Purity

A Christian’s mind is to be filled with thoughts that are without blemish or defect, acceptable in the sight of God.

Note: This transcript was auto generated and may have errors.  If you would like to volunteer to review and edit our sermon transcripts before they are posted, contact Gail Peterson, gpeterson@calvaryefree.church.

If you were an ancient Israelite traveling through the wilderness prior to the entering into the Promised Land, or or living in the land after the conquest of Canaan, your entire year was marked by a series of festivals that surrounded the tabernacle or later, the temple. Our calendar is also marked by holidays and festivals, but most of ours are secular celebrations of made up events like Valentine’s Day, right? Prove me wrong. That’s what I’m saying. Change my mind. We’ve got some meaningful holidays. Okay. We do have a few meaningful holidays. I’m not saying that they’re not meaningful. We have some meaningful events that we celebrate, but for the most part, our holidays center around secular ideas or historic events. As an Israelite, the year would be marked by celebrating the relationship you have with the Lord. Okay, that’s where the center of your of your festival, your holiday would be. It would be both individual and corporate celebrations. As a nation of your relationship with the Lord, you you would celebrate Sabbath every week on on the seventh day. So on Saturdays there would be a a feast of Passover, first fruits and the weeks in the spring and then the Feast of Trumpets would prepare you for the Day of Atonement, and then the feast of the booths in the fall. And all of these events would have within them prescribed sacrifices. There would be animals that you would need to bring to the temple as a sacrifice, which is a form of worship.

Now, this is hard for us to picture because we live in a very different kind of economy. But in an agrarian society, it is not just farmers who have animals. Everyone has animals. Okay? Everybody. Everybody farms. In that sense, houses had barns built right into them. Like we have a garage built right onto our house. They would have a barn built right into the house. And if you didn’t have the animal that you needed at the time, you needed it for one of these festivals, there would be an opportunity to buy the animal. Uh, if for those who couldn’t afford that price, that sacrifice, there would be times when you could offer a less expensive animal or you could share your sacrifice with another household. The goal wasn’t to bankrupt people. The goal wasn’t to to to cause people harm. It was a form of worship to show dedication to the Lord, to celebrate God’s provision, and to express joy and love for him. And on the Day of Atonement, specifically that celebration. It was a symbol of transferring the sin guilt of the individual onto the sacrificial lamb. So a transfer of guilt and punishment would teach God’s people over and over again throughout the centuries, that they need Christ in that way. It was a sort of a teacher for the ancient people. So let’s say that you are an Israelite living in Bethlehem, which is a small town just outside of Jerusalem, and and you’re out in your barn to select the lamb that will serve as this year’s Passover lamb for your family.

Uh, this Passover lamb is is going to be killed, and you’re going to take the blood and you’re going to put the blood on the frame of the front door of your house, and then you’re going to cook and eat this animal together, this lamb together as a family for dinner. And this was a way of commemorating the the Lord passing over the houses of the Israelites when they were in Egypt on the night that the final plague came through Egypt. Of the ten plagues, the final plague took the firstborn son of all of the households. And you would be doing this to commemorate that God passed over the Israelite households. The blood was a sign of trusting that God would accept the lamb in the place of the firstborn son. So it’s a powerful gospel image. So there you are. You’re out in your barn and you are looking to select a lamb. Which lamb are you going to choose? The economical choice, the one that would make the most sense for the finances of your family would be one that’s starting to not look so good, but you know better. Use that one up before it dies, right? When you’re at your refrigerator today and you open it up and there in there there’s there’s two milks and one milk is open and it expires tomorrow.

And the other one is sealed. It expires two weeks from now. Which one are you going to drink up? Right. You don’t get in trouble opening up the sealed one. You’re going to use up the the milk. Same thing here, right? That would make the most economical sense. Use the lamb. That’s not looking great. Or maybe use the lamb that was born blind. You get a blind one in there. You don’t want it to pass on its genes to a whole new generation. You don’t want a whole herd of blind lambs out there. So maybe that one good economics says go with the lamb. Voted least likely to succeed, right? That’s the one you want. However, if you choose that flawed lamb. You would overlook the purpose of the sacrifice. Remember, this is not an economic choice. This is a show of love and dedication to the Almighty God. And in the case of Passover, this animal is to represent an acceptable replacement for the firstborn son in the family. In fact, all of the sacrifices prescribed in the Old Testament have a symbolic significance that points both to the greatness and the holiness of God in some respect. That’s that’s the intention that these these animals would reflect God and his greatness and his holiness. And because of that significance, the Mosaic Law doesn’t just schedule feasts and sacrifices, it actually explains exactly what is and is not an acceptable sacrifice.

This is from Leviticus. This is chapter 22, verses 19 to 22, where the Lord explains to Moses what is and is not an acceptable sacrifice. Listen to this. If it is to be accepted for you, it shall be a male without blemish of the bulls, or of the sheep or the goats. You shall not offer anything that has a blemish, for it will not be acceptable for you. And when anyone offers a sacrifice of peace offerings to the Lord to fulfill a vow or as a free will offering from the herd or from the flock to be accepted, it must be perfect. There shall be no blemish in it. Animals blind or disabled or mutilated, or having a discharge, or an itch or scabs. You shall not offer to the Lord, or give them to the Lord as a food offering on the altar. This is one of at least 40 times in the Old Testament, where it is explained that all sacrifices must be pure. The purity of the animal symbolizes the purity that God requires as an as an ancient Israelite standing in your barn selecting a lamb, you are not at liberty to select just any old lamb that you like. You must choose a lamb that is pure without any blemish. Now, why would I open our time this morning with a long explanation of ancient animal sacrifices? We’re not going to do any if that’s what you think is coming next.

So we’re for good reason. We’re not going to do any. I bring this up because as we return to the list of items that Paul tells us, that should be part of the thought life of every Christian, we come to purity. Here, here’s the list. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. When a Jewish man like Paul refers to something that is pure. It’s this historical background that I just described that he would have in his mind when he thinks about what something pure is, a thing that is pure is a thing that can be brought before the Lord because it doesn’t contain any blemishes. It’s acceptable before the Lord because it’s without defect. A Christian’s mind, then Paul is saying, here is to be filled with thoughts that are without blemish or defect, acceptable in the sight of God. So what are these pure things that we’re supposed to think about? And then what would it look like for us to be thinking about these things? Well, to answer those questions, we’re going to take the same approach that we have had for the past several weeks. We’re going to first define pure as Paul uses the word here, and then we’ll describe pure thinking from the proverbs.

And then finally we’ll consider how purity is displayed in Christ. Let’s start with the definition. Pure is an adjective that Paul uses five times in his letters. It comes from the same word family that we get our word holy from. When Scripture describes God as being holy, it means that he is without any blemish of sin, that he has no sin in him, that he has not committed sin, that he is not motivated by evil or sin in any way, and that he can’t accept sin or evil into his presence. When the demons ask Jesus why, why he’s come to be with them, and whether he’s come to destroy them, they say, what have you to do with us? The Holy One of God, as that was their name for him, the Holy One of God. By calling Jesus the Holy One of God. They’re saying that they know that Jesus cannot be partners with them. They recognize, well, what are you even doing here? Why would you even be around us? We know you can’t be with us or near us, or accept us in any way. And by the way, he didn’t come there to accept them in any way. He actually did come there to destroy them. We can see that that that Paul has this idea of separation in mind when he uses the word pure by looking at first Timothy. This is first Timothy 522. Do not be hasty in the laying on of hands, nor take part in the sins of others.

Keep yourself pure. There’s our word. You can see how purity is contrasted here with taking part in the sins of other people. Paul is saying to Timothy, you know you are pure because you’ve been set apart from sin by Christ. Now there’s still going to be sin going on around you, Timothy, but you need to keep yourself pure. You need to keep yourself apart from it, away from it. Don’t engage within it. That is purity. But what then is a pure thought? In second Corinthians ten, Paul doesn’t use the word pure, but listen to him describe the war that’s going on in the Christian’s mind. 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. So he’s describing the war that is going on in the mind and heart of a Christian. If you’ve if you’ve been a Christian for any length of time in your life, you feel these verses, don’t you? You read this and you can you can feel what Paul is talking about here, that fight for your thought. Life is war. It’s war. We are saved by grace through faith in Christ.

We are set free from the bondage of sin. Those are true. That’s true. We’re set free by entirely by God’s grace. And what that does is it means we can say no to sin. We are enabled. We’re no longer bound by sin so that we can say no to it. We are new creations. But here’s the truth we still live in frail and faulty human bodies. That’s what Paul means when he says, here, though we walk in the flesh, do you see that? We know temptations are everywhere, and we know we often succumb to those temptations. But we’re waging war. We’re waging war against that temptation to sin. That’s the difference between those who have been changed by Jesus and those who have not been changed by Jesus. God’s grace changes your will. It changes your want, what you desire in your heart. It changes your will, and then it empowers you to wage war against your own sin. And we don’t fight against this with with man made ideas and technologies and rules and disciplines. We overcome through worship and prayer and obedience to Christ that’s empowered by the Holy Spirit who now indwells us. He both convicts us of our sin, shows us the truth of our sin, and then offers a way out and empowers us to take a way out. Divine power destroys the strongholds of sin. Human power doesn’t. Your own human power, your own human will is not what destroys sin.

Divine power at work within you is what destroys sin. Human will and power is what got us in this mess in the first place. Okay, that’s how we got to where we are. And notice what strongholds of sin Paul particularly mentions here arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God. Paul’s warfare against sin in this case, is the one that’s being waged in his mind. Picture a battlefield. I want you to just think of a think of a battlefield in your mind. So think of Braveheart, right? Just big, just big open battlefield. Right. And there’s these there’s two lines. One side, you have all the lofty, self-assured opinions of the world, along with their arguments for why they’re excusing their sin and why that’s superior to the way you would think. Right. And so they’re all they’re all up there on the hill, and they’re about to charge into the battlefield. And on the other side of the field, you look and there is the Word of God holding its shield, beating its shield, sword in hand, War paint on. Paul says that’s the battle that every Christian fights in his mind. That’s that’s every Christian’s battle. Every day you wake up as a Christian that you get ready for your thought life to be at war, because it will be at war today, tomorrow, the rest of this week. Because an ungodly world will come crashing in from the hilltops, and you’ll be angry at some point and the thought will come I am right to yell and scream.

I’m a victim. My anger is justified. Or you’ll sit down at your computer this week and the thought will come. Let’s just escape into some pornography for a while. No one will know and it won’t hurt anybody. You’ll you’ll be presented all sorts of worldly ideas and values from friends and coworkers that will make sense to them, but will violate God’s Word. And you’ll have to decide. Do I just nod my head? Do I say something? Do I just pretend I didn’t hear? Or do I absorb that worldly wisdom into my own way of thinking, and suddenly shift the authority in my own heart away from God’s Word? Paul says, here’s what you do when the when the when the battlefield becomes a start, when the battle starts to wage in the battlefield, here’s what you do. He says you take every thought captive. Take every thought captive. You arrest that thought. You stop it in its tracks. You do not allow it to proceed before a proper inspection of that thought. You become like immigration at the airport. You remember that. You know that fun experience immigration at the airport. Isn’t it great? You know, the guy that just eyes you over when you hand him your passport? I’m telling you, I think they just instruct those guys, intimidate everybody.

It doesn’t matter what they’re doing. Doesn’t matter what they look like, doesn’t matter who they are. Intimidate everybody. You could be standing there in a Hawaiian shirt and flip flops holding a baby, and they would be like, can you, sir, step over here into this holding cell we have for you? We’d like to inspect you a little bit further. There’s that, that, that, that quiet scrutiny, that quiet scrutiny that makes you feel like you’ve done something wrong. You know, when you experience it and they’re looking at you and you’re like, did I do something wrong? Why is he looking at me like that? I don’t understand, and no, I’ve not done anything wrong. Why is he treating me this way? That scrutiny. To wage the war against sinful, worldly thoughts that have come in to trip you up to disrupt your pursuit of Christ. Paul says that you have to capture those thoughts. You need to scrutinize those thoughts that have come into your mind. So, so back to our examples. You think let’s just escape into some pornography for a while. No one, no one will know and it won’t hurt anyone. God’s word says, you do not escape into sin. No one escapes into sin because what sin does is, is it ensnares you like a trap. The only thing you could do would be to escape out of sin. Nobody escapes into it. And to. And be sure that your sin, when you’re there, will find you out and will have a great effect on your mind and your heart, and it will hurt your relationships.

And furthermore, you’re contributing to a worldwide market of sin that exploits women, fuels human trafficking, and hurts millions of people. So that thought. That thought you thought was so innocent. What needs to have to happen is you got to capture it and you got to destroy it. With God’s Word. You think I’m right to yell and to yell and scream? I’m a victim. My anger is justified. Do what I want here because I’m angry. James four comes along. And says, what causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions. You adulterous people, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. You’re you’re screaming and yelling as a sign that you have become a friend of the world. It’s not a sign that you’re right. It’s a sign that you become a friend of the world. You’re screaming and yelling because the world isn’t revolving around you and your desires.

And it’s going to take some real scrutiny and real humility to step back from your own emotions and take the thoughts captive that led you to your sinful anger. That’s the pursuit of pure thoughts. That’s the pursuit. This is the war that every Christian must wage in his own heart and mind for pure thought. At this point, I think we can bring together a definition of purity as Paul uses it here in this list, pure thoughts aligned with the holiness of God and His Word, unblemished by the sinful arguments and opinions offered by the world. That’s what purity is. When you’re pursuing pure thoughts, what you’re doing is you are scrutinizing what comes into your mind and then what is allowed to settle into your heart. You’re calling out those things that are leading you astray, and you’re making war against that sin. You’re not allowing that sin to just become part of who you are now. Those thoughts become part of your philosophy for life. You’re scrutinizing them, and you’re getting rid of those things that don’t align with God’s Word. And simultaneously, you are dwelling then, on the thoughts that celebrate the holiness of God and the goodness of his creation. Let’s get a picture of what pure thinking looks like, what this would look like in the Proverbs. You heard Proverbs 1526 to 33 read earlier in the service. Let me point out just a few things here.

It starts with this. The thoughts of the wicked are an abomination to the Lord. Now, you might expect it would say that the actions of the wicked. Are an abomination to the Lord. But those actions start in the thought life just as all actions do. All actions start in the thought life. As I noted earlier in this series, everything you do starts in your mind. Everything you do starts with a thought, and then that thought is either pure aligning with God’s Word or it isn’t. Sin is conceived first in your heart, and then what happens is it becomes an argument in your mind. You put an argument around the thought and then it becomes an act of evil. By contrast, the second part of this verse looks at the process in reverse order. Gracious words are pure words. There’s our word pure these these gracious words. Where do they come from? They come from someone who is pure, who is pure in his heart and mind. And you can see the contrast of this throughout the rest of the verses of the passage. Verse. Verse 27 says, whoever is greedy for unjust gain troubles his own household, but he who hates bribes will live. Notice not those who get unjust gain. But those who are greedy for unjust gain. So? So the focus here is on the thoughts of the person, whether or not they get the gain they’re looking for. It’s on the the greediness within the person to want those things.

If you’re driven in your heart and your thought life by money and getting money any way that you can, you’re going to hurt your family. But the contrast is also focused on thoughts. Do you see that there? He who hates bribes, not just he who doesn’t take them, but he who hates them. He who in his mind has rejected the idea of taking a bribe. Here’s another one. This is from the next verse. The heart of the righteous ponders how to answer, but the mouth of the wicked pours out evil things. So faced with a situation where you need to speak the heart of a person who is righteous before God thinks through how to answer, there’s a discernment process. The discernment. We’ve been talking about all series, this process that happens in your head before you speak, before you act. Since you don’t want to simply add your worldly perspective to the rest of the worldly perspectives, you have to take the time to filter the situation through God’s wisdom before you speak. Now, let me ask you, how many of you are really good at this? Me neither. Not good at taking that that time before we speak. But. But a well disciplined thought. Life okay. A well disciplined thought. Life that scrutinizes situation and employs godly wisdom will allow us to give answers that that honor the Lord instead of simply just pouring out evil like everyone else.

The Proverbs tell us over and over again. Get your thoughts right. Keep your thoughts right. Try to work on your on your choices. Get your thoughts right. Choices will follow. Weed out the sin that has crept into your mind and put sinful blemishes on the thought life. That should be pure. Church. I’d love for you to carefully consider. Do you love the things that God loves and hate the things that God hates? It’s not the same question as asking whether you’re caught right now in sin, succumbing to sin and temptation. Let me ask you a prior question. Do you love the things that God loves and hate the things that God hates? Jesus made this point with an anger and lust in his famous sermon on the Mount. He said, you may not be cheating on your spouse, but are you lusting after other people in your heart? Because that’s where the problem starts. You may not be murdering people, but you are holding hatred and your anger in your heart. Are you calling people fools? Are you hating people? Or are you unleashing your anger and then excusing yourself? Jesus says same sin. It’s the same problem. It’s the same consequence of sin, right? Murder is a worse consequence of sin, but it’s the same sin, same problem. Church. Striving for righteous living. Striving against sin starts with the war between our ears and in our chest. That’s where that’s where the work begins.

It starts with demanding, God honoring purity of our own hearts and minds, because our lives are the spiritual offering that we bring before the Lord. That’s what Paul says when he wrote in Romans chapter 12, I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. You remember those animal sacrifices we talked about earlier? Remember that pure and spotless lamb that was the only acceptable sacrifice. That’s the purity that God requires of us. Our lives are now a living sacrifice before the Lord. We are not to bring an impure sacrifice before God. And if we stopped right now. With this lofty requirement hanging in the air. We just ended the sermon, just prayed and we were done right here. There’d be no hope. There’d be no hope. You and I have both had impure thoughts, some of which led to impure actions this morning. All right. So, I mean, you’ve had impatience that gave birth to anger, which led to accusations. And that was just getting everybody in the car, right? Okay. What? When you consider the day to day grind, the day to day grind of trying to live for Christ, separating the sinful thoughts from the God honoring thoughts and fighting back temptation and sometimes succumbing to that temptation. How can Paul tell us that we we are now living sacrifices? How can he say that? If God only accepts pure, unblemished sacrifices, and he clearly does, he only accepts pure, unblemished sacrifices.

How can I in any sense meet that standard for purity? Do not miss this little phrase in this verse. By the mercies of God. Do you see it? By the mercies of God. What mercy! Mercy is not getting what you deserve. That’s mercy. By not getting what we deserve, Christians can present themselves holy and acceptable to God. That’s Paul’s argument there by not getting what you deserve. You can present yourself holy and acceptable to God. What has God done in his mercy that makes this impossible task of meeting God’s standard for purity possible? Friends. The answer to that is the difference between what Christianity offers and what every other worldview in the world offers. This is so vital to the argument for purity. If you miss this, you will be caught in an unending loop of hopelessness. God requires us to be pure sacrifices before him, and we are not, and we cannot be that. Yes, it is demanded of us right down to our thought life. No, we cannot fulfill that obligation. What mercy of God then makes this possible? And here we turn to Christ. The Apostle Peter, one of Jesus best friends on this earth, said something that would be very familiar to us about our minds. We’ve just as we’ve been looking, therefore preparing your minds for action and being sober minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

So this is very familiar ground for us. Get your mind ready for action. Be sober minded. And we say, great. Yes, that’s exactly what I want. I want that I. But I’m not good at that. I want that, but I’m not good at that. We are not perfect at it. How how can we ever hope to do this in a way that would make us acceptable sacrifices in God’s sight? Peter says, look, you don’t do this in your own power. That’s the first thing you got to know. You don’t do this in your own power. You do this by putting your hope fully in the grace of Christ. See, church. Our pursuit of pure thoughts and pure living is an application of the grace of Jesus Christ. To take every thought captive is to look at it, and to look it directly in the eye and say, I refuse to believe the lies of Satan that are intended for my harm. When the real joy comes from having sober minded hope in the Lord, I say that directly to these lies. I refuse to ponder temptation to disobey Christ, because the hope of Christ is my joy and my life. That’s where my joy is. I will not believe these things. I refuse to live a compromised Christian life full of sins that I that I think are hidden.

Because not only do they hurt the Lord and they hurt me, they’re not even hidden. God sees all of our sins. Peter goes on. As obedient children. Do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct. Since it is written, you shall be holy, for I am holy. There’s the pattern that we’ve seen throughout this series. We’ve seen it over and over again. You’ll find it all throughout the Bible. Look at Jesus and then walk closely in his footsteps. Look to Jesus as your role model. He’s our role model and walk in that model. What Jesus has displayed for us, we are now called to do. He’s the mold to which we are called to perfectly conform. So. So we have what we have here is a perfect, spotless, unblemished model by which we can now shape our lives. There’s our word, by the way. Same word group. Holy. Holy be holy because Christ is holy. How was Christ holy? Perfectly holy. Perfectly. There is no sin in his life all the way right down to his thought life. You say? Whoa! That’s the standard. That’s the standard. That’s the measure for me and my thought life to be considered holy and acceptable in God’s sight. Yep. That’s what Peter says. And if you call on him as father, who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile.

Knowing. Knowing what? It’s a terrible place to stop, wasn’t it? Knowing what? What do I what do I have to know here? If I’m looking to. God is the one who judges impartially according to everyone’s deeds. And the standard that by which he uses to judge is perfect holiness. How am I ever going to do anything to please the Lord with the kind of purity that he’s asking for? In other words, how is my living sacrifice an acceptable sacrifice if I’m a living sacrifice, how is that acceptable to the Lord in any sense? Why? Why would God be pleased with anything that I do? But before we solve this tension. Let me pause here and say that I believe that we have come to the crisis point for many people who love Jesus, but who have disconnected their pursuit of purity from the gospel itself. They they’ve they’ve made a disconnection between the pursuit of holiness, the pursuit of purity and the gospel that they know and love. They rightly claim to be saved by faith through grace in Christ. That that that that his salvation is entirely work of Jesus and not their own doing. It is entirely a gift from God. And that is the gospel. That is the truth. We don’t earn our salvation with the Lord. He grants it to us as a gift entirely on the basis of what Christ has done for us.

There are people who will boldly claim that truth, but then when they’re commanded to think pure thoughts and make war against their sin and and live God honoring lives, they see that as a project only for their own human power. All, God has done so many things for me in Christ. Now, on my own, in my own power, I must now overcome my in my own strength. That path. If you choose, it will lead to either hopeless sinner who is never good enough, or prideful religious guy who is always better than everyone else. Those are the only two endings for that path. When Paul tells us to think about what is pure and holy, he means to do it within the same relationship that Peter describes here. What must we know as we pursue holiness, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. Knowing that you were ransomed, do you know what it means to be ransomed? It means to be bought out of captivity. You were rescued, but you were rescued at a price. The cost was paid to set you free. And the cost was that a pure and spotless lamb was offered in your place on your behalf. It was chosen for you.

You didn’t go to your barn and choose it. It was chosen for you. A lamb was selected, your sin was transferred to it, and it took your status so that before the Lord you would be in a state of perfect blamelessness. There is no spot or blemish on you before the Lord. If you have been bought at the price of the sacrifice of Christ. If you have Christ as your sacrificial lamb, you are pure. You stand before God without blemish. And so, though we do it imperfectly, we can pursue God honoring purity as an acceptable sacrifice. We can go after purity, not as a way of earning God’s favor, so that we’re pure enough so that God will accept us. But because he has already accepted us on the basis of the sacrifice made for us, that we would be set free so that our wills would be changed and we would pursue purity, because it’s our joy and it’s our life, and because he’s our king, that’s why we pursue it. Amen. We can take every thought captive. Take it all, take every thought captive church. And as we grow in Christ, we will get better and better at doing just that. We’ll become more discerning, and our lives will get conformed to the the grace that we’ve already received. So make war. Make war on your sinful thoughts. Church. Apply God’s grace to every single idea that comes into your mind. Be transformed by the renewing of your mind for God’s glory. Let’s pray.