Feast: Avoiding the Ruts of Our Carnal Mind

Maintaining God in all Our Thoughts
#FT24-06A
Bill Onisick
Given 22-Oct-24; 37 minutes 2024-10-22

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I want you to imagine for a minute, behind me here, scrolling right to left, is this giant news ticker. Now, we have all seen these before, probably on TV or on a computer screen. They are scrolling with a constant information flow. It could be the latest sports scores, maybe stock prices, maybe the latest news on the war in Israel. It is just scrolling through, right to left, right to left.

But on this news ticker is something different for all to see. This is actually a "mind" ticker and it is displaying our latest thoughts for all to see, right now, right there. I see Doctor Maas is thinking, "Bill sure did wait to the last minute to get me his notes." You did get them, right? Just barely, under the wire. He is probably also thinking how many Hebrew or Greek words will Bill mispronounce today? Maybe not, maybe not. But Zachary is definitely thinking, is my dad going to mention me again in his message?

Now, this one is a little more serious, a little more close to home, but Bill is thinking, is my low white blood cell count perhaps an indication of a underlying serious illness?

So, let us personalize this, right now, right this very second scrolling for all to see: what is in your mind? What is on your mind ticker?

Now, if everyone could see our thoughts, how would it change our thoughts? There is no doubt some of us have already forced our mind onto something else because we do not want that other thing to be seen. Our thoughts are not exposed to each other. That is a good thing. But we must always remember: Our thoughts are always exposed to God. Right now, right this very second, God knows every thought, even the intent of our hearts and minds. How often is He in them?

I challenge you over this next 30 minutes, this is going to be the most difficult thing ever, something we rarely ever do: to take active control of your mind, to become self-aware of your every thought. You can do it. You are not a goldfish. It is going to be a bit uncomfortable and it will require some self-control, some discipline, and concentration.

Let us check in: what is up there right now on your mind for God to see? Are you still with me? Some of you might already be gone.

Please turn to Genesis 6. We are going to break this message—"Avoiding the Ruts" is the title—into three sections. We are going to start with just a few scriptures that reaffirm that God indeed knows every thought within our mind. We are then going to explore why learning to control our thoughts is so important to God and our calling, and we will end with some practical instruction on how we can all take control of our minds.

Part One: God knows our thoughts.

We are going to start in Genesis 6, verse 5. This is the very first use of the word heart in the New King James. (We can tie back to Christian's message. I love when God does this because we are going to actually explore that word heart here in just a minute.)

Genesis 6:5 Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

This scripture makes it pretty easy to see. The biblical usage of heart is not a reference to the organ that is pumping blood through our body that does not have thoughts. This is a reference to our minds. And we see here the Hebrew word for heart, Strong's #3820 lev, meaning feelings, intellect, mind, understanding, will, wisdom. It is from the underlying Hebrew, Strong's 3824 lebab, mind, understanding, reflection, thinking, inclination.

Throughout the Bible, we see heart and mind are overlapping concepts. They are not separate things here. Together they represent the entirety of our mind, both intellect and emotions. Our heart is at the central core of our mind that drives our thoughts, our emotions, our attitude, and ultimately all our behavior.

Over to I Chronicles 28. King David has assembled in Jerusalem all the leaders, officers, captains, stewards, mighty men of valor. Everyone who was anyone is present here for his message.

I Chronicles 28:9 "As for you, my son Solomon, know the God of your father, and serve Him with a loyal heart and with a willing mind; for the Lord searches all hearts and understands all the intent of the thoughts. If you seek Him, He will be found by you; but if you forsake Him, He will cast you off forever."

Over to Proverbs 4 now. We often see our heart compared to a spring, a spring of water that could gush forth either bad or good water, and we must guard it. Solomon tells us

Proverbs 4:23 Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it spring the issues of life.

And indeed, brethren, we must learn to guard and protect our mind and our thoughts with vigilance, for it guides and directs everything we do.

Back two chapters now to Proverbs 2. Again, some instruction from Solomon. We will kind of skip through this together. In verse 1, Solomon advises that it takes constant work to receive and treasure God's words. And in verse 2, he tells us we must incline our ears to wisdom and our heart to understanding. In verse 3, he takes it up a notch. We must cry out, cry out for discernment and understanding to God. And in verse 4, we must seek and search hard for the hidden treasure within God's Word.

Let us go to Psalm 10, verse 4.

Psalm 10:4 The wicked in his proud countenance does not seek God; God is in none of his thoughts.

The question for all of us is: do we seek God's input all day, every day in everything that we do? Or do we go through a good bit of our day focused on other things?

Psalm 139:1-3 Lord, You have searched me and known me. You know my sitting down and my rising up; You understand my thought afar off. You comprehend my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways.

Over to Jeremiah 17. We could add to our notes a couple more though while you are turning. Isaiah 66:18 and Jeremiah 20:12, "For I know their works and their thoughts." "[God] tests the righteous [to] see the mind and heart." But let us read Jeremiah 17, verse 10 here together.

Jeremiah 17:10 "I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind, even to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings."

So God is constantly searching, testing our mind to give each of us according to the fruit that we produce through our mind. What is on our mind right now?

Over to Matthew 9 now, as we confirm that Jesus Christ retained this same capability when He was here on earth.

Matthew 9:4 But Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said, "Why do you think evil in your hearts?"

We could jot down Matthew 12:25 as well, "But Jesus knew their thoughts." And we will stop there. But we could go to Luke 5:22, Luke 6:8, or Luke 11:17, "Jesus perceived their thoughts." "But He knew their thoughts." "But He, knowing their thoughts."

Clearly, God knows all our thoughts and our intent of our mind. Are you still with me? What is up on your mind ticker right now for God to see?

Part Two: Why are our thoughts so important to God?

Over to Deuteronomy now. We are commanded in Deuteronomy 16:16 to appear before the Lord for this Feast of Tabernacles. But just being here, just being in a seat does not cut it, brethren. We are warned we must not come before Him empty. And if you go and research that word empty, you can research it and confirm that it is not just about monetary offerings. If we are not putting Him first in all our thoughts, we are before Him empty, in vain. We must maintain our thoughts on why we are here at this Feast of Tabernacles.

Now in the book of Deuteronomy, we see heart, lebab, used 47 times in 43 verses. I am going to skip through here. We are just going to hit a few together.

Deuteronomy 4:29 . . . you will find Him If you seek Him with all your [lebab, mind] heart.

Deuteronomy 5:29 "Oh, that there was such a mind [heart] in them."

I will just replace it with mind for sake of speed.

Deuteronomy 6:5 "You shall love the Lord your God with all your mind [heart]."

Deuteronomy 6:6 "And these words I command you today shall be in your mind [heart]."

Deuteronomy 10:12 . . . to serve the Lord your God with all your mind [heart].

Deuteronomy 11:18 ". . . you shall lay up these words of mine in your mind [heart].

Deuteronomy 30 [we could go to so many more in Deuteronomy]. If we choose obedience in life, he tells us,

Deuteronomy 30:6 "And the Lord your God will circumcise your mind [heart] and the mind [heart] of your descendants, to love the Lord your God with all your mind [heart]."

Do we get how important our mind is in our calling, brethren? How careless are we at times with our thoughts?

Over to Matthew 15 now. In the New Testament, God's interchangeable use of heart, mind, and thoughts continue as we see the Greek word translated heart is Strong's #2588, kardia, which carries the same meaning as that Hebrew word for hearts, lebab. In response to the Pharisees accusation now, we are going to pick up in Matthew 15, verses 18 and 20. The accusation was, why do Your disciples eat bread with unwashed hands? And Jesus explains now the source of what makes us unholy, what defiles.

Matthew 15:18-20 "But those things which proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and they defile a man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornication, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. These are the things which defile a man. . ."

Mark's account adds covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness. That is in Mark 7.

Over to Matthew 22, verse 37. You probably knew we would get here at some point in time.

Matthew 22:37 And Jesus said to him, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the first and great commandment."

Now, our younger generations here know that if Jesus was texting them with these words, the "all caps" would be yelling at us, yelling at us, and I believe this is His intent here, brethren. Everything starts and ends with our mind. In confirming the greatest commandment from Deuteronomy, He says, you shall love the Lord your God with all your mind and with all your mind. It is a double mind, right? Mind and mind, all your mind, all your mind. He uses heart, but remember, it really means mind. It is all your mind and all your mind. He is trying to emphasize, it is all about our mind. Our mind must stay on the focus of God's Kingdom, of our calling, of our purpose throughout each and every day.

From the beginning through repetition, in Jeremiah 31, Hebrews 8 and 10, but as part of the New Covenant, God tells us He is putting His laws into our hearts, our minds, and He is writing them on our minds. Again, repetition there.

So controlling our mind is important. Why? Well, God commands it, first and foremost. Two, He gives us with His law in our mind. He commands us to study it and to keep it. Lastly, it is important because all sin starts in our mind.

Are you still with me, brethren? What is up on your mind ticker for God to see right now?

Part Three: How can we take control? (We will spend the most time on this one.) We are going to look at both things we can do to prevent, things we can do to get ready, and things that we would do. So we call those proactive things we can do and then we are going to look at things that are reactive, in the moment, when that evil thought comes in. What do we do? How do we take action?

Imagine for a minute you are driving at a high speed on the Katy freeway. That is Interstate 10 in Houston, Texas. It is one of the widest highways in the world, with 26 lanes all packed with cars driving aggressively. Now, I know it is hard to imagine in a state where everything is bigger and better, that Texans, of all people, would be driving an unsafe distance. But we are there. We are carefully paying attention to all those idiots weaving in and out, you know, the little motorcycles and the sports cars, and we are holding on to that steering wheel, where we are trying to keep control of our car going down this highway.

Now, imagine we just all of a sudden just let the steering wheel go. We let the car just drift with all those people in lanes beside us, following so close. Cars would be crashing everywhere and people would lose their lives. Probably multiple people, right, at that speed, at that many cars traveling.

And that is exactly what it is like, brethren, when we let go of the steering wheel and control of our mind. When we just let it go and we let our mind drift to where it wants to go. That is effectively what we have done. We said, you know, "Hey, Satan, wherever you take me, I'm ok with that." Right?

We have to learn more discipline here. It starts and ends with our mind and it is becoming harder and harder. Harder and harder for us to control our mind as the information highway becomes more and more congested, packed with more information flowing at faster and faster rates. Almost all of us carry a cell phone. Why? So that we can stay connected to the information flow at all times.

The amount of data created and captured is literally doubling every two years. Exponentially it is doubling every two years. That is 400 million new terabytes of data each and every day! 140 zettabytes a year. Each zettabyte is a billion terabytes, if you did not know. The artificial intelligence age has literally burst on the scene through generative AI platforms like ChatGPT.

Now, they are powered by LLM, large language models, trained on vast amount of data. Billions and even trillions of parameters are in these models and they use a type of machine learning called "deep learning" to understand how characters, words, and sentences function together. They extract meanings from a sequence of text and they understand the relationships between words and phrases. These LLM's are becoming smarter and smarter. 24/7 being finetuned through reward and ranking models and it is really not that different than dog training. It is just on a much larger scale.

Bit by bit, these LLM's, large language models, are being trained to think like we think, to be able to reason. It is downright scary as to how powerful they are. And as they advance, it becomes far too easy for us to all just outsource our thinking even further. Use one of those online assistants, right, that conveniently curates all of our content for us so we do not have to do any thinking. And it is going to become increasingly important, brethren, that we control our own thinking, that we focus on the thing that God says is most important to each and every one of us: controlling our mind.

Each morning the battle has already started. As our mind awakes, our thoughts can spring forth into evil or pure thoughts. We must focus to remove fear, doubt, negative, and evil thinking. (We can tie into Christian's message here again on Nehemiah's rebuilding of the wall.) We must work to build up our spiritual wall in our mind, a wall of protection and separation. We are, in fact, in a similar situation to Jeremiah 1:17-18 when they were surrounded by enemies, when Jeremiah gives the battle cry to rally the people. He says, "Gird up your loins!" And we can tie this to I Peter 1:13. He gives the same battle call.

I Peter 1:13 Gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

We are in a battle. Do we realize it, brethren? Do we see the battle? We must have our thoughts collected and focused to make ready for Satan's attack, because the attacks are there. They are there and they are going to be relentless.

So first we must take proactive measures, proactive actions. These are things we can do each and every day, all day long. We must reaffirm our commitment to our Great God each morning to do what He commands. Take control of the steering wheel in our minds and hold on to it. Not let it go, hold on to it all day long. No matter what we are doing, no matter what we are working on, no matter what we are faced with, holding on to control our thoughts.

We must then pray for God's help to retrain our large language model, our LLM, right? Retrain our mind, replace our evil carnal thoughts with godly thoughts. How do we do this? We must remember. Our minds are constantly being trained and refined by all the experiences that we have had, the information that has been fed into them over years and years, and they are being trained, just like an LLM, based off of how we reward the thoughts.

Think about that. When the thought comes in our mind, do we latch on to it? Do we keep it? Do we reward it? Or do we expel it and see it for what it is if it is not focused on God, if it is not the right thought. Many of us are still carrying negative training from our schooling, childhood, imperfect parents. I just reached a milestone this year where I spent half of my life in the church, half of my life outside of the church. I am still working to overcome that part outside the church every day.

We have bad habits that inflate our pride, like gossip, negative speaking about others, bad tempers, outbursts of wrath, impatience. Oh, up on the mind ticker now, Zach, Sam, and Liz are thinking how much of dad's impatience has rubbed off on me? Oh, and there is a lot. Hunter and Jared are thinking, oh, it's a lot more than you think. If there is an attribute or a character flaw we do not like in our parents, we can rest assured we have it. We got it. The only question is, are we self-aware enough to see it and to work to overcome it?

Let us go to Philippians 4, verse 6. How do we proactively retrain our mind? Well, Paul tells us here, we are to,

Philippians 4:6-7 Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, [to] let [our] requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

Paul tells us here at the conclusion of the section:

Philippians 4:8 Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, . . . noble, . . . just, . . . pure, . . . lovely, . . . of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things.

It matters what we are feeding into our mind. Let us tie this to Romans 12, verse 2. We are picking up in the section here where, in verse 1, Paul admonishes us to present our bodies as a living sacrifice. That is the intro here. Present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. How do we do it?

Romans 12:2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

Brethren, our thinking has to be changed. It has to be transformed from old ungodly ways of thinking into new godly ways of thinking. We must become more self-aware of our carnal tendencies to think evil or selfish thoughts. We have to be on guard constantly, constantly checking our thoughts to ensure they are aligned to God's will. Paul reinforces this in Ephesians 4. We must be renewed in the spirit of your mind, he says, created according to God in true righteousness and holiness.

Let us tie this back quickly to Romans chapter 8, four chapters back, verses 5 through 7. These are memory scriptures for many, I am sure. Not me. I will confess, I am not good at memory scriptures. That is something I need to work on. That is part of the preparation we all have to do, to know and study God's Word.

Romans 8:5-7 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be.

We could also tie in Psalm 19:14; 119:15; and 119:97. As we retrain our mind, we must pray, "Let the words of [our] mouth and the meditation of [our] heart be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, [our] strength and [our] Redeemer." "I will meditate on Your precepts, and contemplate Your ways." "Oh, how I love Your law! It is my meditation all the day."

We know that from a song.

How did Jesus respond to Satan's attack in the wilderness? He quoted Scripture. Well, in order to quote Scripture, we have to know it, brethren. When evil thoughts enter our mind, we must have these scriptures as a ready reference in our mind to be able to transform and react to those thoughts. If we have areas of weakness, we can call these "ruts in our mind" that force our tires, our thoughts, into them. We need to memorize key scriptures that will help us get our mind out of that rut and on to God.

The second thing we have to learn to do as we control our mind is more reactive. So we talked about proactive. Now, we are going to talk about reactive, in the moment. No matter what we do proactively, Satan is going to throw his darts at us, they are going to keep coming. They are going to be in our mind, they are going to come in there. What do we do?

Well, there is two primary ways that Satan will get us off the narrow path of godly thoughts and into the ruts of the carnal mind. And throughout each day, we must maintain control, we must remember these two primary tactics that Satan uses.

Number one is the Laodicean rut, I call it. We think we are largely okay. We are fine. We do not really have need of much. But we are so distracted with life, things in this world. We allow the constant information flow to just flood up our mind. Electronic devices and entertainment suck up all our time. AI assistants start doing a lot of the thinking for us. We have demanding jobs, homes, yards, hobbies, the list goes on and on. And the distractions are endless, brethren. But the B.L.O.T., the bottom line on top is, if God is not in all our thoughts, we must repent and we must make more time to put God into all our thoughts. So that is the first rut.

The second rut is even a little more dangerous. And this one is the prideful, hypocritical rut. This one drives us to inevitably think too highly of ourselves and to think negatively about other people. It is the rut that causes us to have evil thoughts about other brethren. Maybe they did something wrong to us and we have not forgiven it. Right? Maybe we see them do something they should not do.

Satan gets us thinking about that evil thought. It is not a godly thought, that is an evil thought. And there our mind goes, down the hole. Right? Boom. And what happens when it is in our mind? When it is in our mind, we start to talk about it and then the sin gets even worse! And we defile everyone else because we did not control our mind. We did not recognize Satan's attack putting and planting those seeds in our mind about someone else, recognize them for what they are.

They are evil thoughts and we cannot allow them to coexist in our mind, brethren. As soon as we find ourselves thinking, let alone speaking about someone else's problem, we are definitely in the hypocritical rut. We need to recognize it and we have got to get out of it.

Please turn to Hebrews 4. As we become more self-aware of our every thought, we can avoid the ruts of our carnal mind. But it does take a lot of work. Each and every thought brings an inflection point. Each and every thought that comes into our mind brings an inflection point followed by a decision point. Is this a godly thought? Or is this a satanic thought? Something that Satan planted? Or something that God planted? It is one or the other. It is not going to be both. It is one or the other.

Let us go to Hebrews 4, verse 12. Here is how we can test our mind.

Hebrews 4:12-13 For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and opened in the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.

The Word of God is our discerner of all our thoughts and intents. If we use God's Word, we can quickly and easily test our thinking against what God says is good and right. Each thought can be examined against the fruit of the Holy Spirit. There is a simple litmus test. Fruit of the Holy Spirit. Is this thought aligned to the fruit of the Holy Spirit? Love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, or self-control. If it aligns to that, the source is God. It is that simple.

But if the thought does not align to God's Holy Spirit, we should be thinking, "Danger! Danger, Will Robinson!" Right? "Danger! Danger, Will Robinson! Satan is trying to take me down a different path, a path I shouldn't take. I cannot allow that thought to stay in there. Boom! I got to get it out. That's not holy. That is not a holy thought." We have got to see it for what it is, we have got to stop it in its tracks, and we need to replace it with a godly thought by prayer and meditation.

Remember, Jeremiah 17:10 makes it super clear. God is constantly searching each and every one of our hearts and minds and He is testing our hearts and minds to know, what are we thinking? What is the intent behind that thought? And He will indeed give every one of us according to the fruit of our doing. Do we produce the fruit of His Holy Spirit or do we do produce the fruit of our self-focused carnal mind? There is no bad fruit on a good tree. Jesus says that over and over and over again

Over to II Corinthians 10. Now we are starting to wind down.

II Corinthians 10:3-5 For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.

In reality, it is the only thing, the one thing that we can control in our entire lives. We cannot control our circumstances. We cannot control what anybody else does to us or the situations that we have to face in life. We can control our mind, we can control our thoughts, and we are commanded to do it. We are commanded to love the Lord our God with all our mind and all our mind. Are we doing it? I know I have a long way to go.

He stands beside us each and every moment in time, and this should be scary. He is standing right here watching what we are saying and thinking. He is evaluating the intent of our minds and our thoughts, right? Are we staying focused on why we are here at His Feast of Tabernacles? How different will our life be when we maintain God in all our thoughts?

Please turn to Colossians 3 where we will conclude. We are going to tie into Richard's messages on Ecclesiastes here to focus on things that are above.

Colossians 3:1-2 If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth.

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