THE WILL OF GOD
John S Speirs
Mark 3: 19 “And they”-20; 31-35
We were occupied in the earlier meeting with the Lord Jesus as the One who did the will of God. He did it in perfection, He completed it, He glorified God in doing it; and in doing it He accomplished what is for God's eternal satisfaction. But God's will applies to us too; that is why I read these passages. The Lord Jesus is a beautiful Model for us, and we can look at Him and see how He did God's will in perfection, and these features that we saw in Him - dependence, obedience, God’s will being His food - we might learn from these things ourselves.
I began in Romans, because it says, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the compassions of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your intelligent service”. How important it is that we seek to do the will of God, because it pleases God, it gives God something that He can delight in at the present time. His delight is in Christ, and He has glorified Him. He is now at His right hand in glory. But He also takes delight in persons who are like Him on the earth, who in their measure are doing His will. It is “your intelligent service”. We ought to know what God's will is, and know why it is important that we should do it. This reference is in the setting of the world, “be not conformed to this world”. As we were reminded in the earlier reading meeting, this is the world where persons pursue their own will. It has been said, has it not, that there are as many wills in the world as there are people, FER vol 18 p98? Everyone has their own will, and they wish to pursue it, and I am no different. And yet the blessing is not in doing my will, but in doing God's will; God helps us in it as we seek to do it: “be not conformed to this world”. Do not be like the world where each one has their own will and they are pursuing it for their own interests. Let us be in measure like Jesus who pursued God's will for His pleasure. It is “by the renewing of your mind”: it does not come to us naturally; it is not agreeable to us naturally to do someone else's will. Naturally I want to do my own will, but God would help us to think in a different way “by the renewing of your mind”, it is a spiritual matter. We need the Holy Spirit to do God's will. We cannot do it in natural power, natural strength; that will not do. We need power from God. Paul is writing to the Romans here, and He is writing after the chapter where He speaks about receiving the Holy Spirit, walking in the Spirit; and he can speak to them about presenting their bodies a living sacrifice. The mind of the Spirit is “life and peace”, not death and unrest. Everything that the Holy Spirit does must be acceptable to God; if He is working something in you it is acceptable to God. He gives you intelligence too, spiritual intelligence, “communicating spiritual things by spiritual means”, 1 Cor 2: 13. You learn you are not just doing things because you have been told to do them but because you know why they are important; it is intelligent service. God loves intelligence, and He loves affection, both seen perfectly in Jesus; He was the instructed One, “and that you may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God”. That is what the will of God is for you and it will always be what is good. Prove it to be acceptable. How do we prove it? I think we prove it by doing it. You do the will of God, in your measure; you seek to do it, and you find out what it is. You find out that it is acceptable; you find out that it is good. You find out that it is perfect. God will help you as you seek to do it. It is important, as I have said, that we do seek to do God's will because it pleases Him, it reminds Him of Christ.
So I read in Mark's gospel. First of all, we might ask what God's will is? Sometimes we over-complicate things and think about what all the details of God's will are. What are all the different things that I am going to have to do? In John 6: 27 the Lord Jesus says, “Work not for the food which perishes, but for the food which abides unto life eternal, which the Son of man shall give to you; for him has the Father sealed, even God. They said therefore to Him, What should we do that we may work the works of God?” And perhaps they were expecting the Lord Jesus to give them a list of good works that they should do. What is the answer? “This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he has sent”. Believe on the Lord Jesus, how essentially simple! Come to Jesus and be attracted to Him, become attached to Him, and grow in your affection for Him. I think you can almost summarise what the will of God is for us like that; it is all relating to Jesus. I do not think there would be anything in God's will for us that was not in relation to the Lord Jesus.
So what a contrast these persons in Mark's gospel are to the Lord’s natural relations. Think of them saying this; His relatives, His natural relatives, saying, “He is out of his mind”. They went to lay hold of Him - think of that! They thought they knew better than the Lord Jesus, and they thought He was out of His mind. Think of how foreign the will of God is to the natural mind, it does not understand it. There is no natural desire to do it. They speak disparagingly of Him in this way: “He is out of his mind”. And then they come and they presume to be able to call Him. His brother and His mother come and standing without sent to Him - send to Jesus - calling Him, asking Him to obey them. They have got things round the wrong way. Beloved, we come to Jesus and obey Him. We do not call Him to us. We are called to Him. Persons have been attracted to Him. “Who is my mother or my brethren”; “looking around in a circuit at those that were sitting around him”. Think of the pleasure that the Lord Jesus had that there were persons sitting around Him who had been attracted to Him and who were listening to Him. I think listening to Jesus is part of God's will for us. God says that on the mount of transfiguration, “This is my beloved Son: hear him”, Luke 9: 35. It is God's will that we hear His Son. So these persons were doing God's will. They were listening to Jesus. “Behold my mother and my brethren: for whosoever …” - whosoever! Brethren, it is open to any one of us; you do not have to be a certain age to be able to do the will of God. Have you believed on Him? If you have then you have done His will already! If you are seeking to place yourself like these persons were, sitting around Him, you are doing God’s will. What a safe place, sitting around Jesus, sitting at His feet, listening to His word, with an opened ear. “Morning by morning”, His ear was wakened to hear as the instructed (Isa 50: 4); have your ear open to hear what Jesus says. It is a spiritual matter. Ask the Holy Spirit for power to hear what Jesus is saying to you. “He that has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the assemblies”, Rev 2: 7. You might hear it on your own when you are reading the bible or praying; you might hear it in a meeting. Ask the Holy Spirit to give you to hear the voice of Jesus and understand what His will is. “Whosoever shall do the will of God, he is my brother, and sister, and mother”. He does not say, ‘they are my family’. He mentions these different relations: “my brother”. Think of that: “brother”; “a brother is born for adversity”, Prov 17: 17. Think of a brother, willing to stand in the testimony and to suffer for the will of God. Think of the “sister”, one who is interested in the preservation of life. Moses’ sister saved his life. And Paul's sister's son saved Paul's life. Think of that affectionate, protective nature seen in the sister; the Lord values these features. “And mother”; think of that: those who are interested in nurturing life. Think of what there is like that in this room. There are spiritual mothers here and we have benefited from them. They are doing the will of God. They are attracting us to Jesus. They are telling us to stay close to Him. Listen to them for your blessing.
In Matthew's gospel, we get the matter of prayer again. They are affected by the Lord Jesus and how He prayed. Doing the will of God requires dependence, because you cannot do it in any of your own strength, and it may lead to us facing suffering. But prayer is available, and I was struck by this passage where the Lord is teaching His own about prayer. “When thou prayest, enter into thy chamber, and having shut thy door …”: we have all these details, why did the Lord Jesus say that? I think we can afford to be very practical in relation to prayer. Go to a place where you can truly be alone with Jesus; shut everything else out, even if it is only for a few moments, and you will get the benefit from it. This is the direct instruction of the Lord Jesus to His own, speaking about a door and a chamber. Subject yourself to what the Lord Jesus says, “use not vain repetitions”. The Lord Jesus prayed “more intently”. It was not vain repetition, the Lord Jesus was intelligently praying in relation to what was ahead of Him. I feel tested by this because it is easy, perhaps when you pray, perhaps to go over your family members, and so on; you can easily fall into a routine, but God would encourage us just to be real in our prayers and freshly exercised each time we pray. The Lord Jesus teaches them that our prayers should not necessarily be in relation to our needs first. He speaks first in relation to the Father: “Our Father who art in the heavens, let thy name be sanctified”. That was first and foremost, in relation to the prayer, and “let thy kingdom come” and then - and this is what I was impressed by - “let thy will be done as in heaven”. God's will is done in heaven. Angels are ministering servants, spirits; they do His will. You could say, heaven is where God's will is done characteristically. I know there are still elements of wickedness in the heavenlies (Eph 6: 12), and yet, characteristically, heaven is the place where God's will is done. And what is the Lord saying? That “thy will be done as in heaven so upon the earth”. Well, it has been done on the earth already, it has already been done by Jesus, and one day it will be done actually and universally. God's will will be prevalent on this earth, and every knee will bow to Jesus. But, think of the privilege that the believer has at the present time of just simply doing God's will, in this world which is characterised by persons doing their own will. Take it as an exercise to do God's will here on this earth, as it is in heaven; it is done there characteristically. Those angels would do what God instructed them to do. Let us be dependent in prayer that we might be given strength to do God's will in our measure here on the earth. The matter of the bread comes in again, “give us to-day our needed bread”, and as it came in helpfully in the reading, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word which goes out through God's mouth”, Matt 4: 4. Let us look for opportunities to hear the word of God, as we have said, by reading, by listening to the ministry, by placing ourselves in the place where God may be pleased to speak and in the company of the saints. These occasions are precious, beloved. They are precious to heaven, and God looks on them. It tells us in Malachi about a time when people “spoke often one to another and Jehovah observed it, and heard, and a book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared Jehovah, and that thought upon his name”, Mal 3: 16. It was so precious to Him that He wrote it down in a book. God takes account of our gatherings; let us grow in our appreciation of them. Let us be there when we can to hear what the Lord would say to us and we will get what has the character of this bread. You find that it becomes something that satisfies you. You will find satisfaction in your heart having known that you have simply done something of God's will, even in a small measure, even without anyone else knowing.
I read lastly in John's epistle about the character of those who do the will of God. Again, the world is mentioned, the same world that Paul was writing to the Romans about that we should not be conformed to. It has its lusts; it has its pride. You can see that all around in this world, people lusting after possessions, lusting after power, people motivated by greed. I was struck in reading ministry which said that if you are greedy of gain, you are a murderer - see FER vol 14 p165 and Prov 1: 19. You might just say you are only collecting things for yourself, how is that murder? If that is what you are doing, enriching yourself at the expense of others, perhaps someone will not have enough to survive. These are practical matters. The world has this character of lust and pride, let us not be associated with it. Let us not have our part in it, or have our interests in it. It is passing. Do not be conformed to it. There is no pleasure in it. These matters of lust and pride, there is no pleasure for God in them. But “He that does the will of God”: I think that is characteristic, if you follow the note for “does” through, it speaks about a course of action, something that is done characteristically. Let us simply seek daily, day by day, in prayer and with intelligence, to understand by the Spirit what God's will is for the day. Read the scriptures at the beginning of the day. They sustain you, they are like bread. Think of the manna as a daily food, it is like being occupied with Jesus, and day by day, it will sustain you to be able to do the will of God. The world is passing and its lust. That is all going; that is going to have no effect, it will be of no effect in eternity. “But he that does the will of God abides for eternity”. I think that not only means that every person who believes in the Lord Jesus abides for eternity in His presence. But, I think the things that that person does in relation to the will of God now will go into eternity too. Think of everything you might do, however simple or small or limited, for the will of God; maybe you help your fellow brother or sister in some little way, in a practical way. Think of the Lord Jesus speaking of, “a cup of cold water”, Matt 10: 42. He takes account of it and He will reward it. These actions, done by those doing God’s will, they would be like “the righteousnesses of the saints” (Rev 19: 8), they go into that garment which the Lamb’s wife will be clothed in. Nothing is lost, and God sees it. God sees these actions that you take, seeking to do His will. And if it is His will, it is pleasing to Him, the result of it goes into eternity. It will be for God's eternal glory. Think of the holy city, its substantial character, “having the glory of God”.
Beloved, now is the time that we can do the will of God. If you rely on the Holy Spirit, if you listen to Jesus, if you have Him as your Model, these things that you do God takes account of, and it is built up in you, spiritual substance, an eternal weight of glory, even though it may involve suffering. Pray about it. Think of the Lord Jesus, how He was strengthened - an angel appearing from heaven, strengthening Him. Those same angels, same divine helpers, are available to strengthen us. We can know what it is to have the assurance that we can abide for eternity and go through and be there for God's eternal pleasure. I feel limited in how much I know these things, because it is so foreign to what comes to us naturally, to do the will of the Lord is greatly testing. But God would encourage us to go in for it. The divine provision is perfect. He gives you the perfect Model in Jesus, He gives you the perfect power in the Spirit, and gives you the perfect love of the Father, everything you need for the present time! He gives you a company of brethren, who we are thankful for, to work things out together with. Let us be occupied in doing the will of God that we might know what it is to be part of that family, to enjoy these relations that the Lord Jesus values. He values us as His brethren, and as those that abide for eternity.
May the Lord bless the word.
Peterhead
9th November 2024