Nashville First Church of the Nazarene - Sermon and Devotional Outlines

First Church of the Nazarene
Pastor Henecke's Sermon Outlines

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Pastor Henecke's PM Sermon Outline
NASHVILLE FIRST CHURCH OF THE NAZARENE

BELIEVERS HOUR

JUNE 4, 2003 7:00 P.M.

Knowing the Will of God

Session 2

In the everyday life of people who to some degree love the Lord, there is a confident faith in God’s absolute power. His final authority over events is not in question. The issue before those who would want to know where God’s will fits in an evil world and in their daily lives asks or begs the question, "How involved is God in my day to day details?"

To better comprehend this question, I believe we must understand that there is under girding our creation a universal law that God put in place when he framed the earth. It is the law of sowing and reaping. The heart of this law can be quoted from scripture. "Be sure your sin will find you out." The harvest is always greater than the initial seed sown. It is on that basis that scripture goes on to say: "You sow to the wind and you will reap the whirlwind." The truth we must learn from this is – every decision or act has consequences.

An insignificant act or action by any individual (for example, me) may have great impact on another’s impressions (for example, you) creating their opinion or feelings toward the one who has acted. This is a profound truth of life. Many Christians believe in God’s opening and closing doors, and I am not denying God’s involvement. I am simply stating that God has made us to live through the consequences of our lives and the consequences of everyone who lives in contact with us. I shook hands with President Johnson only one time, but his decisions regarding the Vietnam War tremendously impacted my life, the life of all my country, its morality, and the rest of the century.

You and I live in a world of secularism. Though we believe in God, we have a basic underlying feeling that is closer to atheism (I am not speaking of faithful, born again Christians, but of our culture as a whole). The ancients were never atheists. From our conversion and belief in the living God, we may believe that they were superstitious or ignorant, but they were not atheists. They believed that God was everywhere. If you walked into a door, it was because the god of the door was angry with you. If you stumbled and fell, it was because a god pushed you and you had grieved some deity. Gods were everywhere: gods of anger, gods of sex, gods of fertility, gods of wine, gods of every human experience and passion. If one were to walk through the woods, he would want to make sure that the god of the forest had been placated.

Because the early Hebrews came out of that culture, it took hundreds of years for them to gather up the concepts of the one true God. Throughout the Old Testament, you will find traces of believing that in every act God was acting or punishing. For this reason, the Book of Job was written. While Job was a righteous man, he suffered the loss of family and possessions, and finally his own health. Naked and scraping his sores among the ashes, he must find the meaning for all his suffering. His three friends who come to help him are now known as the proverbial "Job’s comforters." Basically, all three agreed that Job must have sinned some great sin for God to permit him to suffer in this manner. By the end of the book, Job will have discovered that his testing only proved his faith. This is basic to our understanding: THE WILL OF GOD IS NOT FOUND IN NOR DETERMINED BY OUR CIRCUMSTANCES. We live the will of God in the midst of our situation. Our situation does not determine God’s will.

Consequences that are the result of our decisions or of those around us can be redirected but not avoided. You cannot unscramble eggs. Each of us must begin and live where we are and not where we wish we were. Good intentions cannot alter results. In 1928 Nevell Chamberlain reached an agreement with Adolf Hitler that he reported to his nation was "peace in our time." Fifty million people died during the period we call World War II. Mr. Chamberlain’s good intentions could not change Adolf Hitler.

Many of us wish to give events in our lives a mystical power that will shape our ongoing decisions. If we believe that God directly allowed something to happen to us or was active in making it happen, we can be pushed to actions. Bill Clinton, as a teenage boy, shook hands with John Fitzgerald Kennedy – the president of the United States. With his middle name being Jefferson, he was captivated by that moment with an inner compulsion that he needed to be the second Thomas Jefferson. We have lived out the rest of that story. John Conally was governor of Texas when he hosted Jack Kennedy for a famous car ride in Dallas. The bullet that killed the president also wounded Mr. Conally. From 1963 to 1968 John Conally was captivated by surviving that moment and felt he was impelled to run for the presidency. In a 1970 interview he was asked about his campaign for the presidency, which had been pitiful. John Conally said, "I had no choice. I felt marked for the run to the presidency when I was shot." He did go on to become an outstanding secretary of the treasury for President Nixon. One of the most glamorous men in America, he nevertheless had his life shaped by the way he viewed an event.

We may not only be driven by events and how we interpret them, but we may make decisions that further empower those events over our lives. Human decisions create our condition, and through those conditions we create our circumstances. Today we live in a world of over six billion people who are all making decisions. If an Islamic radical can possess a discarded Soviet nuclear device and in hatred decide to kill a center of Christianity and makes the choice of Nashville, we will all be impacted. One person’s decision would have immediate consequences on our situation and probably end our lives. The result would be global, as all the world would go to war because of one person’s decision.

Not all decisions are this traumatic. The parent of a puberty aged adolescent, whose swings of mood and attitude accompany the changes going in their voice and body, may go to the breakfast table every morning wondering which child will come from the bedroom today. Their momentary moods will affect the situation.

God is above and beyond all this. He is on course and steadfast regardless of our situations. His principles never alter, nor do they change. He penetrates every setting and every circumstance with the same steady mind and irreversible purpose that he has always possessed. This is at the root of sowing and reaping. Jesus stated in a parable that a man sowed a field for a rich harvest. While he slept, an enemy sowed a destructive seed. When the man awakened, he found that his harvest was now mixed and that undesired crop was growing in the midst of his field. This is the picture of our lives. We are not the only one sowing in our harvest.

With regard to the Word of God, Jesus taught us that as the Word is sown, it is the same Word and of the same quality for every individual. The precondition of that person’s receptivity to the Word will affect its power in their lives. Remember that some seed fell on shallow, stony ground, and though it took root in joy, it was easily parched by the heat of life and died. Some seed fell in the midst of the thorns and thistles of preoccupation with worldly lust and was quickly strangled out. Some seed was distracted by the momentary flight of one distraction after another – the birds of the air – and never took root. Again, some received it in great depth and it brought forth a mighty harvest.

In Holy Scripture, we can find verses out of context that would seem clearly to support two trains of thought. In the first, we would believe that God controls everything. Philippians 2:13 for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure. The second would seem to indicate that it all depends on us. Philippians 2:12 Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence, but much more now in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. In the first we would have to ask, "Why vote – God is going to get his man anyhow, even if that man is evil for us?" Or we might say, "Why send missionaries since those who are going to be saved are predestined?" In the second we have the problem of asking just how involved is our Lord.

Our planet rebelled. It walked away from God’s will and entered the state of existence that Bible teachers call fallen. It is not only possible to defy God’s will and direction in the present earth, but it is the natural state of life. You and I live on a planet that is basically in rebellion. We attempt to live out the God life in the midst of a culture and society that does not submit to his lordship. The present world is not the kingdom of God. This is the history of the people of the Old Covenant. It was the will of Yahweh their God that he would be their king. Israel was to be the first world republic. God was to be immediately sought and lived to in every situation. They wanted a nation state instead of being just a people. When they asked for a king, it was God who said to Samuel the prophet, "They do not reject you but me." God was to be their king, but they wanted a human king that they could see and touch. That rejection continues throughout the New Testament until Israel reaches its climax in the Praetorian of the Roman governor in Jerusalem. Their cry before Pilate is, "We have no king but Caesar" to which Pilate responds, "What will I do with Jesus – shall I crucify your king?" And they again respond, "Crucify him." Remember that this is God’s chosen people and the recipients of all the revelations given to the prophets. We are a planet that stands in defiance of the will of God.

Humans are capable of atrocities. The difference between Cain, who killed his brother, and Adolf Hitler, who murdered millions, is simply the number. Many godly and innocent Christians died under the hands of evil men. Evil people may hurt and damage our lives, but it is not from God. We live in a planet that was created to respond. The response is not manipulated like a puppet on strings, nor predetermined. Each of us has the power of decision. We cannot effect another’s decision – not even those of our spouse. We can only live with the choices we have in the setting where we find ourselves.

We have the choice of being an agent of harm and conflict, which produces destruction in relationships, or to be the agent of peace and healing, which brings improvement. God empowers our behavior through our choices. God does not control behavior, but he will guide it and empower it. Here is the key to the will of God: Colossians 3:12-17 Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, and patience, forbearing one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teach and admonish one another in all wisdom, and sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.