PT-4 "Keeping a Pure Mind"

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 3/15/2025 7:54 PM

 

“PT-4 “Keeping a Pure Mind”

 

            This is the fourth quotation from John MacArthur’s booklet entitle “Keeping a Pure Mind,” and the second part from the section entitled “Watch Over Your Heart.”

 

            “Clearly, Job was well aware of the danger of sinful thoughts.  He had consciously, deliberately set a guard in his heart to avoid any such sin.  He even offered special sacrifices to God just in case his children sinned in their hearts:  ‘When the days of feasting had completed their cycle, Job would send and consecrate them, rising up early in the morning and offering burnt offerings according to the number of them all; for Job said, ‘Perhaps my sons have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.’  Thus Job did continually’ (1:5, emphasis added).  Job’s careful safeguarding of his thought life seems to have been the very reason God singled him out for unique blessing.  ‘There is no one like him on the earth,’ the Lord told Satan, ‘a blameless and upright man, fearing God and turning away from evil’ (1:8).”

 

“HOW THE MIND SINS”

 

            “Job understood what the Pharisees stubbornly refused to see:  that just because you don’t act out an evil deed, that doesn’t excuse the secret desire.  Lust itself is sinful.  Greed alone is wicked.  Covetousness, anger, pride, concupiscence, envy, discontent, hatred, and all evil thoughts are just as bad as the behavior they produce.  To treasure such thoughts in the heart and relish the thought of them is a especially grievous sin against God, because it adds hypocrisy to the original evil thought.  There are at least three ways the mind engages in this sin:  remembering, scheming, and imagining.

 

Sins of Remembering

 

            “One way is to cherish the memories of sins past.  To bring back lurid memory of a bygone sin is to repeat the sin all over again.  Can someone who is truly repentant about a sin still harvest pleasure from the memory of that deed?  The answer is yes, because of the deceitfulness of our own hearts and the sinful tendencies of our flesh.

 

            “Some time ago, I baptized a man who was a former homosexual, transformed by Christ.  His life was changed.  His circle of friends was different.  And he had removed himself as much as possible from a lifestyle that would hold any temptation to return to his former sins.  But he admitted to me that the most difficult problem he faced was that his own mind was filled with memories that became temptations to him every time he thought of them.  He had entertained himself with many vile kinds of sexual relationships and activities, and those memories were so embedded in his brain that he would never forget them.  Even though he was transformed as a Christian, Satan would bring back the memory of his former life.  If he allowed himself to dwell on such thoughts, he would discover that his flesh was trying to draw him back into the sin.  All his senses were stirred up easily by the memories, and the memories could be recalled unexpectedly by his senses.  Some sound or smell or sight would provoke a memory in his mind, and he would find himself battling temptation.

            “The truth is, we all know what that is like.  Sin has a way of impressing itself on our memories with vivid sensations we cannot shake off.  As adults we can still remember the sins of our youth as if they occurred only yesterday.  Perhaps it was just such thoughts that prompted David to pray, ‘Do not remember the sins of my youth or my transgressions’ (Ps. 25:7).  David himself remembered them all too graphically.”

 

3/15/2025 8:16 PM