Why Is My Theology Not Changing My Life?
00:00:00.000 | Why is my theology not changing my life?
00:00:08.040 | Or at least not changing me as fast as I thought it would.
00:00:12.000 | Anyone who regularly plunges into the riches of scripture, or who plunges into the riches
00:00:17.200 | of the Reformed tradition, will eventually face this very sobering question.
00:00:22.600 | It's a probing question.
00:00:25.060 | This topic was taken up by Pastor John and by the late R.C. Sproul at a Ligonier National
00:00:30.360 | Conference back in 2011.
00:00:33.080 | The conversation was on stage there.
00:00:34.880 | The dialogue turned toward how the mind and the heart relate to the discovery of biblical
00:00:40.200 | truth.
00:00:41.200 | We jump right into the middle of that conversation, beginning here with Pastor John.
00:00:45.200 | Have a listen.
00:00:46.200 | I totally agree that the primacy of the affections is in terms of the mind serving the affections
00:00:54.660 | so that they're not emotionalism, but real fruit of knowing.
00:01:00.040 | God is not honored by emotions based on falsehood.
00:01:03.960 | He's only honored by emotions that are rooted in truth.
00:01:07.120 | Now here's the practical issue.
00:01:11.560 | Lots of people know things and don't get changed.
00:01:15.280 | Some of you are just discovering the doctrines of grace and you're just as crabby this year
00:01:18.800 | as you were last year.
00:01:23.480 | So what's wrong?
00:01:25.240 | How can you know, right knowing leads to right affections and doing, but not quickly for
00:01:31.940 | everybody or not immediately or sometimes not at all.
00:01:35.100 | The devil knows quite a bit of theology and hates all of it.
00:01:40.420 | He's maybe more orthodox than most of us, but he can't abide it.
00:01:45.300 | The reason is because he doesn't know it as glorious.
00:01:49.500 | He doesn't know it as beautiful.
00:01:51.780 | I'm just going to add to know something a right is not just to get the theological pieces
00:01:58.260 | in order and have the right quotes in the Bible, but to go to 2 Corinthians 3.18, beholding
00:02:06.740 | the glory of the Lord, we are being changed from one degree of glory to the next.
00:02:11.580 | Now I would say the implication is that the veil is lifted by the Holy Spirit.
00:02:16.060 | This is reformed sovereign grace lifting the blinding veil so that now we don't just see
00:02:23.900 | five points.
00:02:25.640 | We see five stunningly glorious, beautiful things about God and it's the beauty of them
00:02:35.540 | that changes.
00:02:37.240 | Beholding the glory, we are being changed.
00:02:40.600 | They asked me the other day in our little round table at Bethlehem College and Seminary,
00:02:45.100 | they said, "We're students here and we're faculty here.
00:02:48.420 | What can we do so that we don't just become academically big headed and get it all right
00:02:55.140 | and not be changed or help anybody?"
00:02:57.360 | I said, "Most practical thing I can say is as you study from morning till night, pray
00:03:04.580 | at least every 10 minutes that God would not let that happen and would reveal the part
00:03:12.060 | of scripture that you're working on or the theological issue you're working on, reveal
00:03:15.860 | himself to you as beautiful.
00:03:18.020 | Ask him over and over again, 'Open my eyes that I may behold wonderful things out of
00:03:23.580 | your law.'"
00:03:24.580 | Psalm 119 verse 18, "Open my eyes."
00:03:27.660 | I'm staring at it right now, nothing's happening.
00:03:30.300 | Ask him, "Open my eyes."
00:03:32.180 | Because I need to see not just truth, I need to see beautiful truth, glorious truth and
00:03:37.180 | that's what changes.
00:03:39.140 | So prayer I think would be the key.
00:03:42.500 | You look like you're ready to say something.
00:03:43.500 | No, I'm just sitting here eating that up, John.
00:03:48.540 | One place where I have felt so much alone in the ministry that I am involved with is
00:03:56.540 | I find so few people who have a passion for beauty.
00:04:00.220 | And I see that God is the foundation for the good, the true, and the beautiful.
00:04:09.220 | And you can distinguish among those three things, but you better never separate them.
00:04:13.260 | And I love it when you sit here and talk about it because you're articulating what I've been
00:04:16.700 | trying to articulate for years.
00:04:19.500 | I've usually said it's not just enough to understand the truth, you've got to see the
00:04:24.100 | loveliness of it, and you've got to see the sweetness of it.
00:04:26.780 | You talk about the glory of it, but you've added to it the beauty of it, and that's it.
00:04:31.140 | I mean, our worship is supposed to be for beauty and for holiness.
00:04:36.540 | And God went to such extremes in the Old Testament to communicate that principle of beauty in
00:04:43.540 | the heart of worship.
00:04:44.540 | And that's one of the great weaknesses of our tradition is that we seem to think that
00:04:48.180 | the only thing that's virtuous is ugliness, and we have to get away from beauty.
00:04:52.980 | But everything that's beautiful, even paintings painted by pagans, travesties, sometimes in
00:05:01.700 | spite of themselves, they call attention to the character of God because everything beautiful
00:05:09.320 | bears witness to Him because He is the source of beauty.
00:05:14.820 | And that beauty is not just in the eye of the beholder.
00:05:17.980 | It's there essentially in the character and the being of God Himself.
00:05:22.940 | And what you're talking about here just thrills my heart because that's what we have to see,
00:05:26.740 | how beautiful, how beautiful the truth is and the God of the truth is.
00:05:33.020 | I think that the enticement to sin is that sin promises pleasure.
00:05:38.740 | That's the bad kind of hedonism, but it never delivers.
00:05:43.260 | It's a lie.
00:05:44.740 | And that's where our great deception is.
00:05:46.320 | We think that we can't be happy unless we're sinning.
00:05:51.400 | And sin can be pleasurable for a season from one perspective, but it can never be joyful
00:05:58.480 | ever.
00:05:59.480 | It can't possibly bring joy because it's not beautiful.
00:06:03.220 | It's ugly.
00:06:04.580 | And we have that attraction to ugliness.
00:06:07.020 | Our basic makeup is to prefer the darkness rather than the light.
00:06:11.980 | We live in a world that has been marred, seriously marred.
00:06:16.440 | It's been vandalized.
00:06:17.720 | The beauty of that creation where the glory of God is everywhere, the whole world is full
00:06:22.400 | of His glory, but we have vandalized that glory.
00:06:27.060 | It seems to me that the way Jesus argues is that the kingdom of God is like a man who
00:06:34.240 | found a treasure hidden in a field, and in his joy, apa khoros, from his joy, he went
00:06:43.360 | and sold everything he had and bought that field.
00:06:47.280 | That's the paradigm for how you get freed from the bondage to the world and sin and
00:06:52.360 | the devil.
00:06:53.820 | If you see the kingdom and the king as a treasure more valuable than your grandfather's clock,
00:07:02.720 | your car, your computer, your books, your fame, and whatever, then it all becomes rubbish
00:07:08.560 | and you're freed.
00:07:10.340 | Before then, it had tremendous power.
00:07:13.200 | It just held you.
00:07:15.420 | So sin has the power of pleasure, and the Bible breaks that power with the power of
00:07:22.800 | a superior pleasure.
00:07:24.580 | It severs the root of it.
00:07:28.560 | Second Peter 1, "All things that pertain to life and godliness are yours through the
00:07:33.940 | knowledge of him who called you to his own glory and excellence.
00:07:36.120 | In order that by these you might have these precious and very great promises and escape
00:07:41.440 | from the corruption that is in the world."
00:07:44.080 | So how do you escape from the corruptions in the world?
00:07:47.160 | Precious and very great promises of the glory and excellence of God.
00:07:51.560 | The sequence of thought in Second Peter 1, 2, and 3 is escape from corruption comes
00:07:59.380 | through a superior promise.
00:08:02.560 | So I think the beauty of holiness, the more it goes deep and satisfies, really, really
00:08:09.920 | satisfies the freer you become from pornography and from the pleasures of resentment and bitterness
00:08:18.280 | that you want to hold on to, and from fear of man.
00:08:23.280 | These sins that have their talons in us, those talons are dislodged, not so much by duty
00:08:30.120 | yanking them out like this, but by pushing them out.
00:08:34.000 | You know, who asked, "What's the easiest way to get the sin of air out of a glass?
00:08:40.040 | Put a vacuum on it?"
00:08:41.040 | No, just pour water in the glass.
00:08:44.280 | It's real simple.
00:08:46.280 | Just want to get the air out of the glass, just fill it with water.
00:08:50.560 | That would be the way I want to build holiness into my people's life.
00:08:54.600 | That's so good.
00:08:56.520 | Sin has its talons in.
00:08:57.920 | Yeah, really good reflections here on the heart, on the place of delight and divine
00:09:02.960 | beauty and our own maturity into Christlikeness.
00:09:06.640 | This excerpt was taken from Ligonier's 2011 National Conference in a session titled, "Ministry
00:09:12.120 | Reflections with John Piper and R.C.
00:09:14.080 | Sproul."
00:09:15.080 | Our session can be found online.
00:09:18.360 | Whether you listen in the car or at the gym doing chores, whatever it is you're doing,
00:09:22.440 | thanks for joining us and inviting us into your busy day.
00:09:25.720 | If you have not yet done so, you can subscribe to Ask Pastor John in your favorite podcast
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00:09:33.080 | To find other episodes in our archive or to submit a question to us, go to our online
00:09:37.360 | home at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.
00:09:42.560 | Friday we end the week with a wonderful question.
00:09:44.640 | I love this one.
00:09:45.640 | "How can I meaningfully bless my children before bed?"
00:09:50.120 | What would it look like if we put some time into this?
00:09:52.320 | It's a great question from a dad of three young kids.
00:09:54.960 | I'm your host Tony Reinke.
00:09:56.320 | We'll see you then.
00:09:57.160 | [BLANK_AUDIO]