Loving God with all your Mind

Loving God with All Your Mind

Mark 12:30 with Ephesians 4:17-24

A Sermon preached by

Pastor Jim Scott Orrick

May 13, 2001

Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.' This is the first commandment.

Now let's again go to the Lord in prayer, and as we pray, I urge you to show your respect to the Lord by assuming a bodily posture of respect, either standing or kneeling. Our Father, in Heaven, how great You are, how good of You to meet with us this morning. Father, if we have simply gone through the motions of worshipping you this morning and have not really done so, we pray that You will forgive us, and that You will now bless us in spite of our disobedience and our sin, that You will now bless us with a sense of Your presence. And that we will from this point on, worship You in spirit and in truth. We thank You, Father, for the truth of Your Word, and we pray that you will help us to submit our minds to the truth of Your Word. And in this submission of our minds to You may we love You with all our minds. We pray, Lord, that You will help us during these next few minutes, to understand more clearly what it means to love You with all our minds. We pray that You will deliver us from false notions that we may have about that, and we pray that You will establish the truth in our minds and that we will from this day forward be different persons as a result of having been here today and heard a sermon on what it means to love You with all our minds. Receive our praises, Lord, we pray that You will bless us with delight now in Your Word, give me delight in the task that I have of preaching Your Word. We pray that You will give all of us a great relish for Your truth. We pray this in the name of Jesus our Lord, Amen.

When I was pastoring in West Virginia, there was a family that attended our church for a while who lived way out in the country. Now a lot of people lived way out in the country in West Virginia. In fact, West Virginia itself is way out in the country! This particular family lived some distance off the main road. One day I was on my way to visit them, and after I had left the main road I noticed someone sitting under a shade tree next to the road with an open book on his lap. Simply seeing someone reading a book is enough to attract my attention, but when I stopped to speak to him I noticed that the book he had was not just any book, it was the Bible. My window was rolled down and I greeted him by saying, “You know reading that book will change your life.” He just sort of smiled and nodded his head. He didn't respond to me in the way that you would have if you were reading the Bible and someone came up to you and said, “You know that Book will change your life.” As I recall the situation, I tried to make some other conversation before I recognized that this person was not in full possession of his mental faculties. So, I bid him a good day and went on up through the woods to visit these people that I was intending to visit. I told the lady of the house about it and she informed me that the young man was severely mentally retarded. “But,” she said, “In good weather, he sits under that shade tree all day long with a Bible and a hymnbook and he turns the pages of the Bible and the hymnbook and just looks at them. He can't read a word but his parents say that he really loves the Lord and he just really wants to be near the Lord's Word.”

That young man didn’t have any academic degrees. No doubt his I.Q. was very low. But it is highly likely that he was obeying the command of our Lord to love the Lord with all your mind. Now in contrast to that, you and I both know people who have high intellectual abilities but they are in rebellion against God. That person is not obeying the command of the Lord here, that we should love the Lord our God with all our mind.

That illustration leads me to a safeguard that I want to put up around this passage of Scripture before I have you turn to another passage of Scripture that teaches us more fully what it means to love the Lord our God with all our minds. In hearing a sermon like this some people may think, “Well, the only people who can really love God with all their mind, are people who have a lot of education.” Well, I think that's a mistake. I'm all for education. I've spent most of my life sitting in classrooms. Let me tell you that having an academic degree does not mean that you have an education. In fact, having an advanced graduate degree says only one thing for certain, and that is, that you are capable of sitting still for long periods of time and submitting yourself to torture. That's all that it says for sure. So it's not simply having an academic degree that equips someone to love God with all his mind, nor is it being highly intelligent. Rather, it is being willing to submit whatever intelligence you have and whatever mind you have to the teaching of God.

I was thinking as Greg was reading Matthew chapter 20 of how that some of the stories that are told in Matthew, chapter 20, illustrate the way that we are to love God with all our mind. You remember that he read the story about a man who went out and hired some workers early in the morning. “How much will you give us?' they asked. “I'll give you a denarius, if you will work all day long.” “ That will be fine.” So they went up and they worked all day long. Later in the day he hired some more men, and then when there was just an hour left in the day, he hired still others. He told them all that he would give them a denarius for working the remainder of the day. When they got out in the field they probably said in amazement, “You know, the fellow who hired us told us that he was going to pay us a denarius for the work we can do in the next hour. I have never made so much money in such a short time!” You can imagine how this sounded to the men who had been hired early in the morning and who had been out there working for eleven hours in the heat of the day. The sun has burned them and their garments are soaked with perspiration. When they hear what these new fellows are saying, they begin to speculate and calculate. “Well, if he's going to give them a denarius for only working only one hour then he will give us more than one denarius. I know he said he was only going to give us one denarius, but now he almost certainly will give us more.” Probably they started calculating, “If he is giving them one denarius for working one hour, maybe he will give us 12 denarii for working 12 hours.” When the time came for them to receive their pay, they were expecting to receive more than they had agreed upon. But their hopes were dashed. They received only one denarius. Well, immediately they flared up and objected; their hopes and their anticipation of getting more had caused them to get disappointed. But what did the master of the house say? To paraphrase, he said, “Now think about it men. Think about it. What wage did you agree to? Use your minds. What did you agree to? And what did I say that I was going to give you? Have I treated you unfairly?” These men had an emotional reaction, and as I said last week, there's nothing wrong with emotions in the Kingdom of God. But I want to make this further refinement this week: our emotions are to be always under the control of our minds. And that's what the master of the vineyard was saying to these men. “Think about it, I know you're emotional, I know you're upset, but think about it. Let your mind be in control before you continue to act ugly.”

Let truth govern your emotional reactions. Your mind is to be in control. If you think about what basic components of personality constitute a human being, you recognize at least three components. There is the understanding, the affections, and the will. I believe the scriptures teach that when God created human beings, He created them so that the understanding was the king of man's soul. Man recognized that God was good and God spoke what was true. This was attractive to man, and so he happily submitted himself to the Lord. He recognized what was best, he admired what was best, and he chose what was best. Stated another way, his understanding set the standard of what he would love, and what he loved he chose. Now when man sinned, he partook of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Up to that point he had entrusted to God the determination of what was good and what was evil. But when he had sinned and had partaken of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he said in effect, “Now I am going to start deciding for myself what is good and what is evil.” And indeed that's the effect that the fruit had! But when man sinned there was a crumbling of man's soul, and the essential human components got turned topsy-turvy. Instead of the understanding reigning as the God-appointed king of man's soul, the affections seized the throne and the understanding was relegated to a position of subservience. Perhaps the primary function of the understanding in fallen man is to attempt to justify why we have chosen what we desired. In other words, in fallen man the affections are on top and the understanding is on the bottom. Before man fell the affections and the will followed the directions of the understanding. But now after the fall the primary guide in people's lives is the question, “What do I want? What are my desires, what are my affections?”

When we begin to love God with our mind, the essential components of our humanity are restored to their original order. When we are born again and recreated in the image of Jesus Christ, our understanding is once again given the foremost place in guiding human decision-making and human living. A person who has been born again is no longer under the reign of their affections and emotions. A person who is born again should not persistently say, “Well, I've just had little emotional fit and that's the way I am. There's nothing I can do about it.” If you are a Christian there's something you can do about it. Your mind has been restored to its rightful place and throughout the Scriptures you will see that the Lord expects Christians to be thinking people that govern their lives by His Truth. This doesn't mean that emotions and affections are not important; it doesn't mean that the will is not important; but it does mean that the understanding or the mind is now restored to it's rightful place of being the king of man's soul.

Turn now to Ephesians chapter 4. Here we are going to see a contrast between a mind that is not under the control of God, and on the other hand a mind that is under the control of God. This I say therefore and testify in the Lord that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart. Who being past feeling have given themselves over to lewdness to work all uncleanness with greediness, but you have not so learned Christ, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him as the truth is in Jesus. That you put off concerning your former conduct the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God in true righteousness and holiness (4:17-24).

From these verses we can see two points and these will be the two points of my sermon. The first one will be: the futility of their mind. No longer walk in the futility of your mind, that from verse 17. And then from verse 23, the second point, be renewed in the spirit of your mind. Now you can see from this passage of Scripture that I have just read that the mind plays an extraordinarily prominent place. To give you a sense of the context of this text of Scripture that has so much to say about the mind, let me remind you that earlier in Ephesians, the apostle Paul has written on the subject of how to be a mature believer. In fact, it will be helpful for us to go back to verse 11 and take a look at how he describes a mature body of Christ. And he himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers for the equipping of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, [That means a mature man, a complete man], to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, that we should be no longer children, tossed to and fro, carried about with every wind of doctrine by the trickery of men in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting. But speaking the truth in love may grow up in all things into Him, who is the head, Christ from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies according to the effective working by which every part does it's share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love. Now much of this text applies to the body of Christ as a whole, but much of it also applies to us as individuals. Do you want to grow up to a mature man, to the measure and stature of the fullness of Christ? Do you want to stop being a child, tossed to and fro with every wind of doctrine? Do you want to grow up in all things into Him who is the Head? If you are saying yes, then pay attention to what comes in verse 17, which begins with the words, This I say therefore. Paul is saying, “If what I have just described is your goal, then you have got to pay attention to your mind.” This I say therefore and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk. Of course the Gentiles were the people who didn't know God. And so, Paul says, you mustn't walk, or live, like the people who don’t know God. At one time you did but live like that but you must live like that no more! Don't let your life be like the rest of the world; you are a Christian, you are supposed to be different. And if you are going to be different, then your mind is going to have to be changed. It will have to be changed from being a mind characterized by futility and meaninglessness into a renewed mind.

There are some people who mistakenly assume that when you become a Christian you have to commit intellectual suicide. That is not true! But you must commit intellectual submission. That is, your mind must be submitted to the knowledge of Christ, and the teaching of Christ, and the teaching of God as it is held forth in His Word. The mind is absolutely essential to living the Christian life. In fact, if you get all emotionally worked up, but those emotions are not based upon the truth of God's Word, your emotions are probably in vain. It is good for us to get emotionally happy about the Lord, but our jubilation must be based upon something that is true – something that we know in our mind – and not just the sort of emotion that we might feel at a concert or at a basketball game. Our emotions grow out of a conviction of truth. And when our emotions do grow out of a conviction of truth, they are no longer frothy and giddy, but substantial and profound.

Let's first of all look at the futile mind as described in the text. There are three descriptions of this futility of mind. The first one is in verse 18, having their understanding darkened; the second one is also in verse 18, being alienated from the life of God, and then in verse 19 we read, who being past feeling have given themselves over to lewdness. Those of you who are students of language will notice that all three of these descriptions are participles. It is as if Paul says, “I am going to talk to you about futility of mind and here are the three characteristics of those who are afflicted with futility of mind.” Now before I talk specifically about these three descriptions, just notice the phrase futility of mind. It means that their mind is always thinking about things that don't amount to anything. It's futility – they're always thinking about meaningless activities or meaningless possessions. Now if you think about it, isn't this a true characterization of the world that does not know God? If there is a God, if there is a heaven and hell, if there is a final judgment, isn't it supremely insane to spend all your life living as if there were not a God, as if there were not a heaven or hell, and as if there were not a judgment? Isn't that insane? Do not these verities cause all else to fade into insignificance? No matter how much you gain of this world's possessions and of this world's knowledge, if it is not going to help you in the end, isn't it futile to spend all of your life running after it? Jesus captures the futility of a life so spent when He says, “What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul?” Now when I read that I first of all think of the world of wealth. What would it profit a man if he gained all the world of wealth and then lost his own soul? But then after I think of that, I remember, no one has ever gained the whole world of wealth. Even the richest person who ever lived only had a tiny fraction of this world's wealth. Jesus said that one of the thorns that chokes out the good seed of His Word, is the deceitfulness of wealth. Do you ever think about that? What's so deceitful about wealth? Wealth promises what it cannot give. There are some people who are just running themselves ragged to get more money. Why? So they can drive a nicer car? All right, suppose they do drive a fine automobile: when they get from point A to point B they are no more in point B then I would be if I got there in my old brown van that's needed shocks for three years. We're both there! Are they after better food? That’s not altogether futile; food is important, and I like food. But after the wealthy man has eaten his steak or his lobster tail, is he any more satisfied or any better fed than the poor laborer is after having eaten his beans and corn bread and fried potatoes? Can the wealthy man enjoy his wife or his family anymore than you can enjoy your wife or your family? Wealth promises greater enjoyment in all of these arenas, but wealth is deceitful. Deceitfulness of wealth is one of the thorns that chokes out the good seed of God's Word. If indeed we have an everlasting soul that will stand before God, then for us to spend all of our time pursuing after the deceitfulness of wealth and the cares of this life is indeed emptiness or futility of mind.

Why do so many live their lives in futility? The first subheading gives us an answer: their understanding has been darkened. Their understanding has been darkened so that they really perceive these exercises in futility to be the most important thing in life. Even if they stop for a moment or two and reconsider and think how they really ought to be living life for something else, yet it doesn't last for very long because their understanding has been darkened. How did their understanding get darkened? Well, I have a couple of answers to that, or the Bible has a couple of answers to that. And the first is subservient to the second; the first answer is that, the devil does it. II Corinthians 4:3 says, But even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, whose minds the god of this age has blinded, [the god of this age is the devil], whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God should shine on them. For we do not preach ourselves but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your bondservants for Jesus’ sake. For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness who has shone in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. We too were once darkened by the god of this age who has blinded their minds, who has clouded their understandings, but God who is so powerful that He could simply speak the word, “Let there be light”, and there was light has also shined the light of His grace into our hearts. If you understand the truth of God as it is in Jesus Christ, it's not because you are somehow smarter than those who don't see that. It is because of the grace of God that has pierced the darkness of your heart. Because at one time you, like everyone else, had your understanding darkened by the prince of this world.

Now I said I had two answers to the question “How did their understanding get darkened?” and that the first answer was subservient to the second. How did their minds get darkened? The first answer was the devil did it. The second answer is, God has done it. The devil can darken human understanding only in so far as God gives him permission to do it. But I see no way of escaping the truth that sometimes God darkens men's hearts. Now that may sound awfully unfair to you. In a moment I will point out a verse of Scripture that may alleviate your perception of unfairness. But for now let's just look simply at the fact that God darkens men’s hearts. In Matthew chapter 11 Jesus says, “I thank you Father, Lord of heaven and earth because you have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and have revealed them to little children, yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure.” Who hid them from the wise and the prudent? Jesus thanked God that He had done it. And then again in Romans chapter 9 when Paul was talking about the blindness of the people of Israel, he says that those who have not seen the light of God's truth, have been hardened. That does raise the objection, Is there unrighteousness with God? Is it fair of God to do this? After we continue a bit further in Ephesians chapter 4 I'll come back to that question, Is it fair? We have seen, then, that their understanding is darkened, first of all by the devil, as far as God allows him, and then secondly God himself darkens their understanding. So that's the first characteristic of the futile mind.

Notice in verse 18 the second characteristic of the futile mind: being alienated from the life of God. When God first created human beings they had the life of God. That is to say, they had spiritual fellowship with God. Before the fall, God came down and communed with Adam and Eve in the cool of the day. But when they sinned then that relationship was broken and they were alienated from the life of God. Being alienated from the life of God is a roundabout way of saying dead. If you are alienated from life then what are you? You are dead. This, then, is the second characteristic of the futile mind. It is alienated from the life of God. As I said before, to say that someone is dead is about the worst thing you can say about someone. It's worse than really sick. Dead doesn't allow for improvement. Dead people don't get better, unless there's supernatural intervention.

When a friend or a loved one dies, your relationship with that person is forever altered. When I was a young man I cut grass for a very dear elderly lady. One day I went into her house for a drink of water and while there I saw that she had her table set with beautiful blue china. There were two place settings. I asked, “Oh, are you expecting a guest?” She said, “No, I always set a place for my husband. He's been gone for 20 years but I always set a place for him.” I don’t know for certain what made her set a place for her husband after he’d been dead for twenty years. I can conjecture a number of reasons that make me pity the woman. But mingled in with my feelings of pity is the decided suspicion that her mental faculties were failing. In some way she was apparently trying to live as though the death of her husband had not affected their relationship. But death drastically affects relationship with the living. And when human beings were alienated from the life of God and fell dead in trespasses and sins, God stopped setting an extra place at the table. The relationship had been altered. So those who have futility of mind not only have their understanding darkened, they also have been alienated from the life of God.

For the third characteristic, notice verse 19: Who being past feeling have given themselves over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness. Those who have a futile mind have become callused in their feelings; they have become past feeling; their conscience has been seared with a hot iron so that sins don't bother them as much as they ought to bother them. They’re past feeling, and seeing the suffering of other people also doesn't bother them as much as it should bother them. I am not saying that they have no feeling at all; Paul is using generalizations here. But they do not have the sort of sensitivity to sin, to righteousness and to the plight of others that would be present if their minds were not alienated from God. They’re past feeling and they have given themselves over to lewdness. This is the sort of sinful living that should be shameful in civilized society, but they give themselves over to it and they don't care who knows about it. They work all uncleanness with greediness. Notice that sin here is called uncleanness – it makes you dirty before God; and those who have a futile mind are pursuing this unclean sin with greediness. That is, they have an insatiable appetite for more and more. So these are the three characteristics of a futile mind.

Now go back to verse 18 and we will return to that question, “Is it fair that they're going to be judged for having their understanding darkened and for being alienated from the life of God when it is God who has darkened their understanding and God who has withdrawn life from them?” Verse 18 says this hardening has occurred because of the ignorance that is in them, that's the first reason, and then that reason is explained with another: because of the blindness of their heart. First of all, their understanding is darkened and they are alienated from the life of God. Why? Because of the ignorance that is in them. Why are they ignorant? Because of the blindness of their heart. Now if we have only the English text, we are still feeling sorry for these people because we know that nobody chooses to be blind. Only an insane person would voluntarily gouge his eyes out and make himself blind. How does that explain, then, why God is just to still judge them? The word blindness here means a willful, self-blinding, or if you please, these persons are clinching their eyes shut. It is because of their clinching their eyes shut in their heart that all of this has happened. It could be very well translated because of the hardness of their heart. The idea is that obstinacy against the teaching of God leads to ignorance. Ignorance leads to alienation or judgment from God, and part of that judgment from God is having their understanding darkened. Inevitably, darkening of the mind leads to obsession with sin, as is described in verse 19. The exact same progression is described in Romans 1:18 and following: For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. That's the obstinacy that I am talking about, that's the blindness of heart, the hardness of heart. They suppress the truth in unrighteousness. It's not that they don't have any access to the knowledge of God, but that they refuse the knowledge of God. Verse 19 says, Because what may be known of God is manifest in them for God has shown it to them, for since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes are clearly seen being understood by the things that are made even His eternal power and Godhead so that they are without excuse. Because although they knew God they did not glorify him as God nor were thankful but became futile in their thoughts and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things. Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness. Verse 26: For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. Verse 28: And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind to do those things which are not fitting. And then Paul goes on and describes a number of those things that are not fitting. When you compare this passage of scripture from Romans with our text in Ephesians 4, you can see that both passages give the same explanation as to why their understanding is darkened and why they are held accountable for having a darkened understanding. It comes as a result of an obstinate turning away from the revelation of God.

Now the lesson that many of you should take away from this, and especially those of you who are not converted, is that it is a very dangerous thing for you to resist the truth of God. That obstinate and persistent refusal to listen to God can provoke the Lord himself to send darkness upon your mind.

Let’s move on now to my second point: be renewed in the spirit of your mind. Verse 20 says, “But you have not so learned Christ, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him as the truth is in Jesus.” Notice that the sum of Christian doctrine is described as simply Christ. You have not so learned Christ. Notice further that the text does not say, “You have heard about Him,” but that you have heard Christ himself and have been taught by him. When the gospel is effectively preached and heard, it is Christ himself who is speaking. Here, then, we see the commencement of the renewed mind. The renewed mind commences when we begin to listen to Christ. And when this happens, you can no longer live in the futility of your mind with your understanding darkened, alienated from the life of God and giving yourself over to wicked behavior. You have not learned that if you've heard from Christ at all and you have been taught by Him as the truth is in Jesus. Well, what have we heard from Him? What is the truth in Jesus? That leads me to my second subheading, the evidence of the renewed mind.

The renewed mind is evidenced by putting off the old man and putting on the new man. Notice verse 22: the evidence of a renewed mind is that you put off concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God in true righteousness and holiness. I say that this is the evidence of a renewed mind because these verbs are not imperatives. He is not saying, “Now that you have heard Christ this is what I command you to be doing.” No, he is saying that this is what has happened to you if you have learned Christ. You have taken off the old man and you have put on the new man. When he talks about the old man, he is simply talking about your old self – the way that you used to be. When he is talking about the new man he is talking about your new self that is submitted to the Lord Jesus Christ and that has learned from Jesus Christ. He is not saying that somehow there is a new personality that is put inside of you and now there is an old personality and a new personality in you. Many mistakenly assert that there are in fact these two personalities, (usually they call them natures), and you are in there somehow saying yes to the new personality and no to the old personality. If that were true then there's at least three of you living inside your body: the old personality, the new personality, and you. But Paul is simply using language that says you used to be this way, you used to have these kinds of desires, but now you have been changed. Those old desires are not completely eradicated, but now you no longer are under control of them as you once were. That's the old man; it's the part of you that wanted to live life as though you were God. That's the old man, but you have changed. You recognize that you are not the center of the universe; God is the center of the universe, and you have put off the old man that characterized your former conduct.

Notice the way that he describes the old man. First, he grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts. So the old man is growing corrupt, it gets worse and worse. Also it's deceitful, I've already spent some time discussing the deceitfulness of sin; it tells you that the things that don't matter are the things that matter most. Your mind is futile, exercising itself in vanity and meaninglessness when you are under the control of the old man. And then it is also characterized by lusts. So it grows corrupt, it is deceitful and it is lusting.

But look at the description of the new man in verse 24: you have put on the new man which was created according to God. The old man was growing corrupt but the new man was created according to God or in the image of God. When we were originally created we were created in the image of God but through sin we got all messed up. I don't believe that all the components that make us created in the image of God were destroyed, but they were just messed up. You might think of man prior to the fall as being a mirror that reflects God's face, and when the fall came the mirror is shattered and it is all broken in little pieces. You can still see reflections of God in the broken mirror, but it certainly is not what it once was. In the new creation, when we are made new in Jesus Christ, the mirror is in the process of being put back together. We are being recreated in the image of God, that's one characteristic of the new man. The second, in contrast to the old man that was deceitful, the new man is true. Holy humanity is true humanity. Sin dehumanizes us, but Christ makes us truly human. He sanctifies us by his power, and this leads to the third observation about the new man: in contrast to being characterized by lustful living the new man is characterized by true righteousness and holiness. So we have seen that the mind that is being renewed is commenced by hearing Jesus Christ and learning from Him; it is evidenced by our having taken off the old man and put on the new man.

Now let's look at verse 23 and the command that you are to be renewed in the spirit of your mind. What happened to us at conversion is, in one sense, a once and for all thing. God does His work—His supernatural work: he resurrects a dead man. Nobody can do that but God. But now that you have been resurrected, here is something that you must do. You are to be renewed in the spirit of your mind. It doesn't just say be renewed in your mind, but it says be renewed in the spirit of your mind. I think the New International Version has the proper interpretation when they have be made new in attitude of your mind. I think that's the idea here, not that when you become a Christian your IQ suddenly increases, but it means that the attitude of your mind has been changed. No longer in rebellion against God, no longer seeking to direct your own course, you are now in submission to God. I believe this is the same thing that is taught is the book of Proverbs when it says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding, in all your way acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight.” Submit your mind to Him; be renewed in the spirit of your mind.

Now let me conclude with some practical observations. First, your emotional life, indeed your entire life is to be under the direction of your mind as it is taught by Christ. Day by day we are confronted by temptations to allow our emotions to get out of control and again to behave as though we are the center of the universe. Let me give you a couple of examples from my own life that just happened this past week. One morning this past week Carol was sick and I was watching after the children and my little daughter, Mary Faith, asked me if she could have some yogurt. For many years I have made homemade yogurt, and I've had the same yogurt maker for probably 20 years. The yogurt maker consists of an incubator and five glass jars. My four year old daughter Mary Faith asked me for some yogurt and requested, “May I eat it out of it's own container?” I said, “Sure,” and I gave her the jar. In a few minutes I heard the unmistakable sound of a jar crashing to the ground and shattering. I knew at once that it was the yogurt jar. I went in there and in my flesh I wanted to grouch at her. I wanted to say, “Mary Faith, I've had that jar for 20 years, how could you be so careless to drop it?” But, what I hope is my renewed mind said, “You know good and well that she didn't mean to do it. She's hurt about this.” (In fact she started to cry about it). The renewed mind said, “Comfort her, tell her it's OK, and tell her that you know she didn't mean to do it.” But that was not my natural reaction. I had to submit my emotions to my mind.

This second illustration is going to take a bit of explanation. I think most of you know that I am a turkey hunter. I don't know how much you have been around hunters, but hunters like to save parts of animals that they shoot. Like the antlers off of the deer, or if you shoot turkeys you save the beard and the spurs if they are any length. And then there are a few turkey hunters that save the rocks from the turkey's gizzard. Turkeys don't have teeth, so that when they eat something it goes into their gizzard and they have rocks in their gizzard that grind up what they have eaten. There are only a few rocks in a turkey gizzard. Many years ago when I first started turkey hunting a man told me, “You should always save the rocks from a turkey gizzard, and when you have filled up a quart jar then you will be able to say you are a turkey hunter.” Although I have been turkey hunting for several years and I have been saving all my rocks, I think it's going to take me about 40 years to say that I am a turkey hunter because there are not very many rocks in a turkey gizzard. Turkey season ended yesterday and I was blessed with some success and so I had my turkey rocks drying in a cup on my desk, which is a perfectly logical place to have them. I came home yesterday and found that my dear little wife had dumped all my turkey rocks out. She didn't know what they were; she had just come across this cup full of rocks and dumped them out in the yard. Now the old man wanted to make a big issue out of this, (to put it mildly), but the new man said, “Now you know good and well that she never did this out of spite. Sure there have been times when she has been aggravated at you for going turkey hunting, but she's not been aggravated at you lately for it, so you know she never did this maliciously. You are going to have to deal with this calmly.” I hope that those are instances, everyday instances, of situations in which the renewed mind must rule us. We are no longer to be under the control of our emotions. Christ has taught us to think before we react. Let your mind be renewed. Take off the old man and put on the new.

One further observation and then I will be finished. If you want to be renewed in the spirit of your mind, be careful what you put into your mind. Your mind is a wonderful invention of God, incredibly more complex than any computer that's on the earth. I doubt that anything ever escapes your mind. You may be unable to recall it, but I think that if you were able you would have access to everything you have ever read, ever heard, or ever seen. It really is a blessing that we don't remember everything. Someone was once complaining to C.S. Lewis how terrible it was to forget so much of what he had read and C.S. Lewis responded that it is more of a curse to remember everything that you have read. And that is probably true of C.S. Lewis and you can believe it if you have read some of his writings. But it is really a blessing that we forget some of the things that we put into our mind because we put a lot of things into our mind that we ought not put into there. If you want your mind to be renewed, then be careful what you put into your mind. Be careful what you watch on TV; be careful of the books and the magazines that you read. Be careful of the music that you listen to. I remember talking to a girl one time who was suffering from depression, and after talking with her I said, “Let me ask you, what kind of music do you listen to?” She acknowledged that she listened to Country & Western music. I said, “During the next couple of weeks, in addition to the other recommendation I have given you, I want you to also stop listening to that music. It may be that all of those sad songs that are on Country & Western radio are influencing your mind.” She took my advice and later testified that it was a great help to her. I am sure that many of you can testify similarly, there may have been a particular style of music that you liked as a lost person, and it may be that the music was all right but it was filled with vile lyrics. You are foolish if you think that you can constantly fill your mind with perverted lyrics and it not affect you the way you think. You've got to exercise discernment in this. If you put garbage into your mind then garbage will come out of your mind. Be careful about what you put into your mind. The other side of that is not only should you guard against bad stuff but make sure that you have a steady diet of good stuff going into your mind. Of course, that's going to include Bible reading for certain, and probably the reading of other good books as well. Fill your mind up with good things, good conversation, good music, good books, certainly the reading of God's Word. Take time to think about the preaching and teaching of God's Word that you hear week by week in the house of God. Be renewed in the spirit of your mind.

Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, we heartily give our minds to you, we pray that you will help us to be renewed in the spirit of our mind, that we will have a spirit of submission, an attitude of submission to You. Grant that we will not foolishly fill our mind with uncleanness. Help us to put off the old man and put on the new. Father we pray just now for those who have never undergone the great change, whose minds are darkened, who have never heard Christ, the truth in Jesus. We pray that you might be pleased to pierce their darkness. It's true what Jesus said, that light is come into the world, that men loved darkness rather than light. That's true, but you have been merciful to us and to many millions of people down through the years and have penetrated their darkness. We pray that you will continue to be merciful and that you, who with great power said, let there be light and there was light, that you will cause Your light to shine in the darkened understandings and the blinded hearts of those who are still living in the futility of their minds. We pray this in the name of Jesus, amen.

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Scripture from The Holy Bible, New King James Version. Copyright 1982 by
Thomas Nelson, Inc.

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