“God’s Will”

Text: Hebrews 10:5-14

There are still many people today who believe in the personal and physical sacrifice that is so pronounced in Judaism. You’ve heard them all - “We have to earn our place in heaven”, “We have to say prayers and offer sacrifice to become freed from the effects of our sin.”, “We have to please God before we will ever receive His benefits.”, “If we are good enough, God will accept us.”
The truth of the matter is that we can never do enough to earn our way into God’s heart, we can never pray enough or sacrifice enough to overcome the condemnation of our sin, if we have to convince God that we love Him as much as He loves us, it will never happen, and we can never ever be good enough, on our own, to enter into glory.
God’s grace and God’s overpowering mercy is the only way that any of this will ever come to be.

Read Hebrews 10:5-8

God’s Will, not ours. God’s Way, not the world’s.

Martin Thornton, in his book Spiritual Direction (Boston: Cowley, 1984), searches for a new vocabulary to describe the dynamics of how God operates in our spiritual lives. He suggests a three-fold pattern: God the Provider, God the Lover and God the Disturber. We like the first two. It's the third that we run from. (From Homeletics OnLine.)

Isn’t that true? We want to see our Lord as one who gives and gives and gives some more, and loves us in spite of what we do. We want Him to be loving, compassionate, all forgiving. We want Him to be the one who makes everything around us right! We do not want him to be the one who changes us, who makes us uncomfortable in our current situation, who waits for us to lay down our will and lean completely on His!
We want the Lord to make everything right in us, without requiring too many radical changes in our lives!
But the writer of Hebrews tells us that it is only God’s Will that can make us Holy – His Will!

Read Hebrews 10:9-10

Even Jesus came to do the Father’s Will. I don’t know about you, but this has been an issue of some consternation for me. Jesus had to do God’s will, but if He was God, why wasn’t it His will, too? Have you ever wondered about that?

The truth is that in becoming fully human - a being held in this mortal flesh - Jesus had to constantly return to the Father to know that He was on the right track. Why else would He need to sneak away for private prayer? Why else would He constantly seek His Father’s Will? Jesus, as a complete human being, even though He was also fully God, needed to seek God’s Will for His life, just as much as we do!

Obedience to God's will does not mean everything will go smoothly, that the wind will always be at our backs and that the journey will be easy. Jesus told his disciples to cross to the other side of the lake, even though he knew the wind would be working against them. Despite the wind's contrariness, they struggled on because they knew they were doing his will.
--Shawn Craig in Between Sundays, cited in Christianity Today, February 8, 1999, 72.

It was Jesus’ Will, because it was, first and foremost, God’s Will. Every Sunday morning, and more often, I hope, each of us prays “Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.!”
I have never heard, and I have never seen, a single version of that prayer that includes “But from time to time, I will need to exert my will for my life!”

The old ways of sacrifice and self control and self achievement of God’s grace has come to an decisive end, and has been replaced by simply accepting God’s great gift to each of us, and in response to that gift, by seeking and following God’s will for our lives.

Read Hebrews 10:11-14

God’s Will was that He would offer the one and complete sacrifice that would break the hold that sin has on all of humanity. “By one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.”
It isn’t those who are holy who have been made perfect – did you notice that? It is those who are being made holy who have already been made prefect! John Wesley used the words “going on to perfection”, and maybe he should have said “the perfect in Christ are going on to holiness”! Of course, it isn't our human life that becomes perfect - it is our spiritual life that receives His perfection. So, it seems that it all comes down to one question – have you accepted the one who offers you perfection?
Human efforts have been set aside because they are ineffective and wholly insufficient, and the only sacrifice that is effective and sufficient is the one that God Himself made on our behalf.
Isn’t it incredible that holiness actually comes from perfection? And that perfection comes perfectly to those in Christ Jesus? Not by our means but by God’s alone.

And that holiness began on that first Christmas so many years ago when perfection itself came to earth in the form of a bloody, noisy baby, mothered by an unwed teenage girl, in the humblest of all settings – a smelly, dirty cave that was home to a bunch of sheep and goats. Heaven’s perfection, right in the midst of our imperfection. God’s will taking precedence over human standards and desires. A small piece of heaven beginning the process of redeeming earthly life.

How could salvation not be God’s Will? And yet, there are those who steadfastly refuse to accept the gift. Oh, they like the earthly trappings and decorations of Christmas, they like the parties and gift giving, they may even reach out, as sanitarily as they can, to help someone in need, but they feel that they have no need for the One that this day is all about.

Holiness, come to bring perfection to all who will accept. Have you accepted the Infant gift that God has offered to all? Are you going on to holy perfection? It is God’s Will, you know! Why fight it?