How Your Coronary heart Governs Your Thoughts

Audio Transcript

Pleased Monday, and welcome again to the podcast with us. We admire that you just hear alongside every week. On this Monday, Pastor John, I need to take a look at Psalm 111. There we discover an excellent 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 numerous us know properly — we all know by coronary heart, probably. A whole lot of listeners have memorized this verse over time. 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 then you definitely stated, “As so usually 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 usually method issues the opposite method round: from our head into our coronary heart, getting issues from our head into our coronary heart. Clarify how this works within the different course — how our hearts govern what occurs in our minds.

After I say that the center governs the thoughts, I don’t imply that when our minds are renewed by the Holy Spirit, they’ll’t exert good affect upon our coronary heart. I don’t imply to exclude that. They do. Renewed considering helps renewed feeling. That’s true. All via the Bible, proper figuring out has the aim of manufacturing proper feeling in addition to proper appearing. We all know God to be able 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, “Should you knew rightly, then you definitely’d assume 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 motive as a method of shaping the feelings of our coronary heart.

Energy of the Coronary heart

The place do I get the concept that it really works the opposite method round as properly — specifically, {that a} coronary heart whose wishes go after evil might be blinded from seeing the reality about God in his methods and works, and a coronary heart that wishes to go after God and what’s good will see the reality extra simply? In different phrases, the situation of the center and its wishes have an enormous impact on whether or not or not we will 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 wishes 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 fairly 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 explanation Jesus provides just isn’t that they don’t have enough mild or enough proof or data. The explanation he provides 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 center governs the thoughts. What the center 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 consequence of their hardness of coronary heart” (Ephesians 4:18). He strikes towards the underside of our drawback, passing via 4 layers. The place does it finish? What’s on the backside of our drawback, our darkness?

He says darkened, alienated, ignorant, exhausting. The underside of our drawback just isn’t ignorance. There’s one thing beneath ignorance that brings about culpable ignorance and holds us at the hours of darkness jail of ignorance — specifically, hardness of coronary heart. That’s not primarily an mental drawback; that’s a need drawback. 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 underneath 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 just isn’t mental. It’s a love problem. It’s a need problem.

Bent Will

Or contemplate this superb 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 by myself authority.” This is likely 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 drawback, 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 feel it was 1966. I keep in mind considering, “That’s superb.” I keep in mind strolling out considering, “That’s superb that my prepared needs to be modified to ensure that me to know the reality.” It’s not simply the opposite method round. My complete mindset was that it’s the opposite method round. Realizing will change my will. “I’ve received to know. I’ve received to know.” Nicely, truly, 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 spotted we now have to be born once more. We’ve got 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 implies 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 mistaken factor. It’s not going to work. My will is bent by nature. It’s known as authentic sin. I really like the mistaken issues, and I want God to intervene to vary my will in order that I can know God rightly.

Reward of Humility

So, the lesson is: other than God’s Spirit, all of us have sinful hearts which might be susceptible 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 susceptible to self-justification — all of us. I actually, actually need to do one thing that’s sinful, so my wishes 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 via our tradition right now.

And since proud hardness of coronary heart is the foundation drawback, God-given humility is the treatment. Psalm 25:9 says, “He leads the standard in what is true, and teaches the standard his method.” So, we ask God to interrupt our hardness and substitute our delight with humility, and in that method make it potential for us to see God — to see his methods and his works for what they are surely. When God modifications our hearts, then our hearts serve the thoughts fairly than blinding the thoughts.