Thus, Romans chapter 12. To say that ignorance was a pandemic
would be an understatement. Ironically, though, what I would
consider people would be ignorant of is probably part of my ignorance.
Ignorance by definition is just not knowing, not having the information. It's not pejorative, it's not
negative, it's not things, it's not something we should go, oh,
I'm ignorant, I'm so stupid. No, it's not about intelligence,
it's about knowledge. What do we know? We are all ignorant
of most things. But I would say that most believers,
most professing believers are ignorant of the Bible. And I'd say that what we often
do know about scripture is what we've absorbed, not what we have
learned. What we often know about that
absorption is that we've come to a place of just hearing the
talking points for so long, hearing the sermons for so long, hearing
the things that we just hold as true for so long that we've
never taken time out to check them for ourselves. And if we
do, we just ask Siri. Google, YouTube, Tippins, or
whoever else could come along and answer the question. And
then we just accept it, mouth open, mind closed, there it is,
there's the answer for it. I've been answering Bible questions,
I don't even know how many Bible questions I've answered. Back
when Theology on Call was in its active days, I remember having
a tally of the number of questions supposedly that we'd answered.
And it was in the tens of thousands. Talking about the whole time
I've been in ministry. But yet, how many of those answers
were tested? And how many of those answers
were tested in the context of other people learning based on
their reading of the Scripture? It's funny that when you go online
and you begin to look in certain communities, I'm a big community
person when it comes to digging around to see what people think.
Not a social media person, a community person. They're hard to get into
because you have to spend some time there. You have to spend
some time reading long form things, like 27 minutes to read an article. Are you going to do that? Or
an hour to read a thread. I mean, that's an investment.
I've got some TV to watch. I don't want to do that. Same
thing is true with the Bible. I think we've come to the place
where we've forgotten that the Bible centers in and on and around
the community. And we are looking for the quippy
little short version of spending time with the Word of God and
we're wanting the answers. We want the cheat sheet. We want the AI responsiveness
to having everything at our fingertips. Well, should I wear black shoes
with a brown belt? Absolutely not, it's forbidden. Unless you don't care. Who said it was forbidden? The
fashion police, the same fashion police that put women in corsets
and put them in shoes that their feet were malformed for generations
so that they couldn't open doors or walk without help. The same people that said what
certain colors had to be worn by certain people in certain
areas of the world so that if you didn't have the right type
of clothes on, you were looked down upon and you were a no one.
Because why? Because you were looked down
upon. People who are so stupid that
they felt like when the Bible poetically said, keep the word
of God in front of your eyes and near your heart, they put
it in a box and hung it there. But they were the pious ones,
right? Beloved, we laugh and think, oh, how ignorant! But
we are doing the same thing. We are doing the same thing as
a culture. We've done the same thing. We've allowed that same
type of nonsense to enter into our fellowship, into our homes,
into our minds. We are walking down the road of being slaves
to other people's ideas and understanding because we do not think. And you think, wow, we gotta
find a thinker to listen to. Got to find someone to think
so that we can learn to think. Well, guess what? Thinking comes
naturally to our minds. Thinking comes naturally to our
existence. But the problem is we don't have
anything to think about nor time to think on it. And I'm here to say for the five
billionth time, hyperbole, that I don't think we're in the Word
of God enough accurately and correctly. I think that we as
a culture, not just we as Grace Truth Church, not just you as
an individual, but we are not in the word of God correctly. And I think we have learned to
not be in the word of God correctly because of the culture of the
churches in which we've come up in. We accept things without ever
questioning why. 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 reasonable worship." If your
Bible says spiritual worship, that's okay, but it's a mistranslation.
It's okay. Reasonable worship. Reasonable. Verse two, do not be conformed
to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.
You see why reasonable is the right word there, because it's
actually what the word is in the Greek. And this is the context,
reasoned, logic, prudent. Your mind, I mean, that's why
it's such a dichotomy. That's why people like, they
pick things apart. Oh no, I need to know what the
goodwill of the Lord is, and the perfect will, and the acceptable
will. Got three, four wheels, he does not. God is not stuck
inside his mind wondering what he wants to do. There's part
of what God wants that he does reveal to us, and there is most
of what God is that he has not revealed to us, but all that
God is and everything that he could ever show us about himself
is in Christ. be transformed by the renewal
of your mind, that by testing you may discern, discriminate."
Doesn't that require thinking? What is the will of God? That
is what is good, acceptable, and perfect. And there's a lot
here, and honestly, there's four hours of teaching I'm going to
cram into this sermon today. I'm not kidding, four hours. So I appeal to you, brothers,
sisters, children, siblings, those who are in the Lord Jesus
Christ, by the mercies of God. See, right here, Paul is expressing
the tone in which he is saying what he's about to say. And what
we need to understand is that there is no difference in doctrine
and doing. We've learned that in our little
bit of time in 1 Timothy, which we'll get back to after the summer.
I still want to go into some more of the Old Testament. And
so we know that there's no difference. Doctrine and doing are simultaneously
the same thing because what we learn in one sense of understanding,
then we learn what to do. It's both teaching. So they're
the constant, gnawing, frustrating, irritating windbags of the world
that love to try to find out why we're antinomian. They cannot
leave us alone, for those of you who are on social media.
Look, the sky is beautiful today, antinomian. I mean, you know,
okay. All right, thank you. I appreciate
that. It is not against the law. or saying that we don't have
to obey anything that we're told to obey because the Bible, the
New Testament specifically teaches us to do certain things. That
is part of the doctrine of Christ. The doctrine of Christ is not
just the theological great divine things that He is and is accomplished.
The doctrine of Christ is not the parsing out of justification
by faith through faith. The doctrine of Christ is not
deep Christological expressions of the substitutionary atonement. The doctrine of Christ is love
your neighbor as yourself. You see? And love the Lord your
God with all your heart, mind, and soul. So it's a misapplication
of the Bible when we think, okay, we got all this theology that
Paul's already taught. Now we get into some doing. Because
you hear me make this caveat every time I get into a letter,
right? Here's this deep understanding. Here's this deep, rich gospel.
Here's this theological truths. Here are these things. Here's
our salvation. Now, therefore, therefore, therefore,
therefore. When we hear therefore, we ask
the question, what is that therefore? And it's always looking to what
was already taught as a causation about what's already about to
be said. Because of what I've said, therefore
you do these things. They are completely and irrevocably
tied together. And to separate them is to bastardize
the Bible. It is to destroy the fabric of
the gospel. And to emphasize one without
the other is to not teach the full counsel of Christ. You see? We cannot take the Bible and
rip it up into segments. We cannot let historical theology,
as precious as it is, be our guiding light to reading the
Bible. At best, a Christian needs to
make historical theology and theological things hobbies and
interests, not a rule. Not a rule. that even if we're
not into those things, we create our own. We create our own. And so here we have Paul saying,
therefore, by the mercies of God, by the love of God, by the
grace of God, by the kindness of God, by the actions of God,
by the purposes of God, by the lovingness of God in sending
his son for you, Jesus Christ, to satisfy his righteousness
in death, I appeal to you. I appeal to you. Present your bodies as living
sacrifices. Living sacrifices. Let's put that in extremely simple
terms. I want you to show up. and be
mindful and be present. I want you to be present. In
this world and in this life, I don't want you to be in your
head being changed and rearranged by the world that you live in.
I want you to be present right now thinking about what Christ
has done so that it may present you and your heart and your hands
and your eyes and your mouth and your feet and your arms and
your everything as something that is being used and given
to God alive. God hasn't called us to die for
Him. He's called us to live presently here in this day, in this age,
in this moment in the mercy of Christ who is alive, you see. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
no. This is psychology. Absolutely, it's psychology.
Who created it? God. He created your mind. Just
because we put a label to it doesn't mean that it's not true. The hypostatic union is true.
Does it mean we can just understand that from that academic position
and not understand anything of Christ? Absolutely. Are you listening? Are we listening? We don't get it. Therefore, therefore, therefore,
this reasonable worship, obvious worship, this logical worship.
But it is very easy for us as people to really cater to the
presence of what we have constructed as the Christian life. And I'm
gonna say this, and then I'm not gonna really do much more
with it this morning, but it's necessary. It is purely wrong, purely wrong
to think that the Christian has their life together. And it is
purely ignorant any Christian who says they do. Any person who says they have
their life together and that they have something that they
could share to a younger or weaker or newer believer that could
settle their lives a little bit better in the faith are completely
deceived. Because wisdom comes from, you
know what kind of mess I've been? You know how hard it is for me
to keep my composure? You ever know what it's like
when you just don't want to go anymore? You ever fight the fight
in your own brain? In your own body, in your own
marriage, in your own parenting? At your own job? Something's wrong with the person
who has no burdens. At best, they're naive and just
haven't experienced enough of life yet. But what do we do? The opposite is true. The world
and the culture has taught Christians that if we doubt, if we are disturbed,
if we are frustrated, if any of these things are battling
in our souls, if there's anything that the culture says is wrong
that we're doing, we are not good people. Hallelujah, we know
that. We are redeemed people. We are the righteousness of God.
We are the sons and daughters of the Father. We are the brothers
and sisters of Christ. We are those within whom the
image of God has been always and now restored by the Spirit
of grace. We are a royal priesthood. We
are a mighty nation. We are the glory of God revealed
as a light on a hill. Now I want you to hear those
words. When's the last time you heard someone say that about
you? That's why I can't stand to read
the Puritans anymore. They were never free. They went from escape to incubation
to isolation to introspection. To woe is me, to I'm probably
going to hell, let me work harder. Oh, my dress isn't well enough.
My furniture looks like a leg. They call it the wild, wild west
for a reason. offer ourselves as a living sacrifice,
which is reasonable worship. Therefore, because of the gospel
of grace, which is God's finished work, because of the gospel of
grace, offer our lives as a living sacrifices. Therefore, because
of the promise of glory, that we will share in the future wonder
of God's son and be just like him. Not God, but we will share
in his glory. We will bask in his glory. He
shares it with us. He does that now and He will
do that forever. He will complete us. He who has
started a good work will do it. He will finish it. And it will
not be on this side of earth, on this side of death. Life. Glory. Therefore, because of the purposes
of God, God's fabulous will, pleasing and perfect, he works
all things after the counsel of his own will for our good,
for his purpose, and we know him. Therefore, we are able to
present ourselves, we're able to show up and clock in for the
sake of Christ. Every single moment of our lives,
every single moment of our days. But the problem is, is that we're
always too interested in what we've learned subconsciously
and unconsciously. Which, by the way, makes up 97%
of our conscious thought is informed by our unconscious thought. We feel guilty for some reason.
Why? I don't know. I'm just not good enough. I don't want anybody
to find out exactly who I am. What are you thinking about? I didn't
pray this morning and I'm afraid somebody's gonna know. And I know that the person at
churches, they pray all the time, they're always talking about
how they pray, and I just don't wanna, I don't wanna face them, because I don't pray
like that. They're not praying like that. Where's that written? It's written,
it's written in our minds from the world. The scriptures here says, be
not conformed. to this world, and the better
word there would be age, to this present age. But be transformed by the renewal
of your mind. Do not live according to the scheme of the age in which
we're in. There's a good layman's translation
of that. Do not live your life according
to the scheme of the age that we're in. Remember John says,
do not love the world or the things of the world, for the
things of the world are not of God and are passing away. So
do not love them. Do not be pressed into the form
of this present age. And what's really crazy about
it, and here's where it starts to really stick for us, is that
every one of us, every person who's listening to this remotely,
every person who will listen to this sermon in the weeks and
months and years to come, when we hear any sermon on this, and
we hear as believers culturally, do not love the world, Do not
be pressed into the form of this present age. We have this extreme,
it's sort of like a Z-tape on a cash register. Have you ever
accidentally pressed that? It's like to give you your total,
it's a check it out, you know, it's just, the tape just comes
out and out and out and out, and you're like, I messed up. And then all of your totals are
emptied and there's nothing you can do, and it's just there,
and there's this 25 foot of tape, and you're going, oh, the boss
is gonna kill me. And there probably wasn't enough and you can't get
it back out again either. Anyway, that's what happens in
our brains when we hear, do not be pressed into the form of this
present age. And we have this Z tape. We have
this list that runs out of our head of all the wicked, sinful,
sinister, awful things that this world is and does and offers
for us. And it's always this horrible
stuff that we think is really, really bad. But you know what
I'm beginning to think and see because of what the text of scripture
is that on that tape, I think there's more of Christian
things and duties and ideas than there are what we would consider
worldly. I think the world includes Christian
culture, and I think if we're not careful, we're gonna be caught up in it. And you will be hearing examples
of those in the weeks to come. This age, all these thoughts
that flow out, all these ideas, all these philosophies, all manner
of arguments, when they're doing this, and it's always there,
right? They're doing this, and they're doing that, and they're
thinking this, and they're teaching that, and they're acting this, and
they're all this, and they're that, and you hear it on the news, you
hear it in the politician's mouth, you hear it in the pastor's mouth,
you hear it at the barbershop, you hear it at the beauty shop,
you hear it at the grocery store, you hear it everywhere you go, and there's always things.
And there's passions that are wrong, and there's greed, and
all this imprudent, and obviously no good stuff going on, people
that are getting hurt, people that are hurting. There's a lot
of bad stuff going on in the world. But beloved, I believe
for us, in the context of what Paul is teaching, it is more
about this. Also your religion. Also the
way you think about the faith. Also the way you marginalize
others in the context of your spiritual, so-called biblical
worldview. The way you hate, the way you
have disdain. Do not be conformed by the world
of Christianity. Do not be conformed by the world
of evangelicalism. Do not become, be conformed by
the world of Christian nationalism. Do not be conformed. This is
not godly. This is not anything. This is
worse than what it was in the days of Christ. In the name of
Christ, God forbid that we call something evil good. Blasphemy
of the Holy Spirit is seeing and knowing the work and the
power of God and ascribing it to the enemy. A close second
is seeing a bunch of evil stuff and saying this is of Christ. That's my turn of words now.
That's not a biblical doctrine. I said, a close second. Test
my words. This bound up infusion of so-called
God into things where He isn't, hate in the name of Christ, hating
people, maligning people, talking trash about people. ostracizing people, making demands
of people. No Christian makes demands of
people. And call it Christ-like, you see what I mean? Oh, we're
gonna do it. Longstanding traditions that
hurt others, some that hurt even half the population in the name
of some good. God said it, that's it. God didn't
say it, you can't read. You don't take six syllables
and create an entire culture around it. You don't take a word and then
turn an entire world upside down on its head. Longstanding traditions that
hurt others in the name of some good with ignorance to the idea
of loving and living according to grace. We need to live by
the Spirit. which tests these things, all
things, especially things that say, this is good, this is of
the Lord. See, conformity is seen. It's
an outward expression. It's how we do and what we look
like and what we say and what's audible and visible. We can see
the conformity. We start to see it. And so, beloved,
the Christian culture is conformed to the world. And I'm not talking
about the extremes. I'm talking about the norm, the
average, the mean. I'm talking about myself. But transformation, it's seared
into the conscience. It's seared into the soul like
a piece of meat on a hot iron. It starts inside. Conformity
is doing an outward transformation. Matter of fact, the word for
that, I believe, is metamorphosis. Where we get metamorphosis in
the English. From the inside, new. So it means to be transformed
from the inside new. So the inner is being transformed and then
the outside is being conformed from the transformation. And
the transformation comes from thinking. 100% of the time, it comes from thinking.
The Spirit of God will teach me. Yes, but the Spirit of God
teaches through your mind and your mind thinks on the things
that it learns. That's what we do. We think. It is not the other way around.
It should not be the other way around. We should not see the
world and let it unconsciously transform us. From the abundance of the mouth,
the heart speaks, right? You can often tell where someone
stands on things and they're thinking about certain things
by just being quiet and listening. Words tell a lot. tell a lot. The thing that typically spills
out of our mouth first in general conversations is something that
we love the most, and that is often an expression of where
we are in the spiritual sense of conformity and transformation. And that's a terrible, terrible
exercise for me. Okay, I'm just going to not say
anything. I'm gonna say it to myself inside my head so then
I will know just what kind of a fool that I am and arrest those
silly things and think more and change the way I think. I wanna
be mindful. It's amazing that God's created
our minds to do that, isn't it? that just by thinking, and thinking
correctly, and thinking with the right filters, and thinking
with integrity, vulnerability, and authenticity, speaking the
truth in love, these are biblical things that we can be healed
of this conformity. Perfectly? Absolutely not. But we are the children of the
King. We are the sovereign family. We are birthed out of God's sovereignty.
What are we fearful of? Why can't we have engaging interaction
and dialogue about everything? Why does our mind have to shut
out everything? Why is it our bodies, when we
hear something that triggers us? Why do our bodies respond? Because we're slaves. We're not
in control. We're not right. We're not empowered. When our bodies and the anxiety
and the stress and the fear and the anger roll out, people who
have gone this path, and we know them, we are them sometimes,
we are not at peace. We are conforming rather than
being transformed. This is a spiritual thing. The
mind is not something you can just sort of lay out and recode. The conscience, it's a spiritual
thing. Philosophers since the beginning
of time have pondered the soul, the essence of life, the reality
of being. And as believers, we know that
the body, although it is good and it is working, it is aging,
it is reeling in the effects of the fall. From the moment
we're born, every second we're one second closer to the day
we'll die. That's the half glass empty type thing. Biologically, maybe there's an
apex, but chronologically, it's ticking downward. And it's a spiritual thing. And
I believe we've punted the spirituality of our faith and our life into
the ditch of fear. I'm not doing that because we've
got a lot of knuckleheadedness in our culture throughout the
last 50 years that have tried to resurface spiritual things
and it's just a bunch of hogwash, a bunch of silliness, a bunch
of ignorance. If you don't know what hogwash
is, it's the slop that the pigs lay in. Sorry about that. See, the gospel is not about
knowing facts. God regenerates people without
facts. And this is a debate for the
people that think God is bound to produce a set of precepts
that must be present in the context of the Spirit making women alive.
Nonsense. Where do we get that? We get
that because we're fearful of doctrinal error. Nonsense. Every Christian church in the
New Testament had doctrinal error. And we see the sermons, we see
the teaching in the book of Acts that the apostles, that God used
the apostles to bring life. by the Spirit, or the occasion
rather, it's not the means. The means is God Himself as He
wills. The Gospel is a person who finished
a promise for a people. The Gospel is spiritual in its
application. It's not academic. The renewal
is academic. The transformation uses the mind
and the study of the Word of God by the Spirit to bring about
transformation. So there is a discipline there,
but it is not unto those things that we give credit to glory.
We give credit for redemption. It's a work of God whereby the
Spirit of God, faith is granted. Faith in and of itself is not
a thing. It is not a set of principles or doctrines. Faith is a disposition that is immediately transformative. The woman at Sychar, argumentative,
argumentative, answering, apologetic, this, that, the other, boom,
it's just going to be Christ. That's regeneration. No, that's
the result of regeneration. The Spirit is doing this. 2 Corinthians, what is that text? Chapter 3, verse 7, now if the
ministry of death carved in letters of stone came with such glory,
talking about Sinai and things of that nature, the letter kills,
the spirit gives life is what he says right before that, that
Israelites could not look at Moses' face because of its glory,
because of its revealing, which was being brought to an end,
will not the ministry of the spirit have even more glory? For if there was glory in the
ministry of condemnation, of death, the ministry of righteousness
must far exceed it in glory. Indeed, in this case, what once
had glory had come to have no glory at all because of the glory
that surpasses it. For what was being brought to
an end came with glory, much more will what is permanent have
glory." Beloved, listen to what Paul
says in the Corinthians here, verse 12 of chapter 3. I wasn't going
to read this, but I saw it, so I'm going to read it. He says,
We have such a hope. We're very bold, but not bold like Moses,
who put a veil over his face so that the Israelites might
not gaze at the outcome of what was being brought to an end.
But their minds were hardened. Their minds were hardened, for
to this day, when they read the old covenant, the same veil remains
unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away. And
it's not the learning of Christ through our discipline. It's
the teaching of Christ by the Spirit. Yes, to this day, whenever
Moses has read a veil, it lies over their hearts. But when one
turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and
where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we
all with unveiled face, seeing, beholding the glory of the Lord
are being transformed into the same image from one degree of
glory to another degree of glory, for this comes from the Lord
who is Spirit. Wow. There's good news. And then,
of course, Paul keeps on and he gets into one of my favorite
chapters, chapter four, and he gets into verse six. For God,
who has said, let light shine out of darkness, has shone in
our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God in the face
of Jesus Christ. Therefore, I appeal to you, dear
siblings, by the mercies of God, press your lives into this living. into this freedom, into this
life. Press it in there. Get away from
your own thoughts and mind and don't be pressed by the Christian
culture, by the spiritual death of what the religions of the
world have said and what Christianity has tried to make it. Live in
the Spirit for a change by the mercies of God. by the renewal of the mind. What
is this discipline? What is this renewal of the mind?
By remembering this, keeping the word of God in sight, mind
and soul, meditating, thinking, having hard conversations, not
this inductive Bible study nonsense. I don't mind if you do that,
but don't think that you're becoming more disciplined in the spiritual
things because you've got 15 colors and that you're outlining
the scripture. Just read it. I dared to take a stab at introducing
Abby to Melville this week. They call me Ishmael, asleep
in third line, you know? Love that stuff. I went in the Willows, too. I
think I'm in chapter three. It's been like three months I've
been reading it. You don't start that out by undertaking
the idea of what it means to be called something. What is it called? Is somebody
yelling at Ishmael? What does Ishmael mean? Just
read it. Just read it. Just read it. Read it, read it, read it. Read
the Bible more than you listen to the sermons on the Bible. I want you to hear that again.
If you're listening to an hour of me talk about the Bible a
week, you better be putting two to three hours of reading the
Bible in the week. That's just my say. That's what
I say. You need to get the point though. being mindful of the essence
of spiritual things, being embodied in our lives, in these bodies,
physically and mentally and spiritually, that goes against the script.
And yeah, I'm playing on words here, but it just sort of comes
too easy for me. Goes against the script of the flesh and embraces
the scripture of the spirit. Because we're reading something.
We're listening to something. And if we're listening to our
minds and the AI script that's running in there based on the
unconscious observations of this world that we've been getting
since the day we were born, the Bible says to resist it by testing through the filter
and the lens of God's Word. Testing, you may discern what
is the will of God, that which is good, acceptable, and perfect.
And we group those together. And some very high, amazing,
godly, spirit-filled men have made amazing journeys by parsing
out those three terms, and I appreciate them. Read it as it is. It's like the golden chain of
Romans 8. Read it as it is and quit trying
to make a system out of it. There's been much forbidden for
the Christian by Christian culture. Think about it for a second.
Think about the things that the Bible says we are given as a
gift that Christian culture says is wrong and sinful even if we
partake in an unsinful way. Movies, pictures, spirits, wine,
tobacco, sports. Public school, private school,
homeschool, no school. Kale. Every child here like,
we've all tried kale. Unleavened bread, leavened bread. How many rules do we have? What's
been forbidden? We have to test it. And testing
things requires tasting. I'm learning to cook. I mean,
I've been cooking for a couple of months. I got me like 11 different
recipes now that I'm trying to work. And Robyn will come in
and she'll say, what did you taste on that? How do you know
it's good? I don't know. I need some more of this. I need
some more of that. You gotta taste it. You gotta taste it. Testing requires
tasting. That's the principle. I need
to write an essay on that. Testing requires tasting of some
things. We know what poison is. We don't
test the poison. I mean, in the chemistry lab,
you know, you could tell and you could always check and there
were things that you could do with sight and odor, but you
never, you know, you have to have some intelligence. So we
don't taste poison. We don't taste things that we
know are evil. We don't taste it. We don't have
to taste them in order to test them because they're obvious. But what we think, what we need
to taste is, is it obvious? Is it obvious? Is what I know
is obviously wrong, I need to test that too. See, the conscience has different
tolerances for some people. Judgment is not to be passed
on someone else because of their tolerance or lack of tolerance.
A better way of doing that is just mind your business. You
know, I wish Paul had just said it that way. Actually, they did,
didn't they? He did say it in four or five different places.
Because what we've got to be as Christians, according to this
text, is be mindful versus mindless. We don't just mindlessly meander
through life with the security of that everything we think and
do is correct. We need to filter it and discern
it. We need to test it by continually reading the Bible in its totality,
reading these letters so that they're so normal to us, that
just like the whole album that we've learned and had all the
lyrics for so many years, and we might not can bring them to
mind, but when the song comes on, we're singing, man. I remember
this, oh yeah. And then we remember the dance,
you know? We remember the dance, we remember the moves, and a
friend of ours goes, I remember the secret handshake we used
to do, oh yeah, bro. Where'd the roller skates? Let's
get the roller skates. And then we're doing it out there
on the roller skate. I probably can't roller skate anymore, but
you know. It just comes back. Eating the Word of God, it just
comes back, it comes back, it's a promise. The Spirit of God
will bring it to mind. That's renewing the mind. We
need to be mindful, not mindless. We need to follow a thought,
we need to hear, we need to think, we need to contemplate, we need
to filter it and make a decision based on discovery, not the dictatorship
of the culture around us or the pastors in front of us. Do not
take my word for what I say. Test my words for everything
they are. In what areas are you talking?
Tippins, what are you talking about? Politics. Sexuality, marriage,
gender, entertainment, food, pleasure, family, family planning,
education, government, religion, commerce. Name it. It's there. Cultural Christianity and historical
Christianity, I think, are some of the biggest brainwashers of
the church. We just take it. Christians need
to think for themselves and not for the breeze brought ideas that so
easily blow around the wind, blow from the wind around us.
We must think and study and we must talk and consider and we
must come to conclusions that we agree on, but we must also take the idea,
the small idea that we might not always be right about those
conclusions. And when you are not coming to
my conclusions, I don't have the right to discard you because
of your understanding of things. You don't have the right to discard
me because my views don't align with yours. If we're not able
to walk together by faith in the Spirit of Christ, then forget
it. We've got no business even here today. Renewing the mind, it's not about
studying Bible things and only engaging in spiritual discussion
or theology. It's nonsense. We must have a Christian mindset
on everything. It means that we are to engage
the world and filter our thoughts about everything through the
things that we know from scripture, holistically, spiritually. One sure way of realizing that
you've probably been duped is that there's a couple of words
or a couple of sentences or a couple of passages that prove what someone
says should be a Christian worldview. at the cost of other things.
See, the spirit reveals and the spirit restores. Let me give
you some examples of things that we think about wrongly, but as
Christians we think about differently. The culture thinks about death
differently than the Christian does. We suffer the same way,
it hurts the same way, but the Christian has a different point
of view. Because as we saw several weeks ago, Christ has overcome
death, he's destroyed it. We look at suffering differently.
We look at wealth differently. We look at forgiveness differently. We look at wrath and vengeance
and benevolence and love in a different way. We look at government differently.
Our duties as citizens, as Christians. We look at the idea of money
differently. We look at marriage differently and sex differently
and children differently. But I'll tell you this, the Christian
culture has taken those three things and completely turned
them on their heads, made them antichrist. And I've been quiet
long enough about it. I've subtly taught some of those
things in the context of one-on-ones and general, but not anymore. Christians have a different view
of humanity, a different understanding of what is good and what is bad,
and what is evil, what is profitable. Christians have a different understanding
of human dignity, the Imago Dei. We understand that every human
being, no matter where they are in the world, no matter when
they were in the world, no matter what they believe in the world, bears the image
of God as a creation. We have a different point of
view on what it means to serve each other. We have a different
point of view on what it means to be equal as human beings. We understand
this because, for example, like Ephesians 2, verse 10, we are
His workmanship. created in Christ Jesus for good
works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
We have a different worldview. So God's will is complete. It's
perfect. It's lacking nothing. And there
are things in the Bible that we know we're supposed to be
doing. Let's work on those. They all boil down to one thing.
Let me give you, I know we're running low on time, but I told you it's
four hours. I'm at hour three. This is the culmination of about
Eighty-five pages of notes over the last four months, journal
entries. God's will is complete and lacking
nothing. The Word of God teaches us that we're supposed to pray,
we're supposed to meditate on prayers, pray for ourselves,
pray for others, pray for our enemies. We're supposed to learn,
we're supposed to live free, an abundant life, free. Where
the Spirit of the Lord is, there's freedom. And I'm going to tell
you, beloved, I've not been this free in my entire life as I am
today. I've never, ever, ever been this
free. I've been euphorically free.
I've been conceptually free, but I've never been this free,
and I'm thanking God for it. The Bible says we should live
in that way. We should love each other. We should worship together.
The Bible teaches us to meet each other's needs, to mutually
submit to one another as unto the Lord. Each of us, husbands,
submit to your wives. Wives, submit to your husbands.
Brothers and sisters, submit to one another as in Christ,
for this is God's will for you, you see? Mutually respect all
people, unbelievers, believers, world believers, weird believers. The Bible gives us instructions
to keep quiet, to tend to our own business, to not gain a lot
of attention from the public, to speak softly, to be patient. to work with our hands, using
our talents for the sake of bettering other people. Nowhere in the
Bible does it tell any of the believers, even the pastors of
the church, to make their thing being like the defender of the
faith stuff. See how we can take the tiny
little thing and look at the world. I mean, I've got so many,
I don't know how many thousands of connection requests I get
on social media for what? These people have nothing in
common with me. Because they got a Jesus sticker on their
head, and they think, oh, pastor, I want to connect with this guy.
And I've just been telling people, look, I broke the mold when I
entered the ministry. And you think that mold is a
little, I'm about to step on that thing. But I want nothing to do with
people who stand on the corners and berate people because of
what they're wearing. or write articles or do YouTube videos
about false doctrines and all this other kind of stuff, and
they lead people all astray. I don't want anything to do with
that. I don't want to be named in that number, because that's
not of Christ. It's not of the Spirit of God.
The Spirit of God has not told us anywhere in those things to
do those things. We're to seek restoration, not
by making someone come to their senses and do what we want them
to do or be who we want them to be, but by submitting to the
Spirit of Christ to serve them. We are to forgive or to love
others as ourselves. Love your wives as Christ loved
the church. Love your wives as you love your
own bodies. Do not exacerbate your children. Don't do anything or say anything
or posture yourself in any way that would make them angry. Oh my goodness. I mean, how am
I doing on that? Poorly, poorly, poorly. So where
in the world do I have any attention to do anything else? And these are needs that the
Bible talks about. We have needs as human beings. We worry. Scripture talks about
these psychological things. Jesus is teaching in Matthew.
I tell you, man, don't worry about your life. He didn't say
it quite like this. Don't worry about what you're
going to eat or drink. Quit being so anxious or worry about your
body or worry about your clothes. Don't worry about these things.
Is life not more than food? Is the body not more than clothes?
Look at the birds. I want you to look at the birds. I want you to be
mindful. I want you to be present, Jesus is saying. I want you to
look around the world. I want you to look out there.
Is that tree and that bird, is he fretting? I don't know if
I'm going to get worms tomorrow. No, he's just tweet, tweet, tweet. Mindfully, we have a reason,
a therefore, to renew our minds, to focus on life from a different
perspective. Our worldview is about spiritual
lives and the power and the sovereignty of God, not fixing the temporal
life, because it's not going to fix. Look, we're not going
to fix this. It's not our calling to fix this,
and it's not our problem to worry about it. We have needs to be
safe. I mean, David's Psalms, which
one wasn't about safety or a result of being safe? He
worshiped God greatly when he was safe. When he wasn't safe,
he scared and cried and talked. And then when, you know, when
he sinned, he was repentant and all that other kind of stuff.
In peace, I will lie down and sleep. For you alone, Lord, make
me dwell in safety. The name of the Lord is a strong
tower. Remember that? The song, yeah,
it's in my head too. The righteous run into it and
they're safe. Let's go. Ready? Come on guys,
stand up. Y'all know the song. Every human being needs to belong
and to be loved and to love. John 13, a new commandment, I
give you love one another as I've loved you, so you must love
one another. By this, everyone will know that you are my disciples
if you love one another. Be devoted to one another in
love. Honor one another above yourselves, Romans 12.10. We
need to have a sense in which we know who we are. Humility
is the fear of the Lord. Its wages are riches and honor
of life. Peter says in 1 Peter 5, 6, humble yourselves therefore
under the mighty hand of God that He may lift you up. I can do all this through Him
who gives me strength. And as I've just quoted Ephesians
2.10, we are God's workmanship. These are needs that we have
as human beings, as image bearers of our Father. Psalm 46.10 says, be still and know that
I am God. And I talk a lot about rest.
Rest for our bodies, rest for our minds, rest for our souls,
rest in this fight. This is a need. We can have this rest. in spurts if we renew our mind
and show up and be present, living our life through a lens of peace,
through the lens of righteousness. so that when Paul tells the church
of Colossae to set your minds on the things that are above
and not the things that are on earth. And he says the same things
to the church of Corinth. He says the same things to Philippi.
It's a constant thing. This is the point. We are focused.
And it doesn't mean theological studies or biblical studies.
It means put a filter through everything. Everything we see,
we can filter it through the sovereignty of God and his mercy
and his love for us. Therefore, therefore, therefore,
present yourself. So, beloved, present yourself
today in a place of freedom, authenticity. Three weeks ago,
I think I preached on that. We have to be who we are, and
we are the righteousness of God. We don't have to hide from one
another. We don't have to hide from our Father. Be free. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your
word and for the purposes therein that you have given us. I pray
that as we move from this moment, that as a family we would be
more intimate, that we would come to a place
of understanding each other, looking through eyes of empathy
and feeling what each other feel knowing that we are not alone,
we are not the only imposters of the bunch, we are all imposters.
Father, you are not, you are not a liar. You are not able
to lie. And you have told us the truth
concerning your son, Jesus. And you have told us the truth
of sending your spirit. And he is teaching us this very
moment. And we are at rest. And so, Father,
let us remember these things. In Christ's name, Amen.