2 Corinthians 10:3-6 | No Vacancy

Preacher: Scott Hollingshead

Text: 2 Corinthians 10:3-6, Selected Scriptures

Big Idea: Scripture gives us a framework for a “no vacancy” thought life. 

1. Remember what sin has done   
2. Recognize what God must do  
3. Repent 
4. Be renewed in your mind 
5. Replace old thoughts with God’s truth  
6. Rest in God’s thoughts of you 

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Coming out of Psalm 78, Father, we ask that you would open our eyes to behold wondrous things in your word. Lord, that you would allow us to give ear to your teaching. You would help us by your spirit to receive and perceive spiritual things, for the natural man cannot understand the things of your spirit. But God, I pray that we would take your truth that's received today and we would hide it in our hearts. That we would tell it to the coming generation. That we would set our hope in you, God. Father, we have a tendency to forget your word. Even for a split second, we can lapse into a kind of forgetfulness that leads us astray. Oh God, I pray that you would help us to store up your word in our hearts that we might not sin against you, that we might not forget the works of your hands. And Psalm 78 is so clear, Lord, the mighty works that you've done. Dividing the sea and letting your people pass through, making the water stand like a heap, leading them with a cloud by day and all the night with a fiery light, splitting rocks in the wilderness and giving them drink abundantly as from the deep. This is what you do, God. And we can lose our awe, we can lose our wonder, Lord. We can fail to remember these things, we can start to slip into unbelief. And God, I just pray that your saving power would be on display, not just for the saved among us, but for the lost here today. Seeking perhaps work that you've already begun in them. But Lord, it um it's my prayer that you would, by your spirit, through your word, cause dead, spiritually dead people to come to life today. You would regenerate their hearts. You would make them new. They turn from their sin, they put their trust in you, God. That is what we pray because we know you are the one that can do that. And the gospel is the power of you, God, unto salvation for all who believe. And God, for those who do, I pray that we would store up your word, O God. May there be two preachers up here today. This finite servant, but may the word go forth by the power of your Holy Spirit and demonstration of your power, Lord. We love you, we thank you. We receive this word S from you, for we know all Scripture is God breathed. We pray this in Jesus' name. And all God's people said. Amen. Let me have you stay standing for the reading of God's word as we come to um, well, we're gonna come to a lot of passages today, but I'm gonna read to you 2 Corinthians chapter 10 to set the tone for our message this morning. 2 Corinthians chapter 10. Beginning in verse 3, and I'm gonna be reading down to verse 6. And as we do this, this is the word of the living God for us today. What a privilege it is to hear God's word over and over and over again, how badly we need it. For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ, being ready to punish every disobedience when your obedience is complete. Love ones, this is the word of the living God for us. May the Lord write these eternal truths on your hearts, and with that, you can be seated. Good morning, church. Good morning to all of you. Happy Memorial Day weekend. Let me just reiterate what Tyler said. What a privilege it is that we can remember the sacrifices made to secure the freedoms that we enjoy. Uh, we can give gratitude to God for that, can't we? And we don't live in a perfect nation by any means, but we can give thanks to those who gave their lives to secure freedoms that we enjoy. Uh, one of those freedoms is what we're doing right now: the freedom to worship, to open God's word, and to preach unapologetically. And uh and I thank the Lord for that. If you have your Bibles, you're gonna need to be in a number of different places. Just get it out, all right? Just get it out. You're gonna need Genesis, you're gonna need Jeremiah, you're gonna need 2 Corinthians, you're gonna need Romans 7, you're gonna need Romans 12. You're gonna need a lot of places. So just be ready. That's not normal for us. We're usually anchored in one text. So let me just give you a background. By the way, my name is Scott. I'm the lead pastor here. It's great to have you with us. If you're new, I look forward to meeting you. I usually hang out at the first time visitor desk. Come say hi. I would love to say hi to you and get to hear a little bit about why you're here and how we can help you maybe get a little bit more information about the church. If you're jumping in with us and you're new, what you probably need to know to understand this message is that two weeks ago, in preparation for our upcoming marriage series, which starts next week, and I couldn't be more excited about it. Yeah, I did a message called Before You Opt Out. And I did that message inspired by some of the wild thinking from people in our church who are considering opting out of the entire series. And uh and it was surprising in some ways, but what I'm also encouraged to tell you and happy to report is that God's word from that message has already begun to bear fruit. It has helped some gain perspective again. It's softened certain people's hearts that needed softening, and it's emboldened some to trust the Lord and what God's word has to say to them, no matter what the subject is, as long as it's coming from God's word. And I will tell you this: I am proud to be the pastor of this church that despite an interesting response from some, you were pulled back in by the word of God. All day long, I'm good with that, all right? All day long we can keep doing that. And I celebrate that, and I love you guys for that. It's like, hey, we may get a little wonky at times, but the word will bring us back in. Let us be that people, okay? Let us be that individual. I'm gonna get a little bit wonky at times, and I need God's word to bring me back in, right? That's the motto over our lives. Tell me someone else agrees with that. Yeah, it is. Okay. Now, a thought for me as your pastor remained. And that was just the residual um contemplations about the place of our thought lives. We can get off real quick, can't we? And without the governor of God's word, we can get all over the place. And that's the inspiration for the message today. As we get ready for this marriage series, I want to talk about how you think. And so the title of the message is No Vacancy. The great Puritan Thomas Goodwin wrote a book called The Vanity of Thoughts. Highly, highly recommend you get a hold of this book. And in the beginning, he sets the book up in this way using Jeremiah 4.14. And Jeremiah 4.14 says this, O Jerusalem, wash your hearts from evil that you may be saved. And here's the question he asks How long shall your wicked thoughts lodge within you? Goodwin goes on to explain that Jeremiah is comparing the heart in this verse to a guest house with many large rooms in which are lodged multitudes of guests, or in other words, thoughts, right? And one of the things that I think is helpful to understand in the Bible is the heart and the mind overlap quite a bit. Both of them refer to the inner immaterial person. And he says when Jeremiah is discussing the heart and comparing it to a guest house with large rooms and which are lodged lots of thoughts, he asks this question: how long shall your wicked thoughts lodge within you? And he sees something here. He sees a distinction between the presence of vain thoughts in our minds and the embrace of vain thoughts. There's a difference between the presence of vain thoughts and the embrace of them. He goes on to say the truth is we can't be complete, the truth of vain thoughts can't be completely kept out while we remain in these houses of clay, meaning our sinful flesh. He says they can't be completely kept out. That's impossible in this life. However, they must not lodge within us. They must not remain as guests. Or in other words, we must have a no vacancy policy for our thought life as it pertains to vain thoughts. So what I want to do today is I want us to have a framework developed. I want Scripture to provide for us a kind of framework for a no-vacancy thought life. You're not going to be able to work through it all today in terms of, okay, how do I apply that to this area of my thought life that I would like to see change? I'm going to provide the framework, you're going to go home and do the homework. All right? Me framework, you homework. Me framework, next message, you applying it to your life. The marriage sermon that you don't like, applying this to your situation. It's going to help you think what does the Bible say about how to develop a no vacancy thought life. In other words, vain thoughts may come in here, but they're not allowed to stay. They aren't occupying free rent in this dome. I'm going to do something about it. I don't want to provide that framework today. Six elements that scripture gives us in this development of a no-vacancy thought life. First one is this remember what sin has done. This is going to be huge. Gotta get the right foundation. Remember what sin has done. And no surprise on that. You can go to the book of Genesis for this. We have the story of God creating the world and everything in it, and it was very good, right? God did not create an imperfect world, He created a very good world, and He created all that's in it, including man. We are the pinnacle of creation. We are image bearers of the living God, right? Amazing situation, but we don't get more than two chapters into the Bible before man's fall into sin. One of the first things you hear about the effect of original sin concerns the mind. And you'll see even how the heart and the mind, the immaterial person within us, is represented here in this thought in Genesis chapter 6, verse 5. It says this now the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth. Listen. And that every intention of the thoughts of his heart, there's that overlap. Mind-heart overlap. Every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. Sounds pretty serious, would you agree? This is what theologians call the noetic effect of sin, the sin that affects your mind. That's just the foundation. You go, well, it's gotta get better in the Bible. Well, the Bible just seems to back up what Genesis seems to reveal after the fall. You go to Jeremiah. How does Jeremiah describe the mind? He describes the mind as being sick. Jeremiah 17, 9. Paul describes the mind as being futile, darkened, depraved, corrupted, hardened, blinded, and debased. That's too much. It's too important we understand these things to just rattle off some words. Let me give you the verses for these things. Remember what sin has done. Remember where you started. Jeremiah 17, the mind's called sick. Ephesians 4.17, the mind is called futile. That's what you're working with, apart from Jesus Christ and the renewaling, renewing work that He does. Your mind is futile. Ephesians 4.18 says your mind is darkened. 1 Timothy 6, 5. Your mind is described as being depraved. 2 Timothy 3, verse 8, your mind is described as being corrupted. 2 Corinthians 3.14, your mind is described as being hardened. 2 Corinthians 4, your mind is described as being blinded. Am I making my point? Romans 1, your mind is described as being debased. Is that how you think about your thought life apart from Jesus Christ, apart from the intervening of the Holy Spirit and the work of the Word in my life? This is where I begin. I don't think we think about it like this, right? Now you have anywhere between 9,000 to 60,000 thoughts a day. Depending on how you think about thoughts. How you break them down. It's a lot of thoughts to have a mind that's sick, futile, darkened, depraved, corrupted, hardened, blinded, and debased. 60,000 of those a day. How's that going for you? Thomas Goodwin seems to make the point when he says, so that, even if you suppose, and we often do, we do, we do, we suppose our thoughts to be least and smallest of all of our sins, yet their multitude makes them more in number and heavier in weight than all other sins. You sin more in your head than you do anywhere else. Watch, watch, watch, watch, watch. For there is nothing smaller than a grain of sand, but when you heap up sand, nothing is heavier. So this is where we have to start. We have to remember what sin has done. It's going to do a couple things for us. Well, number one, it should massively increase the gratitude you have for the atoning work of Jesus Christ if you are a follower of Jesus Christ. Number two, if you're not a follower of Jesus Christ, it should lay you out going, Woe is me, I am a man of unclean mind. I need a savior, I need a cleansing, I need a washing. And the only one that can supply that is Jesus Christ. And he is willing to extend that to you as a gift of his grace. You need only receive him, who he is and what he's done for you. Living a perfect life, dying a substitutionary death for sinners who would trust in him, rising from the dead, conquering Satan's sin, death, wrath, and hell, so that you might be made new in his image. You need that. The other thing it should do, though, it should humble us. Remember what sin has done is to humble us. Why is the first thing when we get confronted to defend our thinking? To defend what we said. When really the first thing should be, wait a minute, my mind is debased, corrupted, darkened, futile, sick. Hang on a second. Maybe I need to go back and think about what I just articulated, because of course we speak out of our hearts. And like I said, the Bible has a lot of overlap between the heart and the mind, the immaterial part of who we are. It'd be great if we weren't so quick to defend and we were more humble about the fact that this is what we're working with. And unfortunately, it still rears its ugly head, right? This debased, corrupt, darkened thinking still rears its ugly head. I'm going to talk about why the Christian life and a Christian person is in a different place. However, we've got to start here. Remember what sin has done. Not a great picture. But it leads us to this speaking of keeping you humble, number two, recognize what God must do. There is a work that God must do. There is a deliverance that God must accomplish for us. This is putting Him and His glory and His goodness on display. So here it is. Apart from Jesus Christ, our minds are dark and depraved, corrupted, hardened, blinded, debased. You could go on, right? Before Jesus Christ. Because of the fallen state of our minds, then here's what the Bible says we are unable to know God rightly. Paul describes this as being blinded. 2 Corinthians 4, 4 says, the God of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers to keep them from seeing the glory of God in the gospel of Jesus Christ. So, Q, what God must do. He, by his Holy Spirit, must open our minds spiritually. And we see this. 2 Corinthians 4, verse 6. For the God who said, Let light shine out of darkness has shone in our hearts to give to us. God gives this to us. Through the proclamation of the gospel, gives us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. The somehow, through the preaching of a sinner saved by grace, up here articulating the Word of God, the Spirit of God takes a spiritual light and opens your eyes through the preaching of the gospel that you might behold the glory of Jesus Christ. And the Spirit doesn't force you to do anything, he frees you to behold rightly. This is what Jesus did, right? In Luke 24, we were just there. The disciples struggling so hard to understand what Jesus was saying and all that he was doing, and what did Jesus do? Then verse 45 of chapter 24. He opened their minds. Do you remember that verse? I'm so glad I got some nods on that one. It was like three weeks ago. Thank you, Lord. I think that was just good for my soul. Um Jesus opened their minds to understand the scriptures. You need help. He opens minds. You can't get there on your own. The natural man does not have the ability to understand the spiritual things of God. It's all over the Bible. I'll give you another one. Because why not another one, right? First John 5 20 says this. You hear that? You need understanding so that you might know him who is true. This is the state of where we are and what we need apart from Jesus Christ. And all of this, guys, is new covenant fulfillment. All of this is the promise of what God would do in the new covenant. I will give you a new heart. I will put my spirit within you. For my people, all of them shall know me. See, this is what God does in the gospel of Jesus Christ. You're given a new heart. And a new mind. And when you turn from your sin and you put your faith in Jesus Christ, here's the most amazing thing. God grants in the regeneration work, He does. He grants you a new mind such that 1 Corinthians 2.16 says, if you are in Christ, you now have the mind of Christ. Let that sit in. Sink in for a second. You have the mind of Christ if you are in Christ by faith. A Christian in the Bible is never said to have a depraved mind. So you go from depraved, debased, darkened, corrupted, hardened, all that stuff. When you become a Christian, the Christian is never said to have a debased or depraved mind. Because God renews the mind at the moment of regeneration, and you are no longer enslaved like you used to be. All the more you have reason to say, others can't make me sin. My mind can't make me sin. My body can't make me sin because I am no longer enslaved to sin. God has broken the enslaving power of sin over my life. Thanks be to God. Yeah, are we excited about that? You know how I feel about conviction. I think we just lean in and clap hard if that's where we're at. God is good, he's deserving of that, especially on a point on recognizing what God must do, right? And that, of course, leads to this gift that God gives us, and it's super straightforward, super easy to write down. It's one of my favorite words, repent. So recognizing what God must do, he enables us to repent. This is your process, guys. Here's where you started. Here's what you're fighting against as a Christian. Some of the influences of what was. God renews. We're gonna understand that the what was doesn't get completely eradicated, not yet, it will. And now we're in this, but God now gives us the power, the ability to repent. And here's the crazy thing about repent. You look at that word in the New Testament, it literally means to change one's. I know it's crazy. It's crazy. It's like this sermon is totally fit together. To change one's mind. Repentance is the gift of God, 2 Timothy 2, to change your mind. I like what uh Sinclair Ferguson, just a great theologian, um said about pastoral ministry. He said it like this to speaking to pastors, he said, there are actually only two pastoral problems you will ever encounter. The first is this persuading those who are under the dominion of sin that they are under the dominion of sin. That's the task of evangelism. And second, persuading those who are no longer under the dominion of sin that they are no longer under the dominion of sin because they are Christ. And that's you guys, or at least the vast majority of you. To be reminded on the regular that you are no longer under the dominion of sin. This is the reminder, this is the importance of something like thinking and considering repentance, because God, in his saving work, yes, he justifies you, he declares you legally righteous on account of the work of Christ received by faith as a free gift, right? You, God looks at you, looks at you in your situation with all your sin, past, present, and future, and because of the work of Jesus Christ, declares you righteous before him. But that's not the only thing God wants to do, he wants to sanctify you as well. So if you were to put it like this, if justification gets you out of sin's dominion, then sanctification gets sin's dominion out of you, he wants both. He wants to completely transform you. This is where repentance fits in. To take you from what you were and make you completely different, to make you like the sun. And his goal is nothing less than this. He's not just settling with justification, he wants to see your sanctification happen, and he wants to see you glorify him for eternity for the work that he does in glorification. But it starts with this. It starts with this initial repentance. And where does uh repentance begin? But you all of a sudden changing your view on sin, period, because you're starting to think like God thinks about sin. That's where it begins. When sin is called to mind, you see sin the way God sees sin. You remember the sin you've committed with far more grief than the pleasure you had in committing it in the first place.

unknown 25:34

Right?

SPEAKER_00 25:35

Sometimes you'll get into a small group and you start to realize that people seem to be reminiscing about the old days where they used to commit X, Y, or Z sin. Have you ever heard this before? Maybe it's not in a small group, maybe just off-the-cuff Christian conversations, it's wild. Like they're almost talking about the old days where that sin, oh, remember we used to do that sinful thing together? Repentance is remembering sin far more with far more grief than the pleasure you had committing it. It's to hate the notion of sin. It's to, with zeal, have a heart inflamed against sin that is so strong within you, empowered by the Holy Spirit, that it leads you to a, not just a change of mind, but the change of mind about sin leads you to a change of life. It's a turning of the whole man. So it's heart and life, it's inner man and external action all coming together and going, I was this and now I'm this, I hate this, and I love Jesus Christ and what he's after in his word for my life. It's person and practice, and it's a consistent pattern. So repentance starts, like what's that breaking point where you become a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ? It's when you repent of your sin and put your faith in Jesus, right? But then that repentance, that first act, becomes a pattern in your life. And it's a pattern you can be confident in because the power of sin has been severed. And so now you look at the Bible and you go, because of that, then for example, Isaiah 55.7 can become a way of life for me. When Isaiah 55.7 says, Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts, you're going, yes. Because there's hope for me to forsake my way. Oh, God, help me forsake my ways and my unrighteous thoughts. Oh, you have hope now for it. Because God has done what he must do to lead you to your response of repentance, a change of mind where you hate sin so much in its effects that it causes an entire life change in the power of the Holy Spirit. Which leads to this fourth dynamic, to be renewed in your mind. To be renewed in your mind. If you know the language of the Bible, you know that I'm coming out of Ephesians 4, 23. It says, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds. So Jesus comes into the picture, you receive him by faith, sin's penalty has been paid for in full. You don't need to pay God back for anything. Jesus Christ has covered the bill in full, even the stuff you've yet to sin in the future about. He paid for all of that. Penalty taken care of. Sin's power or dominion has been broken in your life. But now here's the puzzling part. But sin's presence is still with us. Sin is like a squatter in a home. Right? You have had a total makeover. You have new owners. You have had your house torn down to the studs and rebuilt. Inside, outside, completely made new. And those tenants you couldn't get out, man, you like smack them out, right? Those new owners are like, get out of here, but then somehow, somehow, they're climbing through windows, they're jumping through. I don't, they're back in the house again. Right? And you're like, how did they get there? And some of us we get so defeated, you know, like, I don't know, some of you you're in real estate, right? And you you got houses, you probably have squatter problems in California. It's probably terrible to get them out of their house. California's like, I don't know, now we found some place for people to live, I guess, in your house. They're not paying for your rent, they don't seem very supportive and trying to help you get them out. We could kind of have this problem in us where it's like, man, I just feel defeated. No matter how many times I try to get this out of my thought life, try to get this out from my house, they find ways to sneak back in. Well, listen, if you are struggling with that, then let the apostle Paul encourage you a little bit on the reality of where we are in a fallen world as we have the power of sin severed in our lives, and yet the reality of the presence of sin is still very much there. Paul said it like this: for I delight in the law of God. This is the new heart in my inner being. You ever feel like this? Man, I love God so much I do not know why I think the things I think. I have this new reborn affection for God in my thought life. You know, it's the classic pastor thing of like, uh, you ever heard, I'm sure you've heard this, like uh, you know, could you imagine if we put your thought life up on a screen and we let the whole church watch? It'd be wild actually to put one of your thought lives about what you're taking in as you're listening to this sermon right now. It'd be so interesting. Like the times you zone out and the times you get mad and the times that you are excited, and all that wouldn't that be interesting? We just have big old screen up here, we'll just pick someone random from the audience. We'll be like, you, get up here, let's get your like these, you know, whatever, something on your brain, and we'll get you all projected out so everyone can see what you're thinking, for that would terrify us, right? That would absolutely terrify us. Paul says, but I see in my members, though I delight in the law of God in my inner being, I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind. You ever felt this before? And we get so discouraged as Christians, like I can't believe I'm thinking these thoughts. I love the Lord so much. How come these thoughts? And I would just say the fact that you're so discouraged about that is probably one of the best signs that you are a Christian. I'm not saying you shouldn't be sad about the reality of those things are sin. I'm saying the fact that you're so sad about it should not drive you into the ground of depression. That's what Satan will want you to do. Instead of you realizing that this is actually the expression of, listen, lost people don't care when they have ungodly thoughts. If you care to the point that you're so discouraged, you should actually be encouraged. Because it's a sign that there's one in you that's waging war against your sinful flesh. He says, But I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive. We saw that language in 2 Corinthians earlier when we read it, to the law of sin. And so we have this battle, right? For Christians, God's looking to transform us. Transformation comes through a renewed mind. Ephesians 4 23. It's already been read. Romans 12.2 says something similar. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind. See, you and I need minds that are being constantly transformed. So the interesting language in Ephesians 4, for example, is to be renewed in the spirit of your mind is to say it like this: to be being renewed in the spirit of your mind. It's a regular, constant, over and over thing. Be being renewed. It's a work God does on you. Here it is, do not be conformed to this world, but but be being transformed by the renewal of your mind. Keep being renewed. See, you have the mind of Christ, but the next step is to say, and so now you can think like Jesus. Do you believe that? Don't get this defeatist mentality. This is just who I am. This is how I'll always think. No, no, no, no, no, Christian. You have the mind of Jesus Christ. You can think like Jesus. I'll prove it to you. Philippians 2, 5. Have this mind among you which is yours in Jesus Christ. You can think like Jesus. How are you transformed when you think like Jesus? We read it in 2 Corinthians 10. We have divine power to destroy strongholds. These mental fortresses that build themselves up in our heads and cause us to feel we're trapped. Listen, that fortress in your head has been completely crushed by the Lord. Now, what here's what's crazy, though, because of the flesh, we will rebuild the fortresses Jesus Christ tore down and we will convince ourselves that it is impenetrable and nothing can get through it. This is what's wild. The Lord broke down that slavery to the fortresses of our mental just stuckness. And oftentimes we will rebuild this, but here's the thing: you have divine power. I need you to start believing this. You have divine power to destroy strongholds. What kind of strongholds? Every opinion, every arrogant, lofty thought that raises up itself against the knowledge of God. Everything that your mind thinks about that's not in line with the word of God needs to go. And it can go because God is working in you. And God has severed the power of slavery to sin. So now what you're doing is this as you take in God's word, the Bible, as you're asking the Spirit to work in you, you are saying, God, if anything is out of sync in my thinking with your word, let it be dismantled. You take every single thought that I have that's in contrast to the word of God, that's contrary to the truth of who God is, and destroy it, God. This is the process of being renewed in our minds. Just like in a battle, you destroy the fortress, and then you take captives. First thing you need to realize is in Jesus Christ, that fortress that you think is impenetrable is not what you think it is. And most of that has been rebuilt in your own doing. So re-discover the power you have, divine power to destroy strongholds by the Spirit through the Word of God. So let's talk about it practically. It leads us to the fifth point. Replace old thoughts with God's truth. Replace old thoughts with God's truth. Let's talk old thoughts, shall we? Who doesn't want to have that conversation, right? Cheer up. Hey, let's go. Ready to do this? I've already thought about all the thoughts you think, so it's great. I put them into some categories for you as well. Because again, we can't see your thoughts, which may be part of the problem is why we don't take our thoughts as serious because no one can actually see them, so we can hide them pretty well. But you know what? Can he God can see all of them. That should terrify us far more than that we can't see your thoughts. Now we see a lot of your thoughts because you speak out of your heart, and then we can kind of figure it out. This is a fun side note, isn't it? Alright. Couple things. So so some of you, uh old thought patterns that need to be replaced with God's truth, some of you are stuck in what I'm gonna call immobilized overthinking. You ever you ever been there? Immobilized uh overthinking. You are stuck. You got some I got so many smiles, like half smirks. You resonating or something? Just a half smirk is like, he's on to me. Or maybe even worse, he's on to like my husband or something. You know, I can't I can't tell. It's always weird getting half smirks. Okay. I'm talking repetitive negative thoughts. Hey, you know what's interesting about repetitive negative thoughts that you can't change? It's usually about three areas, okay? And this is more just your pastor speaking. So three areas about why this tends to dominate. It's because that you're either trying to change the past, you're trying to control what belongs to God, or you're obsessing when you need to obey God. That's usually what happens. Was that helpful? Do you want me to say it again? Okay, so when you're in a stuck, repetitive, negative thought process, it's usually about three things. You're obsessing over trying to change the past, which you can't change. You can learn from it, and you should, and then you should let it go. Second thing, you try to control what belongs to God. There's certain things that are in his hands that are not in your hands. You need to entrust that to the Lord. If Christ did it, where do you need to rest? If Christ promised it, where do you need to wait? If Christ said it, where do you need to obey? That would be kind of the idea. And that we often obsess over things. We get really preoccupied, and it's like, hey, let me just stop you right there. Stop that. Stop obsessing and obey the next thing that God's calling you to do. Those are the three main things. We try to change the past, we try to control what belongs to God, or you obsess when you need to, obey the Lord. Can you relate? Here's another one. Inability complex. Hear this quite a bit. Inability complex. I can't fill in the blank. I can't fill in the blank. I can't stop. I have a thought, I can't stop. Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. Not if you're in Christ. You have the mind of Christ. I can't change. Nope. Nope. If God started it, he's gonna finish something in you. He's gonna change you. We become victims of our own thinking. This is often overly therapeutized. Uh, because I have this disorder, I can't change. I'm saying that broadly. I don't need an email about, oh, I have this disorder and it's a real. I got it. I'm sure it's real. But oftentimes, or many times, or at least sometimes, it's not. And it's not helpful in you fighting sin. Here's another one I think is massive for our series coming up: the imagination, your imagination life. I'm I'm convinced the imagination element is huge when it comes to why you don't want this marriage series. Because you're thinking about how good would life be if I just had a girlfriend, a boyfriend, a spouse to enjoy this series with, a good marriage. You're running from something because, if I'm honest with you, you are discontent with the God ordained boundaries of your life. Psalm 16 says, He holds your lot. Truly the lines have fallen in pleasant places, but you don't believe that. And so you live in the world of your imagination. You put yourself in a condition that God hasn't ordained for you, and it makes you discontent. And I'm convinced that's a lot of what's behind many of the things that I've heard. Imagination. And then this one unwelcome thoughts. You've been there? Like, man, I don't know, I'm pretty dialed in, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, I'm like, what was that? Do you ever feel that way? Like, I'm dialed in, and then bam, the stock comes in, and you're like, I didn't do that. Do you ever feel like that? Like, what was that? Was that the was that the devil? You know, you're just like, that wasn't me. Can there be other contributors to thoughts coming into our head? The answer is yes. You think about David, 1 Chronicles 21, Satan incited David to number Israel. There's a sin Satan was directly involved in. Acts 5.3, Peter preaching boldly about Ananias for hiding some of the hiding, concealing the fact that he wasn't giving everything away, right? Of the proceeds of the sales that he made. Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit? So you ever had an unwelcome thought? Absolutely, we have. Goodwin says that our thoughts are like a sandstorm. I remember going to the beach last summer and we were, it was like, it was horrible. You ever been in a windstorm at the beach? Like I'm talking ocean beach, right? Not talking like those little, you're like, they're so soft on my feet. Yeah, but when they get blown into your face, it stinks. And maybe to take take the K of stinks and put a G in there, it stings. It's terrible, it's awful, it's the most in you, you right? I mean, you're just closing your mouth, you're closing your eye, no matter what you wrap something around you. It does not matter. It finds a way in.

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Right?

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You think you got all the sand off you, you stick those boogie boards in the back of the van, what happens? That bottom is covered in sand, right? That's how our thought life is. It's like, no, we're protecting, we're like and somehow the thoughts find a way in. Here's what we need to be thinking about as we replace our thoughts. They find a way in, but are you welcoming them when they come in? Do you give Them free rent. Or do you replace them with the Word of God? Do you entertain your passions? See, here's the thing. You have these passions inside of you, these wants, right? Your thought life was meant to govern your passions. What happens often is our passions end up being, our thoughts end up being the way that passions end up developing and being inflamed inside of us. Our thoughts were supposed to govern our passions, they end up giving way to our passions. And we're like, oh, I like that idea. And then the mind is like, hey, what about this? You ever seen about this scenario? And then it just opens up to all this, right? We have got to replace the inclinations of our passions with the Word of God, our thought life with the Word of God. And you shouldn't be judging so much on, oh my goodness, that thought got in. You should be judging yourself on how much hospitality have I given to that thought. Have I done what Philippians 4.8 says? Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there's any excellence, if there's anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Lots of scripture we could talk about on that. And then for good measure, replacing the lies you believe with the truth of God's word, you need to finish here. You need to rest number six in God's thoughts of you. Which is so hard to do. We are losing our ability to concentrate. We are losing our ability to meditate on the Word of God because our phones are training us to think like our social media feeds come at us. You know a lot. You have like an inch deep knowledge of a lot of things. That's that's basically how we live, right? It is so hard to meditate on the word. It is literally a muscle to exercise, to rest in God's thoughts of you. Psalm 139, verse 17. How precious to me are your thoughts, O God. Do you meditate? When was the last time you said that to the Lord? Psalm 40, verse 5. You have multiplied your thoughts toward us. Thomas Goodwin said it like this: God has more thoughts of mercy than you have of rebellion. When was the last time you meditated upon that? See, as we get ready to begin this series on marriage, we need to learn to practice what God, excuse me, what Goodwin calls the art of extraction. That is, in all of our lives, in every circumstance, a holy heart, a Christian heart converts all things into useful thoughts that you experience. All things that come at you or pop into your head, you don't dwell on what you don't have, you don't dwell on what you can't control, you don't dwell or obsess where you need to obey. Instead, you make it your mission to see God in everything. You make it your prayer to drive a holy, useful meditation out of each sermon. So you go, this isn't what I wanted to hear about today, but what is it in this, God, that I need to receive from you as good for my soul? You need to learn the art of extraction. You need to learn the art of taking something and making it useful and fruitful and seeing God in every single circumstance that comes your way. That's my prayer for you guys as you enter this series. And then out of that, if that's how we think, I guarantee this will be one of the best series that we've ever had. Because you guys will be learning and exercising the muscle of the art of extraction. And not only pulling great things out of sermons from the Word of God for your soul and for your life, but then letting that transfer to the circumstances that you face in your life and drawing a holy, helpful, useful meditation out of everything that comes your way. God help us. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We ask you, Lord, that you would help us to apply this framework to our lives, prepare us for this marriage series that's coming up, God. We pray that you would open the eyes of the blind, Lord, spiritually. The gospel would resonate in hearts, and that you would, Lord, help those who feel stuck in just impenetrable fortresses and strongholds in their mind to be set free by the gospel of Jesus Christ. We'll pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.