Lord, as we bow our heads, we open
our hearts and we ask for you by
your Holy Spirit to take control of this
time.
We are worshiping you, Lord, as we open
up our Bibles and we have been singing
to you and now we want to worship
you through the study of your Word and
Lord, we offer up our minds to you.
That place of often confusion and temptation and
things that go on that we wish would
not go on and yet that place designed
by you to bring us into intimate fellowship
with you, that place within our body between
our two ears that you have designed to
be a storehouse of the treasures of your
Kingdom and your Word, may this message bring
us to that end.
May our minds belong to you and be
filled and programmed with and inhabited by your
truth.
That we might know the freedom and the
grace and the richness that you have in
store for us as your children and we
ask these things in the name of Jesus,
Amen.
As I said, I want to talk about
developing a Christian mind.
There's so much we could say on this.
I've alluded to it in the past and
in fact, one time in the past when
we were in Philippians 4.8 and did
what you could call an exegetical message.
An exegetical message would be one where you
exegete the passage.
You take the key words and talk about
each one of them.
This is not going to be a message
like that.
I want to use Philippians 4.8 as
a launching point and then we'll go on
and in general talk about the mind and
what we can do to develop a Christian
mind.
So if you would turn to Philippians 4
.8, if you'd like to take a look
at this passage with all the key words
developed, you could get that tape.
It's available in the tape catalog.
Many years ago, a great Christian thinker by
the name of Thomas Goodwin said, our greatest
sins are those of the mind.
It doesn't take too long to figure out
that is true.
Francis Schaeffer, gifted by God to reach those
in this world who are the super intellects
and have an intellectual sort of cognitive bent
in their life.
He was gifted to reach them, those intellectual
people and bring them to Christ.
So his study of the mind was consistent
throughout his great ministry and he said, the
spiritual battle, the loss of victory is always
in the thought world.
He's right.
C.H. Spurgeon many years ago in England
said, God will not manifest himself in the
living room of our hearts if we entertain
the devil in the basement of our thoughts.
Think about that one.
Often our minds are just filled with evil
and yet we are anticipating a great infilling
in our hearts of God's spirit and God's
love.
What Spurgeon is saying there is it doesn't
work that way.
You get your mind fixed on God.
You get your mind filled with God and
his truth and you'll find your heart filled
with God.
And further, the truth is that our hearts
and our minds are inseparably connected because the
heart in a Christian sense is not that
thing pumping within your chest.
It is the very center of your being.
And so in the very center of your
being, there is activity that's linked to the
physical brain that you have between your ears.
And all of that comes down to be
ultimately the heart.
They're mingled together.
And the Bible has terms that in the
original can be translated either way, mind or
heart.
So we come to Philippians 4.8 and
Paul says, finally, brethren, whatever things are true,
whatever things are noble, whatever things are just,
whatever are pure, whatever things are lovely of
good report, if there is any virtue, if
there is anything praiseworthy, meditate or think on
these things.
This is Paul's own particular system.
You might say it's his own program that
he uses to keep a godly Christian mind.
Don't forget, it was out of this mind
that came much of the New Testament.
So when Paul tells us what to do
with our minds, we must understand he's he
is the voice of experience.
He knows what he's talking about.
If you've ever read the writings of Paul
and said, oh, God, that I could become
a man like this and take Paul's advice.
It's all right here.
You see, he tells you what to do
with your mind to become that kind of
individual.
I want to talk about basically three things
as it relates to developing a Christian mind.
First of all, the potential that God has
given us with these great brains that we
have inside of our heads.
Secondly, the pollution that is going into many
Christians minds today and robbing them of all
that God has for them.
And third, the programming that is necessary to
develop a Christian mind.
Let's begin by talking about the potential of
the mind.
I don't know how much research you've done
on this, but the human brain is unparalleled
in its potential.
If you look around and see what man
has done with the animals, for example, I
mean, it's wonderful, isn't it?
To go to SeaWorld and to go out
and get yourself seated in there playing the
music.
And then the Shamu show starts.
How many have ever been to SeaWorld and
seen the Shamu?
Well, look at this.
Well, you know, then what a wonderful thing
that is.
And Shamu comes up and he opens his
mouth and there's a big gigantic tongue and
they rub the tongue.
You're going, well, that's just so neat.
He's such a big whale and they're rubbing
his tongue.
And you see him do all these tricks
and that's fabulous.
And then you see the dolphins and how
they've been trained.
And then you go over to that other
show where that little otter runs around, you
know, and they've got the big walrus and
the seal and all of that.
Oh, that's so cute.
Those little brains, how that otter would know
how to go up on the fireplace and
knock the bucket over like that.
It's just so cute, that little tiny brain,
how he could do that and how the
seal would know to come and squirt the
water on the otter and how the water
and the otter get together and, you know,
anyway.
But having said all of that and having
seen all of that, when you talk about
the human brain, you're talking about unparalleled potential.
It goes far beyond what any of the
animals can do.
And that is because God created us that
way.
And yet the average human being uses less
than 10 percent of their brain power.
And think of what man has done.
Look at the technology of today.
Look at what man has done with 10
percent.
You begin to understand the potential of the
human brain.
Nobel Laureate Roger Sperry once said, in the
human head, there are forces within forces within
forces as in no other cubic half foot
of the universe that we know.
Speaking of the wonders of the human brain,
physiologically, listen to this, the whole process in
the brain comes down to about 14 billion
cells that are sending out chemicals to each
other all the time across these gaps that
are called synapses.
The web of nerve cells in the brain
actually describe defies description.
For example, one cubic millimeter, that would be
the size of a pinpoint.
Just get the size of a pinpoint.
One cubic millimeter, the size of a pinpoint,
contains one billion connections of brain cells.
A mere gram of brain tissue may contain
as many as 400 billion synaptic junctions.
Just a gram of brain tissue could contain
that many junctions.
As a result, each cell can communicate with
every other cell at lightning speed.
It would be as if you had a
population that was larger than the earth's population
and everybody was able to talk to each
other at once through this system.
That's what the brain does.
It is just phenomenal, the potential that you
have there.
And yet, there within the brain, which is
just a few pounds that sit between your
ears, some of us have more air in
there than others, of course, but there within
the brain, it's just a few pounds, you
have an entire life.
You have the morality, the sensuality, the mathematics,
the memory, the humor, the experiences, the judgment,
the religion, you could go on and on.
And there's a catalog of all those things
and they're all fixed in there in memory.
In fact, in brain surgery, they've actually touched
certain points of the brain and with the
individual awake during the surgery, that individually suddenly
sees and smells and relives whole experiences that
may have happened 40 years before in their
life.
It's all recorded there.
The brain is an incredible thing.
And with all those memories, it even then
has the common sense to assign priorities to
all those different things that are cataloged there.
Our minds were created with far-reaching capabilities.
But understanding all of that, you have to
realize that ultimately our minds were created for
fellowship with God.
Man is full of woody inventions, isn't he?
I mean, the technology, as I said, of
today is a demonstration of that, but God
did not create man just to sit around
and invent little things.
He created man to fellowship with him, so
that the incredible and parallel potential of the
human brain was really designed for an unlimited
fellowship with an unlimited God.
And we must come to see that as
Christians, because it is through our brains that
we transmit messages to God in prayer and
worship, that we articulate those messages.
And it's through our minds, our brains, that
we ultimately articulate anything we receive from God
and come to understand.
If the brain is not impacted, the heart
never will be.
That is why God designed His Word to
speak to the brain that He might get
to the heart, you see.
So the mind was designed for fellowship with
God.
So yes, the brain is like a computer,
but it's far much more than that.
No computer will ever know the heart of
God, will ever sense the feeling of God's
heart.
No computer will ever think God's thoughts after
Him as we do when we read the
Bible and the Holy Spirit quickens the passion
and the pathos and the feeling of God's
Word to us.
And so the human brain goes far beyond
any computer, though it is so much like
one.
And of course, the reason it's like one
is because man designed the computer after the
model of his brain.
Now there is so much potential there in
the brain that is tragically, though the brain
is unparalleled in its potential, it is tragically
so much of it is unused potential, what
I sometimes call permanent potential.
It just stays around there being potential all
the time, but not being tapped into.
And what I want to talk to you
right now about for the moment is the
unused potential in the Christian minds today in
God's church.
And by that I mean people who call
themselves Christians, because they don't necessarily have a
Christian mind on the inside, just because they
take the name of the Lord.
In fact, it seems to me that we
have a great scandal in God's church today.
And from God's point of view, I'm certain
of this, that God will look down at
his people and see those that have been
converted, but their minds haven't been converted.
Their hearts, yes, have been touched by the
gospel and they've surrendered to Christ and they've
come and been forgiven and been saved and
washed in the blood and they're bound for
heaven.
But the question is, having been bathed in
the blood and bound for heaven, has your
mind been washed?
Have you allowed God's word to wash your
mind and to take up residency there?
Have you become preoccupied with the things of
the kingdom rather than the things that you
used to be preoccupied before you made that
commitment to Christ?
See, the scandal of today is many, quote,
Christians who are truly bound for heaven that
do not have real Christian minds.
And that's why we have so many of
the problems we have today in the church.
Now, there are a few people who are
seeking to warn God's children about this.
One man has mentioned in his writings, he
said, the Christian mind has succumbed to the
secular drift with a degree of weakness and
nervelessness unmatched in Christian history.
Let me say that to you again.
The Christian mind today has succumbed to the
secular drift, the influence of the world around
us, with a degree of weakness and nervelessness
unmatched in Christian history.
All of that is simply to say this,
never has there been a time in the
church when God's people had so much available
materials to them to build strong, godly Christian
minds and never have there been so few
real Christian minds.
That's what the writer is saying.
It is almost as though in our generation
we have come to the point where we
have what you could call widespread religious anorexia,
sort of an anorexia religiosa, mispronounced it, religiosa.
Anorexia religiosa, it's as though there is a
widespread loss of appetite for God's food, for
spiritual food, for the things of God's kingdom.
Now there are a few that are heeding
the warnings and then there are others that
are just simply ignoring them.
I am appalled at how many Christians I
meet who have unguarded, undisciplined, unthinking minds.
I am appalled at what I call adolescent
Christianity.
It just never gets beyond the adolescent teenage
point in a spiritual way.
And so few are going on to sink
their roots deep, so few are making the
effort to develop a real godly Christian mind.
But you see, in contrast to that, if
you open your Bible, you find statements like
this from the biblical writers.
They were so concerned with these issues.
In Proverbs 4.23, it says, Above all
else, guard your heart.
Why?
Because it's the wellspring of life.
Everything about you comes out of your heart,
the essence of your being, and that's inseparably
connected to your mind.
Proverbs 23.7, for example, says, As a
man thinks in his heart, so he is.
And that word heart translated their heart in
the English as the Hebrew nefesh, and it
could also be translated mind.
The point is, you think about it long
enough and you will become it.
You think about it long enough and you
will do it.
Our minds are the center of the whole
thing in our life.
Someone said years ago, In company you should
guard your tongue, but in private you should
guard your mind.
I wonder how many of us really do
guard our minds in private.
I wonder how many of us are so
concerned when we're alone that our minds are
godly.
Marcus Aurelius said years ago that a man's
thoughts will die his soul.
Have you ever seen a piece of cloth
get dyed?
It can be one color one minute, and
a few minutes later with the proper dye
it can look totally different.
It will take on, the cloth will take
on all the characteristics of that, the color
of that dye.
What Marcus Aurelius was saying is that you
think about it long enough and it'll stain
your soul to be the color of your
thoughts, whatever it is.
And that's true.
And you can meet people who have lived
a wicked life all their days and thought
nothing but wicked thoughts, and you can see
it in their countenance.
You talk to people who are given over
to wicked lifestyles, look into their eyes, look
into their face, and you'll see it there
because a man's thoughts dye his soul.
On the other hand, look into the face
of a godly Christian who reads the Word
of God, who seeks God, and walks with
God, and has God as the center of
his thoughts, and guess what you're going to
see in their eyes?
God.
What will you see in their face?
A man's countenance lit up by the Lord.
That's what you'll see.
In fact, that was a great drawing influence
for me before I was a Christian.
I remember looking into the faces of some
godly Christians and thinking, I have never seen
what I'm seeing there anywhere else.
I have never seen that light that I
see in those eyes anywhere else.
I have never seen that kind of a
shining countenance anywhere else except in these people
who follow Jesus Christ.
And that told me that they had the
light I was looking for.
You see, a man's thoughts dye his soul.
And so we see the potential of the
mind.
It's very, very great.
Now let's go on and talk about the
second thing here we are discussing today, and
that is the pollution of the mind among
Christians today.
The pollution of the mind.
How does it happen that someone would be
saved by Jesus on their way to heaven
but not have a Christian mind?
Well, it's because their mind is polluted.
But how does that come to be?
Well, number one, from a lack of understanding.
A lack of understanding of our Christian freedom.
I think that many people fail to realize
that bad theology can do this, bad teaching,
lack of teaching can do this.
Many just fail to realize that they're free
now, that you are free to cultivate a
Christian mind if you want to.
In fact, nobody understood this better than the
Apostle Paul.
He prescribed his own personal program to us,
and we read it in Philippians 4.8,
right?
But turn in your Bible to 2 Corinthians
5.17. Paul writes down here something that
he believed, something that influenced his life constantly,
something he would not negotiate on.
Paul says here in 2 Corinthians 5.17,
Therefore, if any man be in Christ, you
notice he doesn't say if some men be
in Christ or if this person or that.
He says any.
That includes every single truly born-again person.
If any man be in Christ, he is
a what?
New creature.
Old things are passed away.
And so that is a statement addressed to
your faith because sometimes you don't feel like
old things are passed away, right?
If any man be in Christ, that includes
everybody, in case you don't feel like you
would get to have everything that all the
other Christians have, that you're some exception, you're
not, he's saying.
He says if any man is in Christ,
whether you feel like it or not, all
the old things are passed away.
All of that is to say your old
man is dead and you are a new
creature in Christ.
Well, when the old man dies and the
new man is born, launched into God's kingdom
by the power that created the heavens and
the universe coming to live within you, at
that moment in time you are set free
and given the choice to develop a Christian
mind.
You have the freedom to do it.
But many Christians don't understand this, again, because
of lack of teaching, bad theology, or simply
because they don't read their Bibles and don't
go to church, so they don't understand.
So if you were to say why are
so many Christian minds polluted today, the first
answer would be a lack of understanding of
our freedom in Christ.
If you read Paul's list in Philippians 4
.8, remember all the things we read there,
whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is
noble, all these things.
You realize that it becomes a matter of
personal choice.
That if you are going to have those
things dominating your mind, you must make a
choice to make the effort.
You must make a personal choice to meditate
on these things.
You must get involved.
Now somebody's going to say, okay, but wait,
aren't my present choices hindered by my past
choices?
Well, let me answer that.
If you have lived an evil life habitually,
know this, even though you're born again and
you've come to know Jesus and you're indwelt
by the Holy Spirit, not everything is going
to change overnight.
And so the answer to that question, aren't
my present decisions going to be hindered by
my past bad decisions?
The answer to that is there will be,
yes, an influence there.
And to say otherwise would be to ignore
reality.
But if you're thinking that it's impossible to
have a Christian mind, and if you're thinking,
well, you just don't know my problem, you
don't know my past, then my answer to
that is, it doesn't matter what your problem
is, and it doesn't matter what your past
is.
If any man be in Christ, he is
a new creature, and old things are passed
away, you have the potential to cultivate a
Christian mind.
Now yes, it might be a little harder
for you than the person who grew up
as a quote, goody two-shoes.
You know, I don't know anyone left like
that, but you know, if you did grow
up without much evil in your life, it
might be a little easier for you than
the person who had habitual evil.
But this is what I want you to
see.
Please don't allow yourself to rationalize a lack
of effort and a habitual indifference just because
you had a bad or a dark past.
Don't allow yourself to rationalize your way into
an ongoing emptiness.
You see, even worldly people can make a
decision to change their thinking.
Did you know that?
I mean, just think of all the self
-help seminars that are out there.
Think of Tony Robbins, you know, with his
TV advertisements that go on and on.
And they get all these celebrities on there,
you know, Fran Tarkington, Casey Kasem, and they're
just all these stars on there, and they're
all saying, if my life, I would be
nowhere if it wasn't for Tony.
You know, and it's almost like they're talking
about the Messiah or something.
Well, Tony Robbins is just one of many.
We could, I'm just using him as an
example, and the only reason I'm pointing him
out is to say this.
His program is not a Christian program.
It is just a program that says, hey,
use the mind that God gave you.
And with the capabilities of your mind, you
have the power to change.
You don't want to be a drunk anymore?
Don't be one!
You know, that kind of a message.
And you want to get your life right?
Then get it right.
Don't put up with not having a right
life.
And so all these people get on there
and they give their testimonies.
I didn't have a right life.
Now I do.
You know, I'm a millionaire.
Well, hey, if those people can make a
choice in their mind to change, and they're
following Tony Robbins, how much more can you
and I, who are following Jesus and are
in Christ and have become new creatures and
the old things have passed away, and are
indwelt by the Holy Spirit, who has brought
to us all things that pertain to life
and godliness, how much more can we make
a decision to change?
Not even by our strength, but by his.
So I'm telling you, you and I can,
with the effort and the submission to the
Spirit of God, develop a Christian mind.
So for any of you that were out
there making your excuses, we've diffused that little
bomb.
Your excuses are done.
It's over.
It's finished.
We'll all go on together now, won't we?
Because there's always those out there saying, I
can't do it.
I've never done anything.
I just can't.
I'm not capable of anything.
Well, you are.
And today is the day of reckoning to
begin to move forward.
You've been robbed if you've been living like
that.
The pollution of the mind, then, is coming
from a lack of understanding.
Further, another thing is it's coming from a
lack of refusal.
We must get involved in refusal as Christians.
You cannot go forward without refusal.
It is a discipline.
It is the act and the art of
saying no.
If you're going through your life and you're
just taking it all into your mind, then
know this, you'll never have a Christian mind.
There must come a point where you say,
that's not coming into my mind.
Neither is that.
These people that have been dragging me down
and been a bad influence on my life,
they're not going to do it anymore.
This thing I've been watching on TV, I'm
not going to watch it anymore.
This thing I've been reading, I'm not going
to read it anymore.
You see?
You have to refuse some things.
You've got to take control of the situation.
Your mind is a place that you must
take control of and you must keep it
clean or it will be dirty.
How many here have ever owned a bird?
I've had several of them.
I've switched over to dogs.
But how many, again, have had a bird
in your life?
How many were married to a bird person?
Listen, do you know what happens to your
bird and his cage if you don't keep
it clean?
Remember what happens?
Some of you got rid of your bird
for that very reason, right?
You see, birds, they like to eat little
snacks and seeds and things and you know
what happens.
If you leave them alone, their cage becomes
filthy.
In fact, we had a couple of birds
and it's, you know, the person who buys
the bird says, I promise I'll take care
of it, you know, I'll change the paper,
I'll keep it clean.
And the next thing you know, there's stuff
everywhere around the edge and it's piled up
and along the little, you know, wire things
and the next thing you know, the bird's
gone.
Because a cage with a bird in it
that is left to itself will become a
dirty bird cage, right?
And guess what?
There'll be a dirty bird living inside of
it.
Well, if you just leave your mind alone
and you don't make an effort to keep
it clean, it will become like a dirty
bird cage.
Just a dirty mind.
Our thoughts left to themselves are like a
cage of unclean birds.
Indifferent mind pollution today among Christians, I think,
is possibly pandemic.
It's global.
The major portion of this is coming through
television.
Let me give you an example.
Many heard of Charles Coulson, read his books,
seen his books, heard his name.
He tells of sitting at dinner with the
president of one of the three major television
networks and he felt he had a tremendous
opportunity to influence the man, so he told
him how millions of Christians were offended by
the major network's programming.
Knowing that TV executives have an intense interest
in profit, Coulson suggested that it would be
good business if they would begin to air
wholesome family entertainment.
After all, added Coulson, there are 50 million
born-again Christians out there.
The gauntlet was down and as Coulson tells
it, he looked at me quizzically.
I assured him this was Gallup's latest figure.
What you are suggesting, Mr. Coulson, he said,
is that we run more programs like, say,
Chariots of Fire?
Exactly, Coulson said.
That's a great movie with a marvelous Christian
message.
Well, he said, CBS ran it as a
primetime movie just a few months ago and
are you aware of the ratings that it
had?
Coulson said, all at once I knew I
was in trouble.
He then explained, the night NBC showed On
Golden Pond, it was number one in the
ratings with 25.2% of all TV
sets in America tuned in.
Close Behind was My Mother's Secret Life, a
show about a mother hiding her past as
a prostitute.
It was number two, very close behind at
25.1%. A Distant Third and A Big
Money Loser was CBS with Chariots of Fire
11.8% in the ratings.
In fact, of the 65 shows rated that
entire week, Dallas was number one, Chariots of
Fire was 57 in the ratings for the
week.
So my companion concluded, where are your 50
million born-again Christians, Mr. Coulson?
What are they watching?
Good question.
If even half of Gallup's 50 million born
-again Christians had watched the show with the
Christian message, Chariots of Fire would have topped
the ratings.
But the disturbing truth, as studies by the
secular networks as well as the Christian Broadcasting
Network show, is that the viewing habit of
Christians are no different than those of non
-Christians.
Since TV is a business, it gives its
customers, the public, what they want, and thus
it becomes a mirror of what the public
wants.
And we see from the research that Christian
viewing habits are no different than the rest
of the public's viewing habits.
So what we see on TV is a
mirror of what the public at large, including
Christians, want to see on TV.
That's the point.
The Christian community put into its collective computer
our minds as the rest of the world.
According to A.C. Nielsen, the TV set
in the average home is on seven hours
and seven minutes a day.
The average viewer watches four and one-half
hours of TV a day.
The statistics for religious homes is only one
-half hour less.
A renowned media expert, Professor Neil Postman of
the New York University, says that between the
ages of six and 18, the average child
spends some 15,000 to 16,000 hours
in front of the TV set, whereas he
spends only 13,000 hours in school.
Postman says that during the first 20 years
of an American child's life, he will see
some one million commercials at the rate of
about 1,000 of them a week.
Folks, what's in the commercials?
You and I know what's in the commercials.
So TV is a major influence in the
world today.
It's not just America, but in the world
today.
And we are learning that the Christian viewer
is basically, on the average, no different in
what he likes to watch than the non
-Christian viewer.
Why is that?
Christians have allowed their minds to become ungodly
and polluted.
They're doing nothing about it.
They're not refusing to allow ungodliness to come
in.
What you then have is a Christianity that's
a body of believers, a body of Christ
that is just about like the world, and
you're right back to 1 Corinthians, where the
Corinthians were being programmed by the world around
them.
You may not know this, but TV is
not that good for you in general.
For example, if you watch TV a lot,
what will happen to you is that you
will cultivate a short attention span.
You ever wonder why, on all the action
shows, all the things go like this from,
oh man, you should see this movie, it's
so full of action, held my interest.
Okay, go see it, and you'll find out
it's doink, doink, doink, doink, doink, doink, doink,
doink, one thing after the next, because short
attention span, you can't stand anything too long.
That's why on the news, you turn on
the news, and they get on one thing,
and they're on it for just a very
brief time, and suddenly they're on to something
else, and on to something else, and on
to something else.
Why?
Because viewers have a short attention span.
If you leave it on one issue too
long, they'll just tune out and turn you
off.
That's why people today, by the way, have
a low tolerance for sermons, biblical sermons, long
ones like mine, short attention span from TV.
TV further decreases your linguistic powers.
It retards your ability to communicate with your
mouth.
You'd be better off to sit and play
poker than to sit every week and watch
TV, because at least you'd be talking to
each other.
What do you have?
You've been peeking at mine.
You're cheating.
I mean, at least you're talking to each
other.
Pastor Danny's advocating poker.
He said it in the message today.
No, I just said you'd be better off.
I didn't say to do it.
Not only does TV shorten your attention span,
decrease your ability to communicate with your mouth
linguistically, but it reduces your capacity for abstraction.
And listen, much of the Christian life goes
beyond the level of the shallow and the
basic.
You understand that?
I mean, some of our experiences are so
deep and so rich the love of Christ
is beyond our attaining in its height and
its depth and its breadth and its width,
the Bible says.
What TV does is it reduces your capacity
for abstraction.
To put that in simple words, it makes
you shallow and basic, and that's it as
a person.
We could go on and on.
Messes up children.
It blends psychologically adulthood with being a children.
They don't know where they lie in the
middle because they're experiencing all this stuff they
see on TV that they have no business
even watching.
They don't know where they fit into all
that.
Messes up the kids.
Think about this.
The main themes of TV today.
Think about this.
What are the main themes of TV today?
They are in fact the main sins forbidden
in the Bible.
Did you ever stop and think about that?
The very things that God in the Old
Testament under the Mosaic Law prescribed capital punishment
for are the main themes on TV.
Adultery, homosexuality, incest, rape, murder.
All these things, the main things forbidden in
the Bible are the main diet of TV.
And the people love to have it so.
And that's why it's like that.
As a result for the Christian, the lowest
of activities, the most shocking, the most evil
become commonplace.
Think of how bad that is.
That you would come to the place where
you're no longer shocked by evil and thus
in your own life you will not flee
from it because you're just used to living
with it.
You mean after all you live with it
in your living room every day.
You're with it more than you are all
the other things in your life.
That is what TV does to you.
It turns the shocking into the commonplace and
the accepted.
And we accept it, we then reject it
in a way, in the Christian sense, and
we pay no attention to it and thus
we don't deal with it.
But you see that then leaves you a
long, long, long way from Ephesians chapter 5
verse 3 when it said, but fornication and
uncleanness and this kind of wickedness, let it
not even be named among you, let alone
studied and watched and with vicarious pleasure, which
is getting pleasure from watching something without doing
it, let it not even be named among
you.
Listen very closely to what I'm going to
say.
It is impossible for any Christian who spends
the bulk of his or her evenings, month
after month, day in day out, week in
week out, watching TV, the major networks and
the different cable, contemporary videos, it is impossible
for an individual like that, impossible to cultivate
a Christian mind.
And the reason for that is this, a
biblical mental program cannot coexist with worldly programming.
You have to have one or the other.
Somebody's saying, well, what should I do?
This is heavy.
I'll tell you what you should do.
You should selectively watch TV and do it
with great control over what you watch if
you want to watch TV.
Watch it selectively with great control over what
you watch.
That's one suggestion.
Let me take you to a second.
Second suggestion would be this, spend less time
watching TV.
Even if you do it selectively with great
control over it, spend less time.
And well, you're spending less time with the
TV, spend more time with your children, talking
to them, getting into the Bible with them.
For example, on a local station, you can
turn on the word transfer from 7.30
to 8 o'clock at night, Monday through
Friday.
That's a good suggestion.
I'm, of course, biased.
But we do that with our family.
We listen to the word, and then we
get together and talk about it.
And after our program, Skip Heitzik comes on
now, and on you go on the word.
That is a good alternative to TV, filling
your mind with the Bible.
In the time that you would regain by
watching less TV, you could get a book
by Kenneth Taylor called Devotions for the Children
Hour, which will take you through a systematic
theology on a child's level.
And it's all contained in these little chapters
with questions and songs and prayers.
And you could take your children through the
Bible and talk to them in that time
that you would regain from TV.
So one suggestion, selectively watch TV with great
control over what you watch.
Another suggestion, spend less time watching TV, even
if your viewing is controlled.
A third suggestion would be stop watching TV
altogether.
If, I'm not advocating a new legalism here,
no TV to have a Christian mind.
That's not what I'm advocating.
I am saying, if you cannot control what
you watch, if you are being polluted by
garbage from TV, if you live every evening
with the remote in your hand, and you
don't communicate with your family, and you're having
a hard time living a godly life, and
your mind is like a garbage pail because
it's full of garbage all the time, and
the main source of that garbage is TV,
then just quit watching it.
Do you know that some of the nicest
TVs we have here at the church are
from people like that?
Show up at the church, back in, unload
it, say, get it out of my life.
Here, you take it.
I don't care what you do with it.
Well, we take it and we plug it
in.
We hook up little good Christian videos to
it and show them to the children, see?
Programmed with godly stuff, nice godly stuff flowing
through it.
Listen, if you can't control it, get rid
of it.
What is more important to you?
Sitting around becoming an unspiritual carnal couch potato,
watching the tube all the time, or developing
a Christian mind and enjoying the freedom that
comes with it?
You see, we've got to come to the
point where we absolutely refuse to allow ourselves
to indifferently be programmed by the world.
Somewhere along the line, we have to make
that decision.
We're not going to allow TV to rob
us and pollute us.
Jesus said in Matthew 5 29, if your
right eye causes you to sin, pluck it
out and cast it from you.
Was he saying actually take your right eye
out?
No, you're saying take measures, your drastic ones
if necessary, so you'll stop sinning with your
eyes.
The psalmist said in 102 verse 2, I
will walk within my house with a perfect
heart.
I will set nothing wicked before my eyes
and I hate the work of those who
fall away.
It shall not cling to me.
It all comes down to this.
Jesus wants to be lord of your prime
time.
Are you going to let him be or
not?
It's a good question, isn't it?
And I want to encourage those of you
that are married to sit down with your
spouse after today's message and have a good
heart-to-heart honest talk about the TV
in your life and what you need to
do about it and how it's affecting you.
Finally, having talked about these different issues, let's
talk about now, I've seen the potential of
the mind, the pollution of the mind.
Let's talk about as we finish up the
programming of the Christian mind.
John R.
W.
Stott has said that the secret of holy
living is in the mind.
It's true.
It's all in the mind.
I want to give you a couple of
helpful things you can do to program your
mind to make it a Christian mind.
Here is the cardinal thing that must be
done.
A continual immersion in the Word of God.
You see, the Bible has been designed by
God to the end that if you immerse
yourself in it, it will cultivate a Christian
mind within you.
Paul said, brethren, think on whatever is true
or noble or pure or lovely.
These things are found where?
In the Bible.
They're not found on TV.
Very rarely are they found on TV.
Now, you could see a good whale show
or, you know, a little tennis match or
this or that.
But by and large, TV does not program
you with what is pure and lovely and
noble and all of this.
It's just the opposite.
You've got to go to the Bible to
find it.
Now, somebody's going to say, oh, but that's
such good advice.
I just don't have time to read the
Bible regularly.
Did you just say that to yourself?
I heard you over here.
Someone said.
Did you just say that to yourself?
If you did, let me ask you very
directly.
Are you being honest?
Is that really the truth?
Or do you just have so many other
things going on that you have between you
and God that now you don't have time
because you're wasting your time on things that
will not matter eternally, nor will they help
you in your walk with God now?
Listen, I could give you so many examples
of people that were far busier than you
and I will ever be that found the
time.
The time is there.
The question is, what are you putting into
that slot?
That's the question.
You've got to immerse yourself in the Word
of God.
And if you don't, you know what you
will do?
You will edit God out of your life.
There is no other way.
If you do not systematically, regularly immerse yourself
in the Word of God, you will edit
God out of your life.
There's no way around that.
And yet, if you give yourself to the
Word, it will begin to dominate your thinking.
You'll find it getting in there.
It will engage your thinking.
In Psalm 119, 103, the psalmist said, How
sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter
than honey to my mouth.
Can you say that today?
Or have you been watching so much TV
that your Bible is so dusty, you don't
even remember what his words taste like?
You see, the psalmist didn't have a TV
set, so he read his Bible.
How sweet are your words to my taste,
sweeter than honey to my mouth.
Through your precepts, I get understanding, and because
of that, I hate every evil way.
Psalm 119, 105, Then your word is a
lamp to my feet and a light to
my path.
The person you see with a Bible-saturated
mind has a light that shines in their
path.
They have a sweetness in their mouth, a
sweetness in their heart, a sweetness in their
soul that can only come from the Word
of God.
You want to know why it's so important
to read the Bible regularly?
Because you cannot be influenced by what you
don't know.
And I'll go a step further.
You cannot be influenced by what is not
fresh to you right now.
Sure, you may have read the Bible all
last week.
Did you read it this week?
If you didn't, it's not fresh to you,
and thus, it's losing its grip on you
and on your mind.
And if you can't read the Bible well,
someone else is saying, Well, hey, you know,
I would love to take this advice, but
I'm a very poor reader.
All my life, I've hardly read it.
You would be amazed the arguments people come
up with.
They come in for counseling.
You say, Do you read your Bible?
Well, not much, but I'm pretty sure you
can help me.
Oh, no, no, no.
It doesn't work that way.
The full counsel of God can help you,
and I can't read your Bible for you.
You see, you may not be able to
read well.
Well, then here's what you need to do.
Then you buy yourself a set of cassette
tapes where the Bible is read by someone
who can read well with all kinds of
enthusiasm and color in their voice, and they'll
read the Bible to you while you listen.
If you can't read well, then you start
listening well.
Get yourself a set of tapes.
You can get them in our bookstore or
order them if they don't have them there,
but you've got to saturate yourself with the
Word of God.
I so often think about those people who
understood this that had handicaps that would have
gotten in their way if they weren't so
hungry for God.
Like the individual who went through an accident,
a disaster, and could no longer read the
Bible and didn't even have any feeling in
their fingers, and so they discovered they could
read a Braille Bible with their lips.
And so they spent the rest of their
life reading the Braille Bible with their lips.
Then there was another individual who lost their
sight and read about the person who read
the Bible with their lips and got so
inspired, but found that they had almost no
feeling at all in their lips left because
of their accident and discovered they could read
the Bible with their tongue, the Braille Bible
with their tongue, and read through the whole
Bible.
So many of us have Bibles all over
everywhere.
What version do you have?
Oh, I've got them all.
Which version do you read?
Too busy.
Oh, I see.
You see, continual immersion in the Word of
God is the way to cultivate a Christian
mind and further, let me give you a
second thought and we'll close here, classic Christian
literature will make a major contribution to a
Christian mind.
Every single person I quote up here in
the messages, you know those little zinger quotes,
ooh, that was a good one.
Who was that?
You know those good ones that really get
you?
Every single one of them were people who
were given to immersing themselves in the Bible
and then reading good Christian literature.
Very often you find through the years they
all read the same people.
Read Amy Carmichael's writings, you'll find the same
people she's quoting that Spurgeon quotes and Tozer
quotes and J.C. Ryle quotes.
You see, you can track it all the
way along and Lloyd Jones quotes.
They all read the same people but they
all read the classic Christian literature that engaged
them in their thinking.
They didn't read the garbage that floods the
bestseller stands today in Christian bookstores.
I'm not saying Chuck Swindoll or Hank Canegraff
or John MacArthur, those people have garbage.
But I'm saying people like Benny Hinn and
people like that, that's garbage.
If you don't know it yet, find out.
It's full of nonsense.
So I want to give you some helpful
books.
People say at a time like this, well
what do I read?
I go in the bookstore, there's all these
books.
What do I read?
Can I give you a few suggestions?
No?
You're stuck.
Captive audience.
I'll give them to you anyway.
There's a book I'm reading right now.
It's called Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret.
That book is phenomenal.
21 years old, he went alone to China.
Finally he went back to England, brought some
people back to China with him and they
went out with nobody financing them but God.
And they laid the groundwork for the revivals
that have gone on in China until this
day.
You read Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret by Dr.
and Mrs. Howard Taylor and I guarantee it'll
just tear your heart out.
It'll make you weep before God and it'll
put faith into you as you see God
work in the life of real flesh and
blood people just like yourselves.
George Whitfield, great biography by Arnold Dalimore, great
man of God.
The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer,
a classic.
Tozer will take you into the depths of
Christian experience of experiencing God.
The Pursuit of God by Tozer.
Pilgrim's Progress, my son Daniel was reading it
on the plane to Idaho the other day,
the child's version.
Kept showing me the pictures.
Wow, look at this one, Dad.
He's laying this giant right here.
This is heavy.
You know, I'm giving you a list of
books that are on the list of the
greatest men and women of God in our
day have all said that these are their
favorite books.
This is kind of a potpourri.
My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Sanders,
Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, Spiritual Depression
by D.
Martin Lloyd-Jones, Great Christian Leaders of the
18th Century by J.C. Ryle, Holiness by
J.C. Ryle.
We have a paper on the counter in
our bookstore that has all these books listed
on it and I would encourage you to
begin to read, to begin to cultivate a
Christian mind and these are some good starting
points, but brethren, God has given us a
great gift in our minds.
You know that old saying, God gave you
a mind, you ought to use it.
Yes, we should and we should use it
to turn it into a Christian mind, a
place where God dwells, a place where his
word dwells, a clean place, a tidy place,
a bright and shining place where the light
of God is flooding us.
You see, we have the freedom to cultivate
a Christian mind.
I pray in the name of Jesus that
you will make some changes in your life
necessary to bring this about, that you will
no longer allow yourself to be robbed of
the richness and the freedom and the power
that God has for you.
And some of you have already discovered this
goodness and you've got Christian minds and you're
nodding your heads and you're hoping those people
around you will get on to it too
because you want them to know the fullness
too.
May God help us all to become a
thinking church, a church that thinks in terms
of Bible and the goodness and the love
of God, a church with Christian minds.
Let's bow for a word of prayer.
Father, thank you Lord for this time together.
Forgive us God for all of the wasted
hours, hours and hours and hours wasted, vegetating
instead of meditating.
Help us Lord, the television, video is such
a big part of our society today and
it's much good that can be done with
these tools but there's so much damage as
well.
Help us Lord to have a balance as
individuals to not be legalistic with each other
but to seek our own place of balance
and edification.
God, we're asking that you would by your
spirit cultivate within us the desire to make
the effort, the refusals and the necessary efforts
to go on to know a Christian mind,
to have one.
We want to be Christian people with Christian
minds and we ask these things for your
glory in Jesus' name.
Amen.