Taking Control of Our Minds | Kingsmen

Renewing the Mind in the Mercy of God

Welcome to the Kingsman Podcast. I'm John Moffitt, I'm your host, pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Springfield, Tennessee, and the host of Theocast, a weekly podcast on Reform Theology. This podcast is designed to encourage people weekly to think about their lives in light of the King, and when Jesus says, seek first the kingdom of God, what does that look like?

It is so hard to do, and that's the conversations that we want to have. In many ways, we're gonna pick up where we left off last week about the struggle against the flesh. Satan is a deceiver and he likes to cloud and blind our eyes.

I'm gonna steal an illustration and doctor it up a little bit, but the illustration or the comment and statement went something like this, that we tend to entertain ourselves with that which put Jesus on the cross.

You know, if there was a way for us, when we begin to slip into, and it happens, we're watching a show, we're scrolling through the internet, whatever you want to say, we're in a conversation, we're sitting in a public place, and we begin to entertain that which we know is sinful, but our hearts are too weak to fight it, so we just kind of let it go.

If there was a way for us to picture that screen hanging on the neck of Christ while his blood is draining from his body, and you see what you're entertaining yourself with is that which killed Jesus on your behalf, well all of a sudden you would turn from that screen.

You wouldn't be able to look at the screen anymore because what's behind the screen is so bloody, it's so offensive, I couldn't do it, right? If somehow Christ and his crucified body could be the stand for our TVs, we might think of things a little bit different.

And that's kind of what I want to talk about today, is what do we do? How do we keep seeing the glory of Christ and the joy of Christ so we don't sear our hearts, we become numb to our sin, where we come...

I think this is the way we've been saying that a lot lately, but we aren't girding up our minds, we're loose with our minds. James says it this way, why are you fighting with one another? Is it not that your passions, sinful by the way, are at war with one another?

So we are renewing our minds with filth, that is lies, and those lies cause us to sacrifice our Jesus, sacrifice the truth, sacrifice love, sacrifice obedience. We sacrifice those things because they are wanting us to indulge in the flesh.

Present Your Bodies as Living Sacrifices

Listen to the reverse of this. Paul says this in Romans 12 chapter 1, I appeal to you therefore brothers by the mercy of God. By the way, love the sandwich. He goes, it's not out of fear, dear child. It's not out of dread.

I want you to think God does not condemn you, and for that reason, I want you to do something with your body. He's no longer condemning you. He set you free from the cross. He put himself on the cross, and you have been set free from the cross.

I appeal to you by the mercy of God, present your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. So instead of sacrificing our bodies for the sake of the flesh, which is lust and pride and anger, he says sacrifice your body for the sake of holiness.

Now, unfortunately, Satan has convinced us that to live holy, man, that's like no fun. You know, Psalm 73 talks about this, like the unrighteous seem to be having all the fun, and the righteous are over here living in misery.

That is a lie from Satan, because the promise from Jesus in John 15 is that if we truly love him and love others, that we will have his joy, and not only his joy, but the fullness of his joy. Now, our bodies are not going to feel full satisfaction.

We talked about that last week, but our hearts, which is more important, can have peace and rest and joy. Now, he says, now sacrifice your bodies, you know, lay them down as a living sacrifice. Verse 2, don't be conformed to this world.

Now, that's not arbitrary. It's just, like, he says you don't want to be conformed to it, because that's what robs you of joy. That's what robs you of peace. It's literally slavery. If you conform yourself back to the world, remember what I said last week, the whole world is under the power of the evil one.

So if you start thinking like they do, and acting like they do, if you're conforming your body to that, then you are taking your eyes off of Christ, and you're putting it on the promises of Satan, which is a liar, and he was like, you can have security and hope and joy and satisfaction and gratification, which is all a lie.

No one has ever been gratified in our flesh by pursuing sin. Sin has never satisfied anybody. So he says, don't be conformed by the world. Well, how do we do that, Paul? He says, but by the transformation, by being transformed by the renewal of your minds.

The Renewal of Your Minds

Okay? So that means that's an active, ongoing pursuit, that every moment of every day, our minds have to be cleansed and renewed and washed. Otherwise, if we stop doing that, you know, it's kind of like if you stop taking a shower, you're going to be stinky, right?

And your body's going to start feeling the effects of this, because we don't live in a world that is sinless. We will one day. We won't have to wash our minds with the Word, because we'll be with the Word, all right?

We'll be in His presence with new bodies. But until we do, we travel through this world carrying our bodies with us, and it's like, look, you got to constantly be washing your mind. So my encouragement to you is that you have to live in the perspective that if I'm not renewing my mind with Christ, I will be renewing my mind with the world.

That's the tension in the text. It goes on to say this, that by testing, you may discern what is the will of God and what is good and acceptable and perfect. So how is it that you are going to know this is of God, this is not of God, right?

This is a lie. This is truth. The only way you're going to do that is if you're constantly washing your mind with the Word. I want to say here, this is not law. This is actually gospel. Now, the command is law to do that, but what we're washing our hearts and minds are with is the gospel.

It's because that's what Satan attacks. Satan attacks us at the level of our faith. If he can get us to not believe in God's grace and mercy, what did Paul start with? I employ you by the mercy of God.

Renew your mind in His mercy. Renew his mind in His grace. That's why Paul goes to a very wicked church and says, I want to preach to you the gospel of grace. First Peter 1 .9. Why are you so entangled in sin?

Is it not you forgotten? You've been cleansed from your former sins. So there's a way in which we live where we are making sure that we are sacrificing our sinful bodies that have sinful desires. We're laying it down, sacrificially saying, I'm gonna say no to the flesh, all this fleshy desires, and renew my mind so that I can keep doing that.

The opposite is this. We allow our minds... it just happens. If you stop listening to the gospel, it's not like Satan stops putting stuff in your mind. He doesn't stop tempting you. And your flesh doesn't just stop, you know, like what does Romans 7 say?

There's a war within you. So it's not like your flesh just stops barking at you. So the more we can renew our minds, the more we'll be able to discern the will of God, discern what is good and what is evil.

To look at something and go, I'm not going to participate in that. That's evil. And to look at this, and this is holy and righteous, and this is wonderful. And I mean, when he says whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, so I'm not talking about just reading a Bible and praying and listening to Christian music.

I'm being able to discern what is good as far as what we eat and what we entertain ourselves with, and what we find rest in, and what we invest our time and money into. You know, do I think it's good that I allow myself to be financially trapped by this, or my time to be trapped by that?

Is this good? Well, by the renewal of my mind. And so one last application for you is, well maybe somebody you're going to be thinking, well you're going to talk about daily Bible reading now. Man, yeah, I think reading your Bible is refreshing.

My family, we often will read a passage of Scripture that's encouraging at dinner. At church we sing scriptural songs. So I think that there is a personal aspect to our faith. Obviously we pray, but I'll just go over to one other passage in Ephesians chapter 6 when Paul is dealing with this explicitly, when he says that the way we fight bad doctrine, the way we fight our flesh, the way we fight the world.

The Ordinary Means of Grace and the Life of the Church

So all three, right? Bad doctrine, the flesh, and the world. He says that when the body functions properly, it builds itself up in love, protecting itself in these ways. So I think as the Reformers have been preaching for so long, it's the ordinary means of grace.

That we need the Word preached to us, we need it taught to us, we need to fellowship around it, sing around it. So I think it's a community around God's Word. When, oh by the way, I'll just say it this way, when Paul didn't write the book to a guy named Roman or a lady named Roman, he wrote it to the Romans, the church in Rome.

He says you collectively as a congregation need to be renewing your mind so that you'll know what is the will of God. So that's my encouragement to you. You're not designed to live alone. You're not designed to struggle alone.

Taking Sin Seriously and Relying on Grace

And so this will probably be the last thing I want to say, and it's probably the most punchy thing I'm gonna say. You got to start taking your sin serious. Once you see the blood dripping from your sins, then I think you'll understand grace and mercy.

You know, what's the phrase? Be killing sin or sin will be killing you? I don't think you're gonna lose your salvation, but it kills your hope and your faith. It kills your joy. We've all as Christian been joyless and without peace.

Why? You look at it, it's sin. Sin has just gone in and destroyed our assurance. We start becoming introspective. We start listening to the lies of Satan. So yeah, I think it's a time that you got to take your sin serious, which only takes the gospel and makes it.

You want more grace. Trust me, the moment you see how horrible your sin is, the only solution that satisfies the soul is grace, right? So my encouragement to you is take your sin serious. Be aware that Satan wants you to be okay with your sin.

Ah, it's okay, it's just a little bit, it's not that big a deal. It's not like I'm actually acting upon it yet. I'll just say, I keep saying one last thing. When we think about King David, at the moment of his life, he was the most victorious, most powerful man, and he got, it was the heart, his heart started to slip, and he allowed lust to destroy him.

Same thing with King Solomon. Lust destroyed Solomon. He started to worship other gods because of all the women that he brought into his, by the way, ungodly women. So it wasn't, it's not the women's fault.

He fell in love with women who didn't love God. He brought women into his home, and they turned his heart against God to worship idols. This has been the story. I mean, how many times have we seen this?

I mean, Abraham lied about his wife, you know? Yeah, it's like, it's like, you just could go, it's, we are easily drawn away. So that's my encouragement, is that we need to increase our awareness and fear of sin, which then causes us to rely more on the grace of God.

Hopefully this was encouraging to you. My desperate prayer is, Lord, come quickly, and that we rejoice in the presence of our King. But if not, Lord willing, we'll be here next week.