“Commit your work to the Lord, and your plans will be established” (Proverbs 16:3, ESV).
For most of us, the job we do to earn a living may seem far removed from serving God and advancing His Kingdom. This proverb tells us how to reconcile this seeming incompatibility of working at your job with serving God.
When you commit the work that you do to the Lord, then you are asking God to consecrate it and use what you do to accomplish His will.
“They kept the man in custody until the Lord’s will in the matter should become clear to them.” (Leviticus 24:12, NLT).
During their wilderness wandering, the Israelites took a man into custody who had an Israelite mother and an Egyptian father. He had been in a fight with an Israelite man and during the fight, the man with the Egyptian father blasphemed God.
When this happened, the Israelites took him into custody and brought him to Moses for judgment. While Moses was waiting to hear from the Lord about the matter, they held him in custody without harming him, not taking matters into their own hands.
“You must distinguish between what is sacred and what is common, between what is ceremonially unclean and what is clean” (Leviticus 10:10, NLT).
Moses gave these instructions to Aaron’s sons, Eleazar and Ithamar, on the occasion of the fiery death of their two older brothers, Nadab and Abihu.
As Aaron’s sons, Nadab and Abihu served as priests in the Tabernacle. As priests they were tasked with keeping a fire burning constantly on the bronze altar of the Tabernacle and supplying coals from the altar for burning incense in the Tabernacle.
Perhaps careless from drinking wine, Nadab and Abihu took coals from another source. This violation of God’s instructions resulted in God’s judgment on them and their subsequent deaths.
“Finding a ship crossing over to Phoenicia, we boarded and set sail. After we sighted Cyprus, leaving it on the left, we sailed on to Syria and arrived at Tyre, because the ship was to unload its cargo there. So we found some disciples and stayed there seven days. Through the Spirit they told Paul not to go to Jerusalem.” (Acts 21:2-4, HCSB).
In these verses the Apostle Paul was completing his third missionary journey and had determined to go to Jerusalem. Upon arriving in Tyre some disciples there told Paul through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit that trouble awaited him in Jerusalem.
“He said, ‘I will cause all My goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim the name Yahweh before you. I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion'” (Exodus 33:19, HCSB).
God spoke these words to Moses in response to his request that God show Himself–His glory–to Moses. Moses made this request because he was concerned that Israel’s standing with God was in question.
“And since God gave these Gentiles the same gift he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to stand in God’s way?” (Acts 11:17, NLT)
After Peter proclaimed the gospel of Jesus in Caesarea to the Gentiles in the house of Cornelius, a Roman officer, Peter had to explain his actions to the apostolic leadership and believers back in Jerusalem.
As Peter recounted the sequence of events, he explained it was only by God’s initiative that he took the gospel to the Gentiles.
<< Part 1: Looking For God’s Will
“Remember, Lord, Your compassion and Your faithful love, for they have existed from antiquity. Do not remember the sins of my youth or my acts of rebellion; in keeping with Your faithful love, remember me because of Your goodness, Lord. The Lord is good and upright; therefore He shows sinners the way. He leads the humble in what is right and teaches them His way. All the Lord’s ways show faithful love and truth to those who keep His covenant and decrees. Because of Your name, Yahweh, forgive my sin, for it is great” (Psalm 25:6-11, HCSB).
The explanations the psalmist provides in Psalm 25 about how God reveals Himself and His will to us are so perceptive and penetrating that it merits another post to explain the reasons why God reveals His will.
Fortunately, Psalm 25 provides explanations for both How and Why!
In Part 1 we noted that how we look for God’s will is to turn to God, trust Him, and wait for Him.
And, we concluded that God reveals specific details of His character and His will to people who are desperately looking for Him. In other words, when we depend on God, then He will show us His way for us to follow.
But you might be left wondering why God would want to bother with providing a personal revelation of Himself to you and me?
Why go to all that trouble?
The psalmist provides a powerful theological explanation for God revealing Himself and His will to His people in these verses: God is good!
The psalmist contrasts the faithful love of God and His goodness with the depravity of human beings and their need for restoration.
The juxtaposition of remember/not remember/remember demonstrates that God’s consciousness (remembrance) of His own everlasting love and mercy is the reason He acts beneficently toward His people.
Therefore, people’s sins are forgiven (not remembered). And only then can God act on behalf of His people (remember) who have humbled themselves and depend on Him.
In fact, it is God’s reputation (His name) that is at stake in the forgiveness of people’s sins.
God’s reputation–His essential nature or character–is closely connected with His actions toward His people.
Because people are sinful and God is good, He must impute His goodness by forgiving our sins!
It’s as if God is compelled by the force of His own nature to reveal Himself and His will to His people!
“The secret counsel of the Lord is for those who fear Him, and He reveals His covenant to them” (Psalm 25:14, HCSB).
Ostensibly, what most of us want to do most is God’s will!
While we have good intentions, we don’t really know how to go about doing God’s will–or at least put into practice the patience, perseverance, and obedience required to do it!
But for those really, really looking for God’s will, Psalm 25 provides some practical guidance and apt advice!
While the psalmist doesn’t furnish us with a formula or step-by-step methodology, he does identify a strategic approach to looking for God’s will based on reverence, adoration, and veneration for God.
The psalmist begins by advising us to turn to God, trust in God, and wait on God. When we turn to, trust in, and wait on God, then God will forgive our sins and teach us truth because of His faithful love for us (vs.4-7).
And God will reveal His will to us and definitely direct our lives when we realize our dependence on Him and seek His will penitently and humbly: “He shows sinners the way” (vs. 8) and “He leads the humble in what is right and teaches them His way” (vs. 9).
God’s way, His secret counsel, His will, is revealed to people who trust in Him and are faithful and obedient to Him.
Looking for God’s will is an act of worship by people who depend on God!
While God reveals Himself and His general will to us through His Word, the Bible, God makes it personal for us by revealing specific details of His will and attributes of His character that are appropriate to our need and situation.
So, if I were to pack into just one sentence what the psalmist is telling us about looking for God’s will, it would be this: God reveals His will to people who are desperate to know it!
My pastor says that unfortunately, the approach we more often use in looking for God’s will is: “I’m going to do this, this, and this and, by the way, God, will you bless it?”
But the psalmist reminds us that looking for God’s will is so critical that we must be willing to wait on God to reveal it to us.
And when God’s will is finally revealed to us, then God protects us with the assurance of doing the right thing and helps us remain in His will: “May integrity and what is right watch over me, for I wait for You” (vs. 21).
“The Lord was with Joseph, so he succeeded in everything he did as he served in the home of his Egyptian master…But the Lord was with Joseph in the prison and showed him his faithful love” (Genesis 39:2, 21, NLT).
Joseph, the great-grandson of Abraham, often seemed to be a victim of his own success.
He was the favorite son of his father, Jacob, and so his brothers were jealous of him.
God chose him from among his eleven other brothers to be the salvation of Israel and gave him dreams and visions to confirm His promise.
But, when he told his brothers these dreams, they threw him in a dry well and then sold him into slavery.
“The Kingdom of Heaven is like a treasure that a man discovered hidden in a field. In his excitement, he hid it again and sold everything he owned to get enough money to buy the field. Again, the Kingdom of Heaven is like a merchant on the lookout for choice pearls. When he discovered a pearl of great value, he sold everything he owned and bought it!” (Matthew 13:44-46, NLT)
In order to obtain the treasure field and valuable pearl, the field worker and the merchant first had to liquidate everything they had to raise enough capital to purchase their respective treasures.
In following Jesus we must divest our lives of all self-interest with the same totality of purpose as the man finding the treasure in the field and the merchant finding the pearl of great value.
The moral ground on which we form a relationship with God is to give up, surrender, relinquish, or abandon our own self-interests and self-will in favor of God’s will through faith in Jesus.
In other words, eliminate competing priorities.
The reason for this required sacrifice is because self-will and self-interest is the basis for sin and separation from God and hinders us from receiving God’s care and provision.
While giving up the right to self is comprehensive, in the parables of the hidden treasure and expensive pearl the totality of the sacrifice did not leave the main characters without means or substance.
God permits us to trade up!
By the very act of giving up something of less value, a fortune is secured! In His Kingdom, God invests His life in people who abdicate the kingdom of their own self-will and self-interest and make their priority doing God’s will.
Following Jesus costs you all of the only thing you really have—your right to your own self.
When you make the trade, your natural life is replaced with His Kingdom life, your destiny fulfilled, and your life possessed with immeasurable value and eternal significance.
Steve's Bible Meditations 