Think on These Things - The Discipline of a Christian Mind - Part 1

Well, flip back to Philippians chapter 4. Philippians chapter 4. And as I mentioned, we're going to be focusing on just one verse out of Philippians chapter 4. And that's verse 8. So let me read it again. "Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is dignified, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, consider these things." Now, if you've heard me preach very often, you know I believe context is king. So I don't want to ever rip a verse out of its setting and make it say something the Holy Spirit never intended.

And Philippians 4.8 is one of those verses that gets ripped out of its setting a lot. You see it on coffee mugs. You see it on throw pillows. You see it on plaques at Hobby Lobby and on T-shirts. There's nothing wrong with liking the verse. It is a beautiful verse. But Paul didn't write it to decorate your living room. He wrote it to furnish your mind. And those are two very different things. So we're going to take our time here. We're going to handle it carefully. We're going to let the whole letter of Philippians breathe into this one verse before we even try to unpack it. The title of this morning's message is "Think on These Things.

The Discipline of a Christian Mind, Part 1." Think on these things. The Discipline of a Christian Mind, Part 1. I say Part 1 because there's too much in the verse and the lead up to the verse to rush through it in one sitting. This morning, I want to lay the groundwork. I want us to feel the weight of the command before we ever get to the list. Because if we don't understand what Paul is telling us to do, then the categories he gives us will just become a pretty piece of wall art right back to the throw pillow and a t-shirt. That's not what Paul has in mind. One more time. Philippians 4.8.

"Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is dignified, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, consider these things." The King James renders the end of that verse, "Think on these things." And that's where I got the title of the message. Now, the message this morning can be divided into six headings or sections. Don't worry about writing these down just now. I'll repeat each heading as we get there. But here they are.

The prepared mind, the accountable mind, the exposed mind, the engaged mind, the furnished mind, and the examined mind. Ready? Roman numeral one, the prepared mind. One of the first things we need to see if we're going to handle this verse rightly is that Philippians 4.8 doesn't just drop out of the sky. And Paul is not suddenly changing subjects here. He's not wrapping up the letter with a few scattered moral sayings, a little inspirational nugget to end on a high note. No, when Paul says, "Whatever is true, whatever is dignified," and so on, he's bringing to a sharp point something he has been doing throughout the entire letter.

He's been shepherding the Philippians' minds from the very first chapter. Think about it. In chapter 1, Paul is a prisoner in chains. His circumstances are hard. His future is uncertain. Men are even preaching Christ from wrong motives, trying to add affliction to his chains. And yet, what does Paul do? He doesn't spiral into self-pity. He doesn't say, "Woe is me," or, "My ministry's been interrupted," or, "Knocked off track." Rather, he interprets his chains through the advance of the Gospel. He says, in effect, "What has happened to me has actually turned out for the greater progress of the Gospel." That's not just courage.

That's sanctified thinking. It's a mind that has been taught to read circumstances through the lens of Christ's glory and the sovereignty of God rather than through the lens of self. Do you see that? Then Paul says something even more staggering in chapter 1, verse 21. He says, "For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain." That's not just a bumper sticker slogan. That's a man under real pressure, facing real, potentially imminent death sentence, and his mind is so governed by Christ that he can look at both possible outcomes, living or dying, and say, "Either way, I win." That's a trained mind. That's a disciplined mind.

So already in chapter 1, before Paul ever tells the Philippians directly what to think on, he's showing them what a Christ-governed mind looks like. And that's not naught natural. Left to myself in the early days of my conversion when things went sideways, my first instinct was not to say, "Well, praise God. Look how he's advancing the gospel through this." My first instinct, and I suspect many of yours too, was to say, "This isn't fair," or "Why me?" or "How do I fix this?" That was my flesh talking. That's your flesh talking. And that's how an untrained mind thinks.

Now, I'm thankful my mind has come a long way since 1992, and the Lord has graciously trained and equipped my mind to some degree at least by the gospel, and that he continues to do so. But Paul's mind had been fully trained by the gospel, and that's one of the things he's been doing with the Philippians all along in this letter, training their minds or training them to train their minds. In chapter 2, he makes it even more explicit. In verse 5, he says, "Having this way of thinking in yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus." He's not telling them just to play nice.

He's pressing upon them a specifically Christian mindset, one shaped by humility, self-forgetfulness, other-centeredness, and the pattern of Christ himself. In chapter 3, verse 7 through the first part of verse 9, Paul says, "But whatever things were gained to me, those things I have counted as lost for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be lost because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish, so that I may gain Christ and be found in him." That's a radical reordering of the mind.

That's a man who has learned to think differently about value, righteousness, status, and identity. And then here in chapter 4, before he gets to verse 8, he tells them to stand firm, to rejoice always, to be anxious for nothing, to bring everything to God in prayer. And then in verse 7 he says, "And the peace of God which surpasses all comprehension will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." You hear that? Your hearts and your minds. Paul's been dealing with the inward life of the mind for four straight chapters. So when he finally says in verse 8, "Consider these things or think on these things," he's not taking a sudden turn.

He's bringing the whole epistle to bear upon the battlefield of the mind. Makes sense? And that's important because if we miss that, we'll treat verse 8 like a decorative verse, a Christian bumper sticker. We'll hear it as though Paul is merely saying, try to think positive thoughts. But that's not what's happening here. Philippians 4.8 is the mature fruit of everything Paul has been saying up to this point. Roman numeral two. The accountable mind. The accountable mind.

Now again, before we ever get to the list itself in verse 8 of chapter 4, I want us to stop and feel the weight of the command because although Paul begins the verse by defining categories, he ends it by issuing an imperative, a command. He does not say, "Notice these things "if they happen to pass through your mind." He does not say, "Admire these things from a distance." He says, "Consider these things." Or, "Think on these things." Dwell on them, focus on them, give your mind over to them. The Greek is helpful here. The word translated consider in the LSB or think on in the KJV is the Greek word logizomai. Logizomai.

It's a word that shares a common root with our English word logic and is actually connected to it. One commenter said, "Essentially, logizomai "is the action of employing logic. "It is thinking according to logical rules." Close quote. So it certainly does not mean to let a thought drift across the surface of the mind like a cloud passing overhead. Logizomai means to reckon, to calculate, to weigh carefully, to take inventory. It's a word a bookkeeper might use. If you're sitting in your office and you open the ledger and you take inventory of what's in the account that you're examining, that's logizomai. It deals with reality.

It's the same word Paul uses in Romans 4.3 when he says Abraham's faith was counted to him as righteousness. It's the same word Paul uses in Romans 6.11 when he tells believers to consider yourselves to be dead to sin and alive to God in Christ. Same word, logizomai. It's a word that deals with facts, not with daydreams. And it's a word that paints a picture of bringing those facts to the front and center of your thinking, not filing them away in the back of your mind. And that distinction is important. It matters more than you might think because the world treats thinking as a matter of feelings.

What feels true to me, what feels right, or what feels good to me, what resonates with my experience. That's not logizomai. And this is not the Greek word for a passing impression or a gut feeling. There is a Greek word for that, but this isn't it. No, this is the word for deliberate, calculated reasoning. So Paul's word here is about deliberately setting the mind on objective realities that exist whether you feel them or not. And church, that changes the whole game because it means that obeying this verse is not a matter of working up the right emotional state.

It's a matter of training the mind to dwell on what God has declared to be excellent, regardless of how the day is going, regardless of how you feel, regardless of what the flesh is pulling you toward. Logizomai, reckon on it, consider it, ponder it, think on it, that's Paul's word here. And that's a command, sir. It's a command, ma'am. And it also assumes something very important. It assumes that the Christian is responsible before God for the direction and occupation of his or her mind. It assumes that you, dear believer, are responsible for God before God for the direction and occupation of your mind.

And I am responsible before God for the direction and occupation of mine. And that matters because many people speak as though thoughts are mostly passive things that happen to us, as though we're spectators to whatever happens in our own heads. Thoughts come, thoughts go, moods rise and fall, fears rush in and rush out, desires awaken, and we imagine ourselves to be helpless before it all. But Paul doesn't write that way. Paul writes as though the believer is morally accountable, not only for his speech, not only for his conduct, but for what he allows his or her mind to dwell upon.

MacArthur said this about Philippians 4.8, quote, "The mind then becomes the command center which determines a person's conduct based upon how he or she thinks, based upon how he or she has been influenced to think." So how one thinks is the critical issue. You're not just a fancy dog. You're not gonna salivate every time the same deal happens. You're going to react according to how you think. Listen, the mind then has the power to shape you and to shape your action and consequently is the most powerful element of human life. MacArthur says our mind is the most powerful element of our lives. And here's the thing.

Although the Christian may not be sovereign over everything that knocks at the door of his mind, he is responsible for what he invites in, for what he seats at the table, what he permits to stay there. There's an old proverb often attributed to Martin Luther that rings very true and it's this, "You can't keep the birds from flying over your head, but you can keep them from building a nest in your hair." Exactly right. You can't stop thoughts from flying into your head, but you can stop them from building a nest in your mind and living there. Now let me be careful.

I'm not saying every thought that flashes across the mind is embraced by the will in the same way. Tempting thoughts can intrude out of nowhere. Fears can rush in suddenly. The mind can be assaulted. A man may be struck with thoughts he didn't go looking for. Paul isn't teaching some unrealistic view of the Christian life where a believer never feels inward conflict or temptation. The whole tone of scripture assumes conflict. The whole tone assumes battle. And by the way, Paul uses that exact kind of language elsewhere.

In 2 Corinthians 10 verses four and five, he says, "For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, "but divinely powerful for the tearing down of strongholds "as we tear down speculations and every lofty thing "raised up against the knowledge of God "and take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ." You hear that language? Tearing down, taking captive. That's not passive. That's not a man shrugging his shoulders at whatever floats through his head. That's military language. That's a soldier identifying an enemy and subduing that enemy.

Paul says, "Thoughts must be captured "and brought under the authority of Christ." The world says the exact opposite, doesn't it? The world says, "Follow your heart." The world says, "Trust yourself." The world says, "Be true to what you feel." But scripture says, "The heart is deceitful above all things "and desperately sick," in Jeremiah 17.9. "In fallen man, the mind darkens, "the desires and affections are disordered, "and the whole inward man must be brought "under the gracious government of God." The Christian is not called to mental laziness. He's called to think as a Christian and sanctify his or her mind.

Roman numeral three, the exposed mind. The exposed mind. Puritan Thomas Watson wrote this, quote, "The mind is the shop where sin is first framed. "Sin begins at the thoughts. "The thoughts are the first plotters and contribers of evil. "The mind and imagination of the stage "where sin is first acted. "The malicious man acts over sin and his thoughts. "He contemplates revenge. "The impure person acts over immorality in his thoughts. "He contemplates lust. "How much sin do men commit "in the chamber of their imagination?" Close quote. Outward sin matters, of course. Outward obedience matters, of course.

We don't wanna say anything less than that. But here's the thing. The thought life is upstream from both. The inward life is upstream from both outward sin and outward obedience. Which means that if we only deal with the outward behavior and never deal with the mind, we are dealing downstream while ignoring the spring. And this is one of the places where men, and I'm talking to myself here too, can be terribly deceived.

A man may comfort himself by saying, "Well, I haven't done that." Or at least, "I haven't said that." Or at least, "Nobody knows." But what is happening in the hidden place of the mind is not harmless simply because it's hidden. What a man entertains, rehearses, feeds, protects, and returns to in the secret place of his mind will shape his affections, his speech, his habits, and eventually his conduct. What he repeatedly allows himself to think about is doing something to him. It's not sitting still. It's bending him in a direction. It's teaching him what to love, what to resent, what he finds attractive and acceptable.

The hidden life is not disconnected from the visible life. The hidden life is in fact forming the visible life. And ladies, do you think this is only a man's struggle? It's not. The details may differ, but the principle is the same. What you entertain in the secret place of your mind is shaping you too. That's why people don't suddenly become worldly in public. They've been entertaining worldliness in private already. A person does not ordinarily wake up one morning and become bitter all at once. He or she has been replaying the wound, revisiting the offense, nursing the slight, protecting the grievance.

A woman doesn't suddenly become consumed with comparison envy or bitterness toward her husband. She's been nursing those thoughts in private for a while. A man doesn't collapse into adultery in a single instant. He's been feeding the imagination, tolerating impurity, excusing compromise, and furnishing the inner room for sin. He commits adultery in his mind a thousand times before he does so physically. A woman does not suddenly become cynical in one afternoon. She's been training her mind to interpret life through disappointment, suspicion, and self-importance. And I'll be honest with you because transparency is helpful.

Some of y'all know my testimony. It's pinned to the top of my Facebook and Twitter profiles. Before Christ saved me, I spent close to 20 years in law enforcement. And outwardly, I looked like I had it all together. I had the badge, I had the authority, I had the respect of the people around me. But inwardly, my goodness. The things I was entertaining in my mind, the hardness I was cultivating, the resentment, the pride, the self-reliance, the contempt for weakness, all of that was growing in the dark. Nobody could see it, but it was shaping me. It was making me into a harder and less compassionate man.

It was making me the kind of husband who would pull his hand away from patties in public because I didn't want anybody to see tenderness coming from me. That's what an ungoverned thought life produces, sir. It doesn't stay hidden, ma'am. It comes out. It always comes out. And by the time it does, it's been growing for a long time. And I'm so very grateful the Lord saved me before the lust in my heart and mind spilled out into physical unfaithfulness to my wife. But I have no doubt it was most likely heading there. And scripture presses us here.

Proverbs 4.23 says, "Guard your heart with all diligence, "for from it flow the springs of life." Our Lord Jesus says in Matthew 15 that evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, staves, false witness and slanders, all of it, proceeds from within. James 1.15 tells us that desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin and when sin is fully matured, it brings forth death. Do you see it? The Bible doesn't treat sin merely as a singular event when it happens. It treats it as something with an inward history. It has roots before it has fruit. It has a seed before it has a harvest.

Listen to this from Charles Spurgeon commenting on James 1.15. Thoughts are the eggs of words and actions. Let me say that again. Thoughts are the eggs of words and actions. And within the thoughts lie compacted and condensed all the villainy of actual transgressions. There's a pastoral warning here we need to hear. We often fear being exposed before men more than we fear what we are becoming before God. We often fear being exposed before men more than we fear what we are becoming before God. We're more alarmed at being found out than at being formed wrongly. But the Lord is not deceived by the gap between the private and the public.

Psalm 139, 1-4 says, "O Yahweh, you have searched me "and known me, you know when I sit down "and when I rise up." Listen to this. "You understand my thought from afar. "You scrutinize my path and my lying down "and are intimately acquainted with all my ways." And get this. "Even before there is a word on my tongue, "behold, O Yahweh, you know it all." Yikes. He sees the hidden man. He sees what is being entertained, what's being protected, what's being replayed. And what is protected in the secret place does not remain in the secret place forever. It grows, it takes root.

And in time, the inward life that nobody sees becomes the outward life that everybody sees. J.C. Ryle said, "Men fall in private "long before they fall in public." Listen, "The tree falls with a great crash, "but the secret decay which accounts for it "is often not discovered till it's down on the ground." So when Paul commands us to consider these things, he's teaching us that sanctification reaches inward before it appears outward. If the stream is poisoned at the source, the corruption will not stay hidden forever. And that's why this command is both searching and merciful.

It's searching because it won't allow us to reduce holiness to appearances. It's merciful because it takes us to the very place where real change must begin. And that change must take place, and the change that must take place won't just magically happen on its own. You have to engage your mind. Roman numeral four, the engaged mind. The engaged mind. Please note that Paul doesn't merely command the believer to avoid wrong thoughts. He commands us to give the mind somewhere to go. He tells us to positively and deliberately consider these things. So the Christian life is not simply about trying not to think badly.

It's about learning to think rightly. And that matters because many Christians, when they start thinking seriously about the battle of the mind, approach it mostly in negative terms. Don't think that. Don't dwell on that. Don't look there. And there's a place for that. It's not wrong to do that. In fact, it's good to do that. But it's wrong to stop there because it's not enough. If all a man ever does is to try to empty the mind of wrong things without learning to fill the mind with right things, he will find himself losing the same battle again and again and again. Because the mind will dwell somewhere, it will not remain empty.

It cannot remain empty. Try sometime to think of nothing. Try it right now. Go ahead. You can't do it. Your mind won't let you. Also, it will not hover in some neutral zone between holiness and sin. It will feed somewhere. It will settle somewhere. It will return somewhere. And folks, you don't just drift into spiritual health. You just don't. You drift into shallowness. You drift into worldliness. We drift into carnal thinking, anxious thinking, bitter thinking, lustful thinking, angry thinking, self-pitying thinking. We drift into a mind governed by headlines, by entertainment, by sensuality or fantasy or fear.

But one does not simply drift into holiness. It's a discipline. It's learned. It's pursued. It's fought for. It's cultivated under grace, empowered by Christ. Martin Lloyd Jones said, "Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself?" In other words, the Christian needs to tell his or her mind where to go, what to think about, instead of letting the mind dictate the direction and content of the thought life. And that need is especially great in a day like ours. We live in an age of relentless mental assault.

And I'm not being dramatic, and you know it. Think about it. You carry a device in your pocket that is engineered to capture your attention and hold it. Your phone is not neutral. Social media is not neutral. The news cycle is not neutral. These things are designed, designed in fact by very smart people, to colonize your mind, to plant seeds of outrage, anxiety, lust, vanity, trivia and distraction, and to cultivate those seeds until they produce a harvest in your mind, 30, 60, and 100 fold. And if you do not actively learn where to return your mind, the world is more than willing to make that decision for you.

If you don't choose the subjects of your meditations, those subjects will be chosen for you. If you don't train the mind toward truth, the age we're in will train it toward noise or worse. And the broader witness of Scripture confirms this. In Romans chapter 8 verses 5 and 6, Paul draws a sharp line. Listen to this. "For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace." That language is not talking about occasional passing thoughts.

It's talking about a settled direction. It's about habitual orientation. The mind is set somewhere. It leans somewhere. It lives somewhere. And in Psalm 1, the blessed man doesn't just avoid bad influences, though he does do that. But the psalmist says his delight is in the law of Yahweh, and in his law he meditates day and night. Do you see the positive occupation of the mind? Is he a serviceful directing of his thoughts? He's not just a man who shut one thing or many things out. He's a man who brought something better in. Biblical meditation is not mental emptiness.

It's holy occupation, holy contemplation, holy consideration, holy thinking. We often mistake exposure for meditation, and those are not the same thing. What I mean is we think that because we heard something good, we truly thought on it. We think that because we read a verse, we've deeply considered it. We think that because we listen to a sermon, even a long one, and I know something about those, we've obeyed Philippians 4-8. But hearing truth is not the same thing as dwelling on truth. Intake is not the same as meditation. Let me give you an analogy.

You can drive past a field every day on your way to work and never once stop to examine what's growing in it. You know it's there. You've been exposed to that field a thousand times, but you've never actually studied it. You couldn't tell me what's planted there. You couldn't tell me what the soil looks like up close. Exposure is not examination, but in the same way, you may fill your ears with sermons, books, podcasts, and Bible readings all day long and still leave your mind largely ungoverned. You've heard much, but you've dwelt on very little, if anything at all.

So Paul's command calls us to more than a passive and incidental contact with truth. It calls us to active engagement, to deliberate reflection, to chosen meditation, because if right thinking were accidental, Paul wouldn't have had to command it. But he does command it, because a neglected field doesn't become a garden. It becomes overgrown with noxious weeds. In the same way, a neglected mind does not become holy. It becomes crowded with other growth, obnoxious growth, fleshly and sinful growth. If the mind is not being actively guided, it is being actively shaped by something else, furnished by something else. You can be certain of that.

Roman numeral five, the furnished mind. The furnished mind. Now, Philippians 4.8 certainly implies a call to reject what is false, corrupt, shameful, impure, sinful and degrading. A man cannot obey this verse while gladly filling his mind with what God condemns. But if that's all we say, we haven't said enough. Because Paul is doing more here than telling believers what to avoid. He's telling believers what to pursue. Hebrews 4.12 says, "Pursue peace with all men and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord." The King James says holiness, where the LSB uses sanctification. Sanctification is to be pursued.

Holiness is to be pursued. You ought to chase it. Paul here in Philippians 4.8 is not content that the Christian mind become less corrupted. He wants it to become positively purified by becoming positively occupied with what is good. He's not aiming at mere restraint. He's aiming at holy renewal and transformation. Just as he commands in Romans 12.2 in which he says, "And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by what? The renewing of your mind so that you may approve what the will of God is, that which is good and pleasing and perfect." I think many Christians have been undernourished right here.

Many have been taught rightly to be suspicious of the world, cautious of temptation, watchful against sin, and all of that is solid. But perhaps many have not been taught with equal fullness that holiness is not only the refusal of what is vile, it's also the pursuit of what is excellent. Let me repeat that. Holiness is not only the refusal of what is vile, but the pursuit of what is excellent. It's not just learning to hate what corrupts. It's learning to love what is good. Sanctification is not just subtraction. It's replacement. Not just refusal, but renewal. Not just cleansing, but furnishing.

And that's exactly what you see when Paul writes in Colossians 3. He doesn't merely tell believers to stop being earthly. He tells them to purposely seek the things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. He says to set your mind on things above, not on things that are on the earth. You hear that positive note? It's not enough simply to turn from the earthly pull of sin. The mind must be lifted to the heavenlies. It must be occupied with something better.

In the same way, the psalmist in Psalm 19.14 doesn't merely pray, "Lord, keep me from wicked speech." Rather, he says, "Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O Yahweh." Not merely less defiled, but acceptable, pleasing, fit for the gaze of God. Because here's the thing. I'm so happy to hear this. You can avoid filth and still fill your mind with trivia. You can reject obvious wickedness and still spend your inward life on what is shallow, silly, frivolous, self-centered, and spiritually weightless and worthless.

We may say, "Well, at least I'm not thinking about evil things," while scarcely even giving our mind to what are truly excellent things. But Paul doesn't leave room for that. He doesn't merely say avoid the gutter. He says take the high road. He says in effect lift your mind higher. And brothers and sisters, a guarded but starving soul is still a weak soul. We may build protective walls, and we should. We may refuse many things, and we should. If all we have is walls and no table, fences and no food, refusals and no renewal, then we will find ourselves spiritually thin and inwardly susceptible. The answer to corruption is not emptiness.

The answer to corruption is holy fullness. The answer to falsehood is truth. The answer to vulgarity is honor. The answer to moral filth is purity. Paul is not teaching the church to simply subtract poison. He is teaching the church to positively add nutrition, to actively feed on what is nourishing. And by the way, the Lord Himself teaches kind of this principle in His parable in Matthew 12. "The unclean spirit leaves, comes back, finds the house swept clean but empty, and brings seven worse spirits with it. A clean but unfurnished house is just a vacancy waiting to be filled.

And it's the same with a clean but unfurnished mind." Finally, Roman numeral six, the examined mind, the examined mind. So where does all this leave us this morning? Before we ever even get to the individual categories of thinking that Paul prescribes in Philippians 4-8, it leaves us right here. The Christian life requires the discipline of a Christian mind. The Christian life requires the discipline of a Christian mind. Paul is not treating the thought life as morally neutral territory. He's not saying holiness begins only when something becomes visible. He's pressing into the hidden man, the inner man.

Paul prayed for the Ephesian church, quote, "that the Father would give them according to the riches of His glory to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man." In 2 Corinthians 4-16, Paul speaks of not losing heart even though the outer man is decaying because the inner man is being renewed day by day. But not by accident because he says in Romans 7-22, "I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man." So Paul is addressing that inner man here in Philippians 4-8. He's laying hold of the secret place.

He's addressing what the mind dwells upon, what it returns to, what it protects, what it feeds and feeds upon, what it allows to stick around, what it allows to build a nest and take up residence. And that means this text will not allow us to have the comfort of a merely external religion. It will not allow us to congratulate ourselves that we've avoided certain public sins while the inward life remains neglected, indulgent, cluttered, worldly, fearful, resentful, shallow or impure.

So before we go any further, before we take up Paul's categories one by one in Part 2 of this message, this is the question I want to leave with you this morning, it's a searching one, so sit with it a while. What has been discipling your mind? What's been shaping your inward life? What's been furnishing the secret room of your thoughts? What have you been rehearsing? What have you been feeding into and feeding upon? What have you been hiding and protecting in the dark recesses of your mind? When the mind is left unguarded, where does it drift? How about this? When you're wounded, where does your mind go? When you're afraid?

When you're bored? When you're alone? Because whatever the answers to those questions are, they are doing something to you. They're not lying dormant. They're shaping your affections, your words, your responses, your appetites, your habits, and in time, your conduct and your whole manner of life. And maybe for some of us, the honest answer is that the mind has not been well governed or well cultivated. Maybe it's been crowded with anxiety. Maybe it's been furnished with resentment. Maybe it's been filled with fantasy, impurity, filth, vanity, outrage, or endless distraction.

Maybe there's been plenty of outward decency, but very little inward discipline. If so, then let this text call you not merely to sorrow, but to repentance. Bring that inward negligence to the Lord. Stop treating this thought life as a side issue or ignoring it altogether. Stop assuming that what is hidden is harmless. Begin taking seriously what Paul takes seriously or what Christ takes seriously through Paul. Because the Christian is not called merely to behave better in public. We're called to become holy in the hidden man of the heart. We're called to learn the discipline of a Christian mind.

And church, let me say this too, because I don't want to leave you only under conviction without also leaving you under hope. If you hear this message and feel the weight of it, if you recognize that your thought life has been neglected, undisciplined, or maybe even indulged, then I want you to know that recognition is itself a mercy. That's the Spirit at work. And the God who commands you to think on these things is the same God who gives you the grace to obey. Remember Philippians 2.13, "For it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure." The command is real, but the grace behind the command is also real.

So take heart. You're not left to do this in your own strength, and that's good news because you can't. But the same Spirit who convicted you is the same Spirit who will empower you. And with that in view, we're now ready for the next question, and this is where we'll pick up in Part 2. If Paul commands us to consider these things, then what exactly are these things? What kind of realities are worthy of Christian meditation? What sort of excellencies has God appointed as the rightful occupation of the Christian mind? But that's for next time. As we close, let me say one more thing.

If you're here this morning and you've never been born again, if you have never repented of your sin and placed your trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, then I need you to understand something. Everything I've said this morning about disciplining the mind, about holy thinking, about bringing the inward life under the rule of truth, none of that is possible apart from the new birth. You cannot think as a Christian if you've not first become a Christian.

The natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2.14, "For they are foolishness to him, and he is not even able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned." So if you've not been born again, the first step is not mental discipline. The first step is a new heart. That's a gift of God's grace through faith in Jesus Christ. So I beg you, if you're lost here this morning, repent, turn from your sin. Trust in Christ. He is full of mercy and is eager to save sinners. Do it today. Let's pray.