Can you turn with me to Philippians chapter 4? And happy Father's Day for everyone. This sermon isn't about fathers, but I hope that because it's to everyone, and I guess it includes you, make sure to pick up the photo frames and the gift, and you are very appreciated. Hope you feel very loved by your family this day.

Now, we're not going to read this just yet, but I wanted to open by kind of mentioning the title of the sermon, "Where is Your Mind?" And the thought of what we're thinking upon is so much more than just the passing thoughts. The question I'm asking is more the passage we're going to be looking at, which is what are we dwelling on?

What have we been largely, regularly, deeply thinking about lately? And those are the things that are going to be very important for us to consider, especially in this day and age where we're constantly bombarded by all the noise of culture and everything that's going on. And there's not a one of us.

It doesn't matter, like if we're not on technology, we're just constantly being bombarded by so much. And we have to be made aware of this and understand that as things are coming, if we're just passively allowing these things to wash over us and there is no movement there, and then we come to God to worship and say that we surrender our lives to Him without actively surrendering our thoughts and our thinking and our dwelling and our meditating, then we are in for a losing battle.

And so I wanted to address this today, especially in the realm, I guess, of like the smartphone. Everywhere we go, everywhere we go, we have things just in us. I know a lot of us have those earbuds, constantly music and podcasts. You're in the car and you're listening to things.

It's very difficult to find yourself in a place where there's nothing to kind of bombard you with. There's that common fear nowadays where if you go to the bathroom, you don't have your phone on you. You're like, "Oh, no." You know, there's those kind of fears that are there.

And it's because of this generation that we live in. But it is not, I don't think it's the Bible's silent about it. I think the Bible has already addressed it. And we need to be made aware of this. A man by the name Alistair Begg, he says this, he says, "Our thoughts reveal more about the true character of our lives than any other thing.

When our actions follow our thinking, then we give testimony to our thoughts. But when we conceal our thoughts known only to God and ourselves, they are a true monitor of who we are and what we are." And I think that was very convicting a statement because we can very easily change our words and we can present ourselves to one another, but our thoughts are our thoughts.

What we're dwelling on, honestly speaking, I have no idea what you've been dwelling on for many of you. Some of you, yes, but not all of you. And if we're to look around, how many people know what you've been actually actively thinking on, dwelling upon? And they might not know.

On the other hand, they might know very well what you've been dwelling on, right? And that's not so much a comfort either because you're always angry, you know, or like you're always like talking about this thing that you've been dwelling on. That's not good either. And so there are these things about our thoughts that I think I wanted to just really address today because it's been something that has constantly been plaguing me, especially, not selective to, but especially the last few years and the craziness that we've been seeing around us.

So again, title of the sermon, "Where is Your Mind?" It's going to require you to ask this of yourself. Like what have you been actively dwelling on? What are these recurring thoughts, these things that have been captivating your attentions and your motivations have been being affected by your thoughts?

These things that have causing emotions to erupt inside of you, what is that? And the question that follows that is, are they appropriate to the Christian? Have they been causing in you the fruit of the Spirit? Can you say, looking at the thoughts of your heart, that this is unto God's glory?

That these thoughts are actively, I can see the change and the good that it causes in me and those around me. Let me read for us Philippians chapter 4 verse 8. "Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.

The things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things and the God of peace will be with you." Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I pray that we would be a thinking, dwelling people. But the things in which we think and dwell upon would be the things that pertain to You.

Father, help us. We're in such great need of Your care. Holy Spirit, we need You to be changing us inside. And Father, would You cause us to be people who would obediently respond. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. All right, three points today. First point is that we dwell on things.

And what I mean by this is that as humans, we dwell on things. This is just a given. And that's the word that's being talked about there at the end of verse 8 when it says, "Dwell on these things." That word dwell is think. Now this passage, it begins with, "Finally, brethren." And the reason why it's because this is kind of an umbrella term and it kind of starts to push together everything that he's been talking about.

We find that word also in the beginning of chapter 3. And so he's using it as a device to help kind of push everything together and say, "Here we go." And he says, "Finally, brethren." And he delves into these things that he calls us to think upon. Philippians chapter 1 through 3, we already saw and many of us are very familiar that the Apostle Paul is writing this in the presence of when he's in prison, right?

And so he's displaying to the church of Philippi the hope that he has and what he desires for them to have. And that's a very challenging thing for people who are living their lives to be receiving a letter from a brother who's in jail, right, who's been suffering. And for him to tell them, "Be joyful." That's so challenging, isn't it?

So challenging because you begin to look at your lives like, "What right do I have in the presence that I'm in to not be joyful when Paul's in prison saying, 'Be joyful.'" And so, but that's kind of what's going on here. And then in Philippians chapter 4 verse 1, at the beginning there, I think that imperative, "Stand firm, therefore, my beloved brethren, whom I long to see my joy in my crown.

In this way, stand firm in the Lord, my beloved." That imperative pushes off into a litany of other imperatives that I think all fall under the main imperative of stand firm. He's telling them how not to just be taken this way and that way, how to be resolute and convicted and strong and foundational.

How it doesn't matter if we're up or we're down, if we're in places of dire need or we're in places of great abundance. He's showing us what it looks like and how we're called to live unmoving and stable because of something that we have in Jesus Christ. That's where we get this.

He says, "Dwell." The word dwell is a command to us. To dwell, Paul knew that as humans we dwell on things. It's part of what it is to be humans. There are those of us who are deep thinkers. We lay down in bed before sleeping and the thoughts just like this, chasing the tail.

It's hard to turn it off. And there are those who are just like very simple-minded. You might think like, "Oh, I'm not a thinker." We're all thinkers. We all dwell on things. He's speaking into the human reality. Dwell. In the LSB, it says consider. In most other translations though, it just says think.

To think upon this list that we're going to be going into in a moment. This word dwell means to calculate or to reason over, to ponder, to remember, to bear in mind. It's something that's so important to you that you're revisiting it multiple times over and over again. It's not a passing thought.

That's not what this is saying. When he's saying, "Think upon these things," he's saying, "Go deep into it." Because as humans, going deep into things is what we do. It's something that we've deemed worthy enough or important enough to think about. It's to think about something in detail and logical manner.

Perhaps through the day we're thinking and we find ourselves browsing over the topic over the course of time. Perhaps our checkbooks will display the things that we're thinking upon. Perhaps our Google search histories will tell us the things that we're dwelling upon and thinking upon. What is it that we've been consuming?

What is it that we've been hitting over and over and over again? This is what we do as humans. I'm part of this club. It's called the Panera Sip Club. You get kind of free drinks. It's kind of cool. You go and then up through July something, I need to remember to cancel my subscription, but you go and then every two hours you get a free drink.

In the beginning, I was like, "This is wonderful." I'm like, "Oh, I got to be careful." Now I go and I just get tea, I get hot tea. There are six different teas. They're all just tea. Tea is tea to me. Coffee is coffee to me. What I found is I found myself just looking at these teas because I have to kind of change it up.

I've tried all the different teas. All these teas there, it was very interesting. None of them had strings on them. Because they don't have strings on them, they give you a tong. With these tongs, you pull it out. It's a little tea bag. You just kind of put it in scalding, like hot water.

It's really hot. Then you just let it sit there. When I first joined this club, I drank it in the beginning because I like hot tea. Then when I drink it, I'm like, "Oh, that doesn't taste like it's steeped long enough." Over time, I would figure out like, "Oh, I got to wait this much time before it's steeped enough, it's bold enough." There were times when I would come back to it three hours later and take a sip and it's really gross.

And so you'd look at it. When you look at it steeping, I think something very interesting is occurring because I think I actively saw this two weeks ago. I was just watching it. It was too hot. I was just watching my tea bag steep and I'm like, "That's my heart." That's what my heart is doing.

I was watching it. Because we have a tendency with our hearts to really easily just kind of dip into things. And whatever we dip into, whatever happens to them, nothing much happens. When we dip, it's just... It's gross. If you were to be served tea that has been just...

It's an inflation and the Panera baristas are like, "Oh, we're running out. Let me give you some tea." And they just give you a dipped tea and they hand this thing over to you and drink it. "Oh, this is not steeped long enough." And so we know that when we look at this kind of tea, there's something that happens the longer you steep inside of it.

And I think the heart is very much that. When he's saying, "Think upon, dwell, meditate, ruminate, ponder," he's saying actually steep in it because our hearts are very much connected to our thinking. In fact, when we think of our heart, when we think of what it means to give God our heart, it's not that Western understanding of emotions.

We might even know that, but I don't think we all do that. There are many of us who might come and say, "Here's my heart." And what we're displaying, what we're giving up to God, what we're surrendering are our emotions, how we feel. And so when we say, "God, change our hearts," we're asking Him to change how I feel.

But I don't think the Bible talks about the heart just as our feelings. In fact, it's threefold. It talks about the heart in the Bible as being emotions, your affections and your feelings, but it also talks about your heart as being your will. Those are your actions or your behavior.

It's the manifestations. It's what you do, that your heart is very much connected to intention. And then your mind, and that's what we're talking about here in this word, your thinking, your logic, and your rationale, and all three of these things are intricately tied to your heart, and they together make up your heart, and you cannot pull them apart from each other.

They all affect each other. And so when we give up our hearts to God, it's all of it. Now with your emotions, for example, then, how does it connect with your will? Well, it connects with your will very clearly because when you're depressed, like what your behavior looks like and how you act, the things you do, the decisions you make, all those things become very much affected, don't they?

Depression will definitely affect your actions. If you're in fear, it's going to cause you to act rashly or cautiously maybe. If you're happy, it's going to cause you to act generously. When you're sad, maybe selfishly. So you begin to base so much of your will and intention on how you feel.

Your emotions, though, also affect your thinking. It's not difficult to see this. Just talk to any lovesick person. Their hearts are so emotional, so filled with feeling that they begin to talk nonsense, right? And then it affects the way they live and it affects the way they think. The love of their life started dating someone else and gets married to someone else.

And then just look at that person and see how it affects their thinking. I will never get married. I will never be happy ever again in my life. I am going to die alone and a loser. And you're like sitting there, you're like, "What are you talking about right now?" You see like your affections begin to change your thinking.

All this to say, your thinking, and because that's what we're talking about today, the thinking, the thinking actually affects your will. And the thinking actually affects your emotions. Because this all has to do with the control center of the human being, the heart. In Philippians chapter 4, verse 8, let's look at it again.

"Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell, think, meditate, ruminate upon the things that were just written above." This is a command. And this necessitates a couple of things because number one, if it's a command, it's a command.

It's a command from God. He's telling you to do this. It's not something where he says, "Think about it," and then go like, "Okay, like come back to me when you want to obey or not." He's saying, "Obey this." It is an expectation upon us. We must dwell on these things.

But also, a second thing that comes up with this is that we're given a choice. I think that's very clear too. We're given this choice there to obey or to disobey. The command is here because of the threat that there is to the human mind. In 2 Corinthians chapter 4, verse 4, it says, "In whose case the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God." Now, he could have easily have said, the Apostle Paul here, "In whose case the God of this world has blinded the eyes or the heart." Or he could have just said, "He's blinded them." But he specifically says, "He's blinded the minds of the unbelieving." Why?

"So that they might not see the light of the gospel." And then he says something very interesting, "Who is the image of God." So what that means is there's something intricately connected with our thinking and with our sight, right? With our thinking, with what we perceive to be reality.

It's not disconnected. And so when we fill our thoughts with something, will it not affect us? Of course it will. That's why our affections are changed. That's why sometimes we know something is right or wrong, and we will continue to do maybe what is wrong, even though we know in our thought process that this is wrong.

It affects us. Here it's saying that Satan is blinding the minds of the unbelieving people so that they wouldn't see the light of the gospel. And they have no choice in the matter. They're blind. In Psalm 115 verse 4, see what happens to the unbelieving people. Their idols are silver and gold, the work of man's hands.

They have mouths, but they cannot speak. They have eyes, but they cannot see. They have ears, but they cannot hear. They have noses, but they cannot smell. They have hands, but they cannot feel. They have feet, but they cannot walk. They cannot make a sound with their throat. Those who make them will become like them.

I wanted to highlight that. Those who make these idols will become like them, everyone who trusts in them. I like to think about this as like the unbelieving way of sanctification. It's like the believer's way of sanctification where we're going to look at that in just a moment where we're sanctified into the image of Christ, but with the unbelieving people, those who make them will become like them.

Now let me turn our attentions here to the believer because the believer can see, right? We have seen the light of the gospel. We have seen the glory of Christ. We have seen all these things, and this is our reality. So 2 Corinthians 4, verse 16, "Therefore," it says, "we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day.

For momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal." And verse 18, we come across a choice because this is talking to the believer, and he's saying we look not at the things which are seen.

That is actually our reality. We are people of light, and we're thinking, "But at the things which are not seen," right? The eternal things. So right before this, in 2 Corinthians 3, he says, "But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, justice from the Lord, the Spirit." Now I bring up all this because for the believer, there is an intentional choice we can make to behold and to see and to think, to ruminate upon and to dwell on.

And there's something about the clearer sight that we have of God that causes us to become more like Him. Now my question to you is this, what happens when the believer, not the unbeliever, when the believer chooses to dwell upon the worldly things? What's going to happen? Well for the unbeliever, it says, "They become like them." What about the believer?

Something to think about there. And so what we're called to hear with this idea of the mind is to, when we say we want to give God our whole hearts, we need to give Him everything we're thinking, everything we've been thinking. Every thought is His. And this is powerful because I think what many times what we try to do is give Him our feelings.

We say, "Here it is, change it." And we have our hands up, I say, "I surrender." But how can God take a portion of your heart? He can only take all of it, right? He only demands all of it, right? We cannot say, "Change this," but I get to think upon the things I want to think upon.

Change me despite me. Is that how sanctification works? No, it works in obedience to what's happening. And the scriptures tell us how that looks. That's why in Matthew 22, verse 37, it says, "You shall love the Lord your God." He could have stopped there. Actually, how sad a thing it is that He can't stop there.

He has to describe what it is to love. This should be a given to us, but He describes it with all your heart, and He describes it some more with all your soul, and with all your mind. We can just look at this and be like, "Hey, let's wipe this all together," and just be like He just wants all of us.

True, but let's take this time to think about it. It's all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. Let's consider the mind because it's part of your heart. And so to dwell is a command to us to think in a different way because it affects our hearts and it's mentioned quite frequently in Scripture if we were to look at it.

Colossians chapter 3, verse 1, "Therefore, if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your," not heart, but set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. Romans 8, 5, "For those who are according to the flesh, set their minds on the things of the flesh.

Those who are according to the things of the Spirit, for the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace. Because the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God, for it does not subject itself to the law of God, for it is not even able to do so.

And those who are in the flesh cannot please God." Romans 12, 2, "And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your," again, it's your mind, "so that you may prove what is the will of God, that which is good and acceptable and perfect." Even taking a moment to look at this, "That so that will show you that you cannot discern what is good and acceptable and perfect unless your mind is being renewed." Second Corinthians 10, 3, "For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh.

For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. And we are ready to punish all disobedience whenever your obedience is complete." It's talking about speculations, it's talking about knowledge, it's talking about taking every thought captive.

There's a lot that has to do with this. And there are a lot of like, by the way, this isn't like a word study where all of these words are the same words, but these words are very intricately coming together to show us the importance of our minds. So what have you been thinking on?

What have you been dwelling upon? What's been circulating? Have Christian godly thoughts been things we dip into like this? I'm going to list out some things that maybe, I tried to get a wide array here, maybe it's music. And music has been so, especially with the invention of the smartphone and wireless capabilities with our earbuds, it's pretty crazy.

You can now like put in your earbuds and be listening to music or even podcasts or whatever, right? These could be good things. You're listening to it and then you get in the car and it automatically sometimes connects to your car. Seamless, seamless transition. You just keep listening. And it's almost hard nowadays to get the quiet, right?

Fashion. We could be distracted and thinking upon fashion. This is not something I very much, for me it's like maybe like more like gadgetry. What kind of lump these things all together? We go into these things and we go on websites and we just start scrolling and looking and researching.

And many of us know the lyrics to songs, 50 of them, or the capabilities of these gadgets or the latest trends so much more in a deeper way than we know scripture, right? It's kind of sad, but like there is a lot of that where we're able to kind of push out these things really quickly.

Why? Because we've been dwelling on those things. Have we been dwelling on the things of God like we dwell on these things? I'm just pushing these things out, okay? By the way, this isn't like guilt trip time. This is like, "Hey, let's just really think about what we've been thinking about." Movies, getting lost in these imaginary worlds.

I know there are some movies that when you're in it, when you come out of it, you're like dazed because you feel like you've been in a different world for three hours. But there's a lot of this I thought was like so interesting. When my wife and I were watching like one of, I think it was the latest Spider-Man movie, somebody told us we needed to know, or we read it somewhere or something, we needed to know all the other 50 Spider-Man movies that were out there.

And so we're like, "How are we supposed to do that?" And then I remember looking up one of the recap things, but they were like, they would go for like ever. You know where you scroll and then that little bar thing goes only a little? Like, "Oh my gosh, this thing's really long." And so somebody sent us a YouTube video, and the YouTube video of recaps of all the other movies was like an hour and a half long.

I'm like, "What is this?" And it's just, we can get lost in these worlds even. Shows, dramas, many people are into K-dramas and it sucks you in. You weep like no tomorrow over some scene. You look at these things and when it ends, you feel like your friends have died.

They're gone. Like we're so deep into these things because we're dwelling. We're ruminating, we're meditating. We've allowed our hearts to steep in it. I'm not saying it's wrong to do these things. I'm just saying, "Hey, can we travel together here and wonder what it is that we've been dwelling upon?" Video games.

Is this too like childish to talk about video games here? I don't think so because video games goes up to old ages now. Video games, so many things. As a youth pastor, I remember just being like, "What is happening?" Is there like, there isn't a world. I know I'm like, I'm still a young guy but like so quickly everything was changing.

I remember one of the girls, my former youth students was like talking about a cat game where there's like a living room and you make this living room look really pretty and then cats come and they hang out and then they leave. And she said like, "Yeah, yeah, I have a problem Pastor Nate because I bought something." I'm like, "What do you mean you bought something?" She said, "I bought this couch." I'm like, "What do you mean you bought a couch?

It's a video game." She's like, "Yeah, you spent real money to buy a couch on this game?" She's like, "Yeah, but look at it though." And she was like, "I'm thinking about it too much." A few weeks later she came up and she's like, "I deleted the whole thing." I'm like, "Why?" She was like, "I was thinking too much about it." I'm like, "Oh my gosh, we think so much about these things." I'm right there.

I'm right there with it because there was a time like I was really into like fantasy football and fantasy basketball and things like that. I'd be constantly thinking about it, constantly look up all the stats and it sucks you in. One line, isn't it, between the dwelling, leisure, what about travel and vacation?

For those close enough to taste it, what about retirement? What it might be like? Curating the best experiences that we can think of, devoting hours and hours, putting up, "Okay, I'm going here. Rex, please." And then we spend much time just looking at all the good places to eat, all the ways that we can succumb to every fleshly pleasure.

We're like just constantly thinking, "What are the best things that we can get out of this world?" I'm not saying this is wrong, but we're all in this. We're like goldfish in this water. This is all around us, devoting hours and hours, fantasizing, weeks after weeks, months after months, years after years.

That's my place I want to go to before I die. For me, it's New Zealand. That's where I want to go, ruminating, meditating, and dwelling, even more so than heaven? You know, like there's a lot that we have to think about here. In Hebrews 12, verse 1, it says, "Since we have, therefore, so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us." And let me take a moment here to remind us of what came before in Hebrews 11.

That he's saying, "Think about these cloud of witnesses of faith," right? And he reminds us of what they walked and what they went through and how that ended in their lives. They died for their faith. Okay. We take this back into our lives, and we're looking at this Hebrews 12, verse 1.

"We have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us who have such great things." And then he says, "Let us also lay aside every encumbrance." And then we think, like, what are our encumbrances? How sad. How sad that it's sports and leisure and vacations. You know what I'm saying?

Do you guys feel what I'm saying? That here, he's saying, "We must lay aside every encumbrance and the sin," so both things, things that might distract us, "which so easily entangles us." In 2 Timothy 2, verse 4, "No soldier in active service entangles himself in the affairs of everyday life, so that he may please the one who enlisted him as a soldier." Now, be careful here.

He's not saying it's wrong to entangle yourself in the affairs of everyday life. He's saying it's wrong for the soldier, right? It's not wrong to take a nap, but it is if you're in the midst of war and you're the watchtower guy, right? It's being aware of reality. It's not wrong to partake in the things of this world.

But we can't live in that, right? Why? Because we're saying a war is raging around us. We just completed 1 Peter. We are saying there is a lion here that has been uncaged, and he is prowling. How are we on our phones? We're staring at this prowling lion, aren't we?

You don't need to tell me twice. I'm looking, because this is our reality. Like I don't think this is a place where he's telling us to dwell on these good things. He is not sitting there telling us on all the bad things not to dwell on, right? We have to pull this all out, because we have to think about this, because of how it's affecting us.

How much of us has gone into dwelling upon these worldly things that many of them aren't in themselves bad or evil, but we can very clearly say that we have gotten caught up in the affairs of everyday life, that we are getting tripped up by the encumbrances that are near.

And so the command to us to dwell on the good things is a command also negatively to say stop dwelling on those things. They're a necessary two sides of the coin thing. What about security things? Politics? It's like it's overused now, but CNN or Fox, right? But I think nowadays it's like, "Oh, I'm not going to get caught this way or that way.

I'm going to be more balanced," and we found our independent news sources. Same thing though. Find yourself dwelling, meditating on all these independent sources, constantly perusing and feeling the need to stay up to date with everything that's happening in this world. The thought of, "Oh, what about like children, the security of our children that we're getting caught up dwelling on their futures and their success, their safety, because this world is going down the drain." Relationships, what about are we dwelling on friendships, investing in the realm of pleasing man over God?

What about romantic relationships, dwelling so much on certain individuals or dwelling on the need to date or to get engaged or get married? What about personal reputation? Also in the Christian sense that we can seek security in establishing something in front of others, establishing relationships amongst peers or the church.

What about our careers, so invested in moving up the ladder, growing not in godly ambition in career, but clearly and fleshly ambition in career, letting it bleed into the way we feel about ourselves and how we present to others. Have we been dwelling in these things? What about our money?

Have we been dwelling in money? Yeah, Bitcoin and Ethereum, you've been like, "No, don't talk about that today. I'll bring it out." You're in big trouble, right? We've got to just ride it out. We just got to ride it out. That's your hope. You just got to hope. Just got to ride it out.

What a lame hope. Don't look at your 401k. But is that what we've been dwelling on? We're looking at it and we're stressed about these things. First John chapter 2 verse 15, he says, "Do not love the world, nor the things in the world." Now, if we were commanded in Matthew 22, where all the commandments are, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind." When he says, "Do not love the world," it means do not love the world with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind as well.

If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. And he's saying then that there is no arbitrary place. There is no neutral ground that if you do not love God and the things of God, then you are loving the world and the things of the world.

If you are not dwelling on God and the things of God, then you are dwelling on the things of the world and the things that it has to offer. He says in verse 16, "For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world.

The world is passing away, and also its lusts. But the one who does the will of God lives forever." What have you been dwelling on? Have you been dwelling on how bad the world is? Chiming in with the chorus that this world is going down the drain. How everything is wrong.

Hypocritical judgment is going out. Able to point out how wrong everyone else is. To grab the people that we like to grab and say, "Boom! Look at what he said. Let's see how wrong he is." And we continue pounding that drum. And we continue bringing things in, into our world.

And building these things up where we're saturating ourselves and we're steeping in that. Is that what you want to steep on? Perhaps we've grown angry and constantly frustrated that there is no place of Christian joy that unmarks us. When people look at us, they go, "Ah, that guy's always just not happy." Mouth opens, complaining comes out.

Remember, this is the thought. What about if you're able to keep your mouth shut? What would your heart speak? Ultimately, it's only in a place of humility, right, where you begin to see where you've been dwelling on the right things and not the wrong things. You could say all the right things, but if you're coming from the wrong place, the whole thing is wrong.

We'll address that a little bit more too. What have you been dwelling on? Have you been dwelling on sexually immoral things? Now we can get into the realm of sinful stuff. What do you think is going to happen when you're steeping in pornography? What do you think is going to happen when you're constantly dwelling on things and you're having to justify it's okay to watch this show despite the questionable morals, despite the questionable scenes, and just look and be like, "No, but it's okay." What do you think is going to happen to your heart when it's all connected?

You cannot pull those things apart. So many things. Now here's the cool thing about today's passage. It doesn't say anything about what I just said, right? All the things we might have been steeping on. The cool thing about today's passage is not just pounding about everything that we're doing wrong.

It's saying, it's reminding, it's commanding us to look at that which is beautiful. This is important. So when we look at all the wrong things, it might not produce the righteousness of God in you. For the unbeliever, they become like them. Their minds are blinded. For the believer, we are given a choice to dwell and to ruminate on these things.

Now as a quick side note, we're not talking about positive thinking, Robert Shuler stuff, okay? We're not thinking like we have to, positive thinking is going to change us. It's not that. We're talking about the word of God. So let's go to the second point. We must dwell on godly things.

So we know that we're all dwellers. We're all dwelling on something. I hope we're in agreement with that. We're all dwelling on something. Now he's telling us what to dwell on. And here's the list. And whenever he gives a list, remember that he is giving special attention to each thing on the list.

It's not for us to say like, good things, godly things, let's just dwell on that. That's the command to us. No. If we're supposed to think and ruminate and meditate and saturate and seep and steep and dwell on these things, then we have need to engage our minds and to look at each of these words.

And I know that our minds have become very American, like couch potato minds when it comes to the things of God's word. I know that because when I came back to this passage and I was looking at each word again, I had to exercise my mind again because I had forgotten.

So we have to go into each one of these. True, that's the first one. True. That means pertaining to being real and not imaginary. That sounds so simple. Pertaining to being real and not imaginary. There have been people I've counseled who are like, well, like how do I know God loves me?

Because it says God loves you. Right? It's just, there are certain things about faith. It's like, but how do I want God? But it's just like, well, do you want him? These things about faith, it's like, well, do you believe it? You know, faith is an amazing thing because it's that perfect intersection between just believing and then everything just becoming a reality as a result of that.

Right? Because there's a surrender to that thought. So when we're saying that, when Paul is saying that we must dwell on true things, we have to ask ourselves what is true? What is real? What is not imaginary? There's a report done and it was, whatever. I don't care about the results.

You know, you can like make this the results of any survey, however you want. But they were polling a bunch of people and saying, what are the things that you're worried about? Like you have deep anxiety over it. And they would write it in, turn it in. And then they arbitrarily figured out like, oh, only 8% of those people had anxieties that were actually of concern.

The other 92% was not really a concern. And that was an arbitrary thing. But it's still an interesting thing because when we were to ask ourselves the question, the things that we're anxious about, how much of that pertains to what we believe to be truth and reality versus lies?

Right? You know what I'm saying? No? I got some blank eyes, so. Because when we steep ourselves in the truths of God, like our very reality changes, doesn't it? Right? When we're looking at the things of God and we're thinking about the things of God, I'm not saying that we can come doctrinally to the correct conclusions.

But when we're steeping in it, something is different. My home church where I grew up in, it was a lot more elderly people. So I was at the hospital every month, and many, many deathbed visits. And it was incredibly sobering to me. One of the interesting things is, you know that thing where we say, if somebody is going through a difficult time, don't say, "Trust God." You know what I'm saying?

Because it might be kind of insensitive. And that's true. We have to be careful. Right? But there's something about it where it's like, but that's the truth, though. And so somewhere in the midst of that conversation or one day, like if that person refuses to trust God, we have to be able to say, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart.

Do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will keep your path straight." Because that's the conclusion that we believe in. That's the truth. Right? But what was really sobering to me was when I'd go to these deathbeds of some of these individuals who have been walking with Christ for decades, I would go, and you know what happened?

In a place where I would have to, I should be telling them, "Trust God." They were looking at me, young man, and said, "Trust God." These people have been steeping in this truth. It has become their reality. This is their truth. And they're not just saying it because it's a doctrine to them.

They're saying it because it is the truth. It's real. And they've been ruminating on it. And like a teabag, they've been steeping in it over and over and over and over again. So when you're a kid, it could be a cut finger that makes your whole life turn around.

Later on in life, it could be cancer. But they've grown in this and steeping in the truth. Think about the truth of God. What would happen to us if we stopped believing in the lies of the enemy and the lies that the world is trying to say? What would happen to us?

When the world says, "You must buy this thing." We know in here, "No, I don't. Stop trying to trick me. I don't need that." And then we keep clicking on it. We're resolved for one month, but in three months, there's our car, sparkly, right in the front of our house.

We know, but what do we dwell on? We might know, and then we start dwelling on those things, and look at what happens. We know, and we must dwell on these things. What's going to happen when you dwell on these truths? If God is for us, then who can be against us?

How will that actually paint our reality? How will that change our hearts? How would it change our hearts if we believe in this truth for to us to live is Christ and to die is gain? If we were to ruminate in the truth, the world is passing away and all that is in it, unbelievers are today perishing.

We're dwelling and steeping in that truth. How will our hearts change? How will our wills and our motives and our intentions and our behavior and our thoughts and our affections, how would we change as people? Now, this is a sanctification. What about what is honorable? What is honorable? See, we have this thought of like, "Hey, your feelings do not dictate the truth." The Word of God, the truth is the truth.

God tells you what is true. We look at these things and we move into what is honorable, this idea of what is pertaining to appropriate or good or dignified or respectable things. Now we go into a realm of truth that shows you actually what is good, things that are worthy of respect or of good character.

Some translations say noble things, elevated things. I like the way Steve Lawson, a word he uses. He says lofty things. I love that word. High things, majestic things. So let's take a moment, look the other way. He's saying not the trashy things of the world, not the mundane things, the temporal things of the world, not the trivial things.

He's saying do not dwell upon the things that are just kind of passing away. He is saying look and dwell and think about the eternal things, the lofty things. Because if we believe it in here and we're just kind of thinking about it, "Yeah, I agree with that," and we're doing the Christian head nod and we're not dwelling on it, what do we think is going to come about as a result?

Every once in a while dipping into that water. What is honorable? Think of what you're reading, partaking in when no one else is looking, what you watch on TikTok, articles you're clicking into, what images you linger on, what things that you fantasize about. Are these things honorable things? See, he's not telling you what not to look at, he's telling you what to look at.

If we're coming and saying like, "Well, I'm allowed to," but what he's saying is, "Well, not like what I'm not allowed to do," he's saying like, "Look at the things that are good and dwell on those things." Because when you dwell on those things, these things fade. That's the point.

We're called not to let dishonorable things control our thoughts. When we steep on the honorable, our hearts change, our reactions change, and it shows us the moments of reaction where we've been steeping. Now, those moments of reactions are many. One of them, I think it's familiar with a lot of us, like the freeway, you go on the freeway and then like as soon as someone cuts you off, it shows you how you've been walking with the Lord.

I'm very convinced of this. Not when you're with your family or with somebody else in the car, but when you're by yourself. That when you're ruminating and mulling and steeping on the things that are lofty and honorable and good, respectable, noble, just these things that are of God, someone cuts off, what's going to come out?

That shows you where your heart has been steeping. Do not let yourself be fooled into thinking that you can believe yourself to be a double-minded person, that with a group of people, you can say all these lofty things about God, and then in these situations, in these places of the hidden heart, there aren't honorable things going on.

That's not right, and you cannot give that kind of heart to God. He will not accept it. What is right, the ESV says what is just, the things that are right, that which are morally right, the holy things that conform to God's commands. So often I think we are righteous upholders of God's law.

Hey, God doesn't need us to like defend who he is. We are just called to show people who God is by our lives and through the word. He does not need defending. On right things, to think upon right things, we must not laugh along with jokes against God, to root along with storylines of immorality, to partake in the things, to dwell upon the things and say like, "It's my Christian liberty." Because here he's saying dwell.

It's a present continuous, continuously every day, steeping, ruminating, mulling on the right things of God. Just a word. My kids, I'm going to stop using names because I realize I should stop using my kids' names. There's three of them so you could guess. There's one kid who comes and this person comes and tattles and says, "Oh, this other person in my home has done this." Right?

And then they're, "You know, I see this and as this individual," this is kind of hard, "I have two girls, so I'll just say she." Oh, okay, well, that's that. All right. Okay. So when she's like, "Oh, this person did this." Like, it's actually a good thing that she told me this because that thing was like dangerous or wrong or something like that, right?

So I would have to like go and address this. But the problem is this, and if you're a parent, you might be familiar with this. When this person comes like, "This person did this." You know, right? It's like the attitude in which she comes is like, it's really like bad.

So ugly. There are times when like when they act like that, like I actually audibly just want to go like, "Ugh." She's saying the right things, she did the right thing to tell me, but she's like, "He did this." Oh, okay. Okay. So Addy tattles on Hudson a lot.

It's like every day right now. Okay. Oh, well. All right. But you see what I'm saying, right? When we're dwelling on right things, it's like we can like just say the right things, we can do the right things and all this kind of stuff, but that's not actually a person who has been steeping their heart in right things.

It looks so different. The love, the kindness, the grace, and even the rebuke and the exhortations and the wrath looks very different. Oh, man, if you're a parent and you've ever had to discipline your child, you can say the right things. You can say, "This is who God is." And if you use that to punitively take out your anger upon the person, that is expressly wrong.

The heart, the medium is everything. So that when the truth comes out, that's good. What about the pure things? Pertaining to being without moral defect or blemish and pure. Purity of thought, purity of purpose, sexual purity. There is no disjointedness in a person, it's integrity. It's someone who's virtuous and wholesome, somebody who's without impurity, unmixed with filth.

And so we can't think like we have to try to get a little better at this. The standard that's being talked about here is God's standard of purity, to dwell upon absolute purity, not just getting better. Do you see what I'm saying? It's not that we're trying to make ourselves pure.

I'm saying dwell upon the pure things of God. Other ways, stop looking at the garbage, the trashy things of the world. What about the lovely things? To dwell upon the lovely things is pertaining to that which causes people to be pleased with something. It is something that inspires love.

There's an attractiveness to us, again, because there is no disjointedness. There is no hypocrisy in this. There's a person who says something and lives it out. There's nothing more ugly than somebody who says all these things but lives in a different way, right? It's just so unattractive when you see something like that.

But somebody who, like for believers, we must be people who are lovely because not only are we saying all the right things but our conduct and our behavior and our way of life looks just like the rest of the world. Is that what's gonna be lovely in the eyes of the people?

No. In the eyes of the people that we must look lovely because not only are we saying that the things of the world are passing away, we are now partaking in those things because we believe it. And so our lives become lovely. It inspires awe of love in people and wonder.

Okay. Well, there's three more. Good repute, things that are excellent and praiseworthy, and I'll let you do the work. Now, there are plenty of us who can talk about each of the items on this list. But the Christian is not just someone who's able to occasionally pull this out and let's talk about it, right?

Like pure things. Can we have Christian like talk about it? We can even debate it. We can even try to persuade ourselves of the truth of God's Word. But the Christian is not somebody who's able to just talk about the things of God. Their lives talk about it almost.

It's almost kind of like that. The lives talk about it. Our lives become a testing to the things that are being said. We have to say them, but our lives do not give us away. It supports it. We steep, we meditate, we dwell on lofty, godly, beautiful things. And so we ourselves are becoming godly and beautiful.

We must dwell on these things and allow the Word of God to richly dwell in us. If we're not dwelling in these truths, you know what's happening? We're just steeping in the Word of God for one second every morning. We're wondering, "Why isn't it changing me?" We just come in.

It's not going to change you. If we're not dwelling in the Word of God, then we're not allowing the Word of God even a chance to look into us and examine our hearts. This is the difference between someone who is walking with God and someone who has facts about God swirling around the brain.

This is the difference between someone who is academic and scholarly concerning the things of the world and then somebody who is abiding in Him and thinking about and knowing about God on an intimate level. And I believe that this is the problem with many Christians and churches today of which we ourselves, by the way, are not innocent.

Especially as individuals, we are not innocent to these things. And it's been grieving in recent years, not because of what the world has looked like. Can you guys agree with me on this one? That we're not grieving that just the world looks like this. The Bible has already told us what the world is and where the world is headed and what it's going to be like.

And we see the sin in us. I think that's what's been happening in our society nowadays without getting too deep into this. Wondering if this is why the words that are being used, the things that are being said sound so similar to the unbelieving and secular world and how they would respond and speak into those same things.

And of course, there's the, "But for God's glory and to the glory of Christ are added in there at the end." But just like somebody who would come up and say all the right things but has not been steeping in it, I wonder if perhaps that's why we look so much like the world.

I believe that even Christians have been dwelling, meditating, steeping and saturating in social media and stories and articles and friends and things that are ultimately man-centered and not God-centered. And so the results, though if you thought about those things in an appropriate way, the results would be godly. The results come out looking the way we see it today.

And it's a spectrum. I'm not saying here's the line and we place everyone here or we place everyone here. That's just not good to do. These taglines of reparation and reconciliation, representation and repentance. All of these things in themselves, not wrong. Maybe some things that must be and should be considered, though I think that today has hijacked it, but it reveals and exposes what we've been dwelling upon, the things central to God or not.

I believe that many of us have been dwelling on these things. Now, I'll take it to a third and last point, we must practice what we must dwell on. Verse 9, he continues by saying, "The things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me," he says, "practice these things." This means to do or to carry out or to perform.

This means that the things that he calls us to think about, now you must go and do because these things, again, are not separated things. These are interrelated things. That when we say we believe something, if our actions do not follow, then we do not really believe those things.

That this is because when we give our hearts, we give him everything about who we are. Our hearts is not something we rip out of our chest and say, "Here's my body, here's my flesh, and here you go." It's saying that I give you all that I am and so the practicing follows.

And so he says, "All that you've learned and received and heard and seen, practice. Do it over and over and over again." So dwell on these things over and over and over again. Dwell on the things that are of God. Dwell on the good and lofty and beautiful things.

Dwell on the way in which that it would reveal to your own heart how you are, what you're like, how much you're in need of repentance, what God has done for you so that when you go out into the world, you become a steeped person. You become someone who has been changed.

You are someone who is not just espousing a bunch of things and you're angry all the time and you're frustrated all the time. I was so frustrated last week and I know I was so frustrated because I saw what I was ruminating upon. I was on Twitter a little bit too much last week.

But I had to catch myself and come back and I was so thankful for this passage. It reminded me, remember God. Remember the state of the world before God. Remember who he is. And then from there, out of the proper thinking, he says, "Practice." I think this is where a lot of talking needs to happen between us.

How are we going to do this? And he concludes at the end, he says, "And the God of peace will be with you." And I love that because he tags it at the end. He did that, by the way, a few verses earlier. "And the peace of Christ will be with you." Don't we many times come before God in prayer asking for peace?

Because our hearts are in such turmoil? Honestly what we're saying is we're emotionally in disturbance, right? We're saying, "Change that." And yet we're refusing to stop reading articles. You know what I mean? Like, I'm not saying it's wrong to read the articles. Like, just dwelling and thinking about these over and over again.

You're wondering, "God, help me. Help me to be more humble. Help me to be more like this. Help me to be more like you." And then we're just constantly looking at these things. "God, please help me to do these things and watch some more TV. Please help me to do these things." And if we're to sit back and stop and look at the whole of our lives and ask ourselves, what have we been steeping on?

Where is our mind? Please, today, would you take some time to consider where your minds have been? Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones, his last thing, long quote, he says, "Faith, according to our Lord's teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, is primarily thinking. The whole trouble with a man of little faith is that he does not think.

He allows circumstances to bludgeon him. That is the real difficulty in life. Life comes to us with a club in its hand and strikes us upon the head, and we become incapable of thought, helpless and defeated. The way to avoid that, according to our Lord, is to think. We must spend more time in studying our Lord's lessons in observation and deduction.

The Bible is full of logic, and we must never think of faith as something purely mystical. We do not just sit down in an armchair and expect marvelous things to happen to us. That is not Christian faith. Christian faith is essentially thinking. Look at the birds. Think about them.

Draw your deductions. Look at the grass. Look at the lilies of the field and consider them. The trouble with most people, however, is that they will not think. Instead of doing this, they sit down and ask, "What is going to happen to me? What can I do?" That is the absence of thought.

It is surrender. It is defeat. Our Lord here is urging us to think and to think in a Christian manner. That is the very essence of faith. Faith, if you like, can be defined like this. It is a man insisting upon thinking when everything seems determined to bludgeon and knock him down in an intellectual sense.

The trouble with the person of little faith is that instead of controlling his own thought, his thought is being controlled by something else. As we put it, he goes round and round in circles. That is the essence of worry. That is not thought. That is the absence of thought, a failure to think.

I want to conclude by, because it's Father's Day, just the last point of application. Fathers, this is the most important thing for us as fathers in this room, to be people who dwell on the good things of God. Take time to really think about what you've been dwelling on.

It could be the obviously distracting things, but it could also be the things that you're trying to give which are kind of good to the children. Just like how when we steep our hearts, it's going to shape us and change us, as fathers, as husbands, it is going to shape and change our families as well.

It's going to happen. As we go, our families go. As we go, our wives will go. They are called to submit to us. As we go, the children are called to obey us. If you have not been dwelling on the things of God, it is expressly important for us, every father in this room, to say, "Today, as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord." Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for your truths, and we pray, God, for more of your spirit to come and help us, that your spirit might richly allow the word of God to dwell within us, but God, that it would not be simply mystical, but that we would be doing the work of coming before you, of giving to you all our thoughts and everything we've been meditating and looking and thinking and dwelling upon, and God, to surrender to you and say, "God, all this is yours." Would you take our entire hearts today?

In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen.