Rest in God’s Character

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Jen Wilkin
Good afternoon. Well, blessed are those who endure to the end, you guys are impressive. Or for some of us, maybe it’s the beginning of what’s coming next. I am so thrilled to be with you this afternoon, we will be in Romans 11, starting in verse 33. And going through chapter 12 verse to Romans 1133, going through verse two of chapter 12. When I was assigned this topic, I was extremely excited, because it is dealing with some of my favorite themes and all of the scriptures, when I found out that I would be going after Dr. Lake Duncan, I almost passed out. Because I am, I’m not too old to remember when I used to listen to Him teach on cassette tapes in my living room, just these beautiful drops of knowledge that were coming to me from this person that I would never meet. And so the idea that I would get to even breathe in some of the same oxygen that he just breathe in and after he walked off the platform is just pretty unbelievable to me. And he’s been such a grace in my life, I hope you got to enjoy that just before this time in his teaching. So we’re in Romans 11, which is if you’re familiar with the book of Romans, it is the pivot point like I was given in this portion of teaching the hinge point for the whole book of Romans. And so what you’ve seen in the book of Romans thus far is the Indicative it’s it’s basically Paul laying out all of his arguments for how things are, this is the state of things. And as is the case with the New Testament epistles, they move from the indicative, this is how things are, and this is who you are to Okay, and here is now what you should do to the imperative. And that is exactly where we find ourselves when we come to Romans 1133. Does anyone in here want to be transformed, not want to be who you were before. Like isn’t that the true gift of the Christian life that we can say with John Newton, I once was lost. But now, now I’m found, I once was blind. But now Now I see. This is the great hope of the Christian life. It is that though we serve a God who is unchanging, and in that lies our great hope of the gospel, that he will never change in setting his love and His promises upon us, that we as his creatures are changeable. And that when we come to saving faith in Christ, we receive the indwelling Spirit and by grace, we are able to not be who we were any more, but to increasingly become who it is that we were meant to be all along, image bearers in our fullness, bearing the image of God. Do you know what the number one topic is that I am asked to speak on when I go to women’s events? Anyone want to guess the number one topic? It’s actually identity. Women want me to come and tell them who they are, tell me who I am. And it’s always telling me who I am in Christ. But if we’re going to be honest, often the desire that’s underlying that is just telling me who I am. Just tell me who I am. And they’re coming to the Scriptures over and over again. And they’re saying, Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? And what I have exhorted women to over and over again, is to ask the right first question of the scriptures. The scriptures are not first and foremost concern with telling us who we are, although they are concerned with that, but they are first and foremost concerned with speaking of God. Why? Because the knowledge if God and the knowledge of self always go hand in hand, and there is no true knowledge of self apart from the knowledge of God. And so we come to the Scriptures, and we ask them first, speak to me of who you are, so that we can understand ourselves rightly in light of that, and then walk out our face in light of that understanding. So I am thrilled with the passage that I get to take us through today, because it is going to begin with extolling who God is, before it moves to speaking of the implications for you, and for me, if you’re able, would you stand with me for the reading of God’s Word? Romans 1133, through 12, to Oh, the depths

Jen Wilkin
of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God, How unsearchable are His judgments and how inscrutable his ways for him who has known the mind of the Lord or who has been his counselor, or who has given a gift to him, that he might be repaid, For from Him, and through Him, and to him are all things to him be glory forever. Amen. I appeal to you, Therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that by testing, you may discern what is the will of God, what is good, and acceptable, and perfect. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated.

Jen Wilkin
Don’t know if you’ve been paying attention to the tone of the book of Romans, if you’ve ever gotten to study it prior to today. But Paul is fairly matter of fact, in the way that he approaches the first 10 chapters, he’s laying out arguments. In fact, for years, it’s my understanding that the epistle to the Romans was used to teach good legal strategy, good argument for lawyers in law schools. And so he’s been pretty much kicking off his arguments telling us exactly what we need to know. And he’s walked us through everything from Hey, Romans one, guess what, it’s really bad. And it’s bad for all of you, because you all knew better if you just looked around and seen creation, you know. And then he walks us through the beauty of grace that is given to us. He talks about Gentile and Jew. And as we come into the end of chapter 11, he has just been expressing that God will be faithful to the Gentile and to the Jew. And then we come to 1133. And all of a sudden, Paul, who has been very matter of fact, ticking off his arguments, burst into song. And he doesn’t just like, go a little bit in, he is feeling it. He apostrophe sizes. Oh, oh, the depths? Oh, the depth of the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God. It’s completely out of rhythm with the other things that we have seen in the book so far. And in fact, I did a little stroll through the rest of the epistles to see if there was anywhere else where he says anything like this, and the only thing that comes close to this feel, and this level of emotion is actually a little imprecatory. It’s when he yells at the Galatians. And he says, oh, foolish Galatians. So aren’t you glad we’re not there? And we’re here instead, this is better. And what does he say says, in light of all of these things, that we’ve looked at the way that God works through creation, the way that he works in the hearts of man, the way that he draws those who are outside inside the way that he brings people to Himself, Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God, it causes him to worship. But he worships in specific and beautiful terms. If you know this little doxology piece here and 1133 335 You may know that it looks like he’s quoting from the Old Testament, but if you start looking into it, it’s really sort of just a mash up like he’s kind of pulled from places in Isaiah and places in job and, and put the language all together around these ideas. And there are three of them here. Riches, wisdom, and knowledge. There’s actually a central one as well, a fourth one. incomprehensibility unsearchable, inscrutable. So if you’re looking at the text, I want you to see a little of what the structure is here, because we have a little baby chiasm. You know that term. It’s that form of parallelism that works its way outward, and inward to a central point. And he has taken this mashup of ideas about who God is this moment of worship, and he has structured it in a very simple and beautiful way. So if you look at 1133, it says, Oh, the depths of the riches, and the wisdom and the knowledge, okay, in that order. But now looked down at verse 34, For who has known the mind of the Lord, what is that knowledge? Or who has been his counselor wisdom? Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid? Riches? Do you see it? He works his way outward and inward? And what’s at the middle of it? It’s that second half of verse 1133, and it’s a little repetition, repetition statement. How unsearchable are His judgments, how inscrutable his way He has crafted for us here. A repetitive statement, we should always pay attention to repetition. You may know the statement that repetition is the mother of learning. If anyone in here is a parent, well, you don’t even have to be a parent. If anyone has been the child of a parent, can I see a show of hands? What are the things that your parents most wanted you to remember? The things that they took care to repeat. But I, myself as a parent, often repeated things in a hurried way, in an urgent way. But here we have a repetition that is beautiful in its construction. Artistic, poetic. It’s just gorgeous.

Jen Wilkin
Riches, wisdom, knowledge, inconceivable. knowledge, wisdom, riches. He meditates on these perfections of God and he presents them for us to meditate on. But do we meditate on them? Because I told you that the knowledge of God and the knowledge of self must always go hand in hand, we will self deceive, we will tell ourselves we are one way and pretend that we are not another way as long as we are not held up to the reference point of God. But what we are here offered in the short statements is a reference point. What did we learn about God, we learned that he is rich, and how rich is God? Well, he owns all things. He doesn’t just own a few things. Think about the rich people that you know. And I know we like to tell ourselves the lie that they can’t possibly be happy. But frankly, I’ve known some rich people who seem kind of happy to me. And it is vaguely annoying. Think about the wealth that you may have encountered people you know, who have a lot of really cool stuff. Doesn’t even hold a candle to what the Lord can claim. How many hills? Does he own the cattle on? 1000 Thank you. I know it’s late in the afternoon. So we’re gonna have a little chat. But you know that that’s a metaphor, because he owns all the cattle on all of the hills. And why does he own them? Does he own them because he purchased them from a rancher and south, a rancher in Southeast Texas now, he owns them because He created them. He is their author. The person who makes it is the one who owns it. God’s riches are not something that he has acquired from someone else it is because he is the origin of all things and ultimately, all things belong to Him. You and I as Christians inhabit the world completely different than our unbelieving counterparts. Because we understand that we are stewards, we are not owners, and that anything that has been given to us is given to us on loan, it is something for us to care for, and to multiply and to distribute. But it all belongs to Him. And His riches, no, no. And when we speak of the attributes of God, His riches correspond to his self sufficiency. Because all things belong to Him. And because He created all things that follows that though they belong to him, he is not dependent on them in any way. If God needed them, if he needed the cattle on 1000 hills for himself to survive, then they would have existed from all eternity. But because he speaks all creation into being we know that while it all belongs to him, none of it is necessary for his survival. He creates it according to His good purposes. He is not just a little rich, he is the owner of all things. He does not need anything from anyone else. This is a foreign concept to us. You don’t know any human being who doesn’t need something from someone else. You’ve never met a human being like that. And why is that? Is it because of the fall? Now, if you think about it, if you look back to Genesis chapter one, and two, the man and the woman are created, actually with a set of needs, they’re going to need rest, they’re going to need food, they’re going to apparently need one another because it was not good for the man to be alone. And so they’re going to need to have love and affection. We have any number of needs that we can think of. I always think about one of my favorite movies what About Bob, when he says to his therapist, gimme, gimme, gimme, I need I need. And we don’t really like that. Because we’re Americans. We don’t want to need things from one another. We want to be self sufficient ourselves. We don’t want to be beholden to anyone. Because here’s the thing, if you need something from someone else, that is a means for them to control you, isn’t it? So let me just give you an example. Have you ever been trapped in a theme park with a whole bunch of hungry small children? No, just me. And you know that it’s lunchtime, and you know that all of the food options are going to be nutritionally terrible and cost $5 billion. Why is it that the theme park knows that they can charge you $5 billion,

Jen Wilkin
because they know that you have a need, and that they’re the only ones who can meet it. And so extortion is in full bloom. It is significant for us to reflect on the fact that God is deep in riches, because no one can extort God. No one can manipulate God because they find a chink in his armor, something that he needs, what do you need? Do you need money? Do you need acceptance? What do you need? Do you need fame? Do you need glory? God sits between the Caribbean and he laughs He does not need anything. And so he is not beholden to any of his creation, oh, the depths of the riches of God for who’s given a gift to him, that he might be repaid. But when we lack self awareness, when we think that we actually are rich, when we tell ourselves, if I just keep acquiring, I won’t need other people around me I can become an island unto myself, we also shake our fist at God, because ultimately all desire to free ourselves of any beholding this to others is in some way, pointing to a desire that we don’t want to need God, I will just take your things that would be great lord, but I don’t really need you. And when we say that, when we seek to be self sufficient, we are saying I will ascend to the heavens, I will be like the Most High God. Every attempt to insulate ourselves from needing other people in true and healthy ways, ways that actually we were created to need in is an attempt to sit in the seat of God. And what we ought to do instead is to bow in reverence, as Paul is doing here and say, Oh, the depths of the riches. And that any god of such deep riches, she choose to associate with one as impoverished as me. It’s unspeakable, it’s incomprehensible. Who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid as anybody have in their life, a person who’s difficult to shop for? I want you to think about them right now. Your like gift card, gift card, gift card gift card, you just keep giving them gift cards, because you don’t know what to do. God is not like that. There’s no gift you can give him that can possibly be just the right thing. And that’s good, because we don’t have anything that he wants. And what freedom there isn’t that we can certainly never extort him, but we can also never let him down and showing up empty handed. I’ve heard it well said that the God who spoke nothing into something in the creative act can do the same with our nothing. Oh, the depth of the riches, but also the depth of the wisdom of God. And the wisdom of God is the ability to take the facts and to use them for best ends. And so I love that wisdom and knowledge are actually showing up right next to each other in this passage because of the way that they work together to help us to worship God as we should. No one can extort or blackmail God because he has all of the things that he needs. He has stuff he doesn’t need your stuff. In fact, your stuff is actually his stuff whether you’re paying attention to that or not. Sometimes he likes to teach us that and rather shocking wife. But it’s not just that he has riches. It’s that he has wisdom and knowledge. And just as is the case with him having all right witches, guess what else he has all of all wisdom, all knowledge. God is omniscient.

Jen Wilkin
He knows everything there is to know about every single thing he knows all things past. He knows all things present he knows all things future. He knows everything that can be seen through the strongest telescope and everything that can be seen beyond it that that telescope cannot even see he knows everything that can be seen by the strongest microscope and everything that is smaller than that can see. His knowledge knows no bounds. AW Tozer says it like this. God knows instantly and effortlessly all matter and all matters all mind and every mind all spirit and all spirits all being in every being all creature hood and all creatures, every plurality and all pluralities all law and every law all relations, all causes and thoughts, all mysteries, all enigmas all feeling all desires. Every unfettered secret. All thrones and dominions, all personalities, all things visible and invisible in heaven and in earth, motion, space, time, life, death, good, evil, Heaven and Hell. He knows them all. He knows them perfectly. He knows them instantly and effortlessly. And how does he know them? Who has taught him? No one. God does not learn. He knows all things because he is the origin of all things. He holds all knowledge. You’re like, great, that’s great. Thanks for sharing that with me. I kind of knew that already. That’s fine. And the good thing is, is that’s completely irrelevant to my life. So thanks a lot. Jen. Let me ask you something. Do you happen to own a smartphone? Anyone got one on your right now? What does it promise you? Exactly what I just said. You know why you love that thing so much? Because it helps you to feel like you are God. Knowledge is power, right? If knowledge is power, guess who holds all power in addition to holding all knowledge? And the thing is, is we can’t hold all knowledge. We’re not actually designed to God is infinite. And we are limited. But we want to so badly. And we do really actually think it would be super good. If we could. And Google is telling us it’s great. Listen, you don’t have to remember it all. You just look it up. Like years ago, my husband and I used to have some of the best arguments about 80 song lyrics and who started what movies. And now it’s just a race to see who can Google at the fastest. And what is that? What is that thrill? What is that adrenaline rush that we feel if it isn’t a longing for omniscience, this thing that only belongs to God alone. And what we wrongly believe, is that if we just had more facts, we would be better at making decisions. But that’s actually not what psychologists would tell us. They say that the more facts that we have, the more we struggle with anxiety and depression. The more that we suffer from information overload, the more that we are crushed by the weight of it, and it doesn’t actually promote decision making an acid actually Meier’s us down in indecision. Why? Because you’re always thinking maybe there’s another factor out there that’s going to change what I should do with the decision that I have. What’s the problem? Why do we devolve into anxiety and depression? Because when we try to carry more facts than the human mind is designed to carry? What happens? We run right up against our limitedness. We’re not designed for it. Only God can hold all information perfectly, effortlessly. Like, is anybody in here an expert at something? You might be an expert at one thing or maybe two things in your whole lifetime. God is an expert on everything. He knows all things perfectly. Oh, the depth of the knowledge of God. But he doesn’t just hold knowledge, he holds wisdom, infinite wisdom. So that means that in addition to having all of the facts, he is able to use them perfectly to make perfect judgments. This is really such a good news. Because if you’ve ever wondered, does God know how I’ve been treated? Does he know what has happened to me? Maybe you’ve suffered an injustice. What can you know about God? That he knows every single thing that has happened to you? But he also knows exactly how to deal in wisdom with those facts.

Jen Wilkin
The reason that we can trust him to be the just judge is because the combination of His wisdom and knowledge mean he is the consummate eyewitness to everything that has ever happened. He doesn’t need a jury, he doesn’t need people to testify, because he knows what happened. And he knows exactly what the outcome should be. Oh, the depths of the riches, and the wisdom and the knowledge of God. For those of you who have been a part of our conference on James, you know that this God who is infinite in His wisdom says to you and me, in one of the clearest promises you can claim in all of Scripture, if you lack wisdom, just ask. He will give to you out of the riches that he has, and he will not find fault. In the Bible study, I lead in my church, we just spent a semester in the book of Proverbs. And so when I got to the word wisdom here in Romans, it hit me a little differently than it might have in other seasons. Because in the book of Proverbs, if you’re familiar with it, you see these point and counterpoint of wisdom and folly, Lady wisdom, the desirable bride, Lady folly, the harlot. And what we see here in this description of God, is that while you and I are told, seek wisdom, run after wisdom, to turn aside from folly, in this horrible picture painted for us at the path that folly will lay out for us, her paths going down to shale. But what do we see is present in the mind of God? Single mindedness, wisdom only, there is no folly in the mind of God. How trustworthy are his judgments? How reliable are His promises? How straight and steady are his ways riches, wisdom, knowledge, infinite. And then we see this other statement right in the middle of our little chiasm. How unsearchable are His judgments, and how inscrutable are his ways, we learn another thing that is true about God, God is incomprehensible. He is unable to be fully understood. Now, this does not mean that God cannot be understood. That’s what this book is for. This is his declaration of Himself to us. And all that is needful for life and godliness is in here. I propose to you that if we make a good start now, we will have barely scraped the surface of what we can know about God in this book, by the time that we meet him face to face. God is incomprehensible why? Because he is an infinite being. And so you might crack open a theological work, you might crack open a systematic theology and walk through the doctrine of God and see that there are attributes of God things that are true about God that are listed there, that he’s loving, that he’s just that he’s merciful, that he’s good, omniscient, omnipotent. All of these things that we know are true about God because we spend time learning about them in the scriptures. But these are but the outer fringes of what there is to know about him. Because an infinite God has an infinite number of things that are true about him. Now think about our human relationships. It can be a little unsettling to think that the God of the universe is keeping secrets from us in this life, about things that are true about him. Because if you’ve ever been in a relationship with someone and found out that they had a secret, and it was when you did not want to know, that’s not awesome. But here’s the thing about God. There are no skeletons in his closet. The things that we will not know are true about him in this life are only good things because he is infinitely good. Now the worship leaders will tell you that eternity will just be us in a giant praise song. Like all we’re gonna do is just sing praise songs for forever. And I have to say when I hear that I feel a little deflated. I mean, I can sing don’t get me wrong, and I can even learn to put my hands in the air belatedly should I need to. But you know what the Bible teachers think eternity is gonna be an opportunity to discover with ever increasing increasing clarity, the infinite

Jen Wilkin
character of God with no limits whatsoever on our time. time when no limits on our abilities, but even in the next life, we will be finite, will not suddenly be dropped on us. But we will have an eternity to explore the beauties of an infinite God. His ways are unsearchable and inscrutable. And so a question is asked, who has known the mind of the Lord? And what is the answer? No one who is given a gift to him that he might be repaid? No one. And in response, he says, in Verse 36, for from him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things to him be glory forever, amen. Look at that beautiful progression. For from Him. He is our Creator. And through him, he is our Sustainer. And to him, he is our perfector. He is our alpha, he is our omega, he is everything in between. He is our origin, he is our path. He is our Terminus. In Him, we live and move, and have our being. All things. Often things this puts me in mind of Psalm 139, five, where we hear that he hands us in behind and before and he lays his hand on us. He is behind us, before us, and with us even now. from him and through him. And to him are all things do you live your life that way? Or are you like it came from him. But then it came to me. And now it’s my job to keep life and body together. And then one day is death approaches, I will once again focus on the fact that I am going to him? Or do you understand that all of life is lived under his sovereign hand, you will make a different set of choices if you do you will walk according to a different way. So he extols God, He gives us this hymn of praise this poem. And then he gets to verse one of chapter 12. And there’s one of those really important words that you find in the scriptures, I appeal to you what, Therefore, brothers by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Now, I used to have to attend summer camp, I got to attend summer camp. But in order to get there, I had to memorize Bible verses as a kid did anybody else. And the camp was actually not that awesome, I feel like for the work that I put in the camp could have been a little. And the funniest thing is, it was this random camp in the middle of nowhere. And my brothers and I have all of these memories of it. And I don’t know how much you know about Texas, but that’s where I grew up. And in Texas, there’s only one lake that is not manmade, and all of our lakes are opaque and bright red, because of the color of the soil. And so you have to choose the suit, the bathing suit that you liked the least, because it is going to be colored the color of the lake when you get out of the lake. And so this is the summer camp that I went to, which is now strangely about 10 minutes from my home, like it used to be like two hours away. And so I called my brothers and I’m like, Hey, you want to stroll down memory lane? Because I live right up the road from camp and they were like, No, I’m good. But we would memorize Bible verses, you know, all year long to get to go to this janky camp. And we memorized him in the King James, because you know, that’s the version that Jesus carried. And so those are the translations that are often floating in my head when I am going through a teaching like this. And this is one of the ones that I memorized was Romans 12 One and two, I beseech thee, therefore, brethren, in view of God’s mercy, so that’s what floats around in my head. But listen to what Paul is saying here. Therefore, what’s the therefore therefore? This is a bigger therefore than some, this is the pivot point for the whole book. He’s saying, listen, in view of everything that’s come before, but also don’t miss it’s in view of what I just said to you. I just proclaimed for you, and worshipful tones of vision of God high and lifted up and you know what happens in the Bible anytime there is a vision of God Hi, and lift it up. What is it? People understand themselves in a different way than they did before.

Jen Wilkin
The knowledge of God shapes knowledge of self self awareness emerges. And then there will be action But he doesn’t just say, Hey, give some thought to this. Therefore, what does he say? I beseech you? I appeal to you. He’s not done being fervent in his speech here. I appeal to you, I want you to reason with me look at all of these things that we’ve talked about, think about who God is. And in light of that, please, please listen to me, by the mercies of God, present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. I think these verses are so familiar to us that they don’t strike us in the gut the way that they should they don’t hit us the way that his original audience would have been hit by them. He has just said, he is a Jew, remember this, he’s a Jew. And he understands that there is something going on in the sovereign will of God, which means that his own people will be slow in coming to the knowledge of God. And he’s able to recognize the beauty of the Gentiles being called into the good news. But here he appeals to our Old Testament memories, he appeals to our memory of the sacrificial system. And what does he say? He says, Present your bodies as living sacrifices. There’s no more bringing a sheep or a dove. No more of that. No more grain. No more first fruits. It is you bring your bodies as living sacrifices, and by bodies, he doesn’t mean necessarily just your physical bodies, he means bring your whole selves. And they will not come as dead sacrifices. They they’re living. We don’t think about what it would have been like to be in the temple on the day of sacrifice. We don’t think about hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years of death and blood, death and blood, death and blood, death and blood until the coming of that final sacrifice. And then what do we see? No more. No more blood will be shed and you will come as a living sacrifice. Present yourself before the Lord. The King James would say which is your reasonable service. That’s my favorite wording. I’m sticking with it reasonable service. It’s reasonable. In other words, to not do this would be irrational. You know, years ago, I studied the book of Judges. And up until I had studied it, I thought it was a book of Hero Tails. And then I realized it was actually not that at all. Anyone studied it. And the very last to the judges is if I remember who the last one is. Going out with a bang. It’s Samsung. Okay, later, we’re gonna have a little Bible pop quiz, because that was a slow response time. I always thought Samsung was like, Oh, he’s so strong. And then that mean lady cuts his hair off. But if you follow the story, it’s like, no, he’s kind of a dirtbag the whole way through. And at the very end of the story, if you remember he’s had his eyes gouged out, and they’ve strung them up in the temple of Dagon. And he pulls down the columns and he kills all these Philistines as he dies. And one of the commentators when I was working on that study remarked that he actually Slade his whole mission was to subdue the Philistines as a judge in Israel. But he actually only slays Philistines in his death, like he slays more Philistines in his dying than he does in his living. And this commentator rather ominously said, be useful to God. While it is still called today, don’t be known as a person who was more useful in your dying than in your living. Paul urges us present yourselves as living sacrifices, there is no more blood required for sin. Live your life sacrificially before the Lord, it is reasonable service, it is a reasonable thing. And when I read that, I thought about the words of Isaiah, spoken to you and me this side of the cross, Come, let us reason together. Though your sins were a scarlet, they are wider than snow. How should we live is reasonable.

Jen Wilkin
To present ourselves to God to live sacrificial lives to say it all belongs to him. So I’m just going to be a steward. I’m going to keep giving things away. He knows all things I have nothing to hide before him. I may as well confess and trust that he knows what’s best because he knows all outcomes. I can live a sacrificial lie because I can trust the one to whom I am offering myself. Verse two says do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that by testing, you may discern what is the will of God, good, acceptable, and perfect. And so we’re shown here that we have really two options to be conformed, or to be transformed, to be molded, or to be metaphor, but but meta Hold on, molded, or metamorphosis sized. I think I just made up a word guys. Will you simply be you remember Silly Putty, and how you’d pull it out of that nasty little egg and it had flex in it from whatever you stuck it to the day before. But what it had done overnight, it had molded itself to the inside of the container and you could pull it off, and that little silly putty logo would just be perfect on it. That’s what the world wants to do. It wants to take worldly wisdom, as we looked at in the book of James, and it wants to conform you to its version of the good life. This is what flourishing looks like these are the measures by which you can say that you have won or lost, come on along and will smash you into the mold and will extrude you out the other side. But were offered a better way be trans formed. Don’t simply be put into a different shape, but become something new. Be a new creation. And how does it happen? By the renewal of your mind. It’s rather surprising statement here because we speak so often of Christianity, being all about God’s love for us. And then he comes to live in our hearts. And we speak a lot about the heart and the heart and the heart and the heart of Christianity certainly is a religion of the heart. But the question is, how are our hearts formed? And we have a rather surprising answer here because we’re you. And I might rather say this the renewal of our hearts, that is the business of God, we find that there’s actually an order of operations to that, than any change in our hearts will be the outcome of a change in our thinking. You see, the heart cannot love what the mind does not know. The heart cannot love what the mind does not know. And so if you sit thinking, Yes, I do want to be transformed. And I don’t know why it’s taking so long. Maybe I just need to I don’t even really feel that close to God. Like if I could just feel closer to Him, then I would be different. But you can’t simply feel to feel we need right thinking to fuel right? Feeling if we want to feel deeply about God, we must learn to think deeply about God. Because the path to transformation is from our heads to our hearts to our hands. It’s not enough to simply stop doing things with your hands if your heart is still wicked. How do you get your heart to not be wicked anymore? Well, you can’t the Holy Spirit’s going to do that for you. But you know that that passage in Proverbs, that really famous verse that we all love to quote delight yourself? And I’m sorry, it’s in Psalms 37 For Delight yourself in the Lord and He will what gave you the desires your heart? Oh, you knew that went into even on Instagram because it’s out there. And what do we think it means to surface reading? Okay, if I delight myself in him, he’s gonna give me all those things. I’m gonna ask him for my prayer journal. But is that really what’s going on there? No, no, if we truly delighted in the Lord, what would he do? He would give us new desires. We would desire what He desires, your desires. But how do you delight yourself in the Lord so it gives you new desires? Well, your mind has to be transformed. Let me give you a simple illustration. I love cheese puffs. I’ve learned I have to call them cheese puffs because if I say the actual brand name, the company might see me. But I love them so much. And you know which ones I mean. And if I am on vacation, I purchase a very large container of them and I eat them until the roof of my mouth is lacerated and my fingers are indelibly stained orange, and I love them and I love them. And I love them and I love them and I’ve loved them for years, years and years.

Jen Wilkin
And my romance with them was going strong and was working for both of us until the fateful day when I turned over the package and read the ingredients. And it did seem to me that among the incomprehensible speech that was listed there, at least one of the items should have been cheese

Jen Wilkin
my mind now knew Something it had gained a data point, a data point that impacted my love for the cheese puff. I now knew some things about how much fat was in them about how much sodium was in them. I mean, who is the jerk who finally decided to put nutritional information on the back of those? It’s ruining my whole life? Except what is it really doing? You know, and then you can’t unknow and then every time you see them, you’re like, Ah, I know that. And so I quit them cold turkey. Except that that is a lie. But my relationship with them was fractured. Because what I knew meant that my desire for them was dying, and dying, and dying. It’s a ridiculous illustration of a true truth. What sin are you less interested in, because you understand its consequences in a way you didn’t use to. That’s the work of the Lord in your life. That’s what Dr. Duncan meant when he said, We will be sanctified, but it might feel like it’s killing us. Because he’s killing sin. Because when your mind knows, then your desires begin to change. And as your desires begin to change, you begin to desire that which he desires, both ultimately in the universe and also in your life personally, and you want to pursue it. Which brings us to this next part, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good, and acceptable, and perfect. And listen, people really overthink this will of God thing. Like they want to know which car they should buy, and what job they should take. They want to know what God’s will is in a bunch of morally neutral situations, right. And frankly, I think if it’s a morally neutral situation, apply the wisdom that you have to the facts that you have, say a prayer, trust the Lord, even if you make the wrong decision, God is able to sanctify you through the outcome of a wrong decision as much as he’s able to sanctify you through the outcome of a right decision. You see, we are actually not believers in karma. We don’t think that if we make a good decision, God blesses us. So don’t get hung up on decision points and think that the will of God for you has all to do with whether you choose this color shirt or that color shirt. And also, the Bible is actually not concealing from us what God’s will is for our lives. It tells us you make known to me the path of life. So why would we question that? What’s the will of God for your life? Versus lunians For this is the will of God for your life, your sanctification. You know what your sanctification is, be conformed, Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. This is the only rational path that’s what he says. Come let us reason together. You who were once read, are now White. What then should you do? Submit yourself, ask for the mind of Christ. Because that’s your identity. But we will not do that. If we don’t first remember the character of God. Remember, the character of God, we must first have a vision of God high and lifted up, we must first extol him in his infinite goodness, majesty, incomprehensibility in order for us to understand our place in the universe and cry out to Him. Lord, I lay myself on the altar, cut what you must do what you will transform me I don’t want to continue in the ways that I continued in when I was estranged from you. God has a depth of riches and wisdom and knowledge. If you ask for wisdom, He will give it to you. Do you know what the most basic act of wisdom is the very first expression of wisdom in the life of the believer. Because you know that proverbs and Psalms tell us the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, the beginning of it. And so a vision of God high and lifted up gives us the fear of the Lord and what happens what’s the beginning of wisdom, the first expression of it and all of the accounts in scripture where someone apprehends God for who he really is, the first thing they do is repent. Repentance is the first and most basic act of wisdom that the converted person performs.

Jen Wilkin
But in wisdom, we repeat it again. In an again and again. And by grace in the power of the Spirit, we are increasingly transformed as our minds are conformed to the mind of Christ. My prayer for you is that you would come to this book, asking the right question first. Who are you Lord? Grant me a vision of you high and lifted up. Transforming. Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for the gift of Your Word. We thank you for the gift of your son who was that final sacrifice, that we might come to you as living sacrifices. Lord, you have given us new life, new life for a purpose, that we might bear your image to a lost and dying world that we might conformed to the image of your son who did so perfectly. Oh, the depths of the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God. It’s in Your Son’s name we pray. Amen.