The Key to Christian Obedience

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.580 | - We now have over 1,200 sermons by John Piper

00:00:08.660 | in the Desiring God sermon archive,

00:00:10.620 | but none of them are more popular than one sermon

00:00:13.080 | that stands above all the others in page views.

00:00:15.980 | It's simply titled, "What is the Will of God

00:00:18.600 | "and How Do We Know It?"

00:00:20.120 | A sermon he preached on August 22nd, 2004.

00:00:23.480 | In it, he answers the question,

00:00:24.920 | "What is the single most important key

00:00:26.620 | "to knowing God's will in my life?

00:00:28.500 | "Like, how do I obey him?

00:00:29.760 | "In any given situation, but also,

00:00:32.160 | "who does he want me to marry?

00:00:33.760 | "What car should I buy?

00:00:34.840 | "What career path should I choose?

00:00:36.800 | "Where should I go to school?"

00:00:38.700 | Pastor John explains how to know God's will

00:00:40.740 | in three stages from Romans 12, verses one and two.

00:00:44.400 | - If I'm arguing that discern the will of God

00:00:48.420 | in verse two means discern the will of command,

00:00:53.340 | discern your duty, how does that look?

00:00:57.020 | Three stages.

00:00:57.900 | Number one, God's will of command is revealed

00:01:02.900 | finally and decisively only in the Bible.

00:01:06.700 | Finally and decisively, very important words.

00:01:11.600 | God's will of command is revealed with final

00:01:15.860 | and decisive authority only in the Bible,

00:01:18.860 | and we must have a renewed mind in order to see it,

00:01:21.660 | because if you go to the Bible

00:01:23.220 | without having a renewed mind,

00:01:24.680 | you will find a way to distort and evade self-denial,

00:01:29.680 | love, purity, the command that Jesus be supremely satisfying.

00:01:34.840 | We must have the Holy Spirit illumining, transforming.

00:01:39.360 | The Holy Spirit brings us Christ-exalting truth,

00:01:41.620 | and from inside, he works truth-embracing humility.

00:01:45.240 | That's just gotta happen.

00:01:46.380 | When you go to the Bible, you're gonna blow off

00:01:48.240 | all kinds of things or twist them

00:01:50.600 | so that they fit your own self-exalting passions.

00:01:53.920 | So step one is the Bible is God's revealed will,

00:01:58.920 | the will of command, and it's the only place

00:02:04.600 | where it is expressed with final and decisive authority.

00:02:09.600 | Here's a text to support that claim, 2 Timothy 3.16.

00:02:15.680 | All scripture is inspired by God and is profitable

00:02:19.840 | for teaching, for reproof, for correction,

00:02:22.560 | for training in godliness, in order that the man of God

00:02:26.960 | might be competent, equipped for every good work, not some.

00:02:31.960 | Like some good works, you gotta get messages

00:02:34.160 | in order to do.

00:02:35.800 | I won't be able to figure out the will of God here

00:02:38.080 | unless I get a message.

00:02:39.760 | This text says the scriptures are inspired

00:02:45.120 | to make the Christian competent,

00:02:47.600 | equipped for every good work.

00:02:52.520 | Second stage, first one is Bible.

00:02:55.400 | We need renewed mind to understand it and apply it.

00:02:59.760 | The second stage is the application of biblical truth

00:03:02.760 | to new situations that are not explicitly addressed

00:03:05.780 | in the Bible, and there are, of course, millions of them.

00:03:08.620 | The Bible does not tell you which person to marry

00:03:10.720 | or whether to marry.

00:03:12.360 | The Bible does not tell you which car to drive or buy, rent.

00:03:16.360 | The Bible doesn't tell you whether to buy a home or not,

00:03:18.920 | or which home to buy.

00:03:19.800 | The Bible doesn't tell you where or if to take a vacation.

00:03:22.920 | The Bible doesn't tell you which cell phone plan to buy.

00:03:26.560 | The Bible doesn't tell you which brand of orange juice

00:03:28.320 | to drink.

00:03:29.240 | There are 10,000 decisions you must make

00:03:32.000 | that are not explicitly addressed in the Bible.

00:03:35.840 | So what do you do?

00:03:37.080 | My answer is you must have a renewed mind.

00:03:40.560 | That's what the text says.

00:03:42.640 | Be transformed by the renewal of your mind

00:03:44.680 | that you may prove how to eat, how to drink,

00:03:49.600 | cars to drive, houses to live in, missions to go on,

00:03:54.280 | lifestyles to choose from, friendships to cultivate,

00:03:57.640 | conversations to have and not to have.

00:03:59.400 | 10,000 decisions not written in the Bible,

00:04:02.600 | and yet informed by all the teaching of the Bible

00:04:07.680 | into this new mind so that you think with the mind of Christ

00:04:11.600 | and assess things the way Christ would assess them

00:04:14.600 | so that the decisions that are made really

00:04:16.880 | are flowing from the revealed will of God in the Bible

00:04:21.440 | as it transforms your mind.

00:04:24.320 | Lastly, 95% of your life is unpremeditated.

00:04:31.360 | I'm just picking 95% out of the blue.

00:04:33.320 | You pick a number.

00:04:34.840 | 95% of your life is unpremeditated.

00:04:41.200 | Thoughts, attitudes, actions are spontaneous.

00:04:46.440 | They just are spillover, and the Bible is keenly aware of this

00:04:51.720 | and addresses it like this.

00:04:54.280 | Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.

00:04:59.800 | The good person out of his good treasure,

00:05:02.240 | substitute the person with the renewed mind.

00:05:06.920 | The good person, the person with the renewed mind,

00:05:09.360 | out of the good treasure brings forth good.

00:05:12.960 | And the evil person out of the evil treasure

00:05:15.480 | brings forth evil.

00:05:17.000 | I tell you, on the day of judgment,

00:05:20.800 | people will give an account for every careless word,

00:05:27.200 | the ones you didn't think about at all, namely, most of them.

00:05:33.640 | It's got to be that way.

00:05:35.000 | You cannot stop before every sentence

00:05:37.840 | and ponder the use of your verbs and nouns.

00:05:40.520 | It's impossible to communicate that way.

00:05:42.680 | You must just keep talking.

00:05:46.040 | And if you were standing out here, you'd say,

00:05:48.480 | "Where is all that coming from?

00:05:50.040 | Because I'm not thinking in detail about which sentence to use

00:05:54.040 | and which adjective to use and what tone of voice to use

00:05:56.360 | and whether these gestures should keep going."

00:05:57.960 | And just your life is spillover.

00:06:01.000 | 95% of the time, your life is spillover.

00:06:05.160 | And you may ask, "Well, why are you calling that part of the will of command?

00:06:09.120 | Because it sounds like, you know, will of command would be,

00:06:11.360 | I'm hearing a command, I'm thinking about it, and then I'm doing it.

00:06:14.200 | And I'm calling it the will of command because you get in the Bible commands,

00:06:18.360 | 'Don't be angry, don't be prideful, don't covet,

00:06:22.960 | don't be anxious, don't be jealous, don't envy.'

00:06:27.720 | And you don't think of any of those.

00:06:30.440 | Nobody decides to be prideful.

00:06:34.840 | Now, see, I'm humble, but I really like to be prideful.

00:06:37.160 | So now I will make a decision to become prideful.

00:06:39.680 | Or I'm not feeling any envy right now, but I see somebody has something,

00:06:43.120 | I think I'll start feeling envy.

00:06:45.200 | Or I don't have enough and covetousness would be one way to respond.

00:06:49.480 | I think I'll respond with covetousness."

00:06:50.440 | Nobody lives like that.

00:06:52.720 | Those things happen to you and you are guilty because they're coming out of your heart.

00:06:59.800 | I don't, by and large, live my life by lists.

00:07:03.440 | You try to live your life by lists,

00:07:06.280 | either the list will be ridiculous in its shortness compared to the 10,000 things you do each day,

00:07:13.520 | or it will be so long you die.

00:07:15.920 | There's only one way to live the Christian life.

00:07:19.240 | Don't be conformed, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.

00:07:26.160 | It's our only hope.

00:07:28.280 | Life is too spontaneous.

00:07:30.880 | You just can't live it by lists.

00:07:33.000 | You can't live it even by the Ten Commandments because 95% of the time you're doing stuff

00:07:39.200 | without reflecting on whether it breaks any commandment.

00:07:41.600 | You're just doing stuff.

00:07:44.880 | My biggest challenge is, "Piper, be new.

00:07:49.280 | Be new.

00:07:51.280 | Just get at the core of my being.

00:07:54.160 | If there's any stuff, junk, pride left down there that's just causing the stuff to come

00:08:01.520 | out unbidden and unplanned, get at me down there, Lord."

00:08:08.760 | That's the only hope, isn't it?

00:08:11.080 | So concluding exhortation, immerse yourself in God's Word.

00:08:19.280 | Saturate your mind with it.

00:08:21.400 | I don't know any other way.

00:08:22.680 | I'm 58.

00:08:24.680 | Two years ago, I said to the staff at a January meeting, "At age 56, I want to give my life

00:08:32.960 | to memorizing like I've never memorized before."

00:08:36.480 | I'll say that even stronger right now.

00:08:39.480 | I'm into mega Bible memorization.

00:08:43.560 | I don't know any other way to saturate, transform, shape, alter, bring my mind into conformity

00:08:52.360 | to the mind of Christ than by memorizing and meditating upon His Word.

00:08:56.640 | So I don't think you have a chance of a snowball in hell to be holy and avoid that kind of

00:09:03.360 | language if you don't meditate on the Word of God a lot.

00:09:09.160 | So immerse yourself in the Bible.

00:09:11.920 | Get serious about a renewed mind.

00:09:16.320 | That is valuable counsel.

00:09:17.600 | Once again, this excerpt comes from the most popular sermon we have in the DG Sermon Archive.

00:09:23.000 | It's titled, "What is the Will of God and How Do We Know It?"

00:09:25.640 | Which was preached on August 22, 2004.

00:09:28.160 | You can find it on our website at DesiringGod.org.

00:09:32.440 | Also be sure to listen to episode number 181 in this podcast series.

00:09:36.080 | Episode 181 was titled, "How Do We Know God's Will?"

00:09:40.160 | Well tomorrow we hear from a wife who caught her husband checking out a young, attractive

00:09:44.000 | woman at the grocery store.

00:09:45.840 | The wife is, of course, heartbroken.

00:09:48.380 | But should she say anything to him?

00:09:50.680 | We'll hear Pastor John respond to that tomorrow.

00:09:52.560 | I'm your host Tony Reinke.

00:09:53.560 | Thanks for listening to the daily Ask Pastor John podcast.

00:09:56.520 | [END]

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00:09:57.520 | Desiring God's Will 2.

00:09:58.520 | What is the Will of God and How Do We Know It?

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00:10:00.520 | What is the Will of God and How Do We Know It?

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00:10:01.520 | What is the Will of God and How Do We Know It?

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The Key to Christian Obedience

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