This morning speaks about God's word. Deuteronomy chapter four. I'll read the first 14 verses and then move over to chapter five. Deuteronomy four. This is a great passage about the place that God's word is to have in our lives. Listen now as I read it to you. This is God's holy word. Now, Israel, listen to the statutes and the judgments which I teach you to observe, that you may live. And go in and possess the land which the Lord God of your fathers is giving you. You shall not add to the word which I command you, nor take from it that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you. Your eyes have seen what the Lord did at Baal Peor, for the Lord your God has destroyed from among you all the men who followed Baal of Peor. But you who held fast to the Lord your God are alive today, every one of you. Surely, I have taught you statutes and judgment, just as the Lord God commanded me that you should act according to them in the land which you go to possess. Therefore, be careful to observe them, for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples who will hear all these statutes and say, surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. For what great nation is there that has God so near to it as the Lord our God is to us for whatever reason we may call upon him? And what great nation is there that has such statutes and righteous judgments as are in all this law which I set before you this day? Only take heed to yourself and diligently keep yourself, lest you forget the things your eyes have seen, and lest they depart from your heart all the days of your life. And teach them to your children and your grandchildren, especially concerning the day you stood before the Lord your God in Horeb, when the Lord said to me, Gather the people to me and I will let them hear my words. that they may learn to fear me all the days they live on the earth and that they may teach their children. Then you came near and stood at the foot of the mountain. The mountain burned with fire to the midst of heaven with darkness, a cloud and thick darkness. And the Lord spoke to you out of the midst of the fire. You heard the sound of the words, but saw no form. You only heard a voice. So he declared to you his covenant, which he commanded you to perform. The Ten Commandments. And he wrote them on two tablets of stone. And the Lord commanded me at that time to teach you statutes and judgments that you might observe them in the land which you cross over to possess. And we'll move over to chapter five and continue with the reading of God's holy word. Moses called all Israel and said to them, Hero Israel, the statutes and the judgments which I speak in your hearing today, that you may learn them and be careful to observe them. The Lord, our God, made a covenant with us in Horeb The Lord did not make this covenant with our fathers, but with us, those who are here today, all of us who are alive. The Lord talks with you face to face on the mountain for the midst of the fire. I stood between the Lord and you at that time to declare to you the word of the Lord, for you were afraid because of the fire. You did not go up the mountain. He said, I am the Lord, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourselves a carved image, any likeness of anything that is in heaven above or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love me and keep my commandments. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. For the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain. Observe the Sabbath day to keep it holy as the Lord your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work, you nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your ox, nor your donkey, nor any of your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. And remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt and the Lord your God brought you out from there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm. Therefore, the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day on your father and your mother is the Lord your God has commanded you that your days may be long and that you may do and that you may be well. It may be well with you in the land which the Lord your God has given you. You shall not murder. You should not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife. You shall not desire your neighbor's house, his field, his male servant, his female servant, his ox, his donkey or anything that is your neighbor's. These words, the Lord spoke to all your assembly in the mountains in the midst of the fire, the cloud and the thick darkness with a loud voice. And he added no more. And he wrote them on two tablets of stone and gave them to me. There we'll end our reading of God's word from the Old Testament. Now let's go over to our New Testament reading and the portion I'll be preaching from, Ephesians 5, verse 15 to 17. And if you were here last week, you know that I've already preached on verses 15 and 16. And this week we're going to be looking in particular at verse 17. But I'll read all three of these verses this morning. Ephesians 5, verse 15 through 17. See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time because the days are evil. Therefore, do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is. God bless these words to our understanding. As we look to God for understanding from his word, as we hear his law and we desire to apply it to our lives, let's sing Psalm 25C. where we're given assurance that God will indeed cause us to understand and to walk in his way if we are his people. Psalm 25 C. The Lord is good and just. the way he'll sinners show. The meek in judgment he will guide and make his path to know. All pathways of the Lord are truth and mercy sure. To such as keep his covenant and testimonies pure. Now for thine own name's sake, O Lord, I thee entreat to pardon my iniquity, for it is very great Who fears the Lord is taught the way to understand. His soul shall ever dwell at ease. His feet possess the land. The secret of the Lord Shall all who fear him know The knowledge of his covenant He unto them will show My eyes upon the Lord Continually are set For he it is that shall bring forth thy feet out of the net. Today we have the encouragement of the congregation of welcoming Rebecca Gillingham and her membership of this congregation. This is an immense privilege for us because Rebecca comes to us by profession of faith. We celebrate with her the glorious fact that she has now trusted in Jesus Christ and therefore shares with us and the hope of eternal life and with all of God's people all over the world. It's our sister in Christ. She is going to live in God's house is God's own daughter for all eternity. Through the blood of Christ, all of her sins have been forgiven, and by the working of the Holy Spirit, she is able to begin to live a whole new life of fruitfulness for the Lord. Walking with Him, knowing Him, living in communion with Him. It is a marvelous reality for all of you who are trusting in Jesus Christ that you also have been brought from darkness to the light of the Lord. You're able to also live a whole new life, a life growing into the fullness of God's likeness. If that has become a dull thing for you, you need to renew your zeal for this. It's a life that sheds the old ways and puts on the new ways that God has called us into by His grace. You're being renewed by the power of God so that you're becoming more and more like Jesus Christ. Just think what it will be like when God is finished with us and when we're in heaven, having been perfected in Christ Jesus, when we actually love as He loves, when all of our selfishness is gone, all of our doubts, all of our murmurings, all of our greediness, all of our lusts. And we are holy as He is holy. We adore the Father. As He adores the Father, we love one another as He loves us. This is the life that God has called you to live, to be taken from where you are to there. This is the life that He is bringing you into by His power and grace. He has promised to work in all of those who come to Him in faith. If you're a Christian, He has put it into your heart. to yearn for this new life. It's attractive to you. You are now a person that delights in becoming all that God has for you to be. You struggle because you've not yet attained, but you press on and hope, looking to Him to do what He has promised concerning you. This being so, it behooves you to be careful how you walk because the days are evil. There are enemies who desire to lead you away from God's calling into many by paths and distracted ways. There are temptations. There are sinful lusts within you. There are trials. There are hardships. And so, as we saw last week in Ephesians 5.15, you need to walk circumspectly because the days are evil. Not as a fool who acts as if there is no danger. but as one who is wise. You have to be on guard. You have to watch your heart, lest you begin to be drawn away and enticed, lest you grow cold and lose your zeal for the things that God has given to you so graciously. It is for you then to, as it says in verse 16, to redeem the time, to redeem every moment, to take possession, as we saw last week, of every moment, to take it for yourself. to buy it all up for service to God, to see that no time is wasted. You are here in this world only for a short time compared to eternity. Then there is death. And after that, the judgment. It is here in this world only that you have opportunity to bring forth fruit for eternal life. This is the time to bear fruit in preparation for the harvest of the last day. It is only in this world that you will be able to bear the cross, to suffer with Christ, to suffer for Christ, to love others when love is not returned, to go on serving your Lord and love to Him when it is difficult. Whatever you do now will count for all eternity. Surely you want to make the most of every moment. But if you're going to make the most of every moment, It is essential that you understand what the will of God is. This brings us to verse 17. If you're going to walk circumspectly, if you're going to redeem the time, you have to know what the Lord wants of you. And if you remember, I told you last week that understanding the will of the Lord is such an important topic and yet such a misunderstood topic that I wanted to devote an entire sermon to it. So that's what we're going to do today. We can devote a year of sermons to it or more than that. But today we're going to focus in on this particular topic. And so to start off with, I want to show you that it is essential for you to know the will of God if you're going to walk circumspectly in God's way, if you're going to redeem the time. This is obvious, isn't it? If you don't understand the will of God, then you can't do the will of God. If you don't know what is pleasing to the Lord, then you may end up doing what he hates. without even realizing it. Even when you're trying to please Him. He's God. We're fallen. Fallen, sinful creatures. Fallen creatures, we don't always know what God wants. We don't always understand. We confuse evil and good. We have an attraction for evil. And sometimes we're so twisted that we actually think that we're doing the will of God when we're doing the opposite to the will of God. In John 16, Jesus told His disciples that they would be persecuted by the Jews and put out of their synagogues and even killed. And that some of the people who persecuted them would honestly think that they were doing the will of God. Here, His disciples would be telling the world about the glorious salvation that God had brought into the world through Jesus Christ. And these perverted souls would honestly think that they were serving God when they tried to stop these servants of Jesus Christ. The Apostle Paul himself was like that before his conversion. He went around imprisoning the followers of Christ and even having a hand in the murder of some of them. And he tells us afterward that he did it ignorantly and in unbelief. He thought that he was serving God. Now, how awful it would be to spend your time zealously serving God, so you think, and then find out at the end that everything you had done was offensive to God. I don't think this is something that just happened in the time of the apostles when they were persecuted by the Jews. My brothers and sisters, there are thousands And there are even millions of people in the world today who think that God is pleased with them when in fact they are under his condemnation. There are those who do not know that our persons in our works and our service are unacceptable to God because of our sin. They do not know how offensive it is for them to go on before God without dealing with their sin. for them to dare to worship God when they have not first been reconciled to God. As if everything is okay. They're like the guy that I told you about before, who murders your family, who burns down your house, and then comes to you the next day and expects you to be pleased with him because you offer to mow his lawn without charge. That's what people are like who try to serve God without being reconciled to him. Except they're worse because they sinned against the most high God and they're ignoring that. They're acting as if there's no problem. They're acting as if the most high God is not a holy God. And if their sin is not offensive, so offensive that it even required the death of God's son. In order for atonement to be made that nothing else would satisfy the wrath of the holy God. You see, it's a greater front to the living God. We're so corrupt, though, in our nature that we don't grasp this. We don't see what we are before him because we don't see who he is. There are many who think their works are acceptable to God. Without a redeemer, many who think their worship is acceptable to God who have never been converted and trusted in the Lord Jesus. Many who rejoice in what they call a personal relationship with Christ when they have, in fact, never truly rested in Him for the forgiveness of sin as He has offered to us. Many, He tells us Himself to whom He will say at the last day or many who will say to Him, Lord, Lord, Have we not prophesied in your name, cast out demons in your name and done many wonders in your name? And he said that he will declare to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you who work iniquity. Truly, this is a fearful thing. And it is our temptation as we hear such things to say that's not fair. They were sincere. They were trying to serve God. But it's not unfair when you understand the demerit of human sin. The Bible says that there are many who have a zeal for God that's not according to knowledge. This reminds you then how important it is to spread the message of the gospel to all, because people are going to perish in their ignorance. They will perish because they do not know the will of God. But there can also be a problem with ignorance. even after you have become a believer. And that's what especially concerns us here this morning who know Christ. Of course, it's not nearly so serious. The problem is trying to worship God apart from Christ. We can serve God with all of our imperfections and he receives our service despite the imperfections if we're in Jesus Christ, because his blood covers all of our sin. But it still hinders you when you do something other than the will of God from bearing fruit that you might otherwise bear. and from growing into the fullness of the life that God has called you into. Walking carefully, you see, walking circumspectly involves making sure that you understand what the will of God is. That you understand what is pleasing to the Lord. Making sure that you understand it so that you won't be wasting away your life. Let me give you an example from the Old Testament of believers. who displeased the Lord when they thought they were serving Him. It's an example that flows through many pages of the Old Testament. The worship of God at the high places. Under every king but two in the 400 years or so from King Saul until the captivity, Israel worshiped God at the high places. The majority of the people did not think they were doing anything wrong when they worshipped to the high places. They were worshipping God in the places where the Canaanites had worshipped their gods. They were claiming for Jehovah the territory and the worship that had belonged to idols. They were zealously offering sacrifices, burning incense and showing their love and their devotion to God. The majority of the people that were doing this were honestly trying to serve God. But in the history of the kings of Israel, we're told again and again that this worship did not please God. He had commanded that no sacrifice be offered except at the temple in Jerusalem. They had forgotten that commandment, and so had their leaders. Again and again, we read comments like this comment about Asa in first Kings 15, first Kings 15, 11. Asa did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, as did his father David. And he banished the perverted persons from the land and removed all the idols that his father had made. We're told that he even dealt with his own grandmother. But the high places were not removed. Now, you must not think that these people were going to all this effort to worship God at the high places. bringing their sacrifices. It was a costly thing, making their offerings, building their altars, setting up their services and all the while thinking we're going to do this and God, even though God doesn't approve of it. No, they weren't thinking that at all. In fact, later on in the history of Israel, when Hezekiah was withstanding the king of Assyria, the king of Assyria used this to try to sway the people to come to him to submit to him because he said, what makes you think that Jehovah is going to protect you in the city of Jerusalem when your king Hezekiah has destroyed his places of worship? You see, there are people in the community of God's people who thought it was wrong for the high places to be destroyed. And of course, I'm sure that that Sennacherib, the Assyrian had consulted with his analysts and had learned that this is a political point where he could score favor with the people, that they'd say, yes, Hezekiah tore down the high places. They thought it was wrong, you see, to tear down the high places. But now we have the advantage, you see, of coming and reading the history of this and seeing the Lord saying again and again in his word that they serve God faithfully, except They worship the high places. And we know that Josiah and Hezekiah were right when they came forth and destroyed the high places. It was a debate in their own day. Now, I would submit to you that there is a lot of worship like this today as well. Christians have this idea, like the Old Testament believers did, that God does not care how we appear before him as long as we're sincere. We even think that he's extra pleased with our creativity. in worship. And so you have everything. From Bobo the Clown. To a highly trained, sophisticated musical performance. From a stand up comedy. To men walking around with robes waving incense. From an altar call. To a pep rally. From prayers to the saints. To tongues that cannot be understood. from singing uninspired songs to reading from uninspired books, is that these are equal with Scripture. Like Israel of old, we greatly err in assuming that God is pleased with our innovations and what we bring when, in fact, he has told us how he wants to be worshipped and he has commanded us to neither add nor take away from what he has appointed. That is just one example, you see, of how believers may be ignorant of God's will. This just goes to show that as believers, you need to be sure that you understand what God's will is. If you don't know better than you might think that you are doing great service to God, say, by marrying an unbeliever, maybe I'll marry an unbeliever so that I can lead him to the Lord. Well, that sounds like a real sacrificial kind of thing to do, doesn't it? Pleasing to the Lord. But then if you consult God's word, you find that it's not his will for a believer to marry an unbeliever. In fact, he forbids it in his word. Or you might think that it would be pleasing to the Lord to live in a commune, to have shared property and shared spouses and shared everything that we we give of everything we have and share it with one another. But of course, if you consult with the word of God, you find in the Ten Commandments that we're not to take one another's property, that God has appointed that we own property. And you find that he has said that adultery is a violation of his commandments, that one man and one woman are to be joined together in marriage, that that's a sacred bond that's not to be violated. You see, you need to know what God wants so you can redeem the time and walk in his ways, being careful to do what he wants. You have to be able to understand the difference between what is right, what is wrong, what is pleasing, what is not pleasing, what is good, what is evil, not based upon your own judgment. Your judgment's not set. You have to base your judgment upon God's word. And the good news is, you see, that you don't have to be ignorant because God brings his word to us. He gives us his word as we sang about in Psalm 147. This brings us to our second point, then. God has revealed to you all that you need to know in order that you might do his will. He's revealed it to you in Scripture. Now, you notice I didn't say, though, that he revealed everything about everything. But everything you need to know in order that you may do his will, in order to serve him and please him. Deuteronomy 29, 29 explains this. It says the secret things belong to the Lord, our God. But those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law. Now, you see, there are a lot of people that get this wrong. There are a lot of people that want God to tell them the future. There are more concerned about the secret things that God has not revealed than they are about the things that God has given to us in order that we may serve him. They want to pry into his secrets and find out what's going to happen ahead. Or they want to find out if today is the lucky day for them that they should go and and not apply for a job or that they should should do some other thing. This is a large part of what pagan spirituality is about. Anytime you see this in Christianity, it's been brought over from paganism, getting an inside line with with the deity, finding out if the car you're about to purchase is going to be a good car, not trying to get insight through some kind of divination. It's sad to see Christians doing this kind of thing. They spend their time looking for pointers and indicators within their circumstances of what God is trying to tell them or show them. It's like looking at the clouds to see a pattern or looking at the liver of a sheep or whatever it may be. They look for affirmations and signs. There's a lot of valuable time wasted. They might have been serving God. You see that Deuteronomy 29.29 says that the secret things belong to the Lord, our God. and that He has given to us plainly all that we need to know in His Word. Not information about which car is going to be the best car, but about how you can serve Him, what's pleasing to Him, how you can live in communion with Him and bear fruit. That's what you need to know. God has revealed all this to you in His Word. This is where you find everything that you may understand His will is in His Word. 2nd Timothy 3. We looked at this not too long ago. I think on Sunday evening. 2nd Timothy 3 15 through 17 tells us that the Scripture is God breathed and holy sufficient not only to make us wise for salvation, but also to show us the way of, but also to teach us, to show us what is wrong with us, to show us how to correct what is wrong with what is right. and then to guide us to continue in that way. Here's what it says, 2 Timothy 3, 15. Paul speaking to Timothy from childhood, you have known the holy scriptures which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus. So the scriptures show us the way of salvation. And then he goes on. All scripture is given by inspiration of God or God breathed and is profitable for doctrine. for reproof, for correction, for instruction and righteousness that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work. A doctrine that's teaching, telling you what you need to know. Reproof, that's showing you what is wrong with you. Correction, that's showing you how to correct what is wrong with you. And instruction and righteousness, that's putting you in the path of God to continue in the path of God. According to this verse, there is nothing missing from Scripture that there's nothing that you need to know that is not there to point you into the way of God's will. The word translated thoroughly equipped in this verse was used to describe the outfitting of a boat when it was getting ready to go out to sea. You had to put everything on because when you got out to sea, you can't run down to the store and pick up a few things that you forgot. What you have, you have. And this says God's word thoroughly furnishes us. with all that we need for life and godliness. So if you want to understand God's will and you consult God's word, you go to the pages of scripture. Let me give you some examples of things that God's word tells you. It reveals to you what to do if you have a personal enemy. What does it say? It says if that enemy is hungry, give him something to eat. If he's thirsty, give him something to drink. Overcome evil with good. So you know what to do now. You know what God's will is when you have an enemy. It tells you God's will about whom to marry. Not a specific person. That's the secret thing that belongs to God. It's information that some people seek. But it tells you that it's to be someone who is a believer. Someone with whom you can serve God, and it tells you that a woman in a godly home is to obtain the consent of her father before she marries. It tells you God's will about your work. Not exactly which job you're going to you ought to take. God doesn't tell you and reveal to you that in three weeks this company is going to go belly up that you just got a job with. That's not information that he gives you. No, he tells you about how to do your work with honesty and integrity, how to do it diligently as unto the Lord and not unto men, how to do it without complaining and that you are And that you're not to do your work, any work that is dishonest or that would cause you to violate God's commandments and performing it. The Scriptures tell you what to do when you're anxious and worried, to focus on what God has given you to do today and do it and not sit around worrying about the future. There's enough trouble for today, Jesus said, to keep you occupied. And Philippians 4, the apostle tells us that we should pray. Focus our mind on what we're being given to do and on the things that are good and right and noble rather than on our fears. How do the Scriptures then reveal God's will to you? Those are some examples how it tells you all about what you need to know. But how do the Scriptures reveal God's will to you? How do they do it? Well, first of all, they do it by clear and direct commandments that God has given to us. Just glance back over the material that we've been looking at in Ephesians four and five lately. There's a wealth of counsel there from God telling you how he wants you to live in unity with one another, unity that's based on his word. He tells you to put off the old man, put on a new man that's renewed in the likeness of Christ. He tells you to speak the truth. He tells you to replace ungodly anger with holy anger, to stop stealing and start working. To be done with rotten words and to speak rather gracious words, to put away bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, evil speaking, and to forgive as Christ has forgiven you. To be completely clear of all sexual immorality and to live in gratitude instead. To walk in the light and to expose deeds of darkness. To walk circumspectly, redeeming the time. That's the will of God. Then there are places like the Ten Commandments or the call of Jesus that we're to love as He has loved us. There are the many exhortations throughout Scripture that we're to praise the most high God. Of course, most basic of all, there is the call to repent and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, without which, as I have already shown you, we cannot even begin to serve God until we have first been reconciled with him. In these commands, you see, you have the will of God clearly laid out for you from Scripture. But there are also other ways that we are shown the will of God in Scripture. There are many accounts that are full of examples for us to learn from. We have besides commandments, we have these many other ways. We have the example of Abraham learning to trust in God or to follow. We have the example of Job and his patience when he was afflicted. What an instructive material that is for us. We have the negative example that I referred to before, Israel's worship at the high places. We have the admonitions and the warnings of the prophets. We have the example of Jesus Christ that we follow as it is appropriate to us. We have the revelation of the life of Christ that presents him as our savior so that we may trust in him. All of this is part of the completeness of God's revealed will to us as his people so that you may understand it and do it. How do you go about gaining an understanding of God's will from the scripture? Well, you to seek to understand it through personal study. Don't just read the Bible as a spiritual exercise or ritual. You know, some people that do that, it's kind of like a little ritual that, oh, I did my Bible reading. And if you ask them what they read, they have no idea what they read, but they did their little thing for God. No, we come to God's word to to search it out and to look for what he has to say to us. We hunger. It's those who are seeking treasure that we can implement in our life and that we can adorn, be adorned with the truth of God. As Proverbs tells us, we come to the Scriptures with questions looking for how I can be a more godly husband in my home, how I can be a better wife and serving my husband or in caring for my children. But not only should there be personal study of the word, You also should seek to understand God's will through diligent teaching, attention to the preaching of God's word. God has ordained preaching to reveal his will to his people. I was amazed a few years ago in a study that I did to see how much more prevalent the God's preached word is commended to us, how much more often The preached word is commended to us even in our own personal study. It's all through the New Testament, the emphasis upon preaching in the place of preaching. God has sent forth preachers to preach the gospel to all nations. And part of their mandate is not only to introduce people to Christ, but then to teach them to observe all things that Christ has commanded, to teach them to do the will of God. In Romans 16, 25, Paul says now to him who is able to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ. In Romans 10, 14, he shows that Christ himself is heard through preaching. He says, how then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? Do you know what that literally says? It doesn't literally say And how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? But it says, And how shall they believe in him whom they have not heard? He is showing that through preaching the very voice of Jesus Christ is heard, that by the Spirit's working, the word of Christ comes to us. We're going to look at this more tonight. But you are to give diligent attention to the word preached. Because that is how God has appointed to make His will known to His people. Don't have time to say all that the Scriptures say about this, but you have a duty to place yourself under the sound preaching of God's Word and to listen to that preaching diligently as if Christ Himself is speaking to you because He is. Now, I don't mean that you're not to test what is preached. to see if it conforms to the Word of God. You are, Isaiah says, if they do not speak according to this word, it's because there's no light in them. But Paul commends and Paul commends the Bereans for checking out what he said from Scripture. But if that preaching is from the Word of God, if it is true to the Word of God, you're to receive it as if Christ himself has spoken to you, because the minister is an ambassador for him speaking in his stead. And as much as he speaks God's word, it comes to you with all the authority of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ speaks through the mouth of preachers. But personal study and preaching does not exhaust the way to understand God's will from his word. You also need godly counsel. Proverbs 11 14 says that there is safety in a multitude of counselors. Sometimes you have questions about God's will. You have questions about how to apply God's Word, how to understand God's Word, or you're unable to find answers in God's Word for things that you need to serve God. Well, this is when you will do well to seek guidance from others, pastors, from elders, from parents, from friends. But here again, you must make sure that what they tell you is true to the Word of God. What they should be doing is lifting the Word of God and opening it to you. Rather than telling you something over here that is in competition with the Word of God. Fourthly, you must seek to learn God's will from the Word through prayer. It's vain to come to the Scriptures or to preaching or to counseling or anything else. Whatever way you come to the Scriptures, unless God's Spirit works to enable you to understand. Many distort the Scriptures and misapply them. This is why you need to pray. and ask God to grant you understanding from His Word. We are given an example of that prayer in the psalm that we've been focusing on, Psalm 25. Show me your ways, O Lord. Teach me your paths. You see, there's a crying out for it. Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation. On you I wait all the day. Now, there are many other examples of prayer for understanding and enlightenment, for wisdom. But remember that the wisdom that you need It's not wisdom from the air. It's not wisdom from your own heart. It's wisdom from the Word of God. Don't pray for some other kind of understanding from God. Ask for wisdom that comes through the word. If you need to seek to learn God's will through meditation, someone admonishes us or tells us of the godly man who meditates on God's law day and night. Now, what does that mean? Does that mean he sits around with his legs crossed in some cave somewhere? No, he does it day and night. He does it when he goes into battle. He does it when he goes into the field. He does it when he's at home with his children. He's constantly looking at the Word of God this way and that way in order to apply it in his life. You see, that Eastern kind of meditation, New Age meditation, is the opposite of biblical meditation. Biblical meditation is applying these things, looking at all the ways that it works out in my life so that I can get the Word of God from here into my life, into my fingertips, into what I'm doing all the time. This is the goal of meditation. How is this to work out in my life? How is it to work out in my family's life? How am I to apply these things that I have learned? Memorize scriptures, and that's important to facilitate meditation. But don't stop with just learning them by rote. There are many people who have tremendous knowledge of the scriptures who have no idea about how to apply them because they don't meditate. So you see that knowing God's will is really quite a straightforward thing. It comes down to seeking his will as it is revealed to us from scripture. It's a lifelong process. There's always more to learn and there's hard work if you're going to make progress. But God promises to show you his will if you will seek it. And he will. He has given you a heart to seek him and he will show you his way. That's the promise of Psalm 25. But I want you to notice what else Paul says in Ephesians 5 17. He not only tells you to understand what the will of the Lord is, but he also says, don't be unwise. Now, of course, the most obvious way to be unwise is to not care about the will of the Lord, to not bother even with trying to do the will of God. I've already spoken to you about the importance of knowing God's will. But even after you're committed to finding out what the will of the Lord is, you can be foolish in the way that you attempt to understand his will. I tell you that there is no shortage of foolishness. when it comes to ways that Christians attempt to understand the will of God. So now let me show you foolish ways to avoid an understanding God's will. Don't be foolish. First, do not use your feelings as the basis of guidance. People will say things like, oh, I just I just knew I just knew it was right. Or perhaps I felt a real peace about this decision. And then you hear them say that the thing that they felt peace about was that they should leave their husband because they didn't like living with him anymore, even though they didn't have any grounds for divorce. Yes, you felt a real peace about it. But that peace didn't come from God. Or they just felt like it was wrong to chasten their children. Well, too bad. The Bible says otherwise. This is no way to determine the will of God. You see, Proverbs warns that there is a way that seems right to man, that the end of that way is death. The truth is not found within you. It is found from God's Word. Jeremiah says our hearts are deceitful and desperately wicked. Don't look into your heart as if it's a good place to find the will of God. It's not. It's deceitful and desperately wicked. It's darkened by sin. We need the scriptures. We need God's word from without, not understanding from ourselves. However, it's true that you should not violate your conscience if you want to call that your feelings. The thing is, though, if you're a Christian, your mind has been renewed by the spirit of God so that your conscience is now bound to the word of God. You have learned that the Bible is God's word so that when you think something is wrong and God's word says it's right, or vice versa, then your conscience is obliged to submit to what the Word says. You have to struggle for it a bit. You may struggle with, does the Scripture really say this? You may wrestle around with it for a while, but you can't part yourself from the Scripture if you are a true child of God. You've been joined to Christ through His Word, through the Word of faith. Feelings and even conscience then, you see, are not to be your ultimate guide, but the Holy Spirit speaking through Scripture. OK, that's the first foolish way. Secondly, do not use impressions as a basis for guidance. Now, this is similar. But when we were in Alberta, we met a woman who had gone into the ministry and this is the pastoral ministry. And this is the reason she gave. She said, well, I never really wanted to be a pastor, but God had other plans. I couldn't refuse because this is what he told me to do. And that's a classic case of relying on impressions rather than Scripture of using impressions to trump the Word of God. The Scripture says that a woman is not to teach in the church or to exercise authority. Now, whatever voice this woman heard, whatever impression she got telling her to go into the pastoral ministry, it was not the voice of God because God gave us the Bible and he does not contradict himself in his Word. OK, but what about those like the woman who tells you that She received an impression from God that her husband was in danger. Revelation, impression, whatever you might want to call it. And she stopped what she was doing and she went to pray for her husband because she just knew that he was in danger. And then she found out later that, sure enough, he'd been in a car accident. And that he had been rescued from a entrapment in that car in answer to her prayers. Was that God not impressing this woman to pray for her husband? The answer to that is both yes and no. Yes, because in his providence, this woman received an impression that alerted her to the danger that her husband was in. And I don't say that that's impossible. But no, because it was not God telling her what his will was, telling her to pray. This is not where you find God's will. Not any more than a phone call that tells her that her husband was just in a terrible accident. would also alert that woman to pray. The information comes to us in whatever way through God's providence. And yes, that's through God's providence. So you can call that God bringing it to you or showing it to you. But it's not God telling you what to do, because you see, his providence isn't what told her to pray. His providence brought before her a situation and then God's word tells her to pray for those who are in need. The directive came from God's word not from the impression. Now, you might say, what does it matter if she says that God told her to pray for him? Well, the danger is this. If people see their impressions as God speaking to them, then those impressions are necessarily going to be more important than the Scripture. Let me give you an example. When God told Abraham to go and offer his son as a sacrifice, it didn't matter what he said to Noah before that about murder, because God had spoken directly and personally to Abraham And everything else was laid aside to do what God has said. A personal command from God like that is to be obeyed regardless of the general prohibitions of God's word. Now, is that not what these women do who say that they've been called into the pastoral ministry when God's word says otherwise? The problem is, you see, we're given guidelines concerning that matter. We're given guidelines in Scripture of the selection of church officers. And these guidelines do not apply to prophets or priests or kings that God directly and personally called in Scripture. God can call anybody he wants. But as far as us with the office of a pastor or an elder, he's given us guidelines that we're to follow. You see, these are standing offices of the church, and he's appointed a way of selection that the church is to use. And they cannot be disregarded because of the assumed impression that someone got from the Lord that they've been called to this or that they cannot be disregarded without violating the will of God. You see, David, for example, is a man that could not be a pastor. Why? Because David had more than one wife. He couldn't be a pastor in the New Testament. But David was called directly by God to be a king, and he was made directly by God a prophet. God calls those offices. He can call whoever he wishes. But for the standing offices, we have to go by the guidelines of scripture. Now, it is our belief as in our congregation, according to our confession in our church, that special revelation has ceased now that the scriptures are complete. The teaching of our confession. But if someone wants to claim to receive special revelation today, then I say, fine, let him be given the text of Deuteronomy. That test is that he must never once err in his prophecies, and that if he does, he must be dealt with as a false prophet. Of course, they were supposed to be stoned in the Old Testament. Let him be confirmed by signs and wonders. Let him be confirmed by real miracles and real healings and real prophecies. You see, why did God say that? It's because God is very serious about someone making a claim that he said something when you didn't say it. God wants us to be sure of His Word. He doesn't have prophets that are running around, some half-caught prophet going around saying things that God has never said. There were many of those, of course, that were around in Jeremiah's day and Isaiah's day that made all sorts of prophecies and God despised them because they claimed to speak words that God never spoke. It's a very serious thing to say God told me this. If God really came and spoke to you personally like that, it doesn't matter what else, anything else His word says or anything. That is the most important thing. And people go around saying that in a very casual way. God told me to do this. God told me to do that when it doesn't come from His word. OK, thirdly, do not use circumstances as the basis for guidance. I'm wording this carefully. I'm not saying they have nothing to do with where you go. But you don't use them as the basis for knowing God's will. Christians will sometimes say things like, I knew God wanted me to have this job because, you see, I lost my job and I was walking home on my last day of that job and I saw this poster. It was advertising this job and I went in to apply for it immediately. And when I got there, they told me that it was the last day and they were so glad I came. because their advertising had failed to get out and they only got that one poster up that I saw. And then I knew that God had given me this job. See, or another story. Well, see, I was I was going to go and reconcile with Jim. But God closed the door. As you see, I have flat tire on the way to his house. So then I knew that God was telling me it's not time. You need to do this later. Maybe next year you can take this matter up. Well, you see, there's an open door and a closed door, right? So God told you what to do through an open door and a closed door. No, the problem is the open door and the closed door doesn't have directions on it from God. In both cases, the door was interpreted to mean something, but the interpretation you see has to come from Scripture, not just from your own head. It has to be a directive from the Bible. Suppose that the job that you so providentially encountered and had an open door for was a job at an escort service. Well, guess what? The open door was an open door to temptation, not an open door for godliness. It was not the will of God to go through that door. Yes, an open door is always an opportunity, but it's not necessarily an opportunity that God wants you to enter. You have to test. from Scripture. If you're a fireman and a house is burning down and you encounter a closed door when you arrive and there are people inside, then it is God's will for you to get your axe out and to beat that door down no matter what you have to do. You see, a closed door in that case is one that's to be knocked down. Maybe the guy that was going to reconcile with Jim should have taken a bus after he had a flat tire. Or maybe he should have hitchhiked. You're not to let anything stop you short of death in going to reconcile with a brother. The scripture is clear. It's to be done right away. Fourthly, do not use experience as a basis for guidance. You surely heard the church growth experts tell you what the will of God is for your church and increasing attendance and things like that. They do studies to decide how God is to be worshiped. based upon how many people will be drawn out to the service. Something works, then do it this way. Having a celebrity in is the way, then have celebrities in. If having a stand up comedian is the way, then do that. It has to be God's will, because look, it's proven it works. God has authorized it by blessing it. So the assumption goes. Now, this is the way the so-called evangelist Charles Finney did things. He adjusted his practices in order to get results. At the end of the day, he had some of the worst theology you could ever find and some of the most converts that you could ever find. I think it's safe to say that this man was not a true believer. If you read his writings, he even denied the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ. But sadly, to this very day, there are many who follow him because he was so successful. The emergent church movement is really the same error with new clothing. It's about using methods that will speak to our society, even when those methods are not authorized in scripture. Like Finney, there are great results. But as with Finney, the very gospel for which all of this is supposedly being done is compromised and in some cases entirely lost. Of course, experience can be useful. The experience you have is experience in applying God's word. Yes, even tradition itself can be helpful in serving God if the traditions have grown out of his word and are in conformity to God's word. For example, as Christians, we devise ways of doing family worship or ways of courtship, of joining our children in marriage to one another. These ways is based upon scripture. can be the will of God. You kind of develop methodologies for applying the things that God has and different ways that they could be applied. But as a community, you begin to develop these things. The danger comes when we confuse tradition with scripture or when we assume that it has to be right because we've been doing it this way for so long. The Roman Catholic Church has certain traditions that are just plain wrong. Traditions that have grown up around ideas that are not scriptural. Traditions like praying to Mary or the saints, something that God nowhere authorized in his word. People feel comfortable because it has such a long history. You see, we naturally grow very comfortable with tradition because then once you have a way of doing it, you don't have to think about how to do it. You don't have to figure it out again. I'm not saying we should always have to figure it out. If you've done it before, you know what to do. But the tradition, if the tradition is wrong, Then that makes it very hard to break the traditions, to shake people from it. They want to latch on to it because it's so familiar and so comfortable. We always need to be ready then to evaluate what we do based on scripture. Jesus accused the Jews of his day of making the word of God of no use by their traditions. Fifthly, do not use counsel as the basis for guidance. Counsel, if not according to scripture, is wrong. Your dear old mother is wrong if she advises you to pray to a saint. Your psychiatrist is wrong if his counsel is based on the presupposition that there is no such thing as sin or that sin can be treated with medication. It doesn't matter how many degrees he may have. If he does not speak according to God's word, there's no light in him. Your pastor is wrong if he tells you that your problem is that you have a demon of anger or demon of lust. There's not a single example in scripture of such demons. You don't have a problem with demons. You have a problem with sin. You don't need exorcism. You need repentance. The parenting book is wrong if it tells you that your one year old cannot understand retribution or that spanking your child will damage your child, or if it tells you that teenage rebellion is a healthy part of growing up. The Bible has a very different take on that and counsel is wrong. If it is not in accord with Scripture, I've already spoken about the proper use of counsel, though, when it is counsel that shows you God's will from God's word and counsel is good. It's to be used. But there's a huge problem today of people receiving counsel that is not of God just because it comes from an expert, just because the pastor said it, just because the expert in whatever field said it, Isaiah 8 must be remembered no matter who it is. To the law and to the testimony, if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them. Always measure what you are told in counsel by scripture. The Bible is the only rule of faith and obedience. And it is here and here alone that we learn the will of God. So my friends. Do not be unwise. But understand what the will of the Lord is, surely all of you who belong to him want to please him. Surely you do. Surely you want to do things that will lead you along in the way of becoming more like Jesus Christ. But as a first principle, remember, you can neither understand or do God's will apart from God's grace. The only reason that is even possible is talk about understanding God's will and about walking in God's will is because Christ came to give you life, because he is giving you his spirit. who is at work in you to make you like Him. Don't suppose for a moment that you can please God apart from His grace, that you can just come to the Scripture and start trying to obey things without coming to Christ. Understand how it is that God works in you. He doesn't just zap you with a transformed life. He brings His Word to you. He causes His Word to bear upon you. He enables you to understand it. as it applies to you. And then he enables you to obey it, to put it into practice. That's how grace and work go together. God enables you to will and to do of his good pleasure, his work through grace in you. You can see in this how it is essential for you to understand his will. He gives you Understanding of his will is a part of the process of transforming you from where you are into greater conformity to Christ. He gives you the desire to know his will and the ability to know it and then the ability to do it. You have to have that ingredient of knowing his will. That's why it's so important for you to pay attention to what I've spoken about this morning. If you're going to be fruitful and if you're going to grow in grace, trust in him. and He will give you understanding. Please stand and let's call upon Him. Lord, our God, we come before You with gladness today that You have called us into fellowship and communion with Yourself, that You have brought Your Word to bear upon us as individuals who know You, that You have caused that Word to show us what is wrong with us, to show us how to make it right through Jesus Christ. We pray, O Lord, as we go on in Christ, that you would enable us more and more to understand your will and to do your will. We can't do it unless we understand it. Father, we thank you that you are at work in us and we pray that because we know that you're at work, that we would come to the scriptures with hope and zeal, looking to see what we need to understand and how we can implement it. Father, we pray that you would enrich our lives with meditation, that our minds would turn the Scripture over and over again as we seek to understand how it works out in our daily practice. Father, we thank you for the forgiveness of our sins as well, for we recognize that we do still come short of your will, that we don't perfectly obey you, even in the best of times. And we thank you, Lord, that through Jesus Christ, that all of our sins are pardoned, that they are washed away and that we can come before you with confidence and boldness, knowing that you accept us for his sake. So, Lord, we present our supplications to you, not because of our own righteousness, but on the basis of the righteousness of Jesus Christ. Father, we ask you that you would guard us from the enticements and temptations that would lure us away from Christ, that would bring us into false doctrine, that would Bring us into a byways and bypass that father, we would rather walk in the in the straight and narrow way that you have appointed for us. Father, we pray that we would be encouragers of one another's faith also, that we would build one another up and that we would point one another in the direction that we are to go. Father, we pray that you would help us to tell those who are outside of Christ of the danger that they are in. And as though they may think that they are pleasing God and they may think that they're doing the will of God in some cases, enable us to show them that, in fact, it is only through Christ that we can draw near to you, that he is the way, the truth and the life, and that no one comes to the father but through him. We pray that the word of God and the gospel of Jesus Christ would go forward into all the earth and father, that it would bear much fruit. We pray that it would bear fruit in our city, that you would help us to make the most of the opportunity. to expose the works of darkness and to call people into the light of Jesus Christ. Father, we ask you now to bless the remainder of our service and our fellowship together this day in Jesus name. Amen. You may be seated and I'll ask. Come stand over here. Well, as you know, Rebecca, and I think as most of you know, Last Sunday, the elders met with Rebecca and interviewed her for church membership. It's the task of the elders that they have been appointed by God to examine the profession that people make of Jesus Christ and in approving that to receive them into the membership of the church. And Rebecca made a credible profession of faith in which she affirmed that Jesus Christ is the only way of salvation and her only hope. And also that she was trusting in him for salvation, that she was believed his word to be the word of God, the scriptures to be the very word of God and the only rule of faith and obedience, and that she was going to seek to follow Christ by the grace of God. So it's rejoicing. We we admitted her into the church. And now this week we're wanting to present her to you. Rebecca comes to the Lord Jesus Christ after much struggle in her life. But we can see as we hear her testimony how God's hand was upon her life, even in the difficulties that she encountered in preparing her for the time when she would be able to humble herself and to to bow down to the Lord Jesus Christ. Rebecca has already been baptized, and so we have no need to baptize her as we present her to you this morning. We do want to ask her, though, this morning as we present her to you to to renew the vows that she made when she met with the elders. So we're going to present these vows to her again for her to affirm. Rebecca, do you acknowledge yourself to be a sinner in the sight of God, justly deserving his displeasure and without hope, saving his love and mercy? Do you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ is the son of God and savior of sinners, and do you trust in him alone for salvation as he is offered in the gospel? Do you believe the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the written word of God, the only perfect rule of faith and practice? Do you now promise in humble reliance upon the guidance of the Holy Spirit that you will endeavor to live as becomes the followers of Christ? Do you accept the doctrines and principles of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church so far as you understand them as agreeable to and founded on the word of God? Do you promise with the Lord's help to be faithful in the performance of your Christian duties, both in private life and in the work of the church? And do you submit yourself in the spirit of love to the government and discipline of the church and seek the peace, purity and prosperity of this congregation so long as you're a member of it? Rebecca, we, on behalf of Covenant Reform Presbyterian Church, we welcome you into the fellowship of this congregation. May the Lord bless you. Kevin, will you pray for Rebekah? Father, we do rejoice in Rebekah being joined to us. Father, you're the member of this congregation. But Father, above all, we rejoice that she has been joined to Jesus Christ. Lord, we thank you for her. We pray that you continue to bless her and to keep her. Help her, Father, to walk in your ways, to love your word, And help us, Father, as your people, all together, to be desiring to build her up as we build one another up. Lord, just thank you. We rejoice that you are such a good God and that you, Father, have done what you've done. We thank you in the name of Jesus. Amen. Amen. If I became here for many weeks attending the services and we would come to communion She was unable to partake, knowing that she was on the other side of that sacrifice that Christ has made from those of us who are trusting in it. And now it's such a privilege to be able to welcome her to the communion table. She came last week for her first time, and we rejoice that she's able to come in and partake with us in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, rejoicing in what our Savior, our Savior, has done for us. Lord bless you, Rebecca. Now may the God of peace who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead, that great shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you complete in every good work to do his will, working in you what is well pleasing in his sight through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.