"Fear
not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give
you the kingdom" (Luke 12:32).
It
is upon a part of that statement that I want to dwell: "it
is your Father's good pleasure". There
is a very great, a vast, opening out of that fragment in the
later part of the New Testament - later, that is, so far as our
arrangement is concerned, not later actually in date, for the
Gospels were written much about the same time as many of the
epistles. But when we turn to such fuller revelation as we have
in Paul's letter to the Ephesians we have this: "having
foreordained us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto
himself, according to the good pleasure of his will" (Eph.
1:5). "Your Father's good pleasure";
"the good pleasure of his will". And then again: "making
known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good
pleasure which he purposed in him unto a dispensation of the
fulness of the times, to sum up all things in Christ" (Eph.
1:9,10). And again, in Philippians 2:13, we have
this: "It is God which worketh in you both to
will and to work, for his good pleasure". The
good pleasure of the Lord is a tremendous thing. "To give
you the kingdom"; "foreordained us unto adoption as
sons through Jesus Christ unto himself, according to the good
pleasure of his will"; "making known unto us the
mystery of his will" (how great a thing that is!)
"according to his good pleasure"; and He is 'working in
us to will and to work according to His good pleasure'.
And
yet it is not the object that is with me for this moment. It is
the fact of His good pleasure. We have
recently passed through a season of the year in which the old
Authorised translation of Luke 2:14 has been very much used:
"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will
toward men". There are different views as to how the
original ought to be translated here; the renderings are various.
"Men in whom he is well pleased", or His "goodwill
toward men". I do not think it matters very much, because
the upshot of it all, and the very accompaniments and
associations of that great event, all combine to speak of His
goodwill. And, after all, was not that the beginning of the
Gospel? - and the Gospel is "good news". It is the
spirit, the attitude, the mind of God toward us that is the thing
of importance - His goodwill.
The Battle to Maintain Faith
in God's Goodwill
I am
not going to speak of the associations of that goodwill, that
good pleasure, as we have them in the passages which we have
read. Each one of them relates the goodwill of God to some
tremendous thing. But you and I need constantly to be held
strongly to this fact, that God's attitude toward us is a
'goodwill' attitude, in a very vast and full way. It is not
always easy to feel that; it is sometimes difficult to believe
it. Does that sound too bad a thing to say? Are there not times
when you really do wonder about this - when for anybody to say in
those situations and conditions that the Lord is in an attitude
of goodwill toward you sounds almost like mockery? We know this
conflict with the evil forces that are always trying to come
between us and the Lord, to make the Lord appear evil, as giving
Him their own complexion, or giving us their complexion and
transferring it to God, suggesting that God is not a God of
goodwill. It is a real battle to maintain that position,
otherwise there would have been no point in the Lord saying to
His disciples, "Fear not, little flock". 'You will go
to the slaughter, you will know suffering, you will know what it
means to have your innocence made into evil by evil-minded
people, you will know what it means to have your purity
besmirched and blackened, your good name defamed' - all that the
Lamb Himself knew, we shall know it as the little flock - 'but
fear not, none of this is evidence that God is against you, none
of this is proof that God is other than a God of goodwill toward
you'. That is something that we must constantly hold on to. It is
a part of the very victory that has to be maintained. "Your
Father's good pleasure".
The Frown of God's Goodwill
Now,
strangely enough, the very goodwill of God is often hidden behind
a frown. I turn to my friend John Bunyan. You know that he had a
man called Goodwill. He lived at the wicket gate, and Christian's
first contact with Goodwill was when he came to the gate. He saw
the notice written up, "Knock and it shall be opened",
and he knocked and the man opened. It was Goodwill. But how is he
described? "A very grave person called Goodwill".
Surely that is a contradiction! Surely that is not right! If we
had been describing Goodwill according to our idea, well, we
should have said he was a boisterous, hilarious, hearty, jovial
sort of person who was just falling over you with beneficence and
everything light and helpful and cheerful. But in John Bunyan's
story it was a very grave person that Christian met when he met
Goodwill at the wicket gate. And, the gate having been opened to
him somewhat, and seeing this very grave person and being asked
what he wanted and giving his reply, he was suddenly laid hold of
by Goodwill with a terrible grasp and pulled in so strongly that
he might almost have been torn to pieces. Anything but goodwill,
it seemed! Christian did not expect that, and he turned to the
man and said, 'Why did you do that?' 'Oh', he said, 'Beelzebub
has a castle just over there, and he is always watching for
pilgrims coming, so that he can shoot them down before they get
through the gate. He was going to shoot you down, so I pulled you
in'. Sometimes we need rough handling, and it does not mean it is
not goodwill.
This
is the marvelous shrewdness and honesty of Bunyan. Why was
Goodwill a very grave person? Because of the aspects of the
wicket gate. It looked down the way to the city of Destruction;
and Goodwill had constantly in full view all that was going on
down there - the souls perishing and going to perdition. He saw
the road out, and the hard, difficult way from the city of
Destruction to the wicket gate, and how many were caught and
slain or turned back before they got through. He saw all that.
And you cannot live in full view of the awful depredations of
sin, Satan and Hell without being a grave person, with all
goodwill. He saw the castle of Beelzebub, and the malignant eyes
watching for pilgrims, to shoot them down before they could get
through; he knew this hatred, this malice of the Evil One; and
with all the goodwill in the world he could not but be a grave
person in the light of that. And he saw on - he saw the way the
pilgrims were going. He knew what they would encounter. He knew
all that they had to meet. He knew all the rest of the story
contained in that wonderful Pilgrim's Progress,
which was not always progress as we think of it, for we make
progress very often by falls, by mistakes. There are Giants of
Despair, and there are deep and dark valleys, and there are many
other things. Goodwill stands looking in all directions, taking
in everything, but he is still Goodwill.
The
point is that God is disposed like this. Goodwill is not just
some soft, happy-go-lucky sort of person. The Lord takes in all
the gravity and seriousness of the whole course of things, and He
has never promised that we should be exempt from these perils and
these dangers. He has not said, 'You will never suffer, you will
never be tried'. No. He has promised us nothing short of:
"In the world ye have tribulation" (John 16:33). But He
has said, 'When these things come, do not forget that it is never
to be interpreted as indicating that I am disposed toward you
otherwise than in this way of goodwill, good pleasure'.
We
have to meet, then, our difficulties and go through our trials
and believe that in them God's will is good and perfect and
acceptable. It is all in the good pleasure of His will. And is it
not true that it just works out like that? We sometimes feel,
'Oh, that it might never have been, that this might never have
been', and afterward we say, 'God meant it for good; the outcome
is good, not evil; I did not see it, I could not see it, but it
was the good pleasure of His will'. "It is your Father's
good pleasure to give you the kingdom". Rough handling - but
it is good will. Many an adversity, but the goodwill is looking
over it all and following the whole course. I can say this out of
my own coward heart, that knows only too well what it means to
wonder whether the will of God is always good. The Gospel begins
with goodwill, and it develops and unfolds to a vast fulness
encompassing all ages - the good pleasure of His will.
So
He says, "little flock". He immediately, in so saying,
admitted that His flock would be very small in comparison. They
would be very full of suffering, because they were going the way
of the Lamb, 'following the Lamb whithersoever he goeth'. A
"little flock". But - 'fear not, small, despised,
persecuted flock, fear not!' In the midst of all that comes upon
the world, remember, it is the Lamb who has everything in hand,
and He has it all in hand with a view to having with Him the
company of which we read in Revelation 14. "It is your
Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom". It is
"the good pleasure of his will".
First published in "A Witness and A
Testimony" magazine, Mar-Apr 1954, Vol 32-2