Not just that God be glorified, which He should be but that God has ordained that He IS Glorified. It is under His sovereign control. There is no other way. It's not only His choice, looking at it from our point of view, but it is His Nature. There is no other way. No other possibility. No other alternative. God is Glorified by the vessels of honor and the vessels of dishonor alike.(Romans 9, 10, 11) He has a purpose for each. If you were a Physicist/Theologian you might say, It is the First Law... God IS Glorified by all things always. "Thy will be done" is not a request but a declaration. THY WILL BE DONE! Light be, World Be, Water be, Man Be...The eternal creator proclaims My Will Be.... But that is a whole other sermon #:')
YBIC
Above is the letter I was referring to this morning. God's Will, disobey His Will and that person will suffer the consequences, and if that person dies while disobeying, the suffering is eternal. God does not condone, (be willing to overlook something: to regard something that is considered immoral or wrong in a tolerant way, without criticizing it or feeling strongly about it), evil, and to say that He has a Permissive Will is to say He gives His permission for the action that one is taking while in violation of His commands, His prohibitions. Dietrich Bonhoeffer says it this way, "The old life I left behind, and completely surrendered...The disciple is dragged out of his relative security into a life of absolute insecurity ... [to one that] is nothing else than bondage to Jesus Christ." (Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, Cost of Discipleship; Touchstone 1995, p58). Again, as John MacArthur states it, "... the gospel is an invitation to slavery....(MArthur, John, The Gospel According to Jesus, Zondervan 2008 p34). 'Having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness' (Apostle Paul, Romans 6:18). One moves from being in bondage to sin, to being in bondage to God. Bob Dylan sang it in his song, "You're Gonna Serve Somebody, it may be the Devil or it may be the Lord, but you're going to serve somebody".
So again, what is the Will of God? "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life." What about those who do not want to do His Will? "...he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed." (John 3:16, 18-19).
Again, the Lord God has ordained His Will, we say He has a Permissive Will to justify an action of someone that is contrary to the Will of the Lord. But what if at someone while in a state of disobedience is killed in an accident? What if that person is not saved? What is said then? "Oh, he/she must not have been in the will of God. But is that person is not killed, and later someone is presenting the gospel to him/her, they will more than likely say, "...well you didn't die because you were in God's Permissive Will while you were fornicating, smoking crack, stealing, cursing, in a homosexual relationship, etc. etc....". That individual is being told that by being in God's Permissive Will, God is by definition: "habitually or characteristically accepting or tolerating something, as social behavior or linguistic usage, that others might disapprove or forbid; He is granting or denoting permission." If you give permission for someone, anyone to do something, by definition you are approving that action. You can't have it both ways. God IS. When Moses ask who is sending him, [conjecture on my part, yes], I believe the Lord was annoyed from the answer He gave. What did He say? I AM WHO I AM.
I like how John Piper explains it, bare (Arabic) with me:
1. I AM WHO I AM is that God's personality and power are owing solely to himself and to no other;
2. I AM WHO I AM is that God does not change. In Malachi 3:6 God says, "I Yahweh do not change; therefore you, O sons of Jacob, are not consumed." ;
3. When God says I AM WHO I AM, he summons us to humble objectivity. He puts an end to the notion that everybody's view of God is as good as everybody else's;
4. I AM WHO I AM is that we must conform to God, not he to us. If children should learn their manners from their parents and not the parents from the children;
5. I AM WHO I AM, is that this infinite, absolute, self-determining God has drawn near to us in Jesus Christ. In John 8:56–58 Jesus is answering the criticism of the Jewish leaders. He says, "Your father Abraham rejoiced that he was to see my day; he saw it and was glad." The Jews then said to him, "You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?" Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly! I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM." (Piper, John, Desiring God, Sermon: I Am Who I Am, Sept 15, 1984).
To conclude, in the end it is the individual who must decide "... the course of your life. Make a bedrock decision right now how you're going to live your life. Are you going to live your life in the Self way, or are you going to live your life the Jesus way? ... be a slave to the flesh or a servant of God?" (Connell, John; Halos of Fire, Olive Press, 2004, p62)
"...consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God" (Romans 6:11-13).
How many Will's does the Lord God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob have? You tell me, I only know of one (1), and though as scared as I was when I first encountered being on the receiving end of an artillery attack in Vietnam, I know that my Lord, my God and Savior was more scared the night before He died than I could ever imagine, yet His words were "... Thy Will be done."
All emphases are mine.
