The Key to Knowing God’s Will

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.580 | - Good Monday morning and welcome to a new week

00:00:06.200 | on the podcast, a week we're devoting to the theme

00:00:08.920 | of knowing and following God's will.

00:00:11.200 | Today we look at the key to it all.

00:00:13.180 | Without this key in place, following God's will will be,

00:00:16.480 | well, it'll be impossible, quite frankly.

00:00:19.220 | And then on Wednesday, we're gonna look at an example

00:00:21.680 | of how one man proceeded with confidence

00:00:24.160 | in a very real life decision that he had to make

00:00:27.440 | knowing that he was following God's will, he knew it.

00:00:31.080 | It's a great story and that's on Wednesday in APJ 1808.

00:00:34.840 | And then we'll end this week hearing

00:00:36.280 | from a super busy Christian man.

00:00:38.460 | How does he prioritize his life

00:00:40.680 | when he cannot get everything done?

00:00:44.680 | That's on Friday in APJ 1809.

00:00:48.360 | So we start the week talking about the key to knowing

00:00:51.540 | and following God's will.

00:00:53.160 | We'll get there and we'll get there through a Bible question

00:00:56.280 | from a listener named Kyle.

00:00:57.520 | Hello, Pastor John.

00:00:58.860 | In Colossians 1:9, Paul uses the terms knowledge,

00:01:02.240 | wisdom, and understanding.

00:01:04.960 | Do these terms each have a different meaning?

00:01:07.440 | How do these three words relate to each other

00:01:09.960 | in the context of that passage in Colossians 1:9?

00:01:13.720 | Pastor John, what would you say to Kyle?

00:01:16.400 | - Yes, I think they do have different meanings.

00:01:20.120 | And I think there's a practical usefulness

00:01:23.560 | in trying to understand the differences.

00:01:27.240 | But it's good to keep in mind,

00:01:29.200 | I step back and just let myself think about the difficulties

00:01:33.180 | of handling words like this.

00:01:34.800 | And I think that the way the human mind works

00:01:39.800 | and the way language works,

00:01:42.980 | it would be a mistake to think that words like knowledge

00:01:47.400 | or knowing, wisdom, understanding are so precise

00:01:53.240 | that they don't overlap with each other.

00:01:55.680 | They do overlap.

00:01:57.680 | The borders between words like knowledge and wisdom

00:02:01.880 | and understanding are not like walls,

00:02:05.080 | not like fences that are real nice and clear and precise

00:02:08.920 | with one field on one side, one field on the other.

00:02:11.320 | They're more like the space where the fresh water

00:02:14.640 | of a river flows into the salt sea.

00:02:17.880 | And you can't draw a line between fresh water

00:02:21.360 | and salt water, but everybody knows

00:02:23.120 | there's a huge difference between fresh water

00:02:25.720 | and salt water.

00:02:27.760 | Words that refer to processes of knowing

00:02:31.640 | and words that refer to processes of feeling

00:02:35.360 | are inevitably more flexible and more imprecise

00:02:40.360 | than words that refer to objects like dog or daffodil

00:02:45.520 | or peach.

00:02:47.520 | Acts of knowing and feeling are not like a dog

00:02:52.520 | or daffodil or a peach.

00:02:54.400 | You can't see them, you can't touch them,

00:02:57.320 | you can't hear them, you can't smell them,

00:02:59.440 | you can't draw them.

00:03:01.240 | How would you draw wisdom?

00:03:02.500 | How would you draw understanding?

00:03:03.560 | You can't point to them with your finger.

00:03:06.820 | They're a peculiar kind of reality.

00:03:10.280 | And so when language tries to capture them

00:03:14.380 | or give expression to that peculiar kind of reality,

00:03:18.860 | we have to leave room for some overlap in meaning.

00:03:23.540 | So that's a preface to how difficult it is sometimes

00:03:27.820 | to do what Kyle is asking me to do.

00:03:32.600 | Colossians 1.9 says, "From the day we heard,

00:03:37.140 | "we have not ceased to pray for you,

00:03:39.700 | "asking that you may be filled with the knowledge."

00:03:43.700 | That's the first word, the knowledge,

00:03:46.300 | epignosin in Greek, "of his will in all spiritual wisdom."

00:03:51.300 | Second word, Sophia, "and understanding,"

00:03:57.300 | sunesis, sometimes translated insight.

00:03:59.700 | So three words, knowledge, wisdom, insight.

00:04:03.120 | "So as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord,

00:04:07.180 | "fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work

00:04:09.740 | "and increasing in," and then he returns to,

00:04:12.860 | "the knowledge of God," same word, epignosis.

00:04:17.860 | So Paul starts by praying that they would be filled

00:04:22.460 | with the knowledge of God's will,

00:04:24.640 | and he ends that prayer by praying

00:04:28.300 | that they would go on increasing

00:04:30.260 | in the knowledge of God himself.

00:04:33.320 | And I think in Paul's mind, knowing God increasingly

00:04:39.300 | and knowing God's will increasingly

00:04:44.060 | are part of the same experience of knowing.

00:04:47.760 | Because to know somebody, when you think about it,

00:04:52.180 | to know somebody is to know what they love,

00:04:55.740 | know what they hate, know what they desire,

00:04:57.960 | know what they will, that's what it means to know them.

00:05:00.700 | But to really grasp what Paul means by knowing God,

00:05:06.780 | which I think we must do here at the outset,

00:05:09.760 | it helps to look at Romans 1:18 to 23,

00:05:12.980 | where Paul talks about people who are outside Christ

00:05:17.980 | and yet have some kind of knowing of God.

00:05:23.100 | It says, "By their unrighteousness, they suppress the truth.

00:05:28.100 | "For what can be known about God is plain to them

00:05:33.240 | "because God has shown it to them.

00:05:36.080 | "For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power

00:05:39.040 | "and divine nature, have been clearly perceived

00:05:41.860 | "ever since the creation of the world

00:05:44.280 | "in the things that have been made.

00:05:46.920 | "So they are without excuse for all the,"

00:05:50.800 | this is the amazing part, "although they knew God."

00:05:55.760 | It's an amazing statement.

00:05:57.560 | "Although they knew God, every human being outside Christ,

00:06:01.400 | "although they knew God, they did not honor him as God

00:06:04.880 | "or give thanks to him."

00:06:05.960 | So there is a kind of knowing God

00:06:10.680 | that is absolutely useless, indeed worse than useless.

00:06:15.400 | It makes you guilty.

00:06:16.700 | It takes away your excuse.

00:06:18.780 | This is not the kind of knowing God

00:06:24.480 | or knowing his will that Paul is praying for.

00:06:27.320 | In Colossians 1:9, that's not what he's praying for.

00:06:30.840 | So the question is, what's missing?

00:06:33.640 | What's the difference between the knowing God

00:06:36.680 | and knowing his will that he's praying for

00:06:39.040 | and the knowing that will only get you damned?

00:06:42.840 | What's missing is precisely what Paul is praying for

00:06:48.080 | in Acts 1:9, namely, that we would come to know God

00:06:53.080 | and know his will in or by spiritual wisdom

00:06:58.400 | and spiritual understanding.

00:07:02.000 | The word spiritual modifies both of those nouns,

00:07:05.960 | spiritual wisdom, spiritual understanding,

00:07:09.000 | and the key word is spiritual,

00:07:11.640 | which in Paul's language refers to something

00:07:14.760 | that is given by and formed by the Holy Spirit.

00:07:19.760 | It's not just a vague feeling of mysticism

00:07:24.440 | or something like that.

00:07:25.380 | It's a spirit, a Holy Spirit given,

00:07:28.600 | a Holy Spirit shaped wisdom and understanding.

00:07:33.360 | So what needs to happen so that the man of Romans 1

00:07:38.360 | knows God the way Paul is praying for us to know God

00:07:42.880 | and his will in Colossians 1:9 is for the Holy Spirit

00:07:47.880 | to take away his blindness to the greatness

00:07:53.160 | and the beauty and worth of God.

00:07:55.880 | And we can watch this happen in 2 Corinthians 4:6,

00:08:00.880 | where Paul says, "God, who said,

00:08:05.780 | "'Let light shine out of darkness,'

00:08:08.320 | "has shone in our hearts to give the light

00:08:12.860 | "of the knowledge of the glory of God

00:08:17.860 | "in the face of Jesus Christ."

00:08:20.200 | So the formerly blind man of Romans 1

00:08:25.000 | now sees God as glorious.

00:08:28.680 | And a few verses earlier, 318, 2 Corinthians 318,

00:08:33.440 | Paul had said in describing this very miracle,

00:08:36.920 | "This comes from the Lord who is the Spirit."

00:08:41.920 | So this miracle of seeing God for what he really is

00:08:47.440 | is what Paul means in Colossians 1:9 by spiritual insight.

00:08:54.720 | Or spiritual understanding.

00:08:57.440 | When the Holy Spirit removes our blindness,

00:09:01.240 | we don't just know God as Romans 1 knows God,

00:09:07.160 | disapproving, suppressing.

00:09:10.880 | We know him as glorious, as infinitely valuable,

00:09:15.880 | as worthy of all our allegiance and trust and love.

00:09:22.760 | This is spiritual understanding, to know him like that.

00:09:27.760 | Now stir in the word wisdom,

00:09:32.480 | and specifically spiritual wisdom from Colossians 1:9.

00:09:37.480 | So let's go back to Romans 1 because Paul does just that.

00:09:41.080 | He stirs in the word wisdom.

00:09:42.680 | He's been describing the unbelieving person

00:09:47.520 | as knowing God and yet suppressing that knowledge

00:09:51.920 | and failing to thank God and glorify him.

00:09:55.640 | And now he describes this same failure

00:09:59.400 | in terms of foolishness and pretended wisdom.

00:10:04.400 | He says, "They became futile in their thinking

00:10:09.000 | "and their foolish hearts were darkened.

00:10:13.680 | "Claiming to be wise, they became fools."

00:10:19.600 | And then they do something

00:10:21.280 | which tells you what wisdom is all about.

00:10:24.000 | They exchange the glory of the immortal God

00:10:28.520 | for images resembling mortal man.

00:10:33.160 | So in Paul's mind, wisdom and foolishness relate

00:10:38.000 | not merely to whether we see things clearly,

00:10:42.480 | but whether we make choices or experience preferences

00:10:47.520 | which fit reality.

00:10:50.640 | If the darkened heart is not illumined

00:10:53.560 | by spiritual understanding,

00:10:56.400 | then the heart will act foolishly

00:11:00.000 | and make the absurd exchange of Romans 1:23,

00:11:04.880 | trading away God for something he made.

00:11:09.760 | That's foolish, that's crazy.

00:11:12.840 | And that's what the lack of wisdom does.

00:11:17.040 | Spiritual wisdom would never do that.

00:11:21.320 | Spirit-given understanding of the true worth of God

00:11:26.080 | leads to spirit-given wisdom in not making absurd choices

00:11:31.080 | that involve treating other things

00:11:33.760 | as more valuable than God.

00:11:36.440 | So in answer to Kyle's question,

00:11:39.160 | one way to describe the difference

00:11:41.960 | between spiritual wisdom and spiritual understanding

00:11:47.040 | is that spiritual understanding

00:11:50.720 | is the work of the spirit enabling us to see reality,

00:11:55.480 | particularly God, in his ways, his will,

00:11:59.280 | for what they really are,

00:12:00.720 | namely great and beautiful and valuable and wise,

00:12:04.800 | while spiritual wisdom is the effect

00:12:08.480 | of that spiritual understanding

00:12:10.880 | upon the way we evaluate things

00:12:13.920 | and the way we experience preferences in our preferring heart

00:12:18.920 | and the way we make choices that accord with or not,

00:12:23.520 | are in harmony with or not, reality,

00:12:28.280 | and not the result of our former blindness.

00:12:32.000 | So when Paul prays in Colossians 1:9

00:12:36.240 | that we would be filled with the knowledge of his will

00:12:41.320 | in all spiritual or by all spiritual wisdom

00:12:46.280 | and spiritual understanding,

00:12:47.840 | he's asking God to pour out his Holy Spirit upon us

00:12:52.840 | and that more and more,

00:12:57.820 | the spirit would remove our blindness

00:13:00.920 | and the dimness of our ability

00:13:03.440 | to see God for who he really is.

00:13:07.600 | And then as a fruit of that spiritual understanding,

00:13:12.480 | we would have spiritual wisdom

00:13:15.760 | that experiences preferences and makes choices

00:13:20.060 | that are in harmony with reality.

00:13:24.360 | And then when those two are operating the way they should,

00:13:29.240 | we will be filled with the knowledge of God's will

00:13:34.240 | for our daily lives.

00:13:37.160 | - So good.

00:13:38.000 | And speaking of these two things operating

00:13:40.000 | in the way they should,

00:13:40.840 | we're gonna look at a very specific example

00:13:42.640 | of how this works next time on Wednesday.

00:13:45.620 | So thank you for joining us today.

00:13:47.240 | You can ask a question of your own,

00:13:48.500 | search our growing archive or subscribe to the podcast,

00:13:50.680 | all at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.

00:13:54.640 | So how do we make confident life choices

00:13:58.640 | that accord to God's will?

00:14:00.520 | We're gonna take today's principles

00:14:02.800 | and see them work out in practice next time.

00:14:05.720 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.

00:14:07.160 | We'll see you back here on Wednesday.

00:14:09.320 | Thanks for listening.

00:14:10.360 | (upbeat music)

00:14:12.940 | (upbeat music)

00:14:15.520 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

The Key to Knowing God’s Will

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