Message
Romans 12:2
“Transform Your Mind”
The mind is a dangerous place.
I’m talking about all that activity that goes on in your brain.
The thoughts that you are now thinking that have nothing to do with church.
That process going on in your head which is so easily distracted and can even be quite easily manipulated.
Let me show you what I mean.
I want all of you not to think about what your house looks like.
… …
How many of you are now thinking about what your house looks like.
Then perhaps you were thinking about jobs you needed to do.
Or maybe a room that needs to be tidied.
Maybe now you are thinking about next week and planning what to do at home.
And how many of you do this.
You’re talking with someone but there is something interesting going on in the background behind them.
Maybe there is a tv and the score comes on for a football game.
Or there is another conversation happening and you start wondering what people are saying. It is all sorts of stuff.
If ever we go to dinner at a place where they have the keno numbers going on in the background I can’t sit facing the screen. Otherwise my mind gets distracted trying to guess the numbers.
Silly ridicules things that the mind does.
You can see what I mean. The mind is a dangerous place. Distracted. Misdirected. Manipulated. But also a part of us that has been created by God.
So God understands how the mind works. He understands how we work.
Which is why, when we get to the tenth commandment, God uses a different approach.
Most of the previous commandments forbid an action
Don’t put other “gods” before the one true God.
Don’t blaspheme.
Don’t murder.
Don’t steal.
Don’t lie.
Forbidding action. However this command is forbidding a pattern of thought.
17 “You shall not covet your neighbour’s house. You shall not covet your neighbour’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbour.”
Exodus 20:17
It isn’t saying
“You shall not covet your neighbour’s house and then and steal stuff from it.”
Or, “You shall not covet your neighbour’s wife and then commit adultery with her.”
The tenth commandment is only dealing with the thought.
So what is going on here is that this command is saying “Your thoughts can be punishable.”
How many of you find that a little concerning?
I have thought some terrible thoughts.
Some of the thoughts that go on in my mind are not godly … they are far from godly.
Now God is wrapping up the commands with a phrase that is effectively saying, “You will be held accountable for your thoughts.”
Is God deliberately doing everything He can to make our relationship with Him hard?
You might be tempted to think like that.
This just seems really, really hard.
A series of commands on what not to do.
Then a command on what not to think!
Is God deliberately trying to make it difficult?
Well we know He isn’t.
God is not in the business of deliberately setting us up to fail.
So what is going on?
Where is the freedom we have been able to find when we have been talking about all of these commands?
We are given freedom knowing that we can control the source of our sinful actions.
God would not say to us “Don’t let your inner thoughts get the best of you” if it were impossible to do?
God is not in the business of deliberately setting us up to fail.
So even when it comes to our thoughts and desires … the inner life which is so vulnerable to allow thoughts to get out of control … even there God gives us the capacity to overcome.
It is possible to have your thought patterns under control. To have the mind of Christ.
We can have freedom.
As we have been looking at the commands we have seen this reality.
The key to avoid not responding to God properly is to look into ourselves and realise that we can be quite spiritually arrogant. We need to look at that arrogance and change our minds about how good we think we are.
The key to avoiding violence and murder is to look at the level of anger which we have in our lives. We need to be open to the reality that these angry thoughts can lead to a path with is destructive.
The key to avoiding lying is to be people who love the truth. As we consider in our minds what is real truth it directs the actions we take and the way that we deal with other people.
The mind is the key ingredient.
Control the mind and you control the person.
How do you think Kim Jong-Un gets all those North Koreans to follow him?
The nation is crippled with poverty.
Regularly large parts of the country have no power.
The average wage is $2,000 (it is $20,000 in South Korea).
How do you get 25,000,000 people to put up with that situation without complaining? A bit of dictatorship and executions help. But it is more than that.
Constantly their minds are being filled. As far as Koreans are concerned Kim Jong-Un invented the hamburger, and is the world’s greatest golfer. 30% of school curriculum is devoted the Kim family. Movies are not permitted to be watched and the internet is completely controlled. They have the minds … so they have the people.
We might look at North Korea and go “what a bunch of easily led people”.
How many of us have let the latest facebook post direct our minds on, the best latest diet, how to look younger, which cat is the funniest and a whole host of other mind distractions?
How many of us allow the culture we are in to determine our morals and values, even when we know there is something not quite right about them?
How many of us just let our minds we filled with rubbish? We get fixated on all sorts of things that are just absolutely useless.
We may not be in North Korea, but we are just as easily lead.
The mind is the key. Control the mind and you can control the person.
And that is the situation God comes into. Not because His primary purpose is to go into a mind-control experiment … but because He wants to position our lives in such a way that we can continue to experience the freedom to enjoy Him.
So we need to decide – who or what are we going to allow to control our minds?
There is a really great passage written by Paul that helps answer this question.
Romans 12:2 Do not conform any longer to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds.
In the context Paul is helping people to understand how they can live in response to the relationship God has established with them through Jesus.
Living out the mystery that God has shown grace to all mankind and that God is merciful despite our sin.
We see this grace. We accept this grace. Then we sit here and say, “Now what God?”. What do you want us to do?
Paul is answering that question and it is a two-step process.
This is the first step.
Do not conform any longer to the patterns of this world.
The text in the Greek literally says:- “stop being moulded by this age”. In other words we have to look at our lives and make sure we are not allowing the attitudes of this culture … of this age … to shape us.
It is easy to start making a list about the things that shape us.
TV shapes us. It shapes our language. It shapes our attitude to others. It shapes our willingness to stand for social issues. It shapes our acceptance of violent acts. We are not just passive participants. Lots of thinking is going on.
The internet … definitely it shapes us. Facebook has completely redefined what friendship means. And many of us have brought into the definition.
Cultural shifts shape us. Materialism. Status. What makes me a person of value. Style trends. Self-centeredness. They are all massive thinking-shapers.
We can’t avoid it. We will always be confronted with the patterns of this world. The question is, what are we going to do about it? We no-longer conform. God doesn’t want us to have lives which are unthinking, directionless and purposeless.
One way to think about it is to see that our lives are either going to be like a thermometer and a thermostat.
Both of these items are relate to temperature. Yet, there is a big difference between them.
A thermometer merely tells you what the temperature is – so it is controlled by the environment it is in.
A thermostat controls the temperature which, in turn, controls the environment.
When it comes to our reaction to the world we cannot be thermometer Christians. We cannot allow the thinking of the world to determine what our lives are going to be like.
Instead we need to be thermostat Christians.
We dare to be different … to stand up and make our lives count because we are following the purposes of Christ.
That is the first step in the process. You need to be a thermostat Christian.
The second step is to Be transformed by the renewing of your minds.
In the Greek the word translated “transformed” sounds like this … metamorpheoo. It pretty much sounds like our English word “metamorphosis” – and it means exactly the same.
Describe metamorphosis in terms of a butterfly.
Our mind needs to go through a metamorphosis.
They need to be changed so that we do not struggle with the patterns we see.
The way to do this is to hold onto the uniqueness of thinking that comes because we have been connected to a unique Saviour.
Paul tells it this way:-
Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. 3 For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
Colossians 3:1-4
What is the best place for our mind?
Not on the pattern of the world … because the pattern of the world is part of the life which has died. Why would we want our minds focussed on the dead?
Death causes grief and hopelessness.
Death brings instability and uncertainty.
Death closes doors and shatters dreams.
Our minds don’t belong in that place. We set our minds on things above where there is:-
Joy and hope.
Stability and certainty.
An open door of welcome with a chance to dream the biggest dreams.
We look ahead. We look in hope. Our mind is being controlled by Christ.
When our mind is in Christ then even our very thoughts don’t betray our sinfulness.
That is freedom isn’t it. With specific respect to the 10th commandment it is the freedom which recognises that in Christ we have all we need therefore we don’t need to covet.
So what if our neighbour’s household is big and fancy?
You don’t know if they are in debt to be like that.
You don’t know if they are happy.
Besides it isn’t going with them into the after-life.
It is just temporary.
So what if your neighbour married a super-model?
Beauty is only skin-deep.
You don’t know if she is mean and condescending.
It is the woman who fears the Lord who is praised.
We can be content. Even when we are surrounded by people who have much more than us. Because for each one of us there are different circumstances that we face.
Life is full of difficulties and ruts and potholes and side-streets and detours and no-through-roads.
But life is also full of blessing, and happiness, and goodness and enjoyment.
We just need the mind to see the blessings. Moving our minds away from what we think we don’t have and focussing on all that we do have.
It is a mind game.
So, as we come to the end of this series let me finish with this last important question:-
Are you training your mind in Christ?
How do you do that?
It is actually very simple.
To have the mind of Christ I need to read the book which Christ has written.
To have the mind of Christ I need to be taking time to sit with Christ and listen to what He is saying.
To have the mind of Christ I need to let the word encourage, correct, refocus, transform, revive, discipline, challenge and change … us.
To see the new pattern … the pattern of Jesus … for our lives.
To have our minds trained by the mind of Christ.
As our mind is trained we experience the freedom which comes with enjoying the relationship we have with God.
Enjoying the reality that He is walking with us daily and graciously directing us.
Enjoying the hope which comes even when we have messed up in our walk.
Enjoying the truth that God is more determined to hold onto us then we are to hold onto Him.
Freedom in Christ.
That is what these commands give us.
Prayer
