him. But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who believe and are saved. The reading is Hebrews ten thirty two through thirty nine. Shall we again pray? Gracious Father, we thank you for your love and mercy to us. We thank you, Lord, that the day will come when, apart from all the troubles and trials that mark us in this life, we'll enjoy the reality of glory with the Lord of glory. Lord, we thank you at this very moment our hearts are cheered by these things, and our spirits are raised in the knowledge of a God of love and mercy who cares for us and provides for us. So bless us in this time of meditation this morning about the word of God, that it may be meaningful in my life and my friends, and that we may find ourselves built in accord with your will day by day. We pray thankfully in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, I've been here all week, and this is the same passage of scripture I read last Sunday, although I never expect people to remember those things. It kind of goes that way. I'm really starting with it. I'm not exactly ending with it because I'm ending tonight, Lord willing. But the concept here is that you got a great lesson about learning about God's will, and that's what our meditation is on this morning. My theme for the whole week has been critical issues in the Christian life in the book of Hebrews, and we've covered a fair amount of ground and material, maybe not covered it thoroughly, and maybe not covered it well, but we've been there, and you can't go back at this time. Talk about the importance of believing in Jesus. Talk about the importance of taking God at his word. Talk about the blessing of knowing what the Lord Jesus is doing for you today. Talk a little bit about how we give God the worship and praise that he really wants. And we throw in a few other things as we went along, just because they kind of come up and they're important to us. I guess the upshot of the whole thing is, is that God and his word has what I need for every circumstance that arises in my life, and that if I'm attentive to his word, I can be blessed and guided and directed in every issue that faces me. The critical issues of life are addressed in the Word of God. We need to be readers of it and students of it and appliers of it as well. So I suppose in the long and short, it's taking me about forty hours to say that, but I suppose in the long and short, that's what it all boils down to. Paul was concerned that this community of believers, known as the Hebrew community, he was concerned that they be geared to a life that was directed by the word of God and in love with the Lord Jesus Christ. Nothing, he said, compares with that. It's the very best of all possible lives to know God and to be alive in Jesus Christ. And that's where we still are today. There are no improvements to that. There is nothing better than that. Forgiveness of sin, peace with God, eternal blessing, and the joy that comes into our hearts in knowing God in this very day, there is nothing better than that anywhere or under any circumstance. The concept we come to this morning is the concept of learning God's will, learning about God's will. And the thrust goes in this passage in verse thirty six, where the writer says, you know, you need to persevere. And after you've done the will of God, God will bless you with the promises he's given in accord with that will. And the concept of learning about God's will is an important one, because no matter how big we think we are, or no matter how good our accomplishments seem to be, he's still God, and we are not. This morning, I rose early and took a short walk, just a short one. I walked to the mailbox at Campbell's house and saw the newspaper was there, so I pulled it out and brought it back. I went in and read about the Penn State game, because, see, I am a Pennsylvanian, you know, and other things, and then quickly browsed the comic pages. I know some friends in the ministry who don't look at the comic pages at all, and I know some who don't like to look at them on Sunday, lest they get in their minds, but if I don't look at them, then I wonder what they were about. And so, you know, it's better to look. And on the front page of the comic pages, I'm not recommending newspapers, I'm just telling you, on the front page of the comic pages was Hagar the Horrible, the notable Danish raider of other territories. And in today's strip, if you haven't seen it, Hagar has climbed the highest of all mountains. A lifetime goal is fulfilled. He's on the highest of all mountains. He feels he's the first person to be there, and on top of the mountain he announces himself to be the greatest person in the world, and just then a bolt of lightning zaps the mountain. And in the last strip he looks up and he says, well, second greatest, he said, second greatest. I said to myself, that's right. Maybe we don't get our theology from the comic strips, but that's right. God is greater than any of us, and through faith in Jesus Christ, we can know him and claim him as our father. Consequently, since he's greater than us, the will of God has to be supremely important to us. I cannot go into a long theological discussion of God's will this morning. I'll tell you that there are five aspects of it in the New Testament, uh, in the scripture, five aspects of it. The three that interest us the most are the aspects that we call the decretal will of God, where he just says, let there be light, and all at once there's light. That really hits us the most. And the concept that really touches our lives where we live is what we call God's desire for us. The Latin word is desiderate, and that ought to please some scholar somewhere in a room this big. It's the concept of what God wishes for us. He doesn't wish us emptily, but he knows it's best for us, and that's what he wants us to do. And that's the aspect of God's will that we're most taken up with. I suppose the third one that touches us the most is what we sometimes call the dispensational will of God, the particular truth that he reveals age by age and group by group. And for the other derivations, you can see me between meetings. I'll be happy to fill them in. But you see, when God says something, it happens. He says, let there be light, and nobody says, I don't think we'll turn the switch. That doesn't happen. There's light when God says it. But when God speaks of us in a passage like this one, Hebrews ten, when he speaks of us in passages like First Thessalonians four and five, what he's saying is, here's what I want for you. Here's what I want for you. It's the best for you. I want it, but I haven't put you in a box. I haven't made you robots. And if you want to frustrate me in these things, forgive me for saying it that way. You can probably frustrate me in these things. So the writer says, after you've done the will of God. Well, if he was speaking of the decretal will of God, there'd be no choice in it. You wouldn't be able to move till it was done. So it's obvious he's talking about what God's desire is for us, what God wishes for us, what God wants for us, and he's saying, after you've done what God wants for you, after you fulfill that, then be patient because God will bring the right reward in accord with whatever the circumstances happen to be. But that's a big thing, see, and that's learning about God's will. And that's where I am this morning, learning about God's will, learning about what it is and how it applies and how blessed we are in what God wants for us in the scope of life and course and circumstance. I'll say pretty much in this segment of Hebrews this morning, where I just read a few moments ago, and I'll try to draw out a few things along that particular line. God's desired will for us. When you come down to the particulars of where God wants you to live and where God wants you to work and what God wants you to eat for lunch, that becomes another matter that has to be determined on other grounds. I'll merely tell you that those things are highly individualized, and I've tried to say that there's a big difference between God's will, which is essentially the same for every person, and God's guidance, which differs from person to person. I just tell you that kind of lamely, but it does. It differs from person to person. That's why some of you are engineers, and why fellows like myself can hardly read numbers, let alone be engineers. God guides people to particular things. That's why I'm a... Oh, never mind. But guidance, see? Guidance differs from person to person. God doesn't guide anybody to rob banks. God guides in accord with his word, but in accord with his word, some are engineers, and some are the people that pick up the paper that the engineers miss when they throw it at the wastebasket. And we are kind of that way in the course of life. Some of us are guided to be teachers. That's my work. Teaching has been my work, and I think I was led of the Lord to that particular thing, but not everybody is guided that way. But God's will is another matter, and the doing of God's will becomes another matter too. Now, I ought to be careful in following his guidance, but that isn't the subject this morning. The subject this morning is learning about God's will. In this passage in Hebrews, the first thing we learn is that God's will is positive. Verse thirty two, verse thirty two. the emphasis is pretty emphatic. Remember those earlier days after you had received the light, when you stood your ground in a gate contest in the face of suffering, says the NIV. Just stop and look back. Think, he says in the King James, when you were illuminated. Think of it, illuminated, when you saw the light. God's will is positive. Under the guidance of God, a number of things are done, and particularly the illumination of soul and life. I had kind of wrapped up with that because there are some negative aspects to God's will too, but God's will is positive in that it's, first of all, life transforming, see. The concept of God's will is that we would first believe in Jesus. That's the idea of illumination, or when you saw the light, that we would first believe in Jesus. God's desire for every heart is that that individual would believe in his son. You can see it in passages like John four and John six. and yet we know there are many people who don't believe in his son. If it were God's decreed will that everybody should believe, he could just throw a bolt out of the blue, and we'd all become holy in about three seconds. God presents before us the truth of his son. His spirit works in our hearts to show us the reality of belief in his son. And without going any further into the theology behind that, you can say that there's nobody who God takes pleasure in the death of the wicked. God doesn't do it. God's great desire is that men would turn to him and believe on him, and in chapters in the Old Testament, like Amos five, he says repeatedly, seek me, seek me, seek me, look for me. And in the New Testament, he says very much the same thing with regard to endless exhortations to examine yourself and test the reality of faith. What God wants for you is for you to know his son and to be a child of God through faith in the Lord Jesus. I don't mean to make God sound weak. Forgive me if it comes out like that. Preachers have trouble saying things just right, but God has not made you robots. I said that before, and I repeat it again. I can gesture with both arms. I don't wait, I can't gesture much with this anymore. Arthritis has limited it to about shoulder level, but I can gesture with both arms. I don't wait from a movement to heaven to say left arm, left arm, right arm. These are kind of stupid gestures, but they're the best I can do. I really think I'm swimming on the platform, but that's it. You know, when you preach, you become aware of a lot of particular things, and I, some a few years ago, it's hard to know, a few years ago, I said to my wife or somebody, somebody, I can't even remember who I talked to anymore. I said, you know, I said, after the service this morning, uh, my hands were tired. My mouth almost never gets tired, but my hands were tired. And the fellow said, yeah, he said, you spend the whole time. It was known as the claw grip, you know, looks like that. And I suddenly realized that in intensity, I'd become a great claw gripper, grinning my fingers. That shows the intenseness of the thought. And when the meeting was over, my hands felt like I'd been beating them or blacksmithing them or something like that. Well, I didn't have to stop and say, Lord, do I have to make that gesture? Do I have to keep doing that? No, see, that's within the purview of what I want to do. I can either do this, or I can do this, or I can do this, or I can whatever I want to do. It's all within the purview of what I want to do. Do you understand that? Yes, you look like a astoundingly intelligent group. We understand that. And God wants us to believe in his son, but God does not put a little mold down and stamp us in it and put faith in our hearts. He shows us the truth. He shows us his son. His spirit makes grace available to us. What God wants for you more than anything else is that you would be illuminated. God's will is positive. He wants that more than anything else. If you don't know the Lord Jesus Christ as your savior this morning, that's what God really wants for you. But God will not, I don't know how to say it exactly, God will not come down and stand in front of you and say, I'm giving you three seconds to believe. God will not do it. He shows you the evidence, he shows you the truth, the spirit explains what it means to you, people preach it, neighbors witness it, others talk about it. But if you don't want to believe in the Lord Jesus, you can probably just stay where you are. I just kind of plead with you this morning, knowing your heart, you know it, I don't really know it, but if you don't believe in the Son of God, today's the day that you ought to make that statement of faith. Because God's will is positive, and what he wants is for you to be illuminated, that is to believe in his son. The light shines in the world. The darkness hates it, but the light shines, and God wants you to be illuminated. It's not that you don't know anything otherwise. It's not that you're a dummy. It's that you don't have eternal life. And there are some brilliant people that don't have eternal life, and some gifted people that don't have eternal life, and there are some not so gifted, not so brilliant that do. But they have it not because they're not brilliant or not because they're not great in particular gifts of the arts, but because they believe in God's Son. That's the key to life eternal. God's will is positive. Learning about God's will emphasizes that, and it begins with the concept of believing on his Son. If you press that a little further in this passage, you'll see in verse thirty four that it implies also testimony. God's will is positive. It wants us to be illuminated, to believe on his Son. Verse thirty four, positive in the sense of testimony. The writer says, you stood hand to hand with those who held the testimony of Jesus, even when people came and took your property, you stood hand to hand with those. Now, it's easy to be ashamed of people for strange causes. I, I reluctantly tell you that once in a while I was ashamed of my children, and once in a while they were ashamed of me. Kind of goes both ways. You wonder how the children can be ashamed of the father? Well, it depends on what the father does. And I have, uh, I've been a kind of a performer in many lines in my life, which I'm not doing any of them today, but I've been a performer in many lines, and and some of my children were a little tender on those particular things, and they needed to see their father looking like an idiot. Although when you're born that way, there's not a lot you can do about it. You just kind of have to live and go along with it. But one night I was preaching in our own church. One night I was preaching in our own church. It wasn't packed, it wasn't nearly full, had the normal attendance. You could have put them all on the platform with me, but anyhow, anyhow, I was preaching in the church, and I saw somebody, there are fourteen rows in our church. I saw somebody in about the twelfth row snickle a little bit, someone in the ninth row snickle a little bit, someone in the seventh row sn- sniggle is kind of laugh in a kind of a sneaky way. And suddenly, down in the front of the first row, I saw my son. He was swimming on the floor. He had swum the length of the chapel on the floor. And as he came to the front pew, see, he turned around and began swimming back. I really didn't want to, you know, I didn't, you know, I didn't want any, I didn't know what to do. It was almost as bad as the day when he was a little wee boy and he sat in the front row. A little wee boy sat in the front row, and suddenly in a very loud voice he said, Potty daddy, potty daddy, in a very loud voice in the front row. You want to look aside and say, whose kid is that? Whose kid? And the Lord says, my positive will is that you'd be enlightened and you'd believe the truth and that you'd stand for it too. That you'd stand for it too. God doesn't give us all the same gifts, we don't have all the same skills, but that we would stand for the truth too, his will, see. Sometimes we don't do it, but that's his will, that we'd stand for it. And in verse thirty five, that we'd live in assurance and confidence in him. That we'd live with the assurance of knowing that believing in God, he will honor his word and take care of us in accord with his providence. I don't mean the physical day by day take care, I mean the eternal emotional soul care, which all of us need desperately. The characteristics of God's will are positive, to believe in his son, to witness for him, to live in assurance upon him, and that's where Israel failed so often in the Old Testament, and we fail too, day and age by and large. Sometimes, not always, sometimes. The scripture is the guide to that, that his will is positive, and I know what his will is as I read the scripture day by day. I don't want to get carried away on a tangent right away, but I'll tell you that, uh, the moments when you're complaining, you're outside of God's will. It's God's will read in 1st, in first Thessalonians Thessalonians five, read it's God's will in Christ for us to be thankful. Now, I've said many times, if something's wrong, you can report it. If the potatoes are not salty enough, you can say it. You can say there's not enough salt in the potatoes. There's nothing wrong with that when you say it the first time, if the tone of voice is right. You say it the third time, the second time, you're on shaky ground. If you say it the third time, you're outside the will of God. Complaining is outside the will of God. And I went through a series in my life a couple years ago where I was very much irritated about something that my less intelligent superiors had thrust upon me. And I would sit in my office and groan and moan and groan. I didn't moan to others, groan and moan to myself. Nobody was sympathetic, so not even my wife was sympathetic. So I groan and moan to myself. And, you know, I never hear external voices. The Lord doesn't speak to me that way, but one day sitting there, one day sitting there in my heart, a little bell rang and said, are you doing the will of God? And sitting here and moaning and complaining and feeling bad, are you doing the will of God? And another little bell rang and said, no, no, of course he's not doing the will of God. I wish I could tell you that I had the power to change my personality in five seconds. I've got to work on it for weeks to make any improvement at all. So when I realized I wasn't doing the will of God, I felt a little ashamed of myself. God has done so much for me, and the only aspect of his will right there was that I should be thankful. That's pretty positive. Be thankful. Go up and say to those less than intelligent superiors, I know more than you do, but I'm glad you're here. You'll have to figure out how to say it yourself. But I want to tell you God's will is positive. I know a lot of people are afraid of it day by day, but God's will is positive. It's built on the fact that he wants you to believe in Jesus, to witness for Jesus, to live assured in himself. And that's the big emphasis that he wants. God does not want bad things for us. God does not want us to be wretched. God's will is positive towards us. Sometimes his guidance is a little tougher than his will, but God's will moves to us in that degree. Item two against verse thirty four: God's will is trustworthy or dependable. See, the writer tells us in verse thirty four a striking thing. You sympathized with those in prison. You joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property because you knew that you had yourselves better and lasting possessions. Where were those better and lasting possessions? They were in glory with God. You can't run down to the bank and borrow money against them, but they were in glory with God, and the writer says you knew that you had them, and knowing that you had them, the things that you presently had didn't mean much to you. God's will is trustworthy. We had friends whose house burned. It wasn't necessarily definitive will of God that the house burned, but the house burned. In the providence of God, the house burned. There's a house that my wife and I had lived in for a while. We thought of burning it while we were living in it, but anyhow, we had lived in it for a while, and we had left it, and these friends, who were even poorer than we were, had moved in, and one day their boy went down to shake the furnace, and he shook a woodpile, and the house caught fire and burned. They escaped with their lives. Praise the Lord, that's about all they got out with. Their lives, their automobile, which they were able to get out of the garage. Everything else went down. My wife, we went up as quickly as we could, fought through the police cordon to see our friends. And my wife got to this lady whose house was burning. Everything was going. And you know it, you know it's a kind of a funny thing, the kids' baby pictures, all that kind of stuff, it's all going. And my wife said something about it being too bad, and this woman said, yes, she said it is too bad, but she said, you know, she said they're just things. And she said, in God we have many better things than that. Well, that's true. Then when your house is burning, I'll come and tell you that. I'll be glad to do it if you need another voice. I really believe it. I'd like not to go home and find somebody stole my library, or my printing press, or anything else that I have, my mousetrap. God's will is trustworthy, and the writer says, you were willing to stand the spoiling of your goods because you believed God, and you knew that you had far greater and better possessions. What possessions? Things eternal, eternal. Things we sent unto God in faith, acts of goodness and kindness, better possessions in all eternity with those things. You know how patience is developed. We learn in Romans five that patience is developed through tribulation. So I've said many times to myself, somebody told me, and I've told lots of other people, don't pray for patience, because the standard way you get patience is through tribulation. So if you really want patience, find a nicer way to get it than that. You, do you understand? I'm not criticizing, I'm just telling you how it goes. The writer says, you know, tribulation produces patience, so if you really want patience fast, ask for tribulation. It comes better that way, but I, I'm not really big on that, you know. But the need of patience, he says in Hebrews 5, or Hebrews ten, our particular verse, after you've had patience is the way the King James says it. The King James talks about the fact, I'm sorry, the NIV talks about the fact that it isn't so much a matter of patience, but a matter of understanding what God will do for you and how God will continue to help you and how he will bless you in many different ways. You knew that you had yourselves better in particular things. So when you do the will of God and persevere in it, persevere is the NIV word, then you will understand what it means that you have better possessions with him. In Luke eighteen, you have an account where the apostles had just learned that it was hard for a rich man to be saved. The Lord says it's almost impossible that the things that are impossible with men are possible with God, so rich and poor alike can be saved. And after Peter heard that, Peter, who also speaks the Lord forthrightly, he says, Lord, he said, he said, we've given up houses and lands, we've given up everything for you. And Peter doesn't really ask a question, but he suggests one. What he suggests is, we've given up everything for you, what do we get out of it? That's what he suggests. And the Lord says, Peter, he says, there's nobody who's given up everything for me that will have far more, both in this life and the next life to come. And the Lord specifies a number of things. No, we don't suddenly say there will be a great multiplication of material goods, but I'm going to tell you that believing in Jesus Christ, I have a joy in my heart that couldn't be bought for thousands and thousands of dollars. We've sometimes been in Asheville, Tennessee, when it was cheaper to do it, and gone to the Vanderbilt Mansion in Asheville. When I first went there, it was fifty cents to go through. The last time my wife went, it was about seven bucks to go through. I hate to think what it is today. When they got above fifty cents, they lost me. I'd, I'd been there once. I'd been there once. My middle initial is V, but it could be C for cheap if you wanted to get down to it, but I'd been there once. But it's an impressive place. The Vanderbilt Mansion in the Western world is the largest private home ever built. It is three times the size of Buckingham Palace. It is enormous. There's nothing that isn't put in it for richness and all that kind of stuff. Vanderbilt himself, this was the son of Commodore Vanderbilt, died in his middle forties or sometime like that. Among his diary, among his memetums, they found a note that he had left that said, I have hardly known a single happy day in my whole life. See, in Jesus Christ, forgive me if it sounds pious, but in Jesus Christ, we possess a joy in our hearts that can't be bought with any amount of money. It's a better possession than anything the world has to offer. And along with that, we have forgiveness and peace with God, and an understanding of God's program, and rejoicing in what God's going to do. Those things exceed any good you could imagine. So the apostle says, let them spoil my stuff. I have possessions that are better and lasting and eternal, and God's will is trustworthy. I can depend upon God for all of those things, all of those things. And you can watch things burn, or you can watch them go away. I'm not saying you have to do that, but it can happen. But you set yourself in God's will, the concept of knowing Christ and testifying for him and giving yourself to him, and you discover that God's will is trustworthy. No one is misled, no one is misdirected in following God's will. I've had people to whom great tragedies come, and my heart, my heart easily is touched with those things. That's why I'm not a very good counselor. I cry too much. Tell me your problems, and I'll need three handkerchiefs. I will out-hancourcheep you rather shortly. I'm getting better control as I get older because my tear supply is running out, but... but I've had people have great problems, and they say, well, is this particular problem the will of God? Here's what I'm trying to say. In the guidance of life, many things happen. It's God's will that you trust him and find that his will is trustworthy. If you broke your finger this morning, you can't say, why did God break my finger? That's a kind of a contrary position, but that even through great trials, you trust him. And in the face of those trials, you look up and discover that his will is. See, his will is the same for everybody. Nobody can say it's God's will for me to be a grump. First Thessalonians five. No one can say it's God's will for me to live immorally. First Thessalonians four. No one can say it's God's will for me not to witness. First Peter two. It's God's will for everybody in those lives, and God's will is positive, and God's will is trustworthy. Sometimes in the course of day by day life and the way God guides us, there are a lot of things we can't understand. If there's a commitment to God, we can believe that God will make his will and his direction known to us in happy circumstances. And I get carried away on that and get semi-melodramatic, but it's a very big thing. It's we're learning about God's will, not so much about his guidance, because that's a detailed study, but in the connection with his will, it's positive and it's trustworthy. And finally, God's will is rewarding. See how he says it in verse thirty five, Don't throw away the confidence that you have in God. It will be richly rewarded. How will it be rewarded? It'll be rewarded in verse thirty six because you see the way in which God's will works, and in verse thirty seven, it will ultimately be rewarded in the coming of Jesus Christ. We may not live to see that. Some of us may. Hard to say. I'm not a date setter in prophecy, and I wish all the other date setters would quit. The Lord will come when he's ready. I was really irritated when this fellow in California, whose name was even Taylor, but there are not a, not a Taylor's have been hung in years past, and probably, but he's a, he's a man who loves the Lord. I'm not denying that, but he set dates for Christ's coming. He set them in nineteen seventy eight and seventy nine. I can't think what other years he set them in. And he had the gall to write a book and say that Jesus told us we couldn't know the day or the hour, but he didn't say we couldn't know the month and the year. I just, I just, that kind of logic always leaves me absolutely blank or cold or something like that. If you want us to know the month and the year, you told us the month and the year, you could have put off doing everything you ought to do until the day before. Uh, but he doesn't tell us that. I'm one of those men who believes the Lord should come today. I believe he could come at any time and wrap these things up, but I don't say that he's going to do it. He may have a long time in his calendar yet. They may go out and decorate my grave for a couple hundred years. You can't tell what will happen, so we leave those things in God's hands. But God's will is rewarding, and he brings to his people what is properly theirs in his time. One of these days, Christ will come. If you're already in heaven, you can kind of watch him go and come back, see? You can kind of be one of the groups in Revelation nineteen that claps him on as he wraps up things in the end of the age. And I don't mean that lightheartedly, I mean that honestly. Our loved ones are with him today, those that died in Jesus. They're with him today. They're enjoying his company, enjoying his blessing. If the Lord Jesus were to come today for us, to come to accomplish his purposes for us, they would see it from one side of heaven, and we would see it from the other. Praise the Lord. But the concept is that God's will is rewarding. God doesn't promise us things that he doesn't. I've tried to emphasize two or three times this week that we need to know what he promises so that we don't get our hopes set on something which is absolutely wrong. But God does not promise and not deliver. He brings blessing and promising in accord with his will, and he will come someday. But in the meantime, until he does come, your confidence, your trust in him is richly rewarded in dozens and dozens of ways. I always hate to be so general about it like that. If you try to tell people exactly how it's rewarded in life, apart from the joy of the heart and the blessings, it's kind of hard to say. But I'll tell you, the confidence it's given you when loved ones are called into the Lord's presence is a beautiful thing, beautiful thing. We had a, a man in our assembly some years ago, uh, during the breaking of bread meeting, he felt pains in his chest. So after the meeting, they drove him to the hospital. His wife went to the hospital too, the pains had subsided, he was eighty one years old, they'd been married sixty two years. So they drove to the hospital, and the pains had subsided by the time they got there, the initial checkups, oh, you know what you do in five minutes. I'm not a medical person, but what you do in five minutes, he seemed to be in pretty good shape. They wanted to, of course they were going to keep him and look at him and that sort of thing, and he and his wife sat down and read together from Deuteronomy thirty three about the Lord saying, I'll be with you where you go, and that sort of thing. And then she, she said, I just kissed him and left. Someone said maybe that's what got him, but anyhow, anyhow, anyhow, she kissed him and left. But by the time she got home, they called her from the hospital and said he was with the Lord, he was gone. He just laid back, and there was nothing they could do. So at the funeral, which they asked me to come and harass him at the funeral, the funeral, she said to me, she said, we had a beautiful life together, and she said, I'm certainly going to miss him, but she said, I wouldn't want him back for anything. She said, he's with the Lord. She said, he's finished his course, and she says, someday I'll finish mine, and we'll be together in the Lord's presence. And she said, I wouldn't take him back from that for anything. You understand that? The confidence that fills our hearts in a knowledge like that. And I've seen that true with people very old and people very, very little. But there are a lot of other things besides that. You don't have to weep over everything. There are a lot of great joys that come too, because God's will is rewarding. And when we put our trust in Jesus and commit ourselves to what God tells us he wants us to do, what he wants us to be, our lives are made full in the knowledge of him. Nehemiah said it years ago, the joy of the Lord is my strength. Our lives are made full in the knowledge of him, and we find in our souls the power and the courage to live day by day, and the assurance for all eternity in the good and the will of God. You know, there are lots of things you can study in life, but where a real study needs to be made is in God's will, learning about God's will, that what God wants for you is right, and that in what he wants for you, there's the trustworthiness of himself, and that what he wants for you will reward you in ways that you could never go beyond, no matter how much you would try. So the important thing is to learn about his will and to do it, to believe on his son, to have a reputation of standing for him, and to live with great confidence in God day by day. God's will is beautiful along those lines. Ah. When I was saved, I was a senior in high school. That's no big deal. People are saved in every age of life, but that's where I was. I was a senior in high school. And somewhat after that time, had the tryouts for the senior play. Well, it was a little community, and I was a little person, but I'd been in every play in thirteen grades of school. Wanted to be in the senior play. I never had the romantic lead, guys. I always had some dumb part, but I always loved it. And this particular play had a specially good dumb part. Tryouts are on Wednesday night. Does that hit your in at all? They're on Wednesday night. Church had a prayer meeting on Wednesday night. My mother trusted the Lord the same night I did. My mother had Iron Curtain will. My mother said every time the doors of this place are open for us, we'll be there. And that's where we were. I was in prayer meeting on Wednesday night, knowing that the tryouts for the play were there, and if you weren't there, you couldn't be in the play. Did I feel bad? Yes, I felt terrible. Did I sit there saying, oh God, be praised? No, I didn't say that. I'd hate to tell you what I said, but I didn't say anything loud enough for mother to hear. And actually, when prayer meeting was over, I was glad I went. You learn, you know, by hearing the word of God. I was glad I went. And next morning, when I went to school, I was even gladder, because the lady who was in charge of the play met me in the hall, and she said, nobody tried out for this part. I thought you were coming. No, I said it was the night at church. And she said, well, nobody tried out for it, so she said, I guess you can have it by default. And I kind of got it into my head at that time that if you did the will of God, you know, in some regard, every- everything would just kind of, it doesn't always happen that way. I think the next time anything might happen to me, they said, yeah, yeah, we don't need you anyway. But anyhow, doesn't always happen that way. But you discover that God's will is positive, and if we commit ourselves to Jesus and live in accord with what he wants for us, our lives are blessed, we're enriched, and God is glorified. So I commend you this morning with everything I have, the will of God, to believe on his son and to live by his word, and to have a sense of commitment to him in your life day by day. A sense of commitment to the will of God in which you look up and say, Lord, I yield myself to you. I believe on your son and take the gift of eternal life, and I yield myself to you in the other aspects of life too, that I might live out in my life the things you desire for me. If you have any questions about those things, this place is pretty busy when the service is over, and I usually stand at the door and smile at people. If you have any questions about those things, I'd be glad to discuss them with you in the next little bit. Just don't hesitate to speak to me about them. But I'll tell you, God's will is first that you be saved through belief in Jesus, second that you live in testimony for him, and third, you enjoy all the benefits and blessings that God provides for that, because his will is positive, it's trustworthy, and it's rewarding. And the one thing that you do well to learn about well is the will of God. Let's pray. Gracious Father, we thank you for your blessing to us this morning. We thank you for a will given to us which is clear. We thank you, Lord, that you've allowed us to be people who, in a reasonable sense, are free and able to respond to you in love and adoration. Thank you that you didn't just make us machines. But Lord, in the freedom you've given us and in the expression of life you've given us, we pray that we might not forget you, but that we might learn about your will and rejoice in it day by day. We thank you that your will for us included the graciousness of God to save us. And Lord, we pray this morning that there may be some with us who have never trusted Jesus. We pray that right now, in the quiet of their hearts, they'll say, Lord, I believe your son died for me. Please forgive my sin. And Lord, sometimes there are those of us who know the will of God but are unwilling to do it. Speak with us, we pray, that we'll find ourselves committed in trust to it in each walk of life. Now, we thank you we can be here this morning. We thank you for everyone who's come. We pray God the word of God would touch each heart, and we pray you would bless us in the fellowship and the occasion of this day. We ask it thankfully this morning in Jesus' wonderful name. Amen.