How Can I Soften My Own Heart?

00:00:00.000 | Thank you for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast with author and longtime pastor

00:00:04.920 | John Piper.

00:00:05.920 | Pastor John, here's a short question for you today.

00:00:09.840 | Many of the best questions are brief, and it also comes to us anonymously, and many

00:00:14.160 | of the questions we get are unsigned.

00:00:16.800 | Here it is.

00:00:17.800 | "Hello, Pastor John.

00:00:18.800 | Many sins harden our hearts.

00:00:20.440 | We know this.

00:00:21.880 | So what activities will unharden or soften our hearts?"

00:00:25.600 | What would you say, Pastor John?

00:00:28.240 | That's a wonderful question to me, because I don't think I've ever asked it.

00:00:34.200 | I don't think I've ever put the question to myself that way.

00:00:39.200 | So it's really—

00:00:40.200 | I suppose that's the point of the podcast, right?

00:00:41.800 | Yeah, right.

00:00:42.800 | It's really helpful to think about it.

00:00:47.440 | And the first thing that happened as I began to think about it was that I realized there

00:00:56.040 | are two kinds of mistakes that I could make in trying to answer the question.

00:01:02.920 | One would be to assume that hardness of heart implies I can do nothing because a hard, dead

00:01:14.160 | heart can't do anything of spiritual value.

00:01:18.860 | And the other mistake would be to assume that hardness of heart and the deadness that goes

00:01:25.560 | with it really haven't ruined me morally and that I can be the decisive cause of unhardening

00:01:34.720 | my heart.

00:01:36.120 | I think both of those positions would be profound, unbiblical mistakes.

00:01:44.440 | The biblical truth lies in the gospel paradox—we could call it the new covenant paradox—in

00:01:53.520 | which God causes the miracle of unhardening—God causes it—and I act the miracle of unhardening.

00:02:05.720 | God is the decisive cause, but my acting is a real, essential part of the miracle taking

00:02:16.560 | place.

00:02:17.560 | So here's the promise God made for all of us who experience the power of the new covenant

00:02:23.240 | promise that was purchased by the blood of Jesus according to Luke 22.

00:02:29.240 | Here's what he promises in Ezekiel 11.19.

00:02:33.800 | I will give them one heart and a new spirit I will put within them.

00:02:41.360 | I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh that

00:02:52.480 | they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them and be my people and I will

00:03:01.600 | be their God.

00:03:02.840 | That's Ezekiel 11.19.20.

00:03:05.320 | Here it is again in Ezekiel 36.26.

00:03:08.520 | I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you and I will remove the

00:03:14.880 | heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh and I will put my spirit

00:03:21.280 | within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to observe my rules.

00:03:29.860 | So the point in those passages is that God must do the decisive miraculous heart transplant,

00:03:39.500 | heart replacement.

00:03:40.920 | If we are going to escape the hardness and deadness of that heart, the old heart has

00:03:47.140 | to be taken out, a new heart has to be put in, and we can't do that surgery on ourselves.

00:03:55.360 | That's the point.

00:03:56.360 | This is God's sovereign, gracious, saving work and the effect of it is new, tender,

00:04:04.740 | obedient love toward God.

00:04:08.100 | And Deuteronomy puts it a little differently, chapter 30, verse 6, the Lord your God will

00:04:13.100 | circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring so that you will love the Lord your

00:04:21.320 | God with all your heart and soul and may live.

00:04:25.640 | So if we're going to ever turn around, stop hating God, start loving God, he has to do

00:04:31.420 | that heart transplant and that heart circumcision.

00:04:35.580 | But now having made that point, we have to also say that God commands us to do the very

00:04:46.300 | thing he promises to do in the new covenant.

00:04:50.260 | For example, alongside the promise of Ezekiel 36, 26, "I will give you a new heart," there's

00:04:57.940 | Ezekiel 18, 31, "Make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit."

00:05:05.780 | And right alongside the promise, "The Lord will circumcise your heart," there's the command

00:05:11.020 | in Deuteronomy 10, 16, "Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart and be no longer

00:05:16.860 | stubborn."

00:05:17.860 | There's the command in Jeremiah 4, 1 and 4, "O Israel, if you return to me, you should

00:05:24.700 | return.

00:05:25.700 | Circumcise yourselves to the Lord.

00:05:29.380 | Remove the foreskin of your heart."

00:05:32.020 | Same thing in the New Testament, there's the command of 1 Peter 3, 8, "All of you have

00:05:37.380 | a tender heart and a humble mind."

00:05:40.740 | Ephesians 4, 32, "Be kind to one another, tenderhearted."

00:05:45.380 | In other words, we're commanded to be tender, commanded not to be hard.

00:05:52.940 | Tenderheartedness is the opposite of hardness of heart, and we're commanded to pursue it

00:05:57.980 | and to have it.

00:06:00.300 | So the biblical picture is that God does the decisive work of heart transplant and heart

00:06:09.580 | circumcision and heart unhardening, and we are immediately participants in this miracle

00:06:18.500 | as conscious, intentional, willing actors, renouncing the old heart, cutting away.

00:06:28.040 | With all of the opposition we can muster, cutting away the old life and embracing the

00:06:34.420 | new and welcoming and feeding the new tenderness of heart on God's Word, by God's Spirit.

00:06:42.700 | So very specifically, in answer to the question that was asked, "What activities will unharden

00:06:50.740 | our heart?"

00:06:52.220 | I would say besides the divine activity, which is decisive and essential, there are at least

00:06:59.300 | three things we are called to do as we participate in acting this miracle that God is performing.

00:07:09.020 | Beholding or seeing, hearing, and trusting—just a verse for each of those.

00:07:13.780 | Second Corinthians 3, 18, "Beholding the glory of the Lord, we are being transformed

00:07:19.620 | into the image of God from one degree of glory to another."

00:07:24.700 | This comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

00:07:27.820 | So what do we do?

00:07:29.180 | We look to Jesus.

00:07:30.420 | We look to Jesus.

00:07:33.060 | And if you ask, "Where and how does that happen?"

00:07:36.140 | Paul says, "Secondly, faith comes by hearing, and hearing through the Word of Christ."

00:07:42.700 | So faith is the tender, dependent, opposite of rebellion and resistance and self-reliance,

00:07:51.340 | and faith comes by hearing.

00:07:53.700 | We are looking to Jesus with our ears.

00:07:57.500 | We look with our ears.

00:07:59.460 | The eyes of the heart look through the ears of the mind as the Word of God is read or

00:08:06.500 | preached or presented to us in some way, and we, thus being drawn by this sight to be conformed

00:08:14.900 | to Him, we trust Him, and that's the third verse, trust.

00:08:20.980 | Galatians 2, 20, "I have been crucified with Christ.

00:08:24.740 | It is no longer I who live, Christ who lives in me, and the life I now live, I live by

00:08:30.140 | faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me."

00:08:34.620 | So what comes alive when the old, hard heart is crucified and dead and taken out and circumcised

00:08:42.940 | away and cut off, what comes alive is the new, tender heart of faith.

00:08:49.260 | I live by faith.

00:08:50.900 | So my final word, to paraphrase Paul, is work out your tenderness of heart.

00:09:00.980 | Be about the miraculous unhardening of your heart, for God is the one who is at work in

00:09:08.380 | you to remove the hardness of heart and give you a tender heart of seeing and hearing and

00:09:15.020 | trusting.

00:09:17.060 | Profound biblical links here, Pastor John.

00:09:18.900 | Thank you.

00:09:19.900 | On Monday, we return, I'll ask Pastor John, "Does God love His enemies, or is that a command

00:09:25.380 | only for us?"

00:09:26.380 | It's an interesting little twist on Jesus' enemy love command.

00:09:30.740 | Until then, search through our episode archive, find out more about this podcast, subscribe

00:09:34.620 | to the audio feed, even send us a question of your own.

00:09:37.420 | Do all of that through our online home at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.

00:09:40.020 | I'm your host, Tony Ranke.

00:09:43.420 | Have a great weekend, and we will see you back here on Monday.

00:09:46.340 | Bye.

00:09:46.840 | [music]

00:09:47.840 | [music]

00:09:52.840 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

How Can I Soften My Own Heart?

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