Happy Tuesday to everyone. We've got a good number gathered together online here. Glad to see all of you. It's great to see so many chiming in on the chat box and greeting one another on this beautiful morning here in Arizona. wherever you may be or whenever you may be listening to this. We're glad that we're able to share together in an hour of Bible study. We've got a single topic that we're going to be looking at this morning. I mentioned in our update earlier today that we're going to be looking at how to discipline our thought life as Christians. We're going to be thinking specifically about how to kind of control the more random things that go on in our minds. And surely this is something that all of us would be able to relate to or confess that we struggle with. Maybe those that do not struggle with it do so because they don't realize the need to struggle in this area. And I want to begin by kind of setting the table, helping us think biblically about our responsibility with regard to our thought life. and then offer some categorizations for the types of things that we think about. And then I hope some practical ways in order to discipline our mind. Now, I do want to say before we get very far into our session today, that we're going to be thinking particularly about how to discipline our minds in kind of productive, God-honoring ways. And yet this topic is so large that there are a number of different applications that we could make of it that I'm not going to have time to delve into today. I'm thinking particularly about the ways that this topic relates to depression, to kind of chronic discouragement, even despair. We could relate this to struggles with assurance. We could relate this to anxiety over external circumstances in our lives, whether they're personal circumstances or more global or national situations that cause us fear and anxiety. I'm not going to really get into those matters today, but I would commend this material to you as a starting point for thinking about mental discipline in those areas, because it's very, very important that we believe what God says is true and that we speak what God says is true back to ourselves. We need, in many of these cases, regardless of the sin or the struggle that we're thinking about, we need to stop listening to ourself and start preaching God's truth to ourselves. Start preaching the gospel to ourselves as our beloved brother and teacher, Jerry Bridges, taught us to do. With that in mind, I just want to acknowledge there's a lot more that could be said, needs to be said about questions of depression, discouragement, anxiety, but today we want to think just a little bit more broadly about the principles involved in the mental discipline of the believer, and then ways maybe to constructively work toward a more disciplined thought life. So that's where we're going. God willing to allow us strength for the hour. Let's go ahead and bow and ask his blessing and prayer, and then we'll get right into our study together. Gracious God and Father, thank you so much for the blessing of this morning, for the opportunity to meet together online, to record this teaching, O Lord, that we hope and pray will be useful to others of your saints in days and weeks to come. We're grateful, Father, for every occasion that we are able to open the scriptures. And we pray this day as we do so, that your spirit would open our minds and our hearts, Lord, that we would not be calloused, that we would not be uncaring. but that we would be sensitive to your word, that we would be eager to know, that we would be diligent to believe and to do what you teach. Oh, God, we're talking today about a difficult matter, how to discipline the thoughts of our heart. And we pray, God, that you would bless us in this endeavor, that you would help us, that we might glorify you in our heart and in our minds. Oh God, we thank you for Jesus, our Savior, whose life and death and resurrection, whose continual intercession as our prophet, priest, and king is our comfort and joy. Please forgive our sins, strengthen us in all that is good, and bless us this day, we pray in Jesus, our Savior's name. Amen. Now this question that we're gonna be looking at today actually came in maybe two or three months ago. It's been in the queue for a long time and it's one that I've wanted to talk about for a long time and yet it just continually got postponed with other things. Some things that I felt were more urgent and we wanted to get to the point where we could do this topic justice. I don't know that we'll do it justice today but we're gonna try and do at least an adequate treatment of it, an adequate job with regard to the conversation. So here's the question as it was sent in, slightly adapted. The writer says, I am wondering about how best to fight against thought sins. An easy and specific example might be those days in church where my mind seems to wander frantically all over the place. But of course, these thought sins are everywhere. Jealousy, anger, lust, pride, et cetera. I hear plenty of practical discussion about how to fight against sinful physical acts, such as removing internet access on your phone to resist pornography, but very little practical advice about how to resist the sins of the mind. I really appreciate this question because I do think that many of the things that we struggle against We address them in terms of practical sanctification, almost as if there is an external habit change that can really help us to overcome these issues. And that is not the case. You think about the examples that the questioner gave, anger, jealousy, lust, bitterness, things of this nature. A lot of times the solutions or suggestions that are made for dealing with these problems are like putting a Band-Aid on cancer. Yes, if a man is struggling, for instance, with the sin of lust, having adulterous thoughts, he's viewing pornography, sure, there are some practical steps he can take to make that more difficult to access. But recognize it's only making it more difficult to access. There's nothing that you can do short of duct taping a person to the wall. that will prevent them from accessing pornography because it is ubiquitous in the world that we live in. So sure, getting rid of your smartphone, getting rid of your home cable connection, putting safeguards and software controls on your internet usage, all of these can be useful things and we use them in working with men in our own congregation. But the reality is you could have no access to pornography in any form, and you could still be struggling with lust because the issue is in the heart. It's in the mind. And I'll remind you of something we've said before. You may have heard me in the prayer talking about the thoughts of the heart. You may say, oh, Pastor, don't you mean the thoughts of the mind? Well, In most contexts, heart and mind in scripture are interchangeable. They're speaking about the inner part of man, the inner being, where we think, where we feel, where we will to do whatever it is that we do. Now, sometimes heart and mind are used in ways that create subtle distinctions. For instance, when Jesus says, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, When the two terms are set in parallel or in a list like that, maybe then we would say the heart might speak more of the emotional side, the mind might speak more of the rational side, but understand that in neither case are we thinking about the brain as the mind or the blood pump as the heart. This is not a biblical way of thinking about heart and mind. The heart and mind of man are the inner part of man. And this is really where our struggles with sin lie. It's the heart that is deceitful and desperately wicked. It is out of the heart that man speaks and acts. And ultimately, the reason that I struggle with sin is because on some level, sin is appealing to my heart. If it wasn't appealing to me, I would have no problems resisting it, right? I've never been tempted to do certain things because they are disgusting to me, but I'm profoundly ashamed of the sin that has tempted me and in many cases overtaken me because on some level I find that appealing. So the issue with sanctification is not merely to control external behaviors, as important as that may be, as valuable a place as that may have in our walk with Christ. The real issue in sanctification is the work of God's Spirit upon the heart. And so when we think about disciplining the mind, disciplining our thought life, we need to see that this is a key issue in sanctification. You cannot simply read your Bible more, pray more, or indulge your lust less, and thereby be a holy person. The truth is you could be entirely moral in your outward behavior, and be thoroughly corrupt in your inner thought life. And so today we want to talk about this issue of the difficulty and duty of disciplining our minds and controlling our thoughts. Now some people do not realize the difficulty of this because they don't think a lot. Now, I don't mean that in a pejorative way, but the truth is, I say a lot of people, probably not a lot of people, but a certain number of people seem to just kind of coast through life without ever turning their mind on. They never meaningfully engage with the world in which they live. They're not thinking deep thoughts. They're listening to their playlist or they're surfing social media and they're just like moving from one distraction to the next. They're watching cat videos on Facebook and YouTube. And my apologies, if you like cat videos, I'm not meaning to suggest that that's an immoral thing, but I'm just saying that is the level at which they live their life. That is, there's no substance That's all that there is. And so maybe they don't think about the difficulty of disciplining their thought life because they don't really have much of a thought life. On the other hand, I think there are a considerable number of Christians who believe, perhaps, whether they would articulate it this way or not, they believe, perhaps, that the difficulty of disciplining our thought life means that we don't have a duty to do this. I think some people look at this issue and they would say, that's impossible. I mean, pastor, you can't control what goes on in your mind. You can't control the dreams that you have at night. That's just a subconscious rearrangement and interpretation of circumstances in your day. Well, I grant that our thought life often seems to be undirected. But isn't that the whole point? It's not supposed to be undirected. And yes, our dreams at night, they are kind of bizarre sometimes, rearrangements and interpretations of the circumstances of our day. But if we're feeding our heart and our mind on things that are good, right, true, beautiful, lovely, all of these things of God, well, Those are going to be the things that most often pop up into our minds. Now, let me hasten to say at the outset of this conversation, no one does this adequately or even particularly well. No one does it. But it was a conversation with an uncle of mine when I was a fairly young teenager, as I recall, early adolescence, that absolutely got me started thinking about this issue, realizing I've never tried to discipline my mind. I've never tried to control my thoughts. I've never tried to put off and put on with regard to my mental life, my inner life. I've always thought about holiness and sanctification as about my habits and not really about my heart, but it is about my heart. And therefore it very much involves how I think, what I think about and what I don't think about, what I choose to repudiate in terms of my heart and my life. Now, I wanna talk about for just a couple of minutes, the difficulty of doing this and the duty, because I want us to be clear on the fact that it is both difficult, i.e. impossible for man apart from God, apart from grace, and impossible for even a regenerate spirit indwelt man on this side of glory. It's impossible to do this perfectly. And yet it is our responsibility to pursue holiness even in our inner lives. Let me share a few passages. Romans chapter 7. Surely you're thinking of this one immediately when we think about the difficulty of sanctification issues. Romans 7, beginning at verse 14, Paul says, we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin. For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice. But what I hate, that I do. Now, if Paul can say that about his doing, how much more true is that of our thinking, of our willing? Oh, I'm far more willing to think of something in my mind or to desire something in my heart than I am to actually go out and do it. There are all kinds of things that we contemplate that if we were ever tempted to physically act on that impulse, we would, I hope, rightfully reject and repudiate such behavior. And yet, doesn't that behavior first begin in the heart? Doesn't it first begin with the desire that is distorted by our sin? Doesn't it first begin with a thought that contemplates? Think about Eve and the original sin in the Garden of Eden. When Eve saw that the fruit was good, that it was pleasing to the eyes, that it was desirable to make one wise, she's sitting there, standing there, looking at the fruit, admiring it. looking at how appealing it is, looking at how valuable it would appear to be. And it's not long before she says, this makes sense, I'm gonna take the fruit. And of course, disaster followed, but that's what happens. It's the sin that begins in the heart. A man doesn't go to bed one night, a faithful, strong, Orthodox believer, and wake up the next morning and apostate. It doesn't happen that way. Apostasy happens incrementally over time. One compromise leads to the next compromise, which justifies the next compromise until one day you wake up and you are far removed from where you once were. And you're looking around and saying, how did I get here? I don't know. But it was incrementally over time. Well, brothers and sisters, this process begins in our heart, in our mind, in our inner life. And people who say, I could never imagine cheating on my spouse, but it will happen as you begin going down this road in your heart, in your mind, cherishing lust, taking longer looks, contemplating possibilities. Oh, I would never do that. Be careful because that inner life is laying the foundation either for greater holiness or more grievous sin. It begins in the heart and therefore we have to address it at the level of the heart. Solomon says in the book of Proverbs chapter 20 and verse 9, who can say I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin. Isn't that interesting? Who can claim to be sinless and yet Solomon associates that with the purity of the heart? It's not who can say, I've never outwardly broken these commandments. There may be few people that could ever say that, but maybe there would be someone like the rich young ruler who would come along and say, teacher, I have kept these commands from my youth. Well, it's probably not true, but at least in an external sort of way, okay, maybe. Maybe you've sincerely tried to obey the law of God, but who can say, I have kept my heart clean. Who can truly say that? Nobody can. It's a rhetorical question and we need to realize the difficulty of this is really an impossibility both for the unregenerate person as well as imperfection and impossibility even for the regenerate believer. Proverbs chapter 27 and verse 19 says, as in water, face reflects face. So a man's heart reveals the man. I want you to think about this for a second. Let's say that we were one of those churches that had a PowerPoint screen. Now we're not cool like that. I know some churches in the OPC have got PowerPoint screens and it is kind of cool, honestly. I served a lot of churches that had PowerPoint and we came here and we don't have it anymore, but we just have the hymnal. But let's say we've got a PowerPoint screen up at the front of the sanctuary. And as you come in on the Lord's day morning, As you walk through the narthex, you pass through a scanner, and as you enter into the sanctuary, that scanner has recorded all of your thoughts for the last week, since the last Lord's Day when you were here, and it begins scrolling those thoughts on the PowerPoint. I mean, none of us could come to church. I mean, let's just, let's be honest. None of us could ever come to church ever again. We would have to stay home forever because every one of us would be ashamed. We'd be appalled. We would be looking around the room and saying, I'm not sure that anyone here is a believer, but based on that, I'm sure that I'm not. It would be terrifying. And yet what Solomon says is, the heart is what reveals the man. It's not just how I live, it's not just what I do. Oh, let's scroll on the PowerPoint. How many chapters of the Bible I read this last week? How many verses I memorized? How many prayers I prayed? How many good deeds I performed? No, let's put the content of my heart on that PowerPoint screen. And, That'd be a terrible thing. It'd be a terrible thing. And yet that heart reveals something about us. We say in the context of biblical counseling, stress does not create or change character. Stress reveals and confirms it. You find out under pressure, things about yourself that you didn't know were true and that you wouldn't have believed were true unless the stress, the crisis revealed it about you. So what's going on in our heart is often very ugly. Now, don't hear me saying that because what is in our heart is ugly and polluted and so imperfect that therefore none of us are believers. That's not what I'm saying at all. What I'm saying is if we were to measure ourselves and see ourselves as God sees our hearts, well, We'd have a lot more humility in the Christian life. We'd have a much keener sense of our desperation, our desperate need for grace. You see, I don't measure myself by my heart. I measure myself by my outward actions and in relation to other people. And the Bible says the man who does that is not wise. I'm supposed to be looking at Christ. And I'm supposed to see the unbridgeable gap between my polluted heart and the perfection and beauty and glory of Christ and realize that only Christ can bridge that gap. Only Jesus can come to me in grace and mercy and rescue me where I am. I can never make it to him because I'm not even close. I'm not even close. You can't see Christ from where I'm sitting, but Christ can see me. The heart reveals the man, and that should be a very sobering and humbling truth. Now, we continue. Matthew 5, verse 22, Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount says, I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment. Is it necessary to discipline my thoughts? Yes. I can't help it that I get angry. Yes, you can. And even if you can't, you are still responsible for that anger. And Jesus says there is a reason for anger. There is a righteous anger that the believer not only can have, but should have. But whoever is angry at his brother without a cause, without a just reason, is guilty of a sin that God will judge. Now, Jesus can forgive that sin, and he has for the believer, but it doesn't change the fact that that's sinful. Do we need to discipline our thoughts? Yes, yes, we have a duty to do so. And yet, who can say that they do that well? Do you ever become angry without a just reason? I sure do. I'm tired, I'm frustrated, I'm stressed out, and then something makes me angry that doesn't merit anger. The heart reveals man. I'm seeing something about my own pollution and imperfection in those moments. Later in the same chapter, Jesus says in verse 27, you've heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not commit adultery. But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. In his heart, if he never acts on it. But in his mind, in his heart, That thought has brought him into a state of guilt over adultery. What about the latter part of Matthew chapter 6, where Jesus says, do not worry about your life? How's that going for you? That's not an external sin that someone can easily see. Maybe you can observe worry in someone's life. You could see it in their face. You could see it in their speech. But a lot of times, worry is just in our hearts. And yet Jesus expects us to discipline ourselves with regard to that, and yet how difficult is that? Solomon says in Proverbs chapter 4 and verse 23, keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it spring the issues of life. Keep your heart with all diligence, protect your heart, your mind, guard your thoughts. In Ephesians chapter four and verse 31, let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice. These are things that happen in the heart. Bitterness, wrath, anger. This is about your thought life. This is about your inner life. It's about your disposition toward the Lord. Now, there's another passage that is relevant at this point. It's in 2 Corinthians 10. And some of you may have already thought about this. Now, I want to acknowledge that the original context is not thinking so much about the individual private thoughts, but rather ideas, doctrines, arguments that are raised up against Christ and against the Christian faith. But listen to this passage, 2 Corinthians 10, beginning at verse 3. For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty in God, for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. Now again, that passage is more about theology, philosophy, ideologies, bringing those thoughts into submission to Christ. But if I could argue from the greater to the lesser here for just a moment, if that is true, if what I believe about God, this world, myself, my sin, if what I believe about those things is to be brought into submission to Christ, Well then, what about all of the other things that my thought life reveals I believe? Like, I believe that I deserve to be able to indulge my lust without interference. I believe that I deserve to hold resentment in my heart because I have been truly aggrieved. I believe that I have the right to be bitter because other people have mistreated me. I believe that I have the right to be worried because my circumstances are so far out of my control. What do my thoughts say about my belief system? And shouldn't those thoughts be brought into captivity? to the obedience of Christ. Well, more that we could say there, but we press on. We need to make some distinctions in terms of the kinds of thoughts that we have, and I want to suggest five categories. Now, this is not necessarily comprehensive. I hope it's sufficiently comprehensive. It's not exhaustive, maybe. And it could be that you might combine or further divide or rename some of these categories. But here are the categories I'm going to use for our conversation today. I'm going to think about this issue in terms of five types of thoughts. There are worshipful thoughts. There are useful thoughts. There are harmless thoughts. There are pointless thoughts. And then there are perverse thoughts. So let's think about those five categories for just a moment. Worshipful thoughts. What is this? This is explicit adoration, thanksgiving, and communion with the triune God. This is when my mind is actually focused upon, deliberately engaged with God. And how much of our time do we spend every day engaged in this way? Thinking about the Lord, meditating on His word, meditating upon His mighty works, wondering at Him, engaging Him with our minds. Now, you might say, well, Pastor, I do kind of a daily devotion every morning. I have a quiet time and I pray throughout my day and I read a little scripture again before bed. And so in those moments, I'm engaged with God. Praise God. Praise God. But we realize that's probably not a lot of our day. But couldn't it be more of our day? I mean, what am I thinking about as I'm commuting? What am I thinking about as I'm getting ready in the morning, showering, dressing, taking care of just kind of starting my day? What am I engaged with at those moments? Couldn't it be adoration? Thanksgiving, supplication to God, that would be the category of worshipful thoughts. The second category is useful thoughts, and this is a profitable thought that, while not explicitly worship, is still glorifying God. It is still productive. It is purposeful. And we might say in the believer, it is glorifying God because God is pleased when we, as image bearers, exercise dominion in this world and work in productive ways. Even for an unbeliever, these kind of thoughts can be useful. They're not worshipful. They're not good works in the truest sense. And yet they're productive. They're purposeful. This could be constructive work mentally. about our family or the work that we do or the world around us. We're exercising our duty as image bearers to work for the glory of God in all things and not just in the church. So when you are looking at your family budget, that's a useful thought. Now, you could sinfully worry about it, but that's a useful thought to say, I want to be responsible as a steward of what God has given me. Or you're out in your backyard with your wife and you're saying, you know, we could put in some raised beds and we could grow some vegetables, or we could have the kids plant some flowers, or we could do this or that with the landscape. That's not pointless. That's not harmless. That's useful. That's good. That's exercising dominion as image bearers of God. When we're thinking about anything related to working, learning, growing, engaging in meaningful matters, we're in this category. And opportunities for this kind of engagement ought to be sought out because too many people waste their downtime. They read their Bibles and think about their work when they're required to, but when they're not required to, they're on social media, or they turn on the idiot box, also known as the television, or just foolishness. You and I need to be investing ourselves, our minds and our lives in useful things. And that doesn't mean that every free moment of every day has to be saying prayer or has to be memorizing a passage of scripture. But it does mean we want to fill our minds with useful activity. Learn a language, study music, read good books, think deep thoughts. and exercise that, practice that. We'll have more to say about that before we are done. The third category is harmless thoughts. These are unproductive, but harmless. And harmless thoughts are kind of like sweets. It's okay to eat sweets from time to time, but too much of them or too often, that will be detrimental to you. Harmless thoughts don't serve a specific purpose, but they're not contrary to truth, goodness, or beauty in any way. And a lot of our relaxed thoughts may fall into this category. I want my mind and my life to be purposeful, But I realize that it's hard to be on all the time in terms of productive thoughts. And so I can't say that harmless thoughts are sinful. I can't say that just because they don't serve a meaningful purpose, therefore they are evil in some way. By the way, the line between what is useful and what is harmless can be kind of blurry at times. Let me give you an example. Is watching a movie with my children useful or harmless? Well, it could be either. It could be useful because, after all, some films have value. They help us think about issues. We like to watch important movies and then have productive conversations about them. Okay, there's a place for that. It's also useful to spend time with my children, with my wife. It's good for us to spend time together as a family. Now, at what point does that become unhelpful? Well, if the only time that I'm spending with my children is spent in front of the television watching a movie, that's not very good. Because when we're watching a movie, we're not at that moment engaged in any kind of conversation. We're not really encouraging one another in any productive way. There may be a time and a place where that's a good use of my time and of my thought life. But then at the same time, if that is all that I'm doing with them, that might not be very helpful And let's face it, a lot of times, a person may be binge-watching Netflix or something like that solely for their own entertainment. And at that point, you've got to ask, what purpose does this serve? Now, maybe at a level, it's harmless. But maybe at some point, it becomes pointless, and I need to be concerned about that. A good goal to have would be to reduce as much as possible the time you spend on harmless thoughts, and to devote as much time as possible to useful and worshipful engagement with your mind. Try to think about something all the time. I realize you can't do that all the time, but try. Try to have ideas. scripture, and different things to meditate upon. We'll say more about that before we finish. The fourth category of mental engagement are pointless thoughts. Now this is thought that, while not inherently immoral, is a waste of time and a waste of our mind. And this is when that harmless thought life crosses into a serious Waste. A counterproductive waste. And waste is not good. Waste is not pleasing to God. Waste is not glorifying to God. Because these pointless thoughts not only fail to serve any purpose in themselves, they are taking time away that I could engage my mind in more useful activities and leading me down paths that rob me of strength and joy and peace. Pointless thoughts create space for doubt and disbelief. That's what they do. So when I am just checked out, when I am just pointlessly wandering, disengaged, then it should be no surprise that I find I have less joy. less peace, more anxiety, more frustration, always feeling like I'm behind, always feeling like the world around me is just falling to pieces. It's because I am not feeding upon truth. I'm not feeding upon the promises of God. I'm not engaging with my God in any kind of useful way. And what you find is that when you begin engaging your mind, your heart, your life, in more useful and worshipful endeavors, you feel a greater sense of peace, a greater sense of transcendent joy, because you realize that there's not this empty space. that all of the doubt and disbelief and distress of the world around us can creep into. The main distinction that I make between harmless and pointless is the amount of time that I spend and the relative opportunity that I miss. So for example, one of the ways that I do my office work, my creative work, my writing, my study is I'll set a timer. I'll set a timer usually for 25 minutes. It's the Pomodoro technique for those of you who are curious. I'll set a timer for 25 minutes and I won't touch my email. I won't touch my phone. I won't surf anywhere on the web or at least try not to. All I will do is just intensively work on whatever is in front of me. And then after 25 minutes, the timer goes off and I get up and I stretch and I do a set of pushups and I go get a drink of water. At that time, I may check my email or I may have saved a short video on YouTube on some topic that I'm interested in. And I'll I'll watch that. And then after a few minutes of break, I'll go right back to my work and I'll just keep that same cycle going. No, there's nothing wrong with that. As far as I can tell, that little bit of a break, kind of resting the mind, refreshing the mind for a few minutes. You want to go look at something in your email or on YouTube or whatever it is that you prefer. Seems perfectly harmless to me. When does it become pointless when I'm constantly living in my social media, or YouTube, or email inbox, or constantly, you know, continuously feeding myself on these things rather than engaging in things that are good, important, and true? I should be doing something else. And that's the point at which what is harmless becomes pointless. And at that point, I would say sinful. And then the fifth category are perverse thoughts. Now, these are thoughts that explicitly transgress God's law. They pollute, they defile in some way. And some people mistakenly think that these kinds of thoughts are not sinful unless I act upon them. But that's clearly not true. I hope you see that in the passages that we read at the beginning of our study today. Did Jesus ever have lust in his heart? Did he ever have unrighteous anger? Did he ever harbor resentment? No. No, and this is something that people misunderstand. They say, well, I'm not guilty of sin if I'm simply tempted. That's true, that's true. I'm not responsible for temptations that come to me from outside. And I may not be guilty of sin if a temptation suddenly pops into my heart or my mind. But understand, Jesus never had that kind of temptation. Jesus was tempted in all ways that we are, but not with regard to a sinful nature. He doesn't have sin. He has righteousness. He has an original righteousness. And so he is tempted as we are externally. But you and I, when we have temptation, so to speak, arise within our hearts, that temptation is itself a type of imperfection, or we might say sin. In other words, if I have the desire to commit adultery, that's adultery of a sort. Now, I can repudiate that. I can repent of that. I can run from that. But you and I need to see the difference there. It's one thing if the devil comes and he presents to you a temptation externally. There's nothing sinful or corrupting in that. I can simply throw up my hand and say, get behind me, Satan. I'm not interested in what you have to offer. But temptation arises from within me because my heart is sinful, because my thoughts are defiled, because my desires are distorted, and I have to mortify those inner desires. that inner corruption, those inner thoughts and desires, as well as the external behaviors that may arise from it. This is being badly misunderstood and in some cases seriously misused in conversation, for instance, over same-sex attraction. in conversations over sexual orientation, which is not even a biblical way to think about sexual categories. Yes, a Christian may experience same-sex attraction. Of course a regenerate person can. In the same way that a regenerate person can experience attraction to someone other than their spouse. But you need to realize that that attraction is something that needs to be repented of. Repented of and mortified. That it's not just the behavior, it's the desire for sin that is itself a manifestation of the sinful world in which we live. Thank God that when we are in glory, when we are with Jesus, when we are in the new heavens and earth, we will not have sinful desires ever arise in our hearts. And I am longing for that day and I hope and trust that you are as well. There may be a difference between having a thought pop into my mind and immediately repenting of and repudiating it. There may be a difference between that and then allowing that unrighteous thought to remain. But even that thought that pops into my mind is a reminder and evidence of my lingering corruption. So temptation is not sin, but distorted desires that also tempt us are sin. And we need to see that. The scriptures are very clear. I am responsible for my inner thought life, and even if I do not act on my thoughts, undisciplined and unholy thoughts are sinful. And that's why, again, if we if we put all our thoughts up on the screen on the Lord's day, we might conclude, I must not be a believer after all. Well, that's not true, Christian. Praise God for that. Thank God that Jesus died not only to pardon you for all of the external behavioral sins of which you and I have been guilty and will be guilty before we go to meet the Lord in glory, but he also died to redeem and forgive us for all of the inner sins of the heart, of the mind, and of the life. All right, let's begin making some practical suggestions. Here is a basic principle that you need to think about. Maybe this could be the subject of some meditation for you this week. It is easier to think about something than not to think about something. If your approach to inner discipline, mental discipline, the disciplining of the thought life is to say, I'm not going to think about that whatever it is that's making me angry or bitter or resentful or jealous or lustful or whatever it may be. I'm not going to think about that. Well, good luck with that. And I don't say good luck about anything, right? But good luck with that because that's not going to be very successful. It's incredibly hard, i.e. impossible, not to think about something. It's much easier to think about something. And so the way that we do this is we replace and displace inappropriate thoughts, unholy thoughts. By meditating upon the truth, by filling our minds with the things of God, the key to a disciplined thought life is to fill your mind with God-glorifying thoughts and not allow your mind merely to wander. You have to remain mentally active and not allow yourself to become passive. And this is the problem. A lot of people are mentally passive. As we said, they're just kind of going through life, moving from one cat video to another. They think about God when they read their Bible. They think about their work when they're doing widgets on the assembly line. And outside of that, they are not mentally engaged. And you can't be content with that, Christian. You need to be mentally active, deliberately engaged. Don't be content to simply exist. Be loving God with your mind. Now, this is not as difficult as it may sound. It's not as difficult as it may seem at first to be. You can learn how to do this with time and with practice. And again, no one does it perfectly. No one does it even particularly well. I certainly don't. But this is the idea. Filling your mind with God-glorifying thoughts, actively engaging your mental faculties in a way that is productive and pleasing to the Lord. And this is exactly what David prays in Psalm 19. And verse 14, he says, let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight. The meditation of my heart. I want that to be pleasing to God. I want that to be acceptable to God. And that means I am responsible for controlling what I'm thinking about. So let me give you several mental strategies and tactics. I'm going to make six suggestions here as we begin to wind this down. First, practice thinking profitably and purposefully. Practice it. Now, when I say practice, I don't just mean live. I mean, think about this like practicing a free throw on the basketball court. Think about this like practicing shooting at the range. Think about this like practicing your scales when you're playing piano. Think about this like practicing a language that you're trying to learn. You are trying to learn how to think profitably and purposefully. And so what you do is you take an idea, a passage from your morning Bible reading, an idea from the sermon on Sunday, an idea or principle from Bible studies like this one, And you take that idea and you chew on it. You think about it. You ask questions about it. You roll it around. You look at it from all sides. You begin asking yourself, how does this apply to me? What are the areas of my life that this needs to influence? And what changes might need to be made? Practice thinking profitably and purposefully. Deliberately practice. Take a walk with an idea. One of the things that's unfortunate is that we live in such a noisy world today. I have these earbuds in all the time. I'm either talking to someone or listening to an audio book or listening to a sermon. If I'm not engaged verbally with someone, I'm probably listening to something unless I'm actively writing. And yet, where is the time for quietness? Where's the time for solitude? Now you may say, but pastor, I'm thinking as I'm listening to that audio book, or I'm thinking as I'm listening to that music. And I agree that there is a type of thought that happens there, but there needs to be time where we turn the sound off. So take a walk and leave your phone at home. Leave your phone turned off. Don't put your buds in your ears. Take an idea with you and take a walk and think about it for a while. Practice this. Writing is simply a way of thinking. This is a conversation for another day, perhaps, but writing is just a way of thinking. You can tell by the way that a person writes how they think. You can also tell by the way some people write that they don't think or at least don't think very well. Sit down with a journal, with a notebook. And take that idea that you're wanting to meditate upon from the sermon, from the Bible study, from your scripture reading, and start working on it. Start writing about it. Start talking to yourself about it. Deliberately practice thinking in profitable and purposeful ways. Secondly, actively meditate on the word work and wonder of God. Now this is where the Psalms help us so much. The Hebrew word for meditate means to murmur to oneself. It means literally to talk to yourself. And so whereas in most forms of Zen meditation, you empty your mind, you do not have a focal point for your mind, you deliberately disengage and are trying to shut down kind of conscious thought, Biblical meditation is just the opposite. It's filling the mind so completely with one idea that everything else is washed out. And the Psalms help us meditate on the word, work, and wonder of God. of God. Pray through Psalm 119. Maybe make a habit of that once a month or on a more regular basis to pray aloud through Psalm 119. You'll find that it's an extended meditation on the Word of God. And the Psalms can help you learn how to do this. This is why praying the Psalms, reading the Psalms, singing the Psalms is so important. God's Word there, we're meditating on the content of Scripture. Think about it. Think about ideas about it. Talk to yourself about it. Talk to God about it. Pray through passages. Secondly, God's work. Reflect upon what God has done historically in creation, in providence, in redemption, but also personally in his providence in your life. Meditate on that. Look at your life through the lens of God's revelation and see how much more you see than you might have perceived before. And God's wonder. Just meditating on who God is. Forget about everything he's done for you. Forget about what he's told you to believe and to do for a moment. Just think about who he is. How wonderful He is. Beautiful beyond description. Beyond description. And yet, we have this need to describe Him and to praise Him, to honor and adore Him. Actively meditate on that. There is time every day to do this. You can do this driving your car. You can do this while you're in the shower. You can do this while you're between activities. You can multitask. You can wash dishes and meditate in this way. Now, I'm not suggesting that you neglect your spouse, that you neglect your kids, that you neglect other important things that you have to do. And I'm not suggesting that every moment of every day has to be a deliberate exercise of worship I am suggesting every moment of every day ought to be engaged as much as possible in something profitable. And there's nothing more profitable than meditating on God, His Word, and His works. Third, memorize scripture, memorize confessions, memorize hymns, memorize prayers, Memorize content that will help you in this meditation. Now you notice we're getting more specific as we go. We began by saying practice active thinking. Secondly, meditate on God and his glory. And then third, how are we doing this? By memorizing things that you can then meditate upon. Memorizing things that you can murmur to yourself. Where do we start with this? How about memorizing all of the responses that we have in worship every Lord's Day? The Gloria Patri, the doxology, Glory be to God the Father that we open every Lord's Day evening service with. How about the Nicene Creed? How about the corporate prayer of confession that we use on the second Lord's Day of every month? How about the 10 commandments that we use on the first Lord's Day of every month? How about memorizing some of the hymns that we enjoy singing? Now, the truth is a lot of you already have a lot of these things already memorized. Even if you've never tried to memorize them, we structure the liturgy in the way that we do on purpose so that these ideas become imprinted upon your heart. So that even if you've never tried to memorize it, you probably haven't memorized. Or at least, in large part, you haven't memorized. How do I meditate on God? If you're not accustomed to this, you probably don't even know where to begin. And so, begin with what you know. You know Psalm 23? Then pray through Psalm 23 as you recite it. You know the Nicene Creed? Then think about every line of that creed as you recite it. you're familiar with great hymns of the church, try praying them back to God and meditating upon the significance of those words as you sing them softly, or not so softly, to yourself. Fourth, Fill your life with God-glorifying and profitable input. Now, I just talked about the importance and value of silence for thinking profitably. Now, let's talk about when you're living in a noisy world. What kind of input do you want to seek out? How about sermons? How about audiobooks? How about taking up reading projects that are going to challenge you and stretch you? Don't just veg out. Learn to relax in profitable ways. I have to be honest. There are some preachers that it is a guilty pleasure for me to listen to them. And it's not guilty at all, right? But for me to get to listen to them preach, I realized, oh, I'm going to be in the car by myself. I could stick in my earbuds and I can listen to this brother preach the Word of God. What a joy. or to be able to listen to an audio book. I've been listening to some great audio books recently. I listen to a lot of audio books. Why? Well, I'm traveling around constantly, visiting people, counseling people, doing different things. I've tried reading in the car, but you have to wait for a stoplight, and there aren't enough stoplights anymore to get through large books, so I put in an audio book. These can be ways of giving our minds kind of nourishment, feeding our hearts on God glorifying and profitable input. And it doesn't all have to be works of theology. Again, maybe you can learn more about history. Maybe you can learn more about philosophy. Maybe you can learn more about the world in which you live and ways that you can profitably live to the glory of God. Fifth, seek opportunities to learn, grow, and think. Besides prayer and spiritual meditation and things of that nature, God is glorified when we engage ourselves profitably. So learn a language, study music, design a reading project. I mentioned that a moment ago. Why don't you read through Calvin's Institutes next year? Why don't you start this year? You know, there are reading plans online to read through Calvin's Institutes and a lot of other great theological literature. With just a few pages a day, you can read through the entire work in the course of one year. Why don't you do that alongside your Bible reading? You say, take an entire year to read a great big thick theology book? Yeah, absolutely. Why not? Seek out opportunities to learn, to grow. It's going to stretch you. It's going to challenge you. Learn a new skill. Don't just plop down in front of the television. Don't just pull up social media on your phone. Are those things sinful in themselves? No, not in themselves. They're not sinful. But are they profitable? Not very much. We can learn to relax in more profitable ways. We can seek out opportunities to grow and you'll find life more satisfying when you do so. And finally, number six, fill up the empty spaces in your day. Fill them up with deliberate contemplation. Again, we've talked about your commute or when you're in the shower or when you just don't have something else that's engaging you at that moment. Learn to fill up those spaces You may not have 30 minutes to devote to reading a significant work. You may not have an hour a day to study a language, but you've got two minutes over here and three minutes over there and five minutes over here where you could be thinking profitably about the things of God and the world in which you live and the way in which you can best serve to the glory of God. We need to learn to discipline our thoughts. Discipline your heart and your mind. Bring every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. None of us do it perfectly. None of us do it particularly well. Praise God that Jesus's righteousness covers our very disordered and disorganized thought life. But I will tell you, these ideas have profound application in dealing with depression, dealing with discouragement, dealing with anger, dealing with anxiety, dealing with lust, dealing with resentment. Those are all sins that come from a mind that is disorganized and disordered, a heart that has too much empty space in it. And we need to fill up that space, fill it up with God, fill it up with good things. You're not going to be tempted to eat junk food when you're feeding your body well on rich, nourishing, wholesome, satisfying food. And it's the same thing with the mind. All right, more that could be said, but I hope that that will suffice for today. I'm thankful to all of you who have tuned in live. I hope that there is some profit and value in this. Please feel free to follow up. Send me an email. Reach out to me by phone. Let me know if this was helpful. Great. If it was not helpful, if you have questions arising from any of the things that we talked about, or maybe areas where we need to take this a little further and discuss other applications of it, especially in terms of counseling ourselves as believers and helping to encourage others. I'm glad to have those conversations with you.