Welcome back to the Fourth Wing podcast. This episode we are going to continue our discussion of consequentialism by taking a look at biblical examples of a positive Christian ethic. What does it mean to be a Christian and to live like a Christian? What is God's will? I remember I had this high school turmoil.

I don't know if it's a Christian thing, if it's an everybody thing, if it's, like, specifically conservative Christian thing. But there's there's a whole lot of just, difficulty in in picking a college and thinking about what do I do with my life. And part of that that difficulty was uniquely Christian in the sense that there was this aspect of what is God's will for my life? For for some reason, like, I I didn't really ask what is God's will for my life while I'm 17 or 16. What's my what's God's will for my life, my sophomore year of high school?

But all of a sudden, when you have to choose a college, God's will comes into play, for whatever reason. And it is a big decision for sure, but, there's there's just something weird about it in in Christian circles that all of a sudden you question God's will for your life. And it wasn't unique to me. It was something that most of my friends were going through too. What does God want me to do?

And it it didn't strike me then, but it strikes me now as just really odd that you would you would have such a, such angst about that decision as if, like, God's will was mysterious or something. Because, like, when when Noah built his ark, was was he just like, I wonder what God's will for my life is. I I have this feeling that I'm supposed to build a big bark out of gopher wood over the over a series of several 100 years. I mean, I'm pretty sure that God, like when God wanted Noah to build an ark, he was pretty clear about that and spoke with him. And and, no one knew it.

It wasn't just some, like, feeling or weird vibe that he got. And you see that with a lot of places, a lot of places in the bible where when god wants you to know something, a specific will, he lets you know. But, like, we in the new testament, Christians, we have the holy spirit living inside of us, and and God's will is not mysterious. God's not enigmatic and unclear. And I had a youth leader, fortunately.

I had a youth leader who kinda made this this point pretty clear, one youth group, and it stuck with me forever. And it's just so insightful, but so obvious. Now as you think about what is the will of God for your life, there's there's, in one sense, yeah, God surely has a specific will for your life, and there might be some specific things that he wants you to do that he'll let you know. But by and large, God's will for our lives is already very clear. I don't need him to tell me anything to to do anything specific because God has already given that to me.

And our youth leader laid out a number of verses in the bible where it explicitly says that this is God's will for our lives, or or it strongly implies it. So let me give you a few. It is God's will that you should be sanctified, that you should avoid sexual immorality. So avoid sexual immorality. Clear.

Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstance, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. Okay? Pray, be thankful all the time, and rejoice. K. Have a have a contented happy spirit.

It is God's will that by doing good, you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish people. Alright. Be be good. Do good. Do good works.

K? He has shown you, oh, mortal, what is good, and what does the lord require of you? To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your god. K? Justice, mercy, walk with God in humility.

Yeah. So, and, and that was just a sampling of verses. I mean, you can, you can go into the Bible and see God has a very clear will for the lives of his followers. And unlike Noah or Moses or some other people, God might never really, talk to us and give us some super specific will that he has for our lives because he just wants us to to live godly lives. And it probably doesn't really matter what college you pick.

God is going to guide your choices and everything. You can't mess that up. You are just called to live in God's will, which is avoiding sexual immorality, having contentment, and be rejoicing and praying and, doing good and loving justice and mercy and walking humbly with God. You you focus on doing those things, you're in God's will. You do not need to worry about the super specific will of God.

And if you do, he'll let you know. It'll be clear. It won't just be some some feeling that you get, in the pit of your stomach. So god God's will is clear, and our job is to walk in that clear will. And, like, like Samuel, to listen and be attentive if God is going to speak to us about more specific things.

So we don't need to divine the minutiae of our lives, but we're to walk in a holy manner which conforms us to the image of Christ and edifies the body of Christ and testifies Christ to the world. It means the the, this means the Christian ethic is faithfulness in holiness, not effectiveness. That's not our goal. Our goal is conformity, not effectiveness. There's no end so big that it requires us to deviate from the means that God has given to us.

And there are no means of God which are so small that require us to seek something more profound or meaningful. God's means, God's will is what we're to do. There's nothing beyond that. There's there's no relative morality based on the consequences of an action. We live as God wants us to live.

You know, I think one of one of my favorite examples of of pointing this out is in 1 Samuel 15. We see that Saul was given a command to, go and sacrifice, everything to God to to kill, I think it was the Amalekites, and all their livestock and and everything. And when Samuel comes to Saul, Samuel says, wait a second, Saul. Why do I hear the bleeding of sheep in my ears? I thought god told you to kill them all.

And Saul says, yeah. Well, you know, I I kinda thought that it would be fun or good to make sacrifices to god, like, so I kept the best for him. And let's just assume that's true. Samuel seems to assume it's true. Let's assume that's really Saul's intent.

Samuel's response to Saul is, Saul, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams. So he essentially said, god doesn't want your sacrifices without your obedience. And and it's this event which causes Saul to lose his kingship. God is just dying. This is the final straw.

God has had it. We see other glimpses of this, like I Isaiah 1. We see, it said, what are your sacrifices to me? Stop bringing meaningless offerings. And in Amos 5, we see something similar, and even more harsh where god's just, like, saying, all these things that you're doing for me, just stop.

Give it up. You say that you're doing all this stuff for me, but you're not doing the things I told you to do. You're not loving justice, and you're not taking care of people. So stop, quote, sacrificing, and start doing what I asked you to do. And, so the the Christian's call then is is to be faithful in obedience to God.

And a lot of times, we try to complicate that and try to figure out all these things that we think would be awesome to get for God and all these things that would that would if we could just get those, man, how happy would God be when god wants our our base level obedience? And without that base level obedience, our sacrifices are not only meaningless to him, but a terrible aroma like we see in in Isaiah and Amos. I think that's that's really hard for us because we think that God runs on the ethic that we run on, which is effectiveness. We need to accomplish things for God, and we forget that that's not how God works. God's patient, and God uses weak and foolish means to accomplish things.

And he asks us to be faithful to him in those weak and foolish means and just trust him to give control over to him like Jesus did with his pathetic life. Right? Born born in a stable, born in a manger. He to a carpenter's son. He was a carpenter's son, not very wealthy, not very attractive.

He lived a relatively unknown life until he was 30. He started doing some cool things, but then he was publicly humiliated and crucified. Right? What kind of savior is that? But that's how God restores all of creation.

It's how God saves you and me. So faithfulness to God's means. We see something like this in in first Corinthians 1. Paul declares that God uses weak and foolish means to humble the wise and to show His strength. The power to shape, the power to do, the power to accomplish isn't in the vessels, but, it's it's in the potter.

And it doesn't matter whether you're weak or the means you use are weak because the one wielding those means is God. We can see this on lots of biblical examples. Noah. God commanded a man who had never seen rain to build a huge boat on land and start a zoo over the course of a few 100 years. Pretty stupid.

But through Noah, all of us have come and been saved. Humanity was saved. Abraham. God used a barren couple, an old barren couple, to have a child, and he called them to leave their homes where they were established. And then he asked them to kill their only child in whom all their hope rested.

Moses, God commanded a stuttering murderer to publicly declare the freedom of of his weak nation, which was currently enslaved to a superpower. He asked this dude to go and and tell the leader of, of a powerful nation to, hey. Let all the all your slaves go. Joshua. God told Joshua to walk around the city and blow trumpets and yell at the walls to to defeat, Jericho.

Deborah and Ehud, and judges. We have a woman and a left handed man who were picked to be judges for Israel. It doesn't sound like a big deal, but a woman? That was a big deal back then. And a left handed man?

That was a big deal back then too. Right? They were kind of, unexpected, weak. Gideon. God told Gideon, who's so afraid that, like, he has to test God several times to make sure that that God's got it right.

Right? There's that specific will of God pretty clear. But he has God tested several times because he's so scared. And then when he gets the armies of Israel together, God has him whittle down his army to just 100 and then has them use jars and trumpets, to scare the army, the enemy army with a vastly superior force. They're scared to death, literally.

They, like, run and kill each other. David, he was small. He was the youngest in his family in a land where there was a strong, tall, handsome king who had a son, an heir. But God chose David, shepherd. Jonah, he was a spiteful, hateful, begrudging, disobedient man who God used to convert a nation, to convert Assyria.

Hosea was a prophet who married a prostitute. God told him to marry a prostitute, which sounds better than the the, prophet God had, like, cook his food over poop, which is another example there. The disciples. We had fishermen, tax collectors. As far as the women go, it seemed like Jesus had some prostitutes, at least one, who who followed him and cared a lot about him.

And women. Yeah. The fact that Jesus had women following him and that women were the, the ones who were the first to to declare he was risen. In Jesus' lineage, we have, Tamar and Rahab, which, they have some shady pasts. Rahab was a prostitute.

Tamar had a kid with her father-in-law after prostituting herself to him. I mean, he should have taken care of her anyway, but nevertheless. We have Joseph, the youngest of of his siblings, sold into slavery. Samson, who through his hair, is able to beat people up. David's slang defeats a giant.

I mean, the list just goes on. God is, it seems, very unconcerned both with the the individual who he's using and the means that that individual is wielding, because god is the wielder of both the individual and the means that the individual uses. And it's really not a concern to God, how things get accomplished. He he's not worried. If we're faithful to him, he's not worried whether or not we're gonna win because God's got that taken care of.

And the moral for God is obedience, faithfulness, holiness. That's what we're to do. Not we don't need to play around with evil. We don't need to try to accomplish things for God. We need to be faithful and allow God to wield us.

That's our job. The question is, can we trust God enough to wield us As Jesus trusted God enough to, not count equality with God something to be grasped. He laid down his life and and allowed God to wield him. Jesus gave up his status, his rights, his ability to control, history. He just allowed God to use him to the point of death, trusting that that even in his death, that God would be able to win.

Philippians 2 tells us that we're to have the same mind, the same mindset as Jesus. Our job isn't to demand our rights, to maintain our status, to grasp and control. Our job is to serve and love, trusting in God's sovereign control through foolish means and, through us who are foolish and weak vessels. Obedience and not sacrifice, faithfulness and not effectiveness. That's the Christian call.

It's gonna be important to remember this as we continue because when you lose sight of what the positive Christian call is, you're gonna start inserting what you think the Christian call should be or what you want it to be. And it's at that point that we start smuggling in these other ethics that unseat God from his throne because we want to try to have some sort of control over things and to feel useful. So please, as we move forward, try to keep this positive Christian ethic in mind, the ethic that we see Jesus display clearly in Philippians 2, and the, the sovereignty of God and all of the lives of of the people that he's wielded throughout history. That's all for now. So peace because I'm a pacifist.

When I say it, I mean it.