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Taste Test Your Way to God’s Will · Pastor John Piper's answers

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  Boredom and purpose are the two themes we're talking about this week that were related
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  last time. On Monday, we looked at God's purpose in our boredom,
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  basically that God plans for human beings to be frustrated with their experience in this
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  world until they realized that they were made for God. It's a really helpful
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  reminder, and today we continue talking about purpose as we seek to find and
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  follow God's will for our lives. We're on the topic because tomorrow, in
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  the Navigator's Bible reading plan that we're reading together, we launch into Philippians and
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  study one of the key essential texts for learning to discern God's will. And
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  I'm talking about Philippians, chapter one, verse nine and ten. Read those
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  verses especially carefully because in them we learn that following God's will requires that we
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  approve what is excellent. In other words, we taste test our way to
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  discerning God's will. He intends that we have a faculty power for tasting what
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  is true and what is pleasing. The question today is from a podcast listener
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  named ten Yelle. She asks about another text, but Philippines one versus nine
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  to ten is going to factor in here. Here's the question. Pastor John
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  Romans twelve two says, do not be conformed to this world, but be
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  transformed by the renewal of your mind. That by testing you may discern what
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  is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect? Pastor
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  John, what does Paul mean when he says by testing? That is a
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  really, really good question. I love it because it means she's really paying
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  attention, She's looking at the book, and she cares about the words.
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  And oh, I love people who care about the words of Scripture. And
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  that phrase she's obviously reading from the ESV. I think because it's translated differently
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  in different ways. Let me just give it again so that the listeners can
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  get before their mind. Don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed
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  by the renewing of your mind. That by testing you may discern the will
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  of God by testing. Now, that phrase, by testing you may discern
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  is the translation of one Greek word docum modzo. The standard lexical definition goes
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  like this to make a critical examination of something to determine genuineness, such as
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  metals by fire, and interestingly, it's used in one Grinthians three thirteen,
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  where it says, fire will test, and that's the word docum monzo,
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  will test what sort of work each one has done? So our works at
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  the last day are going to be tested by fire. So the idea is
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  that the genuineness of something, in this case the will of God in Romans
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  twelve to two, the genuineness of something is found out buy an appropriate test.
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  For metals, it is often fire. For genuine ripeness in fruit,
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  it would be like tasting and for genuine health. And a horse, you
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  might look at his teeth and here, interestingly, powerfully in verse two of
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  Romans twelve, the thing to be recognized is the will of God, namely
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  what's good and acceptable and perfect. And the question is, so, what's
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  the test? You look at the teeth of the will of God? Or
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  do you put your tongue on the behavior you're testing? Do you put some
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  match to it? What is the test? And Paul answers, the renewal
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  of your mind is the test. By the renewal of your mind, you
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  will be able to discern by testing what is the will of God. So
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  here's the picture I have in my mind, my renewed mind, renewed by
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  the word of God, renewed by the spirit of God, renewed by soaking
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  in the revealed nature of God. In scripture, is is litmus paper which
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  turns green when the good and acceptable and perfect will touches it. Green,
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  go go for that, and it turns red when it considers some act which
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  is not the will of God. It's not good, it's not acceptable,
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  it's not perfect. So my mind is being shaped by God into the kind
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  of mind that when it contemplates a behavior or an attitude or a word,
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  there's something that reflexively says no or yes to it because of the way our
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  mind has been formed. And here's a great example that shows you how the
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  mind is being renewed for this very purpose. It's Philippians one nine where Paul's
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  praying that this would happen. He prays like this, it is my prayer
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  that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and insight, so that
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  you may prove. Now there's the word approve what is excellent. So he's
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  saying, what happens to your love is that love gets more knowledge in scripture,
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  and love gets more insight in scripture, and love gets more of everything
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  it needs to be the kind of litmus paper. It needs to be so
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  that when you're out there in the world and you're navigating at work every day
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  and you don't have your little lists in your pocket to say, oh,
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  where's a list I can consult. Well, you can't consult a list for
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  every decision you have to make. I would say ninety percent of the decisions
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  we make through the day don't have a list that applies to them. You've
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  got to make judgment calls over and over again as to what is good,
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  what is acceptable, what is perfect. And that's why our minds are being
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  renewed day by day. And let me say one more thing that I think
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  is crucial here. The translation desern by testing might give the impression that all
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  that's implied is, well, you test, you desern, and you know
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  that's the will of God. You don't like it, but you do it
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  anyway. That's not what's going on. The word ducku modzo doesn't just mean
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  prove and desern. It means prove and then when something is found to be
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  genuine, approve, approve of it. We know that because in Romans one
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  twenty eight it says the sinners did not approve to have God in their knowledge,
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  and that's the word docu modzoo. They didn't want it, they didn't
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  love. And so the renewed mind is the mind that not only has the
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  mental or intellectual or knowledge or insight capacities to discern something that's good and acceptable
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  and perfect, but it also has the spiritual taste, so that when something
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  is seen to be of God, it tastes good to us. We delight
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  in it, we approve of it. Ay Man. Yeah, ninety percent
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  of the decisions we make throughout the day don't have a list that applies to
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  them. We must make judgment calls over and over again as to what is
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  good, what is acceptable, what is perfect? This is so huge taste
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  testing our way to God's will. It's an amazing principle here, this litmus
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  test of spiritual taste. Spiritual taste is essential to following God's will. And
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  I think it's a good caveat to the don't follow your heart theme that you
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  hear from a lot of teachers that these days factor this in as well.
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  And if you've listened to the podcast for a while, you know that Romans
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  one twenty eight and this dynamic is key to winning the war with sexual sin
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  to because not approving of God, not approving of God, not tasting the
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  goodness of God is what opened our lives up to defeat at the hands of
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  our own lust. You can see this dynamic in Romans one twenty eight in
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  the APJ book on the top of page one eighty one and on the top
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  of page three nineteen. Looking at Romans one twenty eight and what that has
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  to do with the war against lust in the APJ book, summarize on pages
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  one eighty one and three nineteen. Thanks for joining us today. If you
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  have a question for Pastor John, email me ask Pastor John at Desiring Good
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  dot org. Comforted, warned, threatened, comforted, warned, threatened,
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  comforted, warned, threatened. Does your Bible reading feel like this a bit
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  of an emotional rollercoaster back and forth? Why so, we'll ask Pastor John.
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  That's next time I'm your host to Naranki. We'll see on Monday.