The Will of the Lord – Acts 21:8-14

Do you ever wonder if you’d really enjoy the company of some of God’s great servants?

I think that I’d probably really like Joshua; the man with the assistant-pastor mentality.

And the Apostle John would probably be a wonderful friend,

but John the Baptist? – Maybe not.

What about Jonah, Jeremiah and Elijah?

Don’t they come across as grumpy, negative kind of people?

I think that I can empathize with Timothy,

but I would probably be too awestruck with Paul to get really close to him.

But then again, I may be absolutely wrong about everyone of these people.

We just don’t have enough information to really make these kinds of decisions from this distance.

And then there is Agabus – undoubtedly someone whom the Lord loved and used.

But with what we read in Acts, don’t you think that Agabus appears to be a dower, somber, negative sort of person?

At least that’s the way that his prophesies come across.

Both this prophesies portend upcoming disasters; his words were nothing but doom and gloom.

On the other hand, do you suppose that he was actually a jolly, jovial sort of person whenever the Lord wasn’t using him to convey important messages?

Agabus was a prophet of God in the Old Testament style.

For example, this Word of the Lord came to JEREMIAH before his arrest,

“Take the girdle that thou hast got, which is upon thy loins, and arise, go to Euphrates,

and hide it there in a hole of the rock.”

Jeremiah was to preach by way of an object lesson, just like Agabus.

And earlier “spake the LORD by ISAIAH the son of Amoz, saying, Go and loose the sackcloth from off thy loins, and put off thy shoe from thy foot. And he did so, walking naked and barefoot.

And the LORD said, Like as my servant Isaiah hath walked naked and barefoot three years for a sign and wonder upon Egypt and upon Ethiopia;

So shall the king of Assyria lead away the Egyptians prisoners, and the Ethiopians captives, young and old, naked and barefoot, even with their buttocks uncovered, to the shame of Egypt.”

What would you think if I came to preach dressed in nothing but my underwear?

God told EZEKIEL to play with toy soldiers.

“Thou also, son of man, take thee a tile, and lay it before thee, and pourtray upon it the city, even Jerusalem:

And lay siege against it, and build a fort against it, and cast a mount against it; set the camp also against it, and set battering rams against it round about.

Moreover take thou unto thee an iron pan, and set it for a wall of iron between thee and the city: and set thy face against it, and it shall be besieged, and thou shalt lay siege against it. This shall be a sign to the house of Israel.”

When Agabus took the outer sash that Paul wore to bind up his robe,

and he wrapped them around his hands and his feet,

it was very reminiscent of the Old Testament style of prophet.

One of the things to notice here is that the prophet didn’t say, “IF Paul goes to Jerusalem, this is what will happen.”

He said, “This IS going to happen to the man who owns this girdle.”

At that point, as had happened so many times before, Paul’s friends began to plead with him not to go up to Jerusalem.

But he replied with that statement I’ve used so many times over the last month:

“What mean ye to weep and to break mine heart? for I am ready not to be bound only, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.”

And now we come to my theme for this evening: “And when he would not be persuaded, we ceased, saying, THE WILL OF THE LORD BE DONE.”

This statement, “The will of the Lord be done,” can be spoken PROPERLY and in faith,

or it can be spoken UNTHINKINGLY, and then again it might be something very SINFUL.

We’ve all used these kinds of words before, but did we use them scripturally?

To answer that question, we need to have a basic understanding of . . .

What the will of God is.

The “will” is that faculty in any rational, conscious being by which he has the power to choose a course of action and to continue in it.

In other words, the “will” is the power to make a decision and to put it into practice.

It might be argued that every living thing has a will, in the sense that it can make a choice, either complex or simple.

But at the same time every living thing is limited by circumstances and by its own nature.

It may be able to make a choice, but it might not be able to carry it out.

The Pomeranian may choose to fight the Rottweiler, but it doesn’t have the ability to win the fight.

It is limited to its size and stature.

And the Rottweiler may want to write poetry, but its limited brain power makes that a bit difficult.

Besides that, it’s toe-nails make using the computer keyboard difficult.

And even human beings may want to do things which they simply cannot do.

They can not swim under water from Seattle to Tokyo, because they don’t have fins and gills.

But they do have the ability to build submarines which allow them to virtually do it.

Men cannot fly to the moon, but they can manufacture machines which do make that possible.

And yet, there are still things which men cannot accomplish even with technology.

“The good that they would they do not.”

“For to will is present with us; but how to perform that which is good many times, we find not.”

Not only is mankind PHYSICALLY bound and kept from doing many physical things, but he is perhaps even more limited SPIRITUALLY.

He is dead in trespasses and sins, and completely incapable of pleasing God.

“To be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.

Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God.

“The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither CAN he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.”

Man has a free will only as it is contained and limited by his depravity and his spiritual deadness.

The only way that a dead man can even repent of his sins and believe on Christ is to first be regenerated.

In other words, man does not really have a truly free will.

Jehovah on the other hand, is the only Being in existence with an ABSOLUTELY free will.

He can and does do EXACTLY what he chooses in every case.

He over-rules the limited will of everything in His creation, including men, animals and even Satan.

I like this statement by theologian Louis Chaffer:

“God’s will is the standard with which to measure all that is esteemed right in motive, design, and execution. Man’s highest end is realized when he conforms to God’s will.

Even Christ came not to do His own will, but only the will of the Father.

There is nothing higher for man than to find and to do the will of God.

Heaven always has a specific purpose for the bringing of each person into the world,

and that purpose comprehends every moment of life.”

When we start to talk about the will, or the decrees, of God, we are definitely leaving elementary school.

These are subjects within the deep and mysterious things of God.

These things lay at the heart of the differences between Calvinists and Arminians.

And despite whatever we CAN know about the will of God, there will be things that we probably will never really understand – not in this world, nor in the next.

But we still NEED a rudimentary understanding in order to properly say: “The will of the Lord be done.”

Theologians may use lots of different terms, but most agree that God’s will can be divided into two parts:

There is God’s ABSOLUTE will, and there is God’s PERMISSIVE will.

And when placed together, the Bible says that God has decreed ALL things that have ever come to pass.

Psalm 135:5-6 – “For I know that the LORD is great, and that our Lord is above all gods.

Whatsoever the LORD pleased, that did he in heaven, and in earth, in the seas, and all deep places.”

Isaiah 46:10 – “I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me,

Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure.”

Daniel 4:35 – “All the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing: and [God] doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth: and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou?”

In prayer the Jerusalem church stated: “For of a truth against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both Herod, and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together, For to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done.”

Romans 9:14-21 – “What shall we say then? Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid.

For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.

So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy.

For the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might shew my power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth.

Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth.

Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will?

Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?

Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?”

All things work out “according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will” – that is all things work out to match the will of the Lord.

In God’s direct or ABSOLUTE will, a great many things are predetermined, foreordained and predestined.

In God’s PERMISSIVE will, He allows man some choice,

and that often means a choice of that which is second-best or even of what is evil,

and yet God’s will is still accomplished.

For example, God is not the cause of sin – ever.

But for just, holy and wise reasons, known fully only to Himself, God has willed to permit evil and then to overrule it for His own glory.

It is to God’s PERMISSIVE WILL that the Scriptures refer when it says: “Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee; the remainder of wrath shalt thou restrain” (Ps. 76:10).

God PERMITS men to sin, but He restrains those men from sinning more than the Lord wills.

He could keep men from all sin just as easily as He stops them at His appointed place, but that is not his will..

We can give no reason why God permits sin and satisfies the carnal mind; but the fact that He does is abundantly clear.

And since God always does right, we know that it is right for Him to permit such sin as there is in the world.

In Acts 2:23 and many other passages are clear statements that the crucifixion of Christ was a part of the ABSOLUTE WILL of God.

“Ye men of Israel, hear these words; Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know:

Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain.”

We know that God did not CAUSE all the sin which it took to nail Christ to the cross.

That would make God responsible for sin and for the murder of Christ.

God merely withheld His restraining power and permitted those crucifiers to proceed according to their own evil desires.

And through it, God’s will was carried out in minute detail.

This is what the PERMISSIVE WILL of God is all about.

I have to admit that I have been reading and preaching God’s Word, studying theology, and getting to know the Lord for nearly four decades, and I don’t profess to understand these things.

But that they are taught in the Bible I cannot deny.

All that I can really say is, “The Lord’s will IS going to be done.”

And that brings us back to what Paul’s friends said here in Acts 21.

“And when he would not be persuaded, we ceased, saying, The will of the Lord be done.”

There is something in every creature which says, “I want MY will to be done.”

The other day there was a spider which came into my study.

I assume that it was no accident that it was there; I assume that it chose to be there.

When I went over to it with a deadly Kleenex, it had a will to fight.

But my will overcame its will, and it no longer lives in my study.

I wanted MY will to be done, and in this case it was.

When tiny Evelyn Smith begins to scream, it’s because she has a will, and she’s willing to express it.

If her mother is not willing to bring her will into conformity to Evelyn’s will there will be trouble.

All God’s creatures have wills of their own.

But there will come a day when it will be necessary for Evelyn to realize that her will should not supercede her mother’s will.

There will come a day, there will come many days, when there is going to be a struggle – a battle of wills.

And if Evelyn’s parents don’t eventually convince their daughter that THEY are the parents and that SHE is the child, then that little girl will be headed for serious trouble.

Furthermore, Evelyn will need to learn that God’s will must supercede ALL other wills.

It was the will of the Apostle Paul to go to Jerusalem.

But it was the hope and the will of his friends that he would NOT go.

Obviously, Paul’s will agreed with what was the will of the Lord.

It was OBVIOUSLY God’s will that he complete that trip, or it would not have happened.

But the question is: Was it the ABSOLUTE will or merely the PERMISSIVE will of God that Paul go to Jerusalem?

We still haven’t answered the question of whether or not Paul was in rebellion in continuing this journey.

Did Paul sin in continuing on his journey or was it the absolute and perfect will of God?

We aren’t going to successfully all agree on either answer.

But we can, and we must, all say, “The will of the Lord was done.”

And we should also pray, “The will of the Lord be done.”

What did those people mean when they said that?

What do YOU mean when you say words similar to those?

I suppose it all depends on whether or not you really believe that God’s “will” will ALWAYS be done.

If we mistakenly think that there is some doubt, but we hope, that God will be victorious, then we are praying without faith.

“And whatsoever is not of faith is sin.”

Is God’s will going to be done or not?

God’s will is ALWAYS done, even if it is only His PERMISSIVE will.

Was the statement of his friends actually an expression of hope that it was the will of God to change Paul’s mind?

That is very often the back-handed sort of way that we use those words,

and I suppose that there is very little wrong with that.

But if that is really our desire, then why don’t we get direct with the Lord.

“Lord I pray that it is your will that Paul break his ankle and has to remain here in Caesarea.”

If that is really what you are hoping, then pray those specifics.

Don’t beat around the bush by saying, “The will of the Lord be done.”

But in this case, that doesn’t appear to be what the brethren meant.

Assuming that these people were theologically well-taught,

and if their hearts were true to the Lord, then these words should have meant:

“Lord, we love you and acknowledge your sovereignty and wisdom.

We know that you love us and that you love Paul.

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love you and that are called according to your purpose.

And now we know that it is Your will that Paul go to Jerusalem to be bound and afflicted.

We humbly surrender our wills to yours, seeking nothing else but Your will and Your glory.”

The words “The will of the Lord be done,” should ALWAYS mean,

“Lord I want YOUR will to be done no matter what I have personally wanted in the past.”

And I think that is what the brethren in Caesarea meant by these words.

I close with the words of Louis Sperry Chaffer which I quoted earlier:

“God’s will is the standard with which to measure all that is esteemed right in motive, design, and execution.

Man’s highest end is realized when he conforms to God’s will.

There is nothing higher for man than to find, and to do, the will of God.

Heaven always has a specific purpose for the bringing of each person into the world,

and that purpose comprehends every moment of life.”

By going to Jerusalem, Paul was saying, “The will of the Lord be done.”

And by saying “The will of the Lord be done,” Paul’s friends were stating their agreement.

Together, they were bowing before the Lord and properly worshiping His name.