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How Your Heart Governs Your Mind · Pastor John Piper's answers

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  Happy Monday, and welcome back to the podcast with us. We appreciate that
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  you listen along each week. And on this Monday, Pastor John, I
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  want to look at Psalm one to eleven. There we find a great promise
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  for life. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. That's
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  Psalm one eleven, verse ten. I suspect this is a line that a
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  lot of us know well, we know by heart. Likely a lot of
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  listeners have memorized this verse over the years. Many of us have underlined or
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  highlighted it in our Bibles, we tweeted it, or shared it online at
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  some point. I've seen this on coffee mugs and wall hangings. The fear
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  of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. But there's a Christian heathenis spin
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  to this text. I hadn't noticed until I saw something that you said about
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  it a few years back. You quoted this text, and then you said
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  this quote, As so often in scripture, what happens in the heart governs
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  what happened in the mind. So here fear in the heart leads to wisdom
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  in the mind. We so often approach things the other way around, from
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  our head into our heart, getting things from our head into our heart.
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  Explain how this works in the other direction, how our hearts govern what happens
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  in our minds. Right, when I say that the heart governs the mind,
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  I don't mean that when our minds are renewed by the Holy Spirit,
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  they can't exert good influence upon our heart. I don't mean to exclude that
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  they do. Renewed thinking helps renewed feeling. That's true all through the Bible.
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  Right knowing has the purpose of producing right feeling as well as right acting.
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  We know God in order to love God. Ten times. In First
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  Corinthians, Paul says do you not know? Do you not know? Ten
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  times, with the implication if you knew rightly, then you'd think differently,
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  feel differently, act differently about what you're about to do. And First Thessalonians
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  four to five, Paul says, don't give yourself over to the passion of
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  lust quote like the gentiles who do not know God, implying that a right
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  knowledge of God would have a subduing effect upon the passions of our heart.
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  So I'm not denying that God has given us renewed Bible formed reason as one
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  way of shaping the emotions of our heart. So where do I get the
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  idea that it works the other way around as well, namely that a heart
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  whose desires goes after evil will be blinded from seeing the truth about God in
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  his ways and works, and a heart that desires to go after God and
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  what is good good will see the truth more easily. In other words,
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  the condition of the heart and its desires have a huge effect on whether or
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  not we will be able to see God and his ways and his works for
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  what they really are. So let me just give some Bible passages that point
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  to this power of our hearts our desires over our mind's thoughts. John three
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  nineteen. Jesus says, this is the judgment that light has come into the
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  world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light, so they don't
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  come to the light. They reject the truth. They don't embrace the truth
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  with their minds. And the reason Jesus gives is not that they don't have
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  sufficient light or sufficient evidence or knowledge. The reason he gives is they love
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  the darkness. Why don't they see the light because they love the dark.
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  It's a love issue, right, It's a heart issue. This is what
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  I mean when I say the heart governs the mind. What the heart loves
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  can blind the mind to the light the truth. Here's the way Paul gets
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  it, the same thing Ephesians four eighteen. He describes the gentiles who reject
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  the Gospel like this. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the
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  life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to the
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  hardness of heart. So he moves toward the bottom of our problem, passing
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  through four layers. Where does it end. What's at the bottom of our
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  problem, our darkness, So he says, darkened, alienated, ignorant,
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  hard the bottom of our The problem is not ignorance. There's something beneath ignorance
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  that brings about culpable ignorance and holds us in the dark prison of ignorance,
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  namely hardness of heart. That's not primarily an intellectual problem. That's a desire
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  problem. Hardness of heart is stiff necked resistance to God. Because we love
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  our independence from God. We hate the idea of being under absolute authority.
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  We love our autonomy, our self sufficiency, our self direction, our self
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  exaltation. We bristle with hardness, stiffness against any suggestion of absolute dependence on
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  another, especially God. And Paul says that the effect of this hardness of
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  heart is ignorance and alienation and darkness. But the root issue is not intellectual.
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  It's a love issue. It's a desire issue. Or consider this amazing
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  word from Jesus in John seven seventeen. If anyone's will is to do God's
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  will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I'm speaking
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  on my own authority. This is one of the clear statements in the Bible
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  that right willing precedes and enables right knowing. I remember hearing that for the
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  first time in a chapel message at Wheaton College. I think it was nineteen
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  sixty six. I remember thinking that's amazing. I mean, I remember walking
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  out thinking that's amazing that my willing has to be changed in order for me
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  to know the truth is not just the other way around. Yeah, my
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  whole mindset was that it's the other way around. Knowing will change my will.
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  I gotta know, I gotta know. Well, actually, no right
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  willing will enable right knowing. So it was two years later, Tony.
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  It was two years until my first year in seminary where all the pieces fell
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  together, and I realized we have to be born again right. We have
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  to have a new will, a new heart. Something has to happen to
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  us to change us from the inside so we can know things the way we
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  ought to know them, which means God is sovereignly in control over rescuing me
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  from my sinful heart, my bent will. I cannot will myself out of
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  willing the wrong thing. It's not going to work. My will is bent
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  by nature. It's called original sin. I love the wrong things, and
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  I need God to intervene to change my will so that I can know God
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  rightly. So the lesson is apart from God's spirit, all of us have
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  sinful hearts that are prone to take our minds captive and make them produce arguments
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  that justify the sinful behaviors that we love. That's the kind of control I'm
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  talking about. We are all prone to self justification, all of us.
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  I really really want to do something that's sinful, so my desires exert a
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  powerful influence on my mind to create arguments that show me it's not sinful,
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  It's okay. That's the way it works. That's way it's working all through
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  our culture today. And since proud hardness of heart is the root problem,
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  God given humility is the remedy. So Psalm twenty five nine says He leads
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  the humble in what is right and teaches the humble his way. So we
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  ask God to break our heartness and replace our pride with humility, and in
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  that way make it possible for us to see God, to see his ways
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  and his works for what they really are. When God changes our hearts,
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  then our hearts serve the mind rather than blinding the mind. I cannot will
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  myself out of willing the wrong thing. I love the wrong things, and
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  I need God to intervene to change my will so that I can know God
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  rightly. Amen. That is the haunting reality every sinner faces. That's our
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  great problem, because what the heart wan loves, the mind fixates on what
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  the heart hates the mind ignores. God must act, initiate and give us
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  new desires or we are utterly doomed. Absolutely fundamental principle of understanding ourselves evidence
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  in these primary texts against Psalm one eleven, verse ten, John three,
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  verses nineteen and twenty, John seventeen seven, and Ephesians for eighteen you've heard
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  those texts today, you have to understand them for yourself. Psalm one eleven,
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  verse ten, John three nineteen to twenty, John seven seventeen and Ephesians
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  for eighteen. Thank you Bestor John, and thanks for joining us today.
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  If you have a question to ask Pastor John, email me ask Pestor John
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  at Desiring good dot org. Well up, next time we look at a
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  new generation of international missionaries that God seems to be raising up in our day.
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  Very encouraging story. I'm Tony Rank you We'll see you on Thursday.