Preached Sunday, September 16, 2012 from Philippians 4:8
Theme: As Jesus’ followers, we must keep our minds fixed on those things that are consistent with who He is.
(Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture references are taken from The Holy Bible, New King James Version; copyright 1982, Thomas Nelson, Inc.)
Over the past few weeks, we have been studying from a very practical section of the New Testament book of Philippians. The subject of this book has been how we, as Christians, can experience the joy of Jesus Christ Himself in our own inner being. And this particular section of Philippians has been about how we are to put that joy into actual practice in daily life.
In Philippians 4:4-9—after having set before his readers the theological basis for that ‘joy’—the apostle Paul writes;
Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice! Let your gentleness be known to all men. The Lord is at hand. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things. The things which you learned and received and heard and saw in me, these do, and the God of peace will be with you (Philippians 4:4-9).
This morning, I ask that you give your attention to verse 8.
For many of us, it’s one of our favorite Bible verses. Some of us have it framed and hanging on a wall somewhere in our homes. Many of us have it memorized. But its precisely because it is so familiar to so many of us that we’re in danger of not understanding what it really means to put it into practice. So, please give your particular focus to these words:
Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things (v. 8).
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First, I ask you to give attention to the main command of this verse. It’s found at the end. The apostle Paul says that we are to “meditate” on something.
Now; that’s the way it’s translated in the Bible that I’m using—”meditate on these things.” I grew up in the late 60’s and early 70’s; and the word “meditate” scares me a little. To me, it makes it sound as if we’re supposed to sit down on the ground with our eyes closed, our mouths open, and our legs twisted in a painful knot. But understood correctly, the word “meditate” is really a good one. Other Bible translations use a different word. The English Standard Version, for example, translates it, “think about these things.” The New American Standard has it “dwell on these things”. All of these, though, have the same basic idea of thinking deeply and intentionally about something.
All of those various translations help us to grab hold of the idea that Paul was trying to get across to his readers. The word that he used in the original language is logizomai. (You might recognize the relationship that word has to our modern word “logical”.) Logizomai means “regard” something in our minds or to “reason” about it—to think about it deeply and ponder it carefully. It suggests a deliberate choice we make to consciously “consider” something in our thinking, to take it apart and examine it, and to linger over it so that it ‘sinks in’. One commentator used the phrase “focused consideration” in order to capture the idea.
Now; it’s sad to say that very few of us are intentional about what we give “focused attention” to. In fact, there’s much in the world around us to that militates against any “focused attention” at all. We live in a world that is saturated with “amusement”. Have you ever thought about what the word “amusement” means? To “muse”, of course, means to be absorbed in thought about something. But when it has the negating prefix “a—” in front of it, it means to be “not absorbed in thought”—to be “a-mused”.
And this is sad because the Bible calls us to be a thinking people—a people who are intentional about what it is that we give “focused attention” to. The Bible makes clear to us is that, when God the Father redeems us through faith in Jesus His Son, one of the most important things about us that He ‘sets right’ and ‘sanctifies’ in us through His Son Jesus Christ is our minds.
In fact, unless we allow God to ‘sanctify’ and truly transform the way we think, all the other areas of our lives cannot be brought into conformity to His good will for us. Take what the apostle Paul says in Romans 12:1-2. We’re all probably familiar with verse one;
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service (Romans 12:1).
There, in that first verse, we see God’s call to us to present our very bodies to Him for His good purposes. That describes something of our part in God’s process of sanctifying us in Christ. But if we try to live ‘God-devoted’ lives in our bodies while our thinking is still ‘ungodly’, we will fail. And so, the next verse goes on to say;
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 (v. 2).
It is essential that our minds—our very processes of thinking—become as sanctified unto Christ as everything else about us is to be. Paul writes essentially the same thing in Ephesians 4:17-25;
This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk . . . (Ephesians 417a).
“Gentiles” is Paul’s name here for those who have no relationship with God; and their “walk” is another way of describing their daily conduct. But what does he point to as the main dynamic by which the ungodly people of this world “walk”? It’s—
. . . in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart; who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness (vv. 17b-19).
Look at those words! Do you see all the references to the condition of the unredeemed person’s mind?—”futility of their mind”?—”understanding darkened”?—”the ignorance that is in them”?—”the blindness of their heart”? They walk the way they walk because of the fallen nature of their minds. That used to also be true of us. But it’s not to be true of us any longer. We are to be renewed in our minds as well as transformed in our walk. Paul goes on to write;
But you have not so learned Christ, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus: that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness (vv. 20-24).
And that’s what I believe Paul is getting at in our passage this morning. When God caused us to be born-again in Christ, dear brothers and sisters, He renewed absolutely everything about us—including, and perhaps most importantly, our thinking. Our minds are now no longer—by necessarily—in a continual state of darkness. We can now know propositional truth from God. We can think His thoughts after Him, as He has revealed them to us in His word; and can walk consistently with those thoughts. We can now be ‘transformed by the renewing of our minds’, see things as they really are, and live accordingly.
But please hear me in this, dear brothers and sisters: It’s our responsibility to put the right things into those renewed minds and ‘meditate’ on them faithfully—giving focused attention to them. The verb that Paul uses in this passage is in the present tense; which means that it is to be our regular habit of life to keep the right things in our minds—as defined objectively for us by His written word, and as exemplified for us in the Lord Jesus Christ—and consistently give focused attention to them.
We are to, as a regular pattern of life, “meditating on these things”; because doing so consistently transforms the way we live. And that’s how we are to put the joy of Jesus Christ to work in our lives.
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Let me put it to you another way—and in saying it this way, I take up the role of a ‘pastoral counselor’. A failure to obey what this verse tells us to do—that is, a failure to make it our regular habit to meditate on the right things, as God’s word tells us to do—will rob us of joy that God wants us to experience in everyday life.
We are built by God in such a way as to live-out in our attitudes and actions what we meditate upon in our mind. You might say that our mind is to our inner-being what our stomach is to our outer-being. If you put bad things into your stomach as a regular habit, you will hurt your body. Likewise, if you continually meditate on bad things in your mind, you will hurt your spirit. So; God—having renewed our minds from our fallenness, and from all the years of putting bad things into our thinking, and from acting-out all the negative things we have put in—now calls us to put only good things in, and to live accordingly.
So; what are those good things? Paul gives us a list of eight things—or perhaps better, eight categories of things—that we are to regularly meditate on. I consider the first six to be specific categories; and the remaining two to be thought of as general categories that cover what ever might have been missed by the first six.
First; Paul tells us to meditate regularly on “whatever things are true“. That is to say, we are not to give our regular focused consideration to things that are false. We are to reject what is untrue; and only give our focused consideration to that which accords with the truth.
Now; you might ask, “How can I know what is true?” And I have a great answer. It comes from the highest possible authority. The Lord Jesus once spoke to His Father concerning those of us who belong to Him; and in John 17:17, He prayed, “Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth.” The written word of God—preserved for us in the pages of our Bibles—is the solid, unchanging, absolute rule by which we are to measure truth. As we look out into this world, and interact with the various ideas and values and philosophies we find in it, it’s God’s word that tells us what is truth. We are to be like good “Bereans” who—as Acts 17:11 tells us—“searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so.” Meditate, dear brothers and sisters, on the word of truth regularly. Know your Bible well. Measure all that you see or hear in this world against the sure rule of God’s word. Ask, “According to God’s word, is this true?”; and give your focused attention to “whatever things are true.”
Second, Paul tells us to meditate regularly on “whatever things are noble“. The word that Paul uses here is the same word that he uses elsewhere to describe what is to characterize leaders in the church (1 Timothy 3:8, 11; Titus 2:2)—that they are to be “reverent” or “worthy of respect”. They are to behave in an honorable, respectful, dignified manner.
Now; this isn’t telling us that we are to only think about dry, boring, stuffy things. Rather, it means that we are to meditate on that which characterizes someone as “honorable” or “noble”. We must be careful who we admire as our ‘heroes’ in life. We live in a day when people—usually young people, sad to say—are making ‘heroes’ and ‘role-models’ out of ‘celebrities’ whose lives are manifestly ignoble and dishonorable. They think about such folks, read about them in magazines and tabloids and biographies, and even imitate their ungodly habits and patterns of life. But you and I are not to be that way. We are to be careful to look to those whose lives are characterized by a godly reverence and a sanctified nobility of character. Look at what Paul says in verse 9; ” The things which you learned and received and heard and saw in me, these do, and the God of peace will be with you.” We must be very careful not glorify bad behavior in our thinking. We must meditate on “whatever things are noble”.
Third, Paul says that we are to meditate on “whatever things are just“. Some translations have it that we are to meditate on whatever is “right”. And here, the idea is that we focus on what is good and equitable and fair and upright and innocent in our relationships with other people.
Let me get a bit personal. Have you ever laid in bed at night and thought about someone you were really mad at? Maybe you’ve felt that they’ve done you wrong in some way. Have you ever caught yourself fantasizing different ways to get even with them?—ways to make fools out of them?—ways to really put them in their place?—ways that you could ruin them?—ways that you could place yourself above them? Those are the sorts of thing that the people of this world think of. But they aren’t the things we are to give our focused attention to. Instead we’re to mediate on how we might have failed to see things from their perspective—or on how we can treat them fairly—or we could do good to them—or how we can ensure that they are treated kindly. When we think of “revenge” and “envy” and “self-seeking”, we tend to act accordingly; but when we think “whatever things are just”, we tend to behave in ways that are truly just.
Fourth, Paul says that we are to meditate on “whatever things are pure“. The word that Paul uses here refers to the idea of that which is “chaste” or “modest” or “untainted”. And if I may say so, I think this is one of the areas where we—as professing Christians—fail the most in the way we live in this present culture. It’s not that we think we would actually do any of the things that we see in the popular movies we see, or the fiction stories we read, or the television shows we watch. But we do allow ourselves to be passively entertained by what we see on them—and thus all-too-often “meditate” on things that are impure in the sight of our holy God. And I’m not so sure but that’s why so many professing Christians sometimes—in actual practice—actually do fall into grievous sexual sin. They have made a habit of meditating on the wrong things, and have weakened their defenses against those times when temptations come. We are to be careful to give our focused attention to things that are pure in the sight of God. That one commandment alone is enough to radically transform our entertainment habits.
And we should not just do that with respect to entertainment. We should also do so with respect to our actions. Not long ago, a young man in college wrote to me who was struggling in his desire to remain sexually pure. And I offered a suggestion to him that I think is very much in keeping with the spirit of what Paul says in this verse. He struggled with “fantasizing”. And so, I suggested that, since he probably couldn’t help doing so, he make sure that he deliberately imagined the right things—to imagine himself responding in a godly way to temptation. I recommended that whenever he caught himself “fantasizing”, he imagine himself saying “no” and remaining pure in a situation in which he might be tempted—to “meditate” on being a resolute man of God who, if he found drawn into a tempting situation with a young woman, would graciously but boldly say, “No. I will not do that. I will not go there; not only for my sake but also for yours. I will protect your purity as well as my own.” I believe that’s what we should do; to regularly play-out in our minds a scene of ourselves being the godly, pure, sanctified people of integrity that God wants us to be in the moment of any kind of temptation—and do it so much that it becomes our automatic ‘spring-load’ response in actual moments of temptation. We will have a greater chance of being a pure people if we meditate on “whatever things are pure”.
Fifthly, Paul says that we are to meditate on “whatever things are lovely“. The word that Paul uses here means “toward friendliness”, or “toward what is loving”. The idea here is that we focus on what constitutes behavior that is amiable and friendly and courteous and gracious toward others.
I take it that this would mean giving focused attention—in real life situations—to the kind of behavior Paul spoke of in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8; when he said, “Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.” I think that you could say that meditating on “whatever things are lovely” simply means giving focused consideration to what constitutes good and gracious manners.
And sixthly, Paul says that we are to meditate on “whatever things are of good report“. The word that Paul uses here is one that is constructed out of two words put together—the word for “well” or “good”, and the word for “to say” or “affirm”. Thus, the idea is that of meditating on those things that speaks well of other people, or commendably about the things they say or do.
We have a sad tendency to believe the worst about other people; don’t we? We tend to put the most negative spin on their motives. We tend to highlight the things they do wrong, and shine the spotlight on their failures. But Paul tells us here that we are to do our best to concentrate on what is commendable and laudable about other people. Sometimes this isn’t easy. Sometimes people truly do wrong. And this doesn’t mean that we ignore actual wrongdoing. But as much as is possible, we are to put the motives of people in the best light—and make that the focus of our consideration about them.
Now; those are specific categories that are to be the focus of our meditation. But Paul then adds two more that—I believe—we should see as general categories. It might be that there are some things that Paul didn’t mention specifically; but he then adds that, “if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy, meditate on these things.” It’s almost as if he were calling us to look out upon this dark and broken world of sin and sorrow, seek out anything that we might find that even fallen human beings ordinarily consider to be “virtuous” or of “good quality”, and “praise worthy” or the grounds of good commendation; and to give our focused consideration to even these things. We are to look out for the things that people view as heroic and honorable and good—to concentrate on the stories of courage and sacrifice and genuine human compassion—and celebrate these things in our thinking.
Now; none of this means, of course, that we must walk through an evil world with blinders over our eyes so that we cannot ever see anything evil or contrary to His word. We can’t possibly do that and still be alive in this world. We can’t help but, at times, see things in this fallen world that are untrue, or ignoble, or unjust, or impure, or unlovely, or of ill repute, or lacking in virtue and worthy of condemnation. But what Paul is calling us to do is to make sure that those fallen aspects of this world are not the things that we give intentional, deliberate, ‘focused attention’ to. We are instead—because of the renewing of our mind—to ‘meditate’ on whatever things are true, noble, just, pure, lovely and of good report; and any virtue and anything praiseworthy.
And by the way; wouldn’t a careful meditation on these qualities be very much the same thing as meditating on the character of our Lord Jesus Christ Himself? In fact, apart from Him, these qualities—truth, nobility, justness, purity, loveliness, worthy of good report, virtue, true praise—would be abstract ideas that had no real substance. But they are made real and objective and measurable because “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).
These aren’t things that we’re left to ourselves to understand. Our Lord Jesus Christ lived them out on earth perfectly for us. To really meditate on such things is to meditate on Him!
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Now; before we bring things to a close—and lest anyone should misunderstand what this verse is really telling us—let me point something out to you that shows that this is not merely a matter of ‘positive thinking’. This isn’t something that should be done—or that even can be done—in the power of someone’s own abilities and according to the strength of their own fleshly being.
One of the most important things to notice in this verse is the thing that Paul says at the very beginning of it—”Finally, brethren . . .” Do you see who it is that he is writing to? It’s not to just anyone who may find these qualities admirable and who may wish to meditate on them. It’s something that is specifically written to “brethren”; that is, to those who—like Paul—have placed their trust in Jesus Christ, have been “born-again” in Him, and are now Paul’s redeemed “brothers and sisters” by faith. It’s written to those who can say what Paul said in Philippians 3:7-11;
But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead (Philippians 3:7-11).
I hope that, before you do anything else—you will first sincerely confess to a holy God in prayer that you are a helpless sinner in His sight, and that you are in desperate in need of His saving grace. I hope you will place your faith in the cross of Jesus Christ alone; where God has provided full atonement for your sins. Be truly “born again” first, so that you are truly ‘renewed in the spirit of your mind’.
Then—and only then—can you “meditate on these things” as God wants you to.