Doctrine Fails Without Delight: The Mind as Servant of the Heart

0:00 Would you pray with me? You have promised, Father, that you will walk through the valley of the shadow of death with us, that you'll seat us before our enemies at a table, that you'll pour out the oil of gladness on us, that you'll satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love,

0:28 and that you'll help us at every turn. And so now we count on that for the listener, for the speaker. We need your help. I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. The theme of the conference is seeing the songs of the Bible. And on the website, there were two sentences that unpacked it. I took my cue from those. Number one, join us to rediscover the power and beauty of the songs of scripture. Number two, from Genesis to Revelation, we will explore the Word of God and how it guides and invigorates our worship as individuals, families, and churches. So taking all that together, I have a picture in my mind, namely that there is a sword with a sharp point on it, and then this titanium blade, and then this magnificent, beautiful hilt of the sword. And the point is the songs of scripture, and the blade and the hilt is the totality of the Word of God. And the aim of the conference then is that this point and the scriptures behind it, the songs of scripture and the totality of scripture would penetrate through every obstacle to the place where it would guide and invigorate the worship that all of you experience. That's my understanding of what we're about in this conference, if I understand those words correctly. So the way I want to serve the purpose is by fastening on that word invigorate

2:35 and try to understand how the Word of God invigorates singing and worship in general. Not just guide it, but invigorate it.

2:57 So what I'm going to do is draw out of that word this. Right emotions toward God are the goal of right thinking about God. Right feelings toward God are the goal of right doctrines about God. Right affections for God are the goal of true statements about God, which implies that the inspired, infallible Word of God exists for the sake of creating and guiding and invigorating right emotions toward God. The Bible exists to create, sustain, guide, shape, invigorate right emotions, right feelings about God. And therefore, the mind that grasps those biblical doctrines or truths exists to serve the heart. The mind exists to serve the heart. Right thinking about God exists for the sake of right feeling about God. Biblical propositions exist for the sake of biblical passions for the glory of God. Now, even if I were to admit at this point that the reverse is also true, that in some ways, right feelings serve right thinking.

5:00 If you love God, you'll understand your Bible better. If you hate God, you will distort your Bible everywhere. However, even if I admit that the reverse is true, the right interpretation that you arrive at with the help of right affections is is not an end in itself. It is aimed at further up and further in emotions.

5:38 Right thinking is never an end in itself. So I'm arguing that when it comes to the chief end of man, to glorify God, to magnify the Son of God, there is a real ultimacy in Godward feelings that is not true about Godward thinking. Both are indispensable, otherwise we wouldn't have Bible, but they're not equal. One of them is more ultimate as the goal of the other. One of them is less ultimate as the servant of the other, and thinking is the servant. Feeling is the goal. Knowing truth is the servant. Feeling love is the goal. Lyrics of the Bible and of the songs are the kindling affections for God are the fire.

6:52 now one of the reasons I'm emphasizing this is because I assume that as we move along and more and more expressions are made in song and in word to the effect that we ought to build Bible into our singing I don't want anybody to assume from that absolutely crucial emphasis that the scripture is an end in itself, that truth is an end in itself, that lyrics are an end in themselves. They are a means to Godward emotion. Now, does the Bible teach that? Or is that just my idea? Where does the Bible teach that the mind serves the heart? Right thinking serves right emotion? And my answer is everywhere, Cover to cover, the pattern is the same. So let's go and watch it happen. Psalm 16 verse 8 to 10, I have set the Lord always before me, because he is at my right hand I shall not be shaken. Therefore my heart is glad and my whole being rejoices.

8:35 because these words are infinitely important. I don't think that's an overstatement. Therefore and because, on both ends of this verse, because you will not abandon my soul to Sheol or let your Holy One see corruption. So here's the pattern. God has shown me a truth, a great reality. He will be at my right hand. He will not let me be shaken." That's a truth. That ought to be sung. Why? Therefore, my heart is glad. The truth serves the gladness. That's the pattern over and over again. You cannot turn that around. You try to turn that around, you wreck God's whole design and creation. You can't say, because I am glad, I'll build my doctrine on that. My emotions govern my doctrine. It doesn't work like that. Doctrine exists for the sake of the emotions, not the other way around. Psalm 47 verses 1 and 2, clap your hands, all peoples, shout to God with songs of joy, for the Lord Most High is to be feared, a great King above all the earth. So here's the great truth. God is to be feared above all the earth. God is a great King over all the earth. Therefore, clap your hands, shout for joy. The truth serves the clapping. The truth, the doctrine serves the delight. Psalm 95 verse 2, let us come into his presence with thanksgiving. Let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise, for the Lord is a great

10:48 God. That's doctrine. Indispensable to be sung doctrine. Why? Why is it in the Bible? Why is it spoken to us? That we might come into his presence with thanksgiving, that we might make a joyful noise to him. The doctrine serves the delight. The mind serves the heart. Thinking serves feeling. Psalm 100. I'm so glad that's the first thing we sang, I think. Oh my goodness, I love this song, the old 100th. Did you know that Psalm 100 has four stanzas? Yes, you do. Did you know that the first and the third are feeling stanzas and the second and the fourth are doctrine standards, stanzas. Maybe you didn't know that. Stanza number one, the feeling stanza. Make a joyful noise to the Lord all the earth. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come into his presence with singing. That's stanza. One, feeling, feeling, feeling. It's commanded. It's not an option. It's commanded. Feel this, people. Stanza two.

12:12 know that the Lord is God. That's not an accident. It is He who made us and we are His. We are His people and the sheep of His pasture. Stanza three, the feeling stanza. Enter His gates with thanksgiving, His courts with praise. Give thanks to him and bless his name. Stanza four. I get shivers every time we get to this. You really should sing it with me, shouldn't you? For why the Lord our God God is good. His mercy is forever sure. His truth at all times firmly stood and shall from age to age endure. That's one of the best stanzas in the world. All truth, all doctrine, all God, all glory, serving, come into his courts for thanksgiving. Sing his praise. Be glad in the Lord. Make a joyful noise. It doesn't exist to tickle the intellects of theologians. Well, tickle it might.

13:44 Feel because you know. Feel because you know. The second and third or fourth stanzas should be indented, supports for all these first and third. Delight on the basis of doctrine. Delight on the basis of doctrine. This is no accident. This is God's pattern cover to cover in the Bible. Let's go to the New Testament. Matthew 5, 11. Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. That's crazy, right? Rejoice when you're slandered. Are you good at that? You're not good at that. But you need to do it, especially in a day like ours.

14:39 Rejoice when they say all kinds of evil against you falsely. How can you have that emotion? That is so utterly counterintuitive, countercultural. How can you have that emotion for Your reward is great in heaven. Blessed are you when others revile you, persecute you, utter all kinds of evil against you falsely. Rejoice and be glad for your reward in heaven is great. Jesus actually believes that if you rightly know with your brain that truth, your reward is great in heaven it will produce joy in the face of slander that's what he believes or the Bible's thoughts It's just amazing how God has set things up between the brain and the heart.

15:48 Stunningly amazing, gloriously amazing. The head serves the heart in moments of persecution. Luke 10, behold, I have given you authority to tread on demons and serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy. Nothing shall hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you. that your names are written in heaven. There's a truth, there's a doctrine. Child of God, Your name is written in heaven. In fact, it was written there before the foundation of the world, according to Revelation 13, 8.

16:45 It won't be erased. John says it several times. You're home. You home. Therefore, don't rejoice that the demons are subject to you. Rejoice in that, because that glorious, magnificent truth exists to serve your joy. What else? Romans 5. We rejoice in our sufferings knowing. We rejoice in our sufferings knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that's been given to us. Rejoice knowing you know something.

17:45 You know that suffering produces endurance. You know that endurance produces character. You know that hope will not put you to shame for all eternity and therefore rejoice in tribulation. The knowing serves the feeling. It's everywhere. It's everywhere in the Bible. Thank you. One more. James chapter 1. Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet various trials, for you know that your testing, the testing of your faith, produces steadfastness.

18:32 Joy because you know. Joy because you know. the knowing serves the joy that's the biblical pattern the aim of this conference is that the word of God would guide and invigorate our worship and the implication I'm drawing out of that word invigorate because of God's word Thank you. is right emotions toward God are the goal of right thinking about God. There is a real ultimacy in Godward feelings that is not true of Godward thinking. I mean, just a parenthesis. It totally transforms the way you think about Sunday morning, if you believe this. Close that parenthesis. There is a real ultimacy in Godward feelings, which Godward thinking does not have. Both are indispensable. That's why this conference is what it is, but one of them is more ultimate as the goal than the other, and one of them is less ultimate as the servant of the other. Thinking is the servant, feeling is the goal, doctrine is the servant, delight is the goal.

20:15 That's the pattern everywhere in the Bible. Now here's my last question. Why did God set it up that way? Why did God design things? Because this is not just Bible. This is humanity. This is reality. This is the universe. We're on to something globally, universally significant here for the human race. We really are. Why did he set it up this way? So that the mind serves the heart. Thinking serves emotion. Emotions have an ultimacy as the goal. Thinking does not have that ultimacy.

21:08 It is a servant. Why did he set it up that way? Let me try something and see if it helps. I'm going to think for a moment with you about AI, artificial intelligence. this is a thought experiment to get at the why of God doing it the way he did it could have been otherwise thinking could have been the end it isn't Artificial intelligence, according to one definition, is technology that enables computers and machines to simulate human learning, comprehension, problem-solving, decision-making, creativity, and autonomy.

22:06 End quote. Now what is strikingly missing from that list is emotions. Why is that? When was the last time you read an article about AE? I can't see you all, so I don't know if there are any hands up. I've never read an article about AE. artificial emotion. Why? Here's my answer. This is John Piper's, not God. Intelligence, that is the use of the mind for thinking, reasoning, knowing, exists primarily as a means to an end.

23:02 Intelligence gathers data from the five senses, analyzes it, organizes it, draws conclusions from it, puts it to some use. Might be to say something, that's why computers can talk. Might be to do some tasks, which is why there are robots. And if you're human, that thinking might have as its outcome feeling. Intelligence by itself is pragmatic by design. God's design is pragmatic. So we don't take offense when a machine does the type of thinking that intelligence does. Not a problem. The machine got the facts right. The machine got the logic right. The machine got the conclusion right. That's useful. It is. You use it every day.

24:02 But as soon as you put the word artificial in front of emotion, Everything recoils within you. We all have experience of artificial emotion. Nobody likes it. We recoil from it. If a young lady comes home from her first date with a guy and talks to her roommate and says, great knowledge of facts impeccable logic, all the right conclusions, but his emotions are artificial. It all feels fake.

25:02 She's fine with his brain being a computer. That could be useful. She is not fine with his heart being a computer. What's the difference? The difference is that God has designed the human heart and its emotional life not to be pragmatic. That is, when our emotions come into being authentically, they're not a means to an end. What marks an emotion as artificial is that it looks like it's trying to sell you something. Artificial emotions are manipulative. They're not spontaneous. They're not an end in themselves.

26:11 They're trying to do something. Like the brain, make something happen. Get you to do something. That's not what they're for. If you get a gift, you've been wanting this gift for years and couldn't afford it, and somebody freely, in a totally surprising way, gives you what you've been wanting all those years, and thankfulness spontaneously rises up in your heart. don't work at it. Just there it is. And it might spill over in words. It might not. It might spill over in other ways. It might produce tears. What it does is totally not the point. It's real. It's authentic. It came spontaneously. It is not trying to accomplish anything. It is totally an end in itself.

27:14 That's an authentic emotion. That's what God created them to be. That's not A-E, artificial emotion. If you feel thankfulness that way, manipulatively, if I feel this emotion strong enough, maybe they'll give me some more. That's not Thanksgiving. That's a computer. Which means that in God's design, get this, in God's design, human emotion is perfectly suited as the heart of why God created the universe, namely worship. because worship is not a means to an end. You try to turn worship into a means to end, budget raising or evangelism.

28:26 It's not worship anymore. It's not true affection anymore. Great, beautiful, infinitely valuable is God. And we all know intuitively that beauty and greatness and value are not adequately glorified by being adequately described. So here you are standing before Mount Elbert. I haven't met anybody who's ever heard of Mount Elbert.

29:21 You're standing before Mount Elbert in Colorado. You take out your pencil and pad and you write down 14,439 feet tall, snow-covered, eight months out of the year. Highest peak in the Rockies. That's true. Takes 10 hours to hike to the top on a strong person. You hold it up to the mountain. It's my tribute. At that point, you are a computer, not a worshiper. Hear my doctrines, God. Hear my biblical propositions, God. Hear my lyrics to my hymn, God. Only when those doctrines caused the spontaneous emotions of awe and wonder and amazement does worship begin to happen. So the point of the conference is that this sphere of worship songs and and the totality of the Bible behind that pointed spear would thrust through every obstacle in this room and in these days and cause a guiding and an invigoration of worship.

31:03 And I have simply tried to make plain that to invigorate worship, the real implication is the real design of God is no biblical truth, no biblical affections, no biblical propositions, no biblical passions, no biblical doctrine, no biblical delight. but where the Word of God is sung full of biblical truth, full of biblical passion, propositions, full of biblical doctrine, the Son of God will be savored,

31:49 enjoyed, delighted in, as He ought to be, as an infinitely glorious end in Himself. where the truth is known that, as we're going to sing now in just a moment, where the truth is known that God pursues you, follows you with goodness and mercy all your days. Godward, fearless affections will rise in your heart in the valley of the shadow of death. And that's the way he designed it to be. So, Father, I pray. that our hearts would be served well by our minds in these days, that our feelings would be served rightly by our thinking, that our delight would be served by our doctrine as we sing it.

32:57 It sits in Jesus' name. Amen.