On Monday, we looked at how our hearts' desires proceed, they come before, what overflows in our lives. Even our mouth simply voices what our hearts have already conceived. It's a pretty haunting truth that opens up a lot of implications to carefully consider. But that's a non-issue with God, because before we do or speak anything, God already knows our thoughts.

Or that's what one listener wants to find out at least. Today's question is brief, and it comes from a listener named Joan. Pastor John, can God read our thoughts? The short answer is yes, but what's really important, as I have thought about this, are the implications of that answer, and they are many and really significant.

I doubt that Joan, in sending us this question, wanted me to give a one-word answer and then move on to the next question. She probably would like to know, why do you say that? I mean, what's the basis of saying that he knows our thoughts, and what difference would it make in our lives if he does?

So that's what I want to do. Let's do that first, the foundation, and then maybe half a dozen or so amazing, I think, implications of that truth. Psalm 139, verse 2, and verse 4, and verse 23. "You know," so the psalmist is talking to God, "You know when I sit down and when I rise up, you discern my thoughts from afar, even before a word is on my tongue.

Behold, O Lord, you know it altogether. Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts." Or Psalm 19, verse 14, "Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart," that's the phrase, "the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer." There are numerous texts about God testing and seeing the heart and the mind, like Psalm 7, verse 9, "O let the evil of the wicked come to an end, and may you establish the righteous, you who test the minds and the hearts, O righteous God." Or Psalm 26, verse 2, "Prove me, O Lord, and try me.

Test my heart and my mind." Or Jeremiah 17, verse 10, "I, the Lord, search the heart and test the mind." Or Jeremiah 20, verse 12, "O Lord of hosts, who tests the righteous and who sees the heart and the mind." And then, same thing in the New Testament. It speaks of God searching the heart.

Revelation 2, 23, "All the churches will know that I am He who searches mind and heart." And then the idea of God's discerning the intentions of the heart is picked up in Hebrews 4, 12, "The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and the intentions of the heart." And in the final judgment, God will take into account the secrets of the heart, Paul says in Romans 2, 16.

On that day, when according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Jesus Christ. So, repeatedly, we read that God knows the heart and its thoughts. 1 Corinthians 3, 20, "The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile." He knows the hearts of all men.

Acts 1, 24, "The apostles prayed and said, 'You, O Lord, who know the hearts of all, show which one of these you have chosen to be Judas's replacement.'" So, God is the great heart-knower, the great mind-knower. And Jesus, in his ministry, had a huge quarrel with the Pharisees and the scribes, precisely because they pretended to be something on the outside which they were not on the inside.

And Jesus knew that. He knew what was inside of them. Matthew 23, 25, "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside you are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, and the outside will be clean also." Or, the way John summed it up in John 2, 25, "Jesus needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man." So, from numerous angles, the Bible teaches that God knows our thoughts.

He knows our feelings. He knows our attitudes, our inclinations and decisions before they show themselves in outward action. Now, the really interesting part. Some of us may think, "Well, this is just so obvious. Good grief, he's God." Yes, of course. And then we just kind of move on to the next question or issue instead of pondering the implications of what many of us just assume is a given because that's what God does.

He knows all things. But let me spell out a few of the implications so that this can rest on us with some sense of glory and significance. Number one, God's great work of sanctification that is making us holy works mainly from the inside out. That's the way God does it.

It's the work of the Spirit in our hearts. Paul prays, "Now may God, the God of peace, himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." That's 1 Thessalonians 5, 23. Now, if he's going to change John Piper's attitudes and inclinations so that they conform more closely to Christ, he needs to see what needs to be changed.

He must know, "My heart." If he's going to do work on my heart, the great physician does not do his heart surgery blindfolded. He sees what he's working on. He sees my pride, my greed, my fear, my lust, my anger, and all the inclinations and potential decisions that are welling up from them.

He does his sanctifying surgery from the inside out. He would be a bad surgeon if he could not see the cancer he was working on. Number two, there's another way that God limits the evil of our lives besides that internal transforming surgery. The psalmist prays in Psalm 141, verse 3, "Set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth; keep watch over the door of my lips." So, besides working on the heart directly to sanctify us, God also can put a guard at our lips so that an internal thought or emotion does not get expressed and hurt more people.

But God could not do this if he could not see the thought that was about to come out of my mouth and stop it. I see that coming. I'm not going to let him say that. He's my child. He could have changed that deep down in my heart, but for reasons of his own, he sanctifies me in various ways.

One of the ways is I see that thought coming, no way, I'm going to save him a lot of trouble at this elder meeting or this sermon to keep that from coming out of his mouth. Number three, if God could not see hidden motives, he could not distinguish good and evil.

Many outwardly good acts are hypocrisy because there is so much evil intent on the inside. God would be no better off than we are in knowing people if he could not see the heart. He would be liable to call a Pharisee godly when in fact the Pharisee is a whitewashed tomb.

All behavior gets its true virtue from its motive. God could not know virtue. He couldn't know right from wrong, good from bad, if he could not know the heart. Number four, God could not receive worship from the paralyzed, the totally paralyzed, if he could not see their hearts. I'm thinking of a person who has lost all outward capacities to communicate, but whose mind and heart are conscious and alert and full of faith and worship.

If God does not know the thoughts, he could not receive the worship of such a saint, a paralyzed saint. But God will not be denied such worship. He sees the heart and rejoices over that amazing faith. Number five, the same is true of prayer. If God cannot see thoughts and feelings of the mind and heart, then those who cannot make a sound with their lips for whatever reason, chosen or unchosen, then he wouldn't be able to hear their prayers.

When David prayed, "Let the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord," he was saying, "Let my prayers be acceptable." The same thing would be true. "Let the prayers of my heart be acceptable, O Lord." And then finally, number six, and this may be the most amazing, God could not rule the world if he did not know the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

Picture it. If eight billion people surprised God every minute of every day by turning their unknown thoughts suddenly into action, and God says, "Whoa, I didn't see that coming," taking God off guard because he could not see the thought or the emotion that was ready to come out of their mouths because it was only in their heart and he can't know their heart, then God could not govern the world with any semblance of certainty.

He would be endlessly, billions of times every day, playing catch-up ball, rearranging his plans. If God were ignorant of what was about to happen from the mouths and hands and feet of eight billion people, he could not know what would be happening everywhere, all the time, all over the world.

But Proverbs 19.21 says, "Many are the plans of the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand." God knows the plans of the mind, and in his sovereign wisdom sees to it that all goes according to his perfectly wise plan. So, yes, Joan, God reads, knows our thoughts, and the implications are vast.

Very vast, yeah. I love that Psalm 141 text, "Set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth; keep watch over the door of my lips." God knows our thoughts and desires before our mouths even open, and that means that he also knows when we stop sinful words from exiting our mouth to our spouse or kids or coworkers, we glorify God when we stop the evil thoughts from becoming evil words.

Even better if we don't have the evil thoughts to begin with, but that's not insignificant, that God can see when we stop the thoughts in our teeth before they become words. So good. Thank you, Pastor John, for that survey. You're welcome. And thank you for joining us today. Ask a question of your own, search our growing archive, or subscribe to the podcast hall at askpastorjohn.com.

Vast implications here. God can read our thoughts and intentions, and on a related note, can Satan put thoughts and intentions into our heads? And if so, what are the implications of that possibility on our lives? I'm your host Tony Rehnke. We'll see you back here on Monday for that.

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