How Do We Know God’s Will?
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:05.000 | Tenniel writes in to ask this, "Romans 12, 2 says, 'Do not be conformed to this world,
00:00:10.500 | but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what
00:00:14.700 | is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.'"
00:00:18.760 | Pastor John, what does it mean when it says "by testing"?
00:00:23.680 | That is a really, really good question.
00:00:25.400 | I love it because it means she's really paying attention.
00:00:28.360 | She's looking at the book and she cares about the words.
00:00:33.200 | And oh, I love people who care about the words of Scripture.
00:00:38.400 | And that phrase, she's obviously reading from the ESV, I think, because it's translated
00:00:44.800 | differently in different ways.
00:00:46.680 | Let me just give it again so that the listeners can get it before their mind.
00:00:52.240 | "Don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind,
00:00:55.820 | that by testing you may discern the will of God."
00:00:59.440 | Now that phrase, "by testing you may discern," is the translation of one Greek word, dokim
00:01:04.160 | mazo.
00:01:05.160 | The standard lexical definition goes like this, "to make a critical examination of something
00:01:10.920 | to determine genuineness, such as metals by fire."
00:01:18.420 | And interestingly, it's used in 1 Corinthians 3:13 where it says, "fire will test"—that's
00:01:28.800 | the word, dokim mazo—"will test what sort of work each one has done."
00:01:32.920 | So our works at the last day are going to be tested by fire.
00:01:39.480 | So the idea is that the genuineness of something, in this case the will of God in Romans 12:2,
00:01:46.040 | the genuineness of something is found out by an appropriate test.
00:01:51.900 | For metals, it is often fire.
00:01:55.360 | For genuine ripeness in fruit, it would be like tasting.
00:02:00.060 | And for genuine health in a horse, you might look at his teeth.
00:02:04.640 | And here, interestingly, powerfully, in verse 2 of Romans 12, the thing to be recognized
00:02:12.500 | is the will of God, namely what's good and acceptable and perfect.
00:02:19.440 | And the question is, so what's the test?
00:02:24.300 | You look at the teeth of the will of God, or you put your tongue on the behavior you're
00:02:29.360 | testing?
00:02:30.900 | Do you put some match to it?
00:02:33.020 | What is the test?
00:02:34.740 | And Paul answers, "the renewal of your mind is the test."
00:02:40.200 | By the renewal of your mind, you will be able to discern by testing what is the will of
00:02:48.160 | God.
00:02:49.160 | So here's the picture I have in my mind.
00:02:50.660 | My renewed mind, renewed by the Word of God, renewed by the Spirit of God, renewed by soaking
00:02:59.380 | in the revealed nature of God in Scripture, is litmus paper which turns green when the
00:03:10.700 | good and acceptable and perfect will touches it.
00:03:14.340 | Green, go!
00:03:15.620 | Go for that!
00:03:16.980 | And it turns red when it considers some act which is not the will of God.
00:03:24.700 | It's not good.
00:03:25.700 | It's not acceptable.
00:03:26.700 | It's not perfect.
00:03:29.060 | So my mind is being shaped by God into the kind of mind that when it contemplates a behavior
00:03:38.500 | or an attitude or a word, there's something that reflexively says no or yes to it because
00:03:46.100 | of the way our mind has been formed.
00:03:48.100 | And here's a great example that shows you how the mind is being renewed for this very
00:03:55.020 | purpose.
00:03:56.020 | It's in Romans 1.9 where Paul's praying that this would happen.
00:03:59.140 | He prays like this, "It is my prayer that your love may abound more and more with knowledge
00:04:08.700 | and insight so that you may prove"—now there's the word—"approve what is excellent."
00:04:18.300 | So he's saying what happens to your love is that love gets more knowledge in Scripture
00:04:24.760 | and love gets more insight in Scripture and love gets more of everything it needs to be
00:04:30.220 | the kind of litmus paper it needs to be so that when you're out there in the world
00:04:34.540 | and you're navigating at work every day and you don't have your little lists in your
00:04:38.300 | pocket to say, "Oh, where's a list I can consult?"
00:04:40.740 | Well, you can't consult a list for every decision you have to make.
00:04:45.460 | I would say 90% of the decisions we make through the day don't have a list that applies
00:04:49.820 | to them.
00:04:50.820 | We've got to make judgment calls over and over again as to what is good, what is acceptable,
00:04:55.280 | what is perfect, and that's why our minds are being renewed day by day.
00:05:01.440 | And let me say one more thing that I think is crucial here.
00:05:07.700 | The translation "discern by testing" might give the impression that all that's
00:05:15.040 | implied is, "Well, you test, you discern, and you know that's the will of God.
00:05:23.480 | You don't like it, but you do it anyway."
00:05:26.280 | That's not what's going on.
00:05:27.280 | The word "documazo" doesn't just mean "prove and discern."
00:05:32.440 | It means "prove and then when something is found to be genuine, approve, approve of it."
00:05:40.280 | We know that because in Romans 1:28 it says, "The sinners did not approve to have God
00:05:47.880 | in their knowledge."
00:05:48.880 | And that's the word, "documazo."
00:05:50.720 | They didn't want it.
00:05:51.800 | They didn't love it.
00:05:53.400 | And so the renewed mind is the mind that not only has the mental or intellectual or knowledge
00:06:00.520 | or insight capacities to discern something that's good and acceptable and perfect, but
00:06:05.480 | it also has the spiritual taste so that when something is seen to be of God, it tastes
00:06:13.880 | good to us.
00:06:14.960 | We delight in it.
00:06:15.960 | We approve of it.
00:06:18.360 | Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this podcast.
00:06:21.920 | Email your questions to us at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org.
00:06:25.080 | Visit us online at DesiringGod.org to find thousands of books, articles, sermons, and
00:06:28.920 | other resources from John Piper, all free of charge.
00:06:31.240 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:06:32.640 | Thanks for listening.
00:06:33.280 | [END]
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