Is it really the Will of God that these things happen? It isn’t the INTENTIONAL Will of God. God is “not willing that any should perish,”2 Peter 3: 9. But many will perish. Many more will perish than not, as is described in Matthew 7:13-14. And yet, it’s not God’s Will. In 1 Timothy 2: 4, the Bible says God would “have all men to be saved.” That’s God’s INTENTIONAL Will. But we’re told over and over again that not all will be saved.

It was God’s intentional Will in the Garden of Eden that man not sin. But man did sin. And that was also intentional will—on the part of MAN. God, at the risk of our hurting ourselves, and of hurting others (and we have, with those risks, hurt ourselves, and hurt others), but it was God’s Will that, even with the risks involved, we become free moral beings. We’re free to make choices. We’re even free to blaspheme God! We’re free to turn our back upon God. We’re free to become alcoholics and drug addicts—free to become immoral! But while we’re free to make a choice, we’re never freed from the CONSEQUENCES of the choices we make. A man, who uses this freedom to become a drug addict, he’s not free from the consequences of the drug addiction. Let’s say, though, that in the case of this highway automobile crash that we were talking about before, that the father of that baby, the husband of that wife, hadn’t really been interested in spiritual things, while his wife and baby had been. And after their deaths, he gets to thinking: “If I am ever to go heaven, if I ever want to see them again, I’m going to have to change my way of thinking, change my life, change my course.” And maybe, had it not been for that accident, he might not have thought that way. But it STILL wasn’t God’s Will for a man to get drunk. It STILL wasn’t God’s Will that a man in that condition try to drive. It STILL wasn’t God’s Will that two innocent people be killed. But, you see? Paul was thrown in prison. That wasn’t God’s Will. Paul was thrown in prison because he was preaching the Gospel and people didn’t want that Gospel. Yet, Paul said, “The things that are happening to me have fallen out unto the furtherance of the Gospel,” Philippians 1:12. What? Do you see? “It was good for me that I have been afflicted,” Psalm 119:71. Maybe the affliction was from the devil, but there are things that work out, and God’s CIRCUMSTANTIAL Will also needs to be considered. Still, it wasn’t God’s Will that a man get drunk. But, had the man NOT gotten drunk, had the man NOT tried to drive, had he NOT had the accident, and had these deaths NOT occurred, it might be that somebody would have never obeyed the Gospel. You never know.

There is a difference in God’s “intentional Will” and God’s “circumstantial Will.” Why did Christ come to earth? Why did He have to go to the cross? Well, God’s circumstantial Will was at work. It wasn’t God’s Will that man sin in the beginning! And it wasn’t God’s Will that man be thrown out of the garden, eventually. But it worked that way, because of the circumstantial Will of God. Man ran that risk, and he suffered as a result of it. But, within the circumstances, something might come of it that otherwise wouldn’t have.

For instance, when the first property this congregation sought to buy, for constructing a new church building, didn’t work out, well, it just seems to me that it was better, that it was providential. It seems that you have a much better situation now with the new building location than you did where you were trying to build earlier. Well, was that God’s intention? No. There is the circumstantial Will of God.

And then, finally, there is the “ultimate Will” of God. You can’t defy the ultimate Will of God. The righteous will go to heaven, and the unrighteous will go to torment. And nobody, but NOBODY can change that!!

And so, when we talk about the Will of God, let’s clarify it some. Let’s qualify it. Are we talking about God’s intentional Will? So many people ascribe to God so many things that shouldn’t be ascribed to God, like wars—wars that aren’t warranted. When you think of killing all of those thousands of people, like during World War II, surely that wasn’t God’s intentional Will. But within the circumstances, things might work out that might not have otherwise worked out. Life has its favorable moments, and man has his susceptible times.

Have you ever gone through one of those big steel mills? It’s interesting to see that steel in its molten form, writhing under the blast of those tremendous furnaces. And then there is what is called the “ingots”—those white-hot-but-JUST-beyond-the-molten-state-but-not-by-much, long bars of steel. Those steel workers, using rollers, manipulate, elongate, and bend those ingots, just like clay in a potter’s hand. But I was told that, if those ingots were allowed to cool to a certain temperature, they would refuse to mold. And human susceptibility is like that; human personality is like that. Life has its favorable moments; there are times when you can be reached, and other times when you can’t. And who knows? But as you prepare to go into that new church building, the Lord permitting, remember that perhaps while at THIS location, you’ve probably reached some that you wouldn’t have reached had you been elsewhere. But who knows? Maybe by going to that particular new location at this particular time, who knows but some might be reached because they are more susceptible than they have ever been before? And think about the tragedy that we talked about earlier—the drunk, the woman and child killed. Because of this tragedy, something’s happened. There is the sadness, and there is the loss. But who knows what else will come of that particular tragedy at that particular time?