Audio Transcript
Pleased Monday, and welcome again to the podcast with us. We admire that you just pay attention alongside every week. On this Monday, Pastor John, I need to have a look at Psalm 111. There we discover an amazing promise for all times: “The worry of the Lord is the start of knowledge” (Psalm 111:10). I think this can be a line that a number of us know nicely — we all know by coronary heart, possible. Loads of listeners have memorized this verse through the years. Many people have underlined or highlighted it in our Bibles, tweeted it or shared it on-line sooner or later. I’ve seen it on espresso mugs and wall hangings. “The worry of the Lord is the start of knowledge.”
However there’s a Christian Hedonist spin to this textual content I hadn’t observed till I noticed one thing you stated about it a couple of years again. You quoted the textual content and you then stated, “As so typically in Scripture, what occurs within the coronary heart governs what occurs within the thoughts.” So right here, worry within the coronary heart results in knowledge within the thoughts. We so typically strategy issues the opposite means round: from our head into our coronary heart, getting issues from our head into our coronary heart. Clarify how this works within the different route — how our hearts govern what occurs in our minds.
Once I say that the guts governs the thoughts, I don’t imply that when our minds are renewed by the Holy Spirit, they will’t exert good affect upon our coronary heart. I don’t imply to exclude that. They do. Renewed pondering helps renewed feeling. That’s true. All by way of the Bible, proper figuring out has the aim of manufacturing proper feeling in addition to proper performing. We all know God with a purpose to love God.
Ten occasions in 1 Corinthians, Paul says, “Do you not know?” (1 Corinthians 3:16; 5:6; 6:2, 3, 9, 15, 16, 19; 9:13, 24) — with the implication, “In case you knew rightly, you then’d suppose in a different way, really feel in a different way, act in a different way about what you’re about to do.” And in 1 Thessalonians 4:5, Paul says to not give your self over to “the fervour of lust just like the Gentiles who have no idea God,” implying {that a} proper data of God would have a subduing impact upon the passions of our coronary heart. So, I’m not denying that God has given us renewed, Bible-formed purpose as a technique of shaping the feelings of our coronary heart.
Energy of the Coronary heart
The place do I get the concept it really works the opposite means round as nicely — specifically, {that a} coronary heart whose needs go after evil shall be blinded from seeing the reality about God in his methods and works, and a coronary heart that needs to go after God and what’s good will see the reality extra simply? In different phrases, the situation of the guts and its needs have an enormous impact on whether or not or not we can see God and his methods and his works for what they are surely.
Let me simply give some Bible passages that time to this energy of our hearts — our needs over our thoughts’s ideas.
Darkened Love
In John 3:19, Jesus says, “That is the judgment: the sunshine has come into the world, and folks liked the darkness relatively than the sunshine.” They don’t come to the sunshine. They reject the reality. They don’t embrace the reality with their minds. And the rationale Jesus offers shouldn’t be that they don’t have enough mild or enough proof or data. The rationale he offers is that this: they love the darkness. Why don’t they see the sunshine? As a result of they love the darkish. It’s a love problem, proper? It’s a coronary heart problem. That is what I imply once I say the guts governs the thoughts. What the guts loves can blind the thoughts to the sunshine, the reality.
Hardened Coronary heart
Right here’s the best way Paul will get on the identical factor. He describes the Gentiles who reject the gospel like this: “They’re darkened of their understanding, alienated from the lifetime of God due to the ignorance that’s in them, as a result of their hardness of coronary heart” (Ephesians 4:18). He strikes towards the underside of our downside, passing by way of 4 layers. The place does it finish? What’s on the backside of our downside, our darkness?
He says darkened, alienated, ignorant, laborious. The underside of our downside shouldn’t be ignorance. There’s one thing beneath ignorance that brings about culpable ignorance and holds us at nighttime jail of ignorance — specifically, hardness of coronary heart. That’s not primarily an mental downside; that’s a want downside. Hardness of coronary heart is stiff-necked resistance to God as a result of we love our independence from God. We hate the thought of being below absolute authority. We love our autonomy, our self-sufficiency, our self-direction, our self-exaltation. We bristle with hardness, stiffness in opposition to any suggestion of absolute dependence on one other, particularly God.
Paul says that the impact of this hardness of coronary heart is ignorance and alienation and darkness. However the root problem shouldn’t be mental. It’s a love problem. It’s a want problem.
Bent Will
Or think about this wonderful phrase from Jesus in John 7:17: “If anybody’s will is to do God’s will, he’ll know whether or not the educating is from God or whether or not I’m talking alone authority.” This is without doubt one of the clearest statements within the Bible that right-willing precedes and permits right-knowing.
“Since proud hardness of coronary heart is the foundation downside, God-given humility is the treatment.”
I keep in mind listening to that for the primary time in a chapel message at Wheaton School. I believe it was 1966. I keep in mind pondering, “That’s wonderful.” I keep in mind strolling out pondering, “That’s wonderful that my prepared must be modified to ensure that me to know the reality.” It’s not simply the opposite means round. My complete mindset was that it’s the opposite means round. Realizing will change my will. “I’ve obtained to know. I’ve obtained to know.” Effectively, really, no. Proper-willing will allow right-knowing.
It was two years later, Tony — it was two years till my first yr in seminary, the place all of the items fell collectively, and I noticed now we have to be born once more. We have now to have a brand new will, a brand new coronary heart. One thing has to occur to us to vary us from the within in order that we will know issues the best way we must know them, which suggests God is sovereignly in management over rescuing me from my sinful coronary heart, my bent will. I can’t will myself out of prepared the flawed factor. It’s not going to work. My will is bent by nature. It’s known as authentic sin. I really like the flawed issues, and I would like God to intervene to vary my will in order that I can know God rightly.
Present of Humility
So, the lesson is: aside from God’s Spirit, all of us have sinful hearts which can be liable to take our minds captive and make them produce arguments that justify the sinful behaviors that we love. That’s the form of management I’m speaking about. We’re all liable to self-justification — all of us. I actually, actually need to do one thing that’s sinful, so my needs exert a robust affect on my thoughts to create arguments that present me it’s not sinful; it’s okay. That’s the best way it really works. That’s the best way it’s working all by way of our tradition right now.
And since proud hardness of coronary heart is the foundation downside, God-given humility is the treatment. Psalm 25:9 says, “He leads the standard in what is true, and teaches the standard his means.” So, we ask God to interrupt our hardness and substitute our pleasure with humility, and in that means make it attainable for us to see God — to see his methods and his works for what they are surely. When God adjustments our hearts, then our hearts serve the thoughts relatively than blinding the thoughts.
