Discovering God’s Will - Principles of Conduct

Rev. Dr. Christopher Carlson

Someone made an appointment with me to have a chat and came over to talk with me and he said, “You know, right before I came to talk with you, I mentioned that I was going to see my pastor to a co-worker, and I asked that person whether they would have any questions of the pastor.  The response was this:  ‘Well, no, not really, but I would if you were going to go see a psychic.’” 

I found that so fascinating that people would want to hear a psychic or someone who is schooled in horoscopes and getting in touch with whatever vibrations there are in the universe to discover what you are supposed to do versus someone who knew the bible or the Word of God.  I wonder about that, but, you know, it is not that surprising.  People today and really for hundreds of years are much more comfortable inquiring of an impersonal force, whatever it maybe, for their future than they are inquiring of a God who might require something of you.  You see, a psychic or whatever force they’re dealing with has no requirements of us, but God does.  God might tell you what to do.  God may say you must change.  God might be saying to you you’re not so good.  So, no wonder we would rather talk to psychics or deal with horoscopes than the Word of God.  It is true of our time, we have come to believe that spirituality is apart from ethical considerations or moral considerations and this is exactly what Paul ran into in Corinth.

Now, Corinth was a city in Greece on a little neck of land in between two bodies of water and so it became a great port city.  You would have people who would come on one side, unload, and then take it to the other side and keep going.  Corinth was like the Las Vegas of the Ancient World, “What happened in Corinth stayed in Corinth.”  It was a wild and crazy place.  Paul went there and, through his preaching and ministry, a great church was established.  But these folks, though they reveled in their spirituality, they loved speaking in tongues, they loved getting revelations from God, they loved worship, they did all kinds of things, but in their private lives and in many cases their public lives, they were doing all kinds of things, and Paul loved them and yet wrote one of the strongest letters you will ever read in the bible of saying, “you guys have got it all wrong.” 

This is the context of what I will read to you in just a minute from this same book as we continue and actually end our series of sermons on discovering God’s will.  Of course, there is a lot more to say about this, and we are just going to end it for now; but, in this particular series of sermons, or this particular sermon, I am simply going to end up with some questions.  We all come to the place of trying to decide amongst the millions of choices to make what we’re supposed to do and again the question is, “How do we figure out what God wants us to do?”  And so I am going to give you some questions to ask -- principles, if you will, of conduct which can be gleaned from the words of Paul to the first Corinthians.  In Corinth, they loved the fact that they were saved by grace and there was kind of a phrase going around that “everything is permissible.”  Paul says, “Well that may be true to a degree, but you were saved for a reason unto holiness.” 

Listen to the Word of God as it comes to us from I Corinthians 6:12-20.

¹² “Everything is permissible for me” – but not everything is beneficial.  “Everything is permissible for me” – but I will not be mastered by anything. ¹³ “Food for the stomach and the stomach for food” – but God will destroy them both.  The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.  ¹⁴ By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also.  ¹⁵ Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself?  Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute?  Never!  ¹⁶ Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body?  For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.”  ¹⁷ But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit.

¹⁸ Flee from sexual immorality.  All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body.  ¹⁹ Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?  You are not your own; ²⁰ you were bought at a price.  Therefore honor God with your body.

This is the Word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

Will you pray with me.

Father, we thank you for telling us what to do and being our God and being personal that we may know you.  We ask your forgiveness, Lord, that we so often ignore your words and what you want us to do.  Lord, help us to look at these principles and to use them in our lives.  We pray these things in Jesus’ name, Amen.

The first question or principle is, “Is something lawful?”  Or, in other words, does it go against the plain reading of the Word of God.  You know, I have talked a lot about the bible in the last few weeks and, again, so many people in our day believe this, they believe, “Oh, you can make the bible say anything.”  Well, that’s really true.  People do it all the time.  They make the bible say anything, but that doesn’t negate or make the bible unworthy of reading, but a lot of people treat it that way.  “So you can make it say anything so, therefore, we might as well not even read it,” but it doesn’t make it true.

Let me give you an example.  I’m sure every one of us here has had people interpret us in certain ways, and sometimes in bad ways.  “Oh, John, he’s a jerk.  He doesn’t work hard.  He doesn’t do anything.”  “Oh, Mary, she’s a gossip.”  Oh, you can think of a thousand things, and I am sure some of those things have been said about you.  All kinds of things.  People who interpret you.  In other words, in an analogy, people can make you come out to be anything, can’t they, but that doesn’t mean it’s right or true.  That doesn’t mean it’s real.  It’s just someone’s interpretation.  In order to get to know you, someone really has to know you and me.  The same is true with the Scripture.  Just because someone makes it out to say something doesn’t mean their interpretative skills are correct or they’re even being good at it.  We need to ask, “Is something lawful?”

You know, there are a lot of things in the bible that are hard, that are difficult, that are up to interpretation, but many things are incredibly clear, and, you know, it really is true.  We tend to make excuses, don’t we?  It’s kind of like the little boy who came -- named Johnny, who came to his teacher and said, “The dog ate my homework.”  The teacher put her hands on her hips and said, “Johnny, I have been teaching for 20 years and that’s never been true when someone said it.”  And he said, “Well, he did eat it!  I had to force it down his throat, but he ate it.”  We have all kinds of excuses like, “That doesn’t apply to me in the 20^th century or to my situation.”  “I was born that way, I can’t help it.”  “It’s their fault.”  Or, as Adam said, “It’s that woman you gave me, Lord.”  And the woman said, “It was that snake that you let in here, Lord.”  And on and on it went, excuses, excuses.  The bible is very clear about a lot of behavior.  We need to ask the question “Is it lawful?” 

We also have to ask the question “Is it beneficial for me?”  This is a profit question.  Is this profitable for us, and I’m not just talking about just any kind of profit.  The question is really, “Is this beneficial in my relationship with God?”  “Is this beneficial for my relationship with God?”

I have a good friend who just bought himself a Harley-Davidson motorcycle.  He is a chaplain friend, and he didn’t tell his wife about it, and she went absolutely ballistic – absolutely ballistic!  He even laughed about it and he said, “Well, we were close to divorce,” and he was actually being somewhat serious about it, but he kept the bike.  Now, there are a lot of things in the world which you might call neutral.  You know, for some people it’s perfectly okay to buy a motorcycle.  For some people it’s not really, because it would harm relationships.  I’m not judging my friend, but I think he made a mistake.  I think he should have taken time to talk with his wife about the motorcycle, and then maybe have bought one, but he bought it because he wanted it and the heck with her.  It harmed their relationship – I think it did.  There are things that we do in our lives that might in general terms be just fine, but for us it may harm our relationship with God and we simply have to ask the question, “Is this beneficial for my relationship with God?”  We can ask that question of anything -- buying a car, buying a vacation home, doing this or doing that, is this going to take too much time for me, from away from my wife and children and my God and my church.  You know, having a lot of stuff is okay, but having stuff requires responsibility – it means sooner or later you have to fix it and you have to spend money on it.  Those are just some examples.  Among thousands, there are a lot of things that are just fine to do, but are they beneficial for you in your relationship with God.

To go along with that, we have to ask the question, “Is it enslaving?”  You know, Paul says everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial,” but then he says, “Everything is permissible for me, but I will not be mastered by anything.”  Again, the same principle applies.  There are a lot of things out there that, in general, are just fine to do, but too much of a good thing sometimes leads to having to do it.  We all have the example of eating too much.  Eating is just fine.  Shoveling it in probably is not, and I have a tendency to do that.  Anything can become addicted to us – anything can from TV to sports, to owning things, to reading, anything can be addictive.  Is it enslaving to us?  It is a powerful question to ask.  Sometimes I choose not to do something because I know I won’t be able to stop.

A couple of years ago, we went on a cruise and many of the cruise ships now have gambling establishments, so I went down to this place and took twenty dollars with me and got the change, and I was only going to spend the twenty bucks doing the slots just to see what it was like.  Well, I won thirty more dollars.  Oh, this is fun.  I should have stopped.  I promptly lost the fifty, and it was so tempting to pull out another twenty, and if it weren’t for the fact that I’m cheap, I would have done it.  I don’t think it was wrong to play those slots, but, boy, it was tempting to play it more and to lose more.  It was so tempting.  Is it enslaving? 

Is it consistent with the Lordship of Jesus Christ?  I think Americans have trouble with this one.  We are so used to being free and doing whatever we want to do, and even our leaders are subject to the vilest ridicule, especially the President, whoever that happens to be.  People can say the most horrible things about the President and it’s okay.  What’s the difference between a president and a king?  We’re Americans.  Thank God for it, but more than being Americans, we’re Christians, and we have a Lord, a King – what’s the difference there?  Now the King can tell us what to do.  The King ought to tell us what to do.  In what we are doing, is that consistent with that Lordship? 

You know, Paul has an interesting conversation going on here.  He talks about how we have been bought with a price.  In the image that he has, and it’s a real one, in the spiritual realm when we’re not in the Lord, we’re – it’s not that we belong to ourselves, we belong to somebody else.  His name is Satan.  There is a sense when we are not Christians, we’re on the slave block -- we are slaves to this person, and God has bought us off the slave block and made us children.  How great is the love the Father has lavished on us that we should be called the children of God!  You should memorize that one.   I John 3:1.  How great is the love the Father has lavished on us that we should be called the children of God. There is a sense in which we are not children of God.  Oh, we are by creation, but not by family until we are in Christ.  And Paul says, “You have been joined to Jesus Christ and his Holy Spirit has moved in.”  You know, I have used this illustration so many times about how we are like houses and when we become Christians, God moves in.  And the problem with us is that we tend to like to keep Jesus in our living rooms and no place else in the house – and some of us put him in the basement and say you cannot come upstairs.  You can’t go in the bedroom or the places where we really live.  You have to stay here.  Is it consistent with His Lordship?  And Paul talks about this and he says, “You know what?  When Jesus lives in you, wherever you go, he goes.”  So when you go visit the prostitute, that’s one example, guess where Jesus is?  Or whatever we are doing, when we’re doing something a little shady or a little bit dishonest, Jesus is right there.  Do you realize that Jesus – that you’re taking Jesus into this place?  There is nothing you can do.  God loves you.  He’s with you.  He has welcomed you into His Kingdom and nothing is going to change that, so why are you dishonoring God and Jesus by doing these things?  Strong language.  It really proves that our society has come to believe that if you don’t agree with what people do, you don’t really love them?  You’re being judgmental or you are being hateful if you say this is wrong.  Paul loved these people and yet he talks with them in the strongest terms and he is asking that same question, “Is what you are doing consistent with the fact that you belong with someone else now?”  “Is it helpful to others?”  “What are the two greatest laws?”  Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and soul.  Love your neighbor as yourself.

I was watching TV last night and they were advertising this new chef show, you know where they have the chefs come in and compete with each other, and they were trying to advertise one of the women chefs, whether it matters whether it was a woman or not, but she said, “All my world revolves around one little word, and its ‘me.’”  Well, I said that’s consistent with all of us.  With all of us in the end, the thing we have to fight against is “me” and doing it just for ourselves.  Jesus said, “Even the Son of Man did not come to rule but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.”  Our God gives the same example of what we’re supposed to do.  “Is it helpful for others?”  None of us lives in a vacuum.  None of us lives to ourselves.  As much as the philosophy of the world would like to say that we do, and it’s all about me -- It’s not.  It’s all about us.  We are responsible for other people. 

You know, when I got married, it was the biggest change in my life, but when we had kids, it was a change times ten because suddenly I was responsible for little lives.  Not just one, but many, and none of us live to ourselves.  We need to ask that question.  Just one other question to add, “Is it helpful to others?”  “Is it consistent with the example of Jesus and the Apostles?”  Here is the WWJD question, and it isn’t WWWD as I saw in the paper this morning, “What Would Wellstone Do?”  I have nothing against Wellstone, but it isn’t about him.  It’s about Jesus and Paul of the Apostles.  “What Would Jesus Do?”  It’s a great question, yet you have to be careful about that.  You have to be careful in asking that question because that implies that you actually know Jesus – not just spiritually, but the character of Jesus, and you only find that out in the Scriptures. 

We have a wonderful class on the historical Jesus, and all that means is that a hundred years ago, because people were kind of trying to disprove the Scriptures, they were saying let’s find out what the extra biblical sources are to find out about Jesus, and you know what they found?  They found that there really weren’t any.   That the only historical Jesus is the biblical Jesus.  However, Jesus is mentioned in a couple extra historical things, but it’s basically in the bible that we find out about Jesus.  So we have to be careful when we ask, “What Would Jesus Do?”  We would have to know who Jesus is. 

I have mentioned before that I find bumper sticker theology really funny, and I was driving down the road the other day and saw one that said, “Who would Jesus bomb?”  Now, I presume that was saying Jesus would be anti-war – any war, but if you read the Scriptures, you find that Jesus, being God, and God actually did start a couple wars, and Jesus did actually make a whip and drive some people out of a temple – he wasn’t nonviolent, and when he comes back at the end of time, he is going to be a warrior.  I’m not saying Jesus would throw grenades into a crowd, but it’s a lot more complicated than that – a lot more complicated than that.  A lot of people think they know who Jesus is, but they have no clue about who Jesus is, and so we just need to read the bible; and, yes, some of it is subject to interpretation, true, but that’s what the community is for, that’s what we’re all for is to talk with one another in love and determine what God would have us do.  And that is the last thing I want to say to you is that we need to walk in love, and love doesn’t necessarily mean agreeing with everyone, but it does mean that we treat each other with respect and we treat one another as family and we talk with one another and we may disagree, but part of finding out God’s will is working it through together, not simply by ourselves.  It is a community affair as much as it is a single affair.  We live in a very, very individualistic culture and the bible is very much against that.  Oh, the individual is fine, we are saved as individuals, but we’re saved into a community, we’re saved into a church, as messy as that is, and it is messy, people are messy, but that’s what God has given us – each other.

Let us pray.