This week we want to look at how to serve God with your mind.
In the Old Covenant, God gave Israel the Law. This is commonly referred to as the “Ten Commandments.” The purpose of the commandments was to show Israel how to serve God and how to stay focused on Him. This law would keep them from sinning.
The commandments were given to Moses on stone tablets on Mount Sinai in the third month after they left Egypt. Exodus 19-20 tells the whole story. Most people don’t realize that while Moses went up on the mountain, God spoke to him and all of Israel could hear God speaking to Moses.
Exodus 19:9 And the LORD said to Moses, “Behold, I am coming to you in a thick cloud, that the people may hear when I speak with you, and may also believe you forever.”
This was their response after God gave the Ten Commandments.
Ex. 20:18-19 Now when all the people saw the thunder and the flashes of lightning and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, the people were afraid and trembled, and they stood far off and said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, lest we die.”
Remember that they heard God’s audible voice. You would think that it would change them. Not so because they requested not to be able to hear God. Instead, now God gives Moses the “Law” on tablets. This would start a whole new problem. They would have the Law on tablets but not in their hearts. Their bodies were freed from slavery but their minds were still in Egypt. They lived as free men still shackled to their past. Their thinking was not renewed. Now they will serve God with their strength. They had to keep the Law. Now the focus was on their actions and their behavior.
Deut. 6:4-5 “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.
Now they will serve God using their heart, their soul and their strength. Their heart was unchanged, their soul was unchanged and their strength was limited.
What people don’t realize is that the Ten Commandments does not change your heart. For that, you need a different experience. You must be born again through repentance and the renewal of the Holy Spirit. When you get born again, God writes His laws on your heart. Your heart and your mind are connected. What is in your heart will dominate your thinking. The New Covenant promises that God will write His laws on our hearts.
Jer. 31:31-33 “Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the LORD. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
2 Cor 3:3 And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but tablets of human hearts.
This change the whole thing. In the Old Covenant, you had to use your strength to serve God. You had a body that was free from slavery but you were still a slave n your mind. In the New Covenant God writes His Law on your heart and you have a chance to renew your mind.
Eph. 4:23 And be renewed in the spirit of your mind;
Look at what Jesus says now when they ask him; What is the Law and the Prophets?
Matt. 22:37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. (Jesus changed the word strength for the word mind)
Did Jesus just misquote the scripture? No, I believe He is showing us the reality of the New Covenant. Because God writes His Law on our hearts, we have a renewed way of thinking. Not only does he set us free from slavery in our walk(Bodies) but He now sets us free from slavery in our thinking(mind). We no longer struggle with loving God because we think differently. We now have the same mind as Jesus.
1Cor. 2:16 For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.
Now we are free to serve God with our bodies as well as our thinking. This is freeing to understand that my mind is no longer a slave to sin. Paul commanded us to set our minds on things that are above and not on things that are on the earth- Col 3:1.
Rom 8:5-9 For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh, but they that are after 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, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if any man has not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.
