In his sermon titled 'What is Your Mindset?', Scott Brown delves into Romans 8:1-11, emphasizing the importance of setting one's mind on the spirit rather than the flesh. He outlines the four contrasts presented by the Apostle Paul: the mind set on the flesh vs. the spirit, life and peace vs. death, subjection to the law vs. enmity towards it, and the state of believers vs. unbelievers. Brown stresses the significance of having no condemnation for those in Christ and the peril of counterfeit Christianity. He also uses real-life examples, such as the shooting of a former president and the secularization of culture, to illustrate how the Word of God serves as an interpreter of life events. The sermon underscores the need for believers to set their minds on spiritual matters, highlighting that true Christianity is marked by a transformed mindset that seeks life and peace.

Please open your Bibles to Romans 8 and find verse 1. Romans 8 verse 1. We'll be reading the first 11 verses of Romans 8. This is the inerrant, all-sufficient, sweeter-than-honey word of God. There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh. On account of sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. 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 can it be nor indeed can be. So then those who are in the flesh cannot please God. But you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now, if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, He is not His. And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.

But if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever. Let's pray. Father, let your word fall down upon this congregation as dew on the grass, that it would enliven, enlighten, that it would help us to know the ways in which we should go and who we really are, and to understand how to see everything in life. Amen.

Please be seated. One of the most wonderful things about the Word of God is that it really is the great interpreter. And even the events of yesterday with the shooting of the former president of the United States. We have an interpretive grid to understand what's going on. It shouldn't be confusing to us what is happening all around us.

And what we see here, I mean, And it's already been spoken of in prayers of the sovereignty of God and these remarkable providences that God brings about in the world. God is the ruler of the kings of the earth. But we also see here in this passage there's a phrase that I think is a very helpful interpretive grid for what we saw yesterday, as shocking as it was. The mind set on the flesh is death. And this is the problem.

And you know, in our church, our great hope is that the entire congregation is focused really on one thing, the words of Jesus Christ. That this is the shepherding staff in the church. And we so desire that the whole church is focused on scripture and scripture alone, not the leaders, not one another necessarily except to love one another, but to be filled up with the knowledge of the will of God, to set our minds on the things above, not on the things that are on the earth. And I pray today God will give us such a gift. Well here we are in Romans chapter eight.

We covered the first four verses last Sunday. Today my focus really is verses five through 11. And it just brings down to me that one of the most important things that pastors ever do in churches is what this passage does. And that is to help a congregation to understand the gospel to such a degree and to have it be a window into their own souls to such a degree that they know with certainty whether they are believers or unbelievers. This is the most pivotal thing that we must do as preachers of the word of God.

And to preach in such a way as to give unbelievers assurance of salvation is one of the most damning things a pastor can do. And at the same time, it's also very harmful to a congregation to preach in such a way that genuine believers are always doubting their salvation and they don't receive the encouragements and the truth about their process of so slow progress and sanctification that they don't misunderstand the kingdom of God being at hand in their own lives. And so this passage of scripture helps us to see the differences and you can see this outline in front of you. There are four contrasts that the apostle brings. This is a very simple passage actually in many ways.

And the first contrast is the mind set on the spirit, the mind set on the flesh and the mind set on the spirit. That's verse five. The second contrast is the mind set on death or life and peace, that's verse six. The third contrast is the mind subject to the law of God or enmity toward the law. And the fourth contrast is really the apostles' encouragement of the believers in Rome saying what has happened to them.

So that's the passage of scripture. You know the other day I was walking through my house and I saw a hundred dollar bill on the ground and I thought well that's unusual that's never happened before and I picked it up and it looked just like a hundred dollar bill and I started asking around who's it whose bill is this? Who left this on the ground? Who would possibly leave a hundred dollar bill on the ground? And And I looked at it more carefully and I recognized there were some very, you had to look very carefully, but it became clear that this is a counterfeit hundred dollar bill.

I don't know how it got there. I don't know who passed it to who. You know, I immediately thought of my grandchildren that this possibly was a trick, you know. And you know, this last Wednesday, I was with about 45 of your children. And I held up that counterfeit bill and I told them that on Sunday we were gonna talk about a counterfeit Christianity.

And the contrast there is between real Christianity. Now I want you to notice the word mind in this passage. The word is repeated over and over again. The mindset, the mindset. This is about your mindset.

This whole section is about the occupations of your mind. What's what's what's Rolling in your mind and this is how God desires for us to understand Whether we are believers or not. What is our mindset? Upon what are we setting our minds. And of course, the battle for the soul of mankind was always the battle for the mind.

Right back in the Garden of Eden, the serpent wanted to convince Eve that God was not good, that she was thinking wrongly about God, that she could have something better than God, something cooler than God, something better for her than God. It had to do with the way that she thought about God. And This is always the battle. And so here in Romans, we're confronted with this battle for the mind. And of course, we know this.

The battle for our mind is fierce when we're unbelievers. But the battle doesn't let up against our minds as believers, but something has changed in our minds, which is such a blessing. And this passage in Romans chapter eight is just so beautiful. We know that the apostle Paul, just in the context of Romans, he's explaining why he's not ashamed of the gospel. Because it's the righteousness of God unto salvation.

And in verse four of chapter eight, he says that, and I think this is really what Paul is trying to prove, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. So he's explaining what it looks like that the righteous requirement of the law has been fulfilled in us through Jesus Christ. And our minds have much to do with this. I wanted to make it very plain that the first four verses have its focus on the word no. There is therefore now no condemnation.

That there is no now or forever condemnation for the believer. Not one second. I hope you understand that. There's not one second of the believer's life where they live under condemnation. That should be so freeing.

Not that Christians are living perfect lives, that's not the point, but God is merciful to sinners. God is more merciful to sinners than we are. And we praise the Lord for that. And the apostle has been making this point of what the Christian life looks like. And so there are these four contrasts that illustrate true Christianity and counterfeit Christianity.

And we find this from verses five through eight, and then in verses nine through 11, this beautiful description that if you're a believer you should take it personally. Consider yourself a Roman today when we get to verses 9 through 11. So the first contrast is the mind set on the flesh or the spirit. 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.

So You have this way of living, the way that you live, what you do, and your mind. Your way of living is controlled by your mind, by the way that you think. That's the whole idea. And we learn something about the unbeliever. You have this contrast.

The inclination of the unbeliever's mind, the mind share, the mindset of the unbeliever is on the flesh. And that's code for the manifestations of the unrenewed nature. The unregenerate man. The bent of life just on what life can give to me. Earthly joy only.

The first thing about the non-Christian is that he's dominated by his fallen nature and he's driven by his fallen nature. And this is not the same thing, by the way, as saying these people are just so exceedingly evil. This is not to say, well, they're just going around murdering people. No. No, this is an inclination of their being.

And these people can be exemplary citizens. They can be brilliant, they can be wise. They can actually command lots of respect. He's not talking about this distinction between the really bad people and the really good people. He's talking about the state of their being, not even necessarily what they are doing.

It's who they are at the core of their being. But the believer is different. They live according to the Spirit and they set their minds on the things of the Spirit. They deliberately, voluntarily desire to set their minds on the things of God. The things of God are attractive to them.

They want them. They don't resist them. Later on we'll read that the unbeliever is an enmity with God. Well, here, I mean, the believer is not an enemy at all. He loves God, he pursues it.

You know, this week I was reading one of the Psalms and I was so struck by it, it just stopped me because over and over the apostle, or not the apostle David, he talks about his soul. He says, unto you I lift up my soul. Unto you I lift up my soul. This is the heart of the Christian. He wants his soul to be saturated by the goodness of God.

And you know, one thing that anyone should ask after reading this is, can you say that you're concerned about the state of your soul? Is this your greatest concern? Because it really shows you who you are. And then the second contrast is the mind set on death or life and peace, that's verse six. For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.

So this is the next feature of the non-Christian and the Christian. And of course, and the Christian is on a path of death. Every day. They are physically alive, but they're dead. Well, and the apostle speaks of the unbeliever being dead in his trespasses and sins.

Dead to God, outside the life of God. I was reading, I think it was in D. Martin Lloyd-Jones' commentary, he told this story about William Wilberforce. William Wilberforce, of course, the believer who was in parliament for years and the Lord used him to abolish the slave trade. And what a remarkable believer he was.

But he also knew, because he was in Parliament, William Pitt the Younger, who was once the prime minister of Britain, he had such a concern for his soul. He prayed for him, he was a rank-on believer, and he would invite him to church, but he denied it over and over again. And finally, William Pitt decided he would go to church with William Wilberforce after being begged to do such a thing. And during the service, Wilberforce talks about how he was so thrilled. You know, every word of the sermon just took him down, you know, It was so helpful, so encouraging.

It was convicting and enlivening, you know. He's talking about just how great the sermon was and after the sermon, he thought William Pitt was gonna get saved. And he asked him, well, what did you think? And he said, you know Wilberforce, I have not the slightest idea what that man was saying. I didn't know what he was talking about.

Wilberforce says, well he was bored. I was thrilled, but he was bored. And this is the life of the unbeliever. They're deaf to the gospel. They are tone deaf.

They can hear it, and this happens all the time. Every pastor knows this. You can have people who've, they've been in church for a long time, heard the gospel 500 times, and when they finally get saved, they say, I never heard the gospel before. They actually really did. They just didn't hear it.

You know, there's this tone deafness to God. And I don't know if, you know, this happens in hearing. You have tone deafness in some people. I don't know if you've heard of cookie bite hearing loss, where this is particularly manifested in males. And their mid-range hearing loss is such that they can't hear the mid-range frequencies and they lose the ability to hear about 500 to 2, 000 megahertz bandwidth.

But unfortunately, a woman's voice is right in that bandwidth. But people have tone deafness as well. They can't hear the gospel. And so, but those who are spiritually minded, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Now we could spend the whole rest of the time talking about life and peace, but we won't.

But what this is saying is that the spiritually-minded are not on a trajectory of death, but they're on a trajectory of life and peace. Jesus said, I came that you might have life and that you might have it more abundantly. He said, my words are spirit and they are life. Jesus Christ is life. So you have this contrast, the mind set on death or life and peace.

This, again, it's a very simple passage. And then the third contrast is the mind subject to the law or enmity to the law. That's verses seven and eight, verse seven, because the carnal mind is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. So then those who are in the flesh cannot please God. So you have this word enmity, this is resisting God.

And it's a hard place to be because it's not that they just don't submit to the law of God, but they can't. They can't be subject to the law of God. You know, I was very struck by this at the shooting of Donald Trump yesterday. I don't know if you noticed this, but there were so many women protecting him, and when he was finally in the Secret Service, and when he was finally put into his vehicle, it was almost only women that were standing in the way of those bullets. And I couldn't help but think that this is a people who have rejected the law of God.

In Deuteronomy 22, five, we know only men go to war, women do not go to war. In the Bible, the women and children stay behind. But these women were playing a military role. They were in harm's way. And They were literally shielding the body of a man.

And frankly, I mean, it's wrong to put women in combat. It's wrong to put women in harm's way. In Christianity, the men take the bullet for the women. That's how it works in Christianity. But we saw before our eyes a manifestation of the secularization of our culture, because I grew up in a time when women in Conback was an absolutely unheard of idea, Nobody would even think to do that.

And now it's the normal thing. And but it makes sense because the Secret Service is headed by a woman and her diversity, equity, and inclusion goal is to have 30% of our recruits by in the next six years or by 2030 to be women. In other words, to have more women's bodies in front of the bullets. Well, this is a culture that is not subject to the law of God. But, nor can it be, if they're unbelievers.

This is the world that we live in, and this is really another way that the Bible is the interpreter of everything in life. And it says here that they cannot please God. In other words, and this is the heartbreaking thing about every person who doesn't know the Lord, and it really should break our hearts that God's displeasure rests upon them. They cannot please him. But the believer can please God.

The normal believer is a pleasure to God. You know, you think about in... You know, you have... You know, you have, you know.