The Power of a Changed Mind

The Power of a Changed Mind

Good morning. Good morning. It was a good morning for you, right, Wasn’t it? Maybe it wasn’t, well, even if it wasn’t God is so good and we’re glad that you’re here with us. Um, if I haven’t met you, my name is dan and I’m one of the elders here. There’s five of us, four of us now. We sent one out and he’s planning a church, so there’s four of us now. Um, so glad that you’re here with us this morning. Go ahead and open your bibles to Romans. Chapter 12 work. Our main text will be two verses, but we will read quite a bit of romans just because of the context. Um, we believe in exposition of preaching and teaching. And even though we’re gonna look at two verses this morning, the way in which we work that out. Exposition aly is we look at the contexts that that verse lives in. We we don’t just say that one verse has its own zip code, right? It lives within a context. And so the context helps to bring more of the meaning of the individual verses that we’re going to highlight today. So while you’re turning there to Romans 12, I do want to tell a little bit of a story um, to kind of set the table a bit for today’s teaching recently, I did a wedding, I did a premarital counseling and a wedding for a couple of friends and um, I took them through a curriculum that I used for premarital counseling that likes to use fictional characters. Um, and highlighting within these fictional characters, various challenges that America couple might face. And uh, some of the challenges are kind of over the top a little, a little bit silly, but they communicate a point, They emphasize the point, they get the point across, so to speak. For example, one of the little challenges that I saw, um, that I think is funny from the book is that this newlywed couple, right? Um, every night the wife would politely ask the husband to turn off all the lights in the house and you know, they’re newlywed the first night or so. No big deal. Right? Oh man, this is my wife. Yeah, she’s asked me to, yeah, yeah, I’ll do that, you know, So he goes and he obliges and he turns off all the lights. Um, every other night after that, she continued to ask the question, would you please turn off all the lights? And it didn’t matter if he was in bed first or if he was in bed last. She wanted him to turn off all the lights. Well, uh, the shiny newness of marriage began to wear off and this young husband became incredibly frustrated and lashed out at his wife and said, you turn off the lights, I’m in bed already, right. And uh, that really crushed her and led her to believe, well, did I marry the right person? He won’t even turn off all the lights right, You know? Um, but through the course of conversation and trying to resolve this conflict over who will shut off the lights, it was revealed that this wife, this this new wife, um the one man that she had respected the most in her life was her father and what he did every night was he shut off the lights, he tucked her into bed and he kissed her goodnight. But she’s not married to her father, she’s married to a different man. And so the point of that is that in marriage, You have two individuals with two lives shaped by various experiences, relationships, values, ideas Coming from different families, trying to come together and become one new family. And that’s hard. In fact, it’s incredibly hard without God, but it’s worth it. And so my goal in the pre medal counselors to help these two individuals understand the things that have shaped their personality and the things that have shaped their spouse’s personality and to figure out how to follow jesus in becoming one new family. And through that process, you’ve got to be transformed. That only works if both individuals are being transformed. And so this morning we’re gonna talk about transforming the mind because in a similar way when we come to faith, we are united with the Lord jesus christ. But guess what we bring into that relationship, a bunch of ideas, experiences a personality that’s been shaped by all of these things and the relationships that we have known all our lives, we bring all of that into the relationship with jesus. And if we’re not careful the past and and that old way of thinking will pull us away from the Lord’s heart and pull us away from the Lord. And we’re not able to walk with him in a way in which we are called to unless of course we transform our minds unless our minds are transformed, transformation is a reality for christians. When you come into the faith, the first thing you ought to notice there’s a growing awareness of sin both within yourself and around you. You start to notice it. Sin that you were once comfortable with. Now that kind of stinks. That doesn’t look right, That doesn’t sound right, I shouldn’t do that. You start to grow in that awareness and in the process you start to grow in the awareness of the holiness of God. Wow, God is so other from this creation and yet we have been brought into this relationship with christ. How do we as sinful broken human beings walk in unity with our Lord? Well, you can’t do it without being transformed, being transformed. And so that’s what today’s message is about transforming the mind Romans 12 verses one and 2 says, I appeal to you therefore, brothers by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice. Holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship Verse two do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind. That by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. Let’s pray father, I thank you. This is your call, This is your call to us, your people. You’ve given us your word, you have sent your spirit. You have called us your people to be transformed by the renewing of our minds and to be made more and more like your son, jesus christ the Lord. That is our goal this morning. To learn how we can with greater fervency, engage in this process of being transformed by having our minds renewed and we ask this in jesus name. Amen. So transforming the mind. That’s what God has for us. Yeah. Um, I was thinking sometimes when you come into the faith, right, have you ever heard, have you ever heard someone say this to you or had someone say this to you? You’ve been brainwashed? Well, the honest truth is my brain needed washing, come on, It needed renewal. It needed to be transformed. Yeah, I need some more brainwashing by this word from this word. I needed to cleanse me. I needed to change me. I needed to blaze new thought patterns in my mind. I needed to clear up the fog of this life and of my own emotions and my own thoughts. I needed to wash my mind. So man, you’ve been brainwashed. Not enough. Not enough. I need more of this in me. I need to think more like the way this word says I am to think. And you know what? When you read that passage this morning, the first thing that paul says is he appeals to us and how does he make his appeal to us? He says, I appeal to you by the mercies of God. The mercy of God makes transformation possible. It’s the Mercy of God that makes it possible for our minds to be changed Again. I told you this morning that this passage, this text does not have its own zip code, it lives within a context, it lives within a neighborhood. And the 1st 11 chapters of Romans, Paul lays out the problem of the natural mind, the need for the Gospel. He lays it all out and then he says, I appeal to you based on what I’ve just laid out to you the dangers of living this life without christ. The hope that is offered to you in christ I appeal to you now by the mercies of God to be transformed by the renewal of your mind. Merci and the Mercy of God makes this transformation possible. But let’s look at what look at some of what Paul lays out in the earlier chapters of Romans and I’m gonna read chapters one, I’m gonna read chapter one. I’m gonna read a little bit of chapter one here that kind of talks about the mind. It talks about the world that has been created because of a debased mind because of a fallen mind because of a sinful mind. And it describes the behaviors of the people who give themselves fully to this mine that needs to be transformed, paul wants to give some contrast. Here’s what it’s like. Apart from christ, here’s what it’s like in christ. So let’s start with what he’s talking about, apart from christ as it relates to the mind. And I’m gonna read from romans chapter one, but I’m not gonna read the bumper sticker versus the one that we all love. That’s really cool. It’s really good. It is true, it is powerful. I’m talking about romans 1 16 where he says, I’m not ashamed of the Gospel, who is the power of God and the salvation. We we love that. We have christian hip hop labels named after that, we have bumper stickers, we have tattoos with that one, but the passage that I’m about to read to you. No one’s gonna tattoo that No, isn’t it ironic that he says, I’m not ashamed of the Gospel, and then he says some things that make some christians ashamed, do you think that’s ironic, God doesn’t? So let’s look at what he says here in verse 18, he says, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodly nous and unrighteous nous of men who by their unrighteous nous suppress the truth. They hide it, they still form it, They push it down. They want to suffocate it. They suppress the truth Verse 19, for what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them for his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. He’s saying here is that there is a general revelation that we find in creation. That general revelation says that there is a God. He’s saying when you look at this creation, it makes you wonder about this God. For example, if you go on a hike and you pick up an arrowhead, mm hmm. A martian dropped this from outer space. Now you see a man made this and when you look at the creation it leads you to that single point, God, he is magnificent. And paul is saying, men in all in righteousness suppress this truth and will not acknowledge Verse 11 for although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him. But they became futile in their thinking. There’s the mind and he says, and they were full and their foolish hearts were darkened, claiming to be wise. They became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things And he says in verse 24 that God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts, to impurity to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. Do you know when he says, served the creature, but that’s also a reference to serving themselves. You are creatures, We are creatures, and he says, we would rather serve ourselves rather than the creator, it says. For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions for their women, exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature. And the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another. Men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteous nous evil covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit maliciousness. They are gossips slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die. They not only do them, but give approval to those who practice them. And paul says, I appeal to you brothers by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, as the very opposite of what we see going on there in romans one, this is the world we live in, this is the world that we swim in. There is a current that moves in that direction and we must be transformed and not move in that direction. But that’s not easy. It’s not easy because not only do we live in this world, you christian, you are exercising your faith in this world. That is hard. What makes it even harder is that you’re born with, the nature that is bent towards sin. That’s what Romans 3 10 talks about the reality that none is righteous. No, not one, no one understands, no one seeks for God. All have turned aside together, they’ve become worthless. No one does good, not even one. And then he also talks about this later in romans House sin, how this whole process began because one man’s sin and sin injured the world and all men die because of and so now we have this sinful nature that we have to do that we have to deal with and then we live in this world that is sinful and so this the whole pool of life, The ideas that are constantly bouncing around us, the temptation, the pressures, all these things pull us away from God. And paul says, I appeal to you by the mercies of God to be transformed, to not conform to those patterns and we come to faith in christ and we think yay I’m saved. I’m gonna go to heaven now when I die. And and we start noticing sin in our lives, we start noticing that man, I I really don’t want to do this but I seem to enjoy doing it and yet I know that it’s wrong. Paul addresses that too in Romans seven, he says for I do not understand my own actions for I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate and if I do what I do not want to agree with the law of God that it is good, so no longer. So it is no longer I who do it. But sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me that is in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. Should we see this And as christians, we can be overwhelmed at this reality. But how does paul begin? Chapter 12 he says, I appeal to you by the mercies of God because it is the mercy of God that will make your transformation possible. And what is this mercy? Well, According to Romans 6 23, the wages of our sin and disobedience to God is death on the mercy of God. Is that he does not just give that to us though we deserve it, that we deserve judgment and ralph, he doesn’t give it to us. He offers to us christ. He offers to us a way out away from under the Wrath of God. In christ, the mercies of God are wrapped up. There are bound in the person of the Lord jesus christ. In the Lord jesus christ Either all of your sins, all of your sins paid for on the cross. For if you’re not in christ and the cross, it is for you, it is a foretaste of what eternity will be like eternity under the wrath of God. Paul says, I appeal to you by the mercies of God. The mercy of God that is wrapped up in the person of the Lord jesus christ be transformed. Let your salvation be obvious. Let it become obvious that you’re no longer the same person, but you now belong to God. Does that appeal to you in this way? And the mercy of God that makes this transformation possible is also God showing us his love for us. It’s him showing that he loves us that he doesn’t simply just leave us in a place where we are helpless, that he offers salvation to us because he loves us. That’s where Romans five comes in verses six through eight were paul says for a while we were still weak at the right time. Christ. Died For the ungodly for one will scarcely die for a righteous person though, perhaps a good person, one would dare even to die. But God shows his love for us and that while we were still sinners, christ died for us, we were weak and unable to atone for our own sins. And christ died for us. We were undeserving of love of God. And christ died for us. We don’t always desire to do God’s will. And yet christ died for asked. This is amazing. When you consider the mercy of God. I think today and our culture, we confuse mercy and grace and I think we confuse it because we are a proud people. We much prefer to talk about the giving of grace. What is grace Graces? I didn’t earn something and I was given it was given more than what I rightfully deserve because I didn’t earn it right. I don’t deserve it. Merci is that what I rightfully deserve? He withholds when I say rightfully, I mean the sin that has earned me judgment and wrath. He withholds it so that I don’t receive it. Mercy requires an understanding of humility. The person who needs mercy is humble. You plead with the one who has the ability to show you mercy. But in an age of entitlement, you have no problems asking for things you don’t deserve, right? You can be proud about that, right? Give me this because I want it. It will make me happy because it will show that you’re a good person if you give it to me right that we like to talk about Grace because it’s receiving something right? But Mercy shows the estate that were in that we deserve something far worse. And God and his love for us doesn’t give it to us. It requires humility. And that’s the key to your transformation. The mercy of God bringing you to a place of humility. So Mercy of God makes transformation possible. But knowing and conforming to the will of God is the goal of our transformation. We not only want to know that it is possible to be changed to be transformed, but now we want to know what exactly is God calling me to. What exactly is God calling us to? How has he called us to live? We need to know what the will of God is. The pastor says, we need to prove what is the perfect will of God is. What does he say? What is the will of God? Often when the scripture speaks of it, he speaks in terms of the revealed will of God and what is the revealed will of God right here, you know you’re probably used to people talking about romans 12 2 and saying, hey go read your bibles and yes you should read your bibles but you should know that this is the revealed will of God. That’s why you read your bibles and within the context of this book you begin to know what the will of God is and you begin to be transformed When you give yourself to pursuing the will of God and Paul says in Romans 12 that we are to give ourselves as a living and holy sacrifice to God. This means that the will of God is that we are to be holy right? What does that mean? I need to become a holy roller, I need to dress and show that I’m holy, I’m wearing pineapples on my shirt and so holy pineapples, right, It’s okay to put pineapples on the shirt, just not on the pizza, just so you know stepping on toes this morning. Mhm No. Seriously, what does he mean? When he says be holy verse peter 1 16 says you shall be holy for I am holy. What does he mean by that? What does he mean when he says you are to be holy as the Lord, your God is holy. He means that you belong to him. You don’t belong to anyone else. You don’t belong to this world. In fact, you live as if you don’t even belong to yourself, you belong to him. You are set apart. You’re sanctified. You are prepared by your Lord and master for every good work that he has prepared for you in advance. That means for us, we live as if we belong to our God and paul says this is the acceptable sacrifice to him because of the great mercy he has shown us in christ and we’re called to live this way in every part of our existence, every part of our lives and our relationships with our finances with our time. We have to live this way In our bodies. That’s what Romans one was talking about. That their bodies were no longer acceptable and useful to the master unless they come to repentance and be transformed. And you are like, you know if you’re a christian you’re like yeah, yeah, yeah Romans 12 says that this transformation begins with a renewed mind. Okay, all right now he really didn’t mean mind in that way, right? We don’t want to get too intellectual, our faith, right? We don’t wanna we don’t wanna make it just some rationalism thing, right? But he says be transformed by the renewing of your mind. You know like medical students say work on cadavers, that what they’re calling. When you cut open the head. Will you see a mind? Well, you see your mind. No, you will not. You might see a brain. He owns your mind. What is a mind? What is it? I never thought about that? No dan mind your own business, Right, mm hmm. What is it? Mine? The mind is it’s the reasoning capacity of the inner man of the inner person. God says your transformation begins there, your mind being changed being renewed. Do you know that’s what got us into this predicament I’m talking about when Adam sinned against God. You know the test of the two trees Tree of life, the truth of knowledge of good and evil. It says that Eve was deceived Adam. It doesn’t describe him in that way. He reasoned within himself in agreement with the serpent. That’s what got us into trouble. We do not have a mindless Christianity. We don’t believe in a blind leap of faith. R Christianity begins with a right understanding of who our God is, that didn’t end there but has to begin there. It has to begin with I know who this christ is because of what the scriptures say and how they describe him and what he’s done for me, I understand who he is, he’s the son of God. He didn’t deserve to die on the cross mind. I’m starting to grasp Christianity and now it’s time to be transformed. Now I gotta start looking at the word of God and when the Word of God says something that I don’t like, the word needs to be changed, doesn’t it? No. The problem isn’t with the word, it’s with who for me, I need to be changed. I need to be renewed in my mind. Well the culture says that this is acceptable. The word of God says. It’s not, I need to be renewed in my mind dr R C. Sproul says this, he says to be conformed to the thinking of this world is to think with its forms or structures to be transformed just to think beyond the forms of this world, What you’re saying here is to think in terms of this world, you embrace all of the values, all of the ideas of this world without questioning them, but to be transformed. And I began to think as God thinks and how do we think is God thinks the revealed will of God. His mercy has made transformation possible. Knowing and conforming to his will is now the goal of our transformation. I want to think his thoughts after him now the scripture uses the mind and the heart interchangeably. But it does show to help us to understand that we are unified in our inner being. So the mind speaks to the reasoning capacities, the heart speaks to the affections, the desires, the things we love and want or think we you gotta have. Right? That’s where the quote from Dennis Peacock where he says the mind justifies what the heart has chosen. Now. The older we get we get we become more sophisticated in our excuses for why we’ve done what we’ve done. But when we’re younger we’re really simple and straightforward. Right? You hit your brother. Why did you do that? I don’t know. Did you think you would feel better after you hit him? Yeah. Right. The mind justifies what the heart has chosen. We reason to justify why we’ve given ourselves to the things that we are giving ourselves too and that’s why we need to be renewed in that place first. It becomes like the fortress that needs to be torn down and rebuilt with the word of God as its foundation and as the gatekeeper. So transformation is our goal and it’s according to the will of God and transformation is normal for the christian experience, it’s normal for us to continue to consistently and continually become transformed according to the word of God because we’re people of the word, we don’t just read the word for entertainment do we? You didn’t come to church just for entertainment did you? You came because you wanted to hear what the word we gather around this word. This is for us a symbolic example of gathering around the king’s throne someday for what purpose hear his word and to worship. And so as preachers we stand up here and we say this is the authority, this is the king’s word. And the more we give ourselves to a transformation becomes normal in our lives. It’s not a one time event, it’s not a one time experience, it is a consistent and continual experience of being transformed. People ought to look at your life and say boy you’ve changed. I know I needed it. You don’t know what I was like. I needed it. I still need some more. But if you’re not experiencing transformation and growth in christ that my friend is a huge spiritual red flag, if you’re not being transformed, that is a huge spiritual red flag, it may be the case that you’re not experiencing transformation and you’re not desiring transformation because you’re living in some secret sin and that secret sin is grieving the very spirit of God that lives in grieving God’s holy spirit and so you’re not being transformed because you’re in bondage to the secret sin and maybe that you are not experiencing transformation because your heart is now entangled with bitterness and unforgiveness that grieves grieves the spirit. Do you know it matters to God how you operate in relationship to other people. The spirit of God applies the word of God to our hearts so that we become the Children of God, we become a people family and it matters how we live in relationship to one another and bitterness will, it will not allow you to experience transformation the scriptures and romans, I mean in Hebrew speaks of it like a weed, like a um that grows and that entangles the life the heart. Thirdly, you may not be experiencing transformation because you might simply only be a christian in name only, you might be okay with being around christians might be okay, we’re coming to church, may even feel good about coming to church, you may even know a few scriptures, but in your innermost being, you live for yourself, you know that you pursue your own way and so you’re not able to grow, you’re not able to be transformed more into christ because you’re only a christian name only and some of you in this room, you may be in one of those camps maybe someone and bondage to secret sin, you maybe someone, he’s got a lot of bitterness in your heart towards others. You may be someone who you know in your heart of hearts, you’re just a christian in name only. I want you to understand at the Mercy of God is available to you right now to be transformed. You just got to come to christ, you’ve got to call out to him, you have got to come to him, God that is me, I’m the one, you got to say it and you got to name it and then you got to rip it out and the mercy of God will show you the love of God and ways in which you’ve never known an experience before. And then this transformation will become your goal. I want to read this quote from a guy named frank Outlaw says watch your thoughts, they become words, watch your words, they become actions, watch your actions, they become habits, watch your habits, they become character, watch your character for it becomes your destiny. Either you’re being renewed and transformed to look more like christ headed towards an eternity with him forever or you are being conformed to this world and had it to an eternity separate from christ. Pay attention to your thoughts. Pay attention to your words that leads us to the last the point I want to make and closing the mercy of God makes transformation possible and transformation is our goal. Then we must respond in faith. We have to respond in faith And faith has three dimensions. It has an intellectual dimension. We must understand the simple basic truths of the gospel and the teachings of Christianity with our minds must be able to understand it. You can’t think that you know God is you know half man, half wolf and then think that you’re going to be in heaven with him someday. Like you know your mind is busted, there’s an intellectual dimension. Your mind must be able to understand and comprehend the basic gospel truths and the basic teachings of Christianity. Secondly faith touches the will. Faith becomes the the passion, the energy, the the desire of the will to to do something. For God it touches the will, the will does not remain untouched or neutral. Faith touches it and it moves in the direction of God. It wants to please God. That’s what he says here, this is pleasing to God, it’s acceptable to him. So faith as an intellectual component, faith touches the Will and lastly faith impacts our affections. It changes who and what we desire changes and the only reason it’s able to impact us in this way is because our faith must be in a person that person is the Lord, jesus christ, it changes the mind empowers the will and he influences the affections and now transformation begins to happen in your life. It’s just the direction of your life and makes your life while pleasing to God. So friends, I could have very easily just said hey Roman Squirrel one and to read your bibles and you’ll be different. But I wanted you to understand more fully your faith. I’m not saying anything less than that because that is certainly true. That’s certainly the case that if you’re going to be transformed, it begins with this revealed will of God and the spirit of God will apply it to your hearts and you will be transformed and it begins in your mind, the renewing of your mind. Let us pray father in heaven. I thank you for your word, I thank you for your spirit. Present here with us today. Lord, I pray that we will not leave this place without answering the question of whether or not I am growing in my faith in christ whether or not I am offended or ashamed of anything in your word. And I pray God that you would not allow us to rest until we come to a place of complete surrender to your mercy and to your great love. So that transformation would become our goal in christ his name. We pray amen