Think on Things that are True

So good to see everyone this morning. Thank you, Tyler, for leading our songs today, and we appreciate you being here this morning, and today we’re going to be thinking about Philippians chapter 4 and verse 8, and we’re going to look at a series of lessons on these words that we are commanded to think on in this verse, and maybe you’re familiar with Philippians chapter 4 and verse 8.

It says, “…Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue and if there be any praise, think on these things.”

And thinking is something that we are going to be doing as we contemplate this verse and this list of things that we are to think about. You know, the book of Philippians has a lot to say about Christian joy, and chapter 4 gives us a great formula or great recipe for joy within our lives.

We need to make an effort to rejoice. Rejoice in the Lord always. And again, I say rejoice. Verse 4 of that chapter says, we need to behave well in order to have Christian joy within our life. We need to recognize the Lord’s presence to have Christian joy in our lives.

But here, in this verse, Paul emphasizes controlling our thinking. And thinking can be hard work. It can be difficult to think through things and to think about things. But how and what we think is a significant factor for developing joy. So Paul lists eight things or eight areas in which we may think and control our thoughts. The New King James Version says, meditate on these things. And meditation is a good way to consider this particular passage.

Sometimes maybe we use the word think to just discuss a passing thought or an individual thought. But there is more here than just individual thoughts. We are to meditate. We are to think as an ongoing process on these various different areas of thought.

Well, we have those areas listed before us, and this morning we’re going to tackle the first one, and that is, think on things that are true. And so let’s consider thinking about things that are true this morning. And to think on things that are true, we must first of all know the source of all truth.

Secondly, we must correct untruthful thoughts with truthful thoughts. And third, we must be completely honest with ourselves about our thoughts. Truth is a great judge, and by that I mean that it doesn’t change, and so it’s always there for us to measure ourselves against.

And thinking on things that are true, then, means that we need our thoughts to be true. And so, let’s think about truth this morning. When we think about truth, first of all, we need to know the source of truth.

You know, Pilate once asked Jesus, what is truth? And essentially, we think about truth and the basic definition of truth. We think about truth being the alignment of words with reality. And so when Jesus said here in John 14, verse 6, I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me, He is saying something about Himself and His life in relationship to truth.

And that is, namely, that his life was the unique combination of God’s Word oriented within a human life. And he perfectly lived out God’s Word within his life, and so he is the perfect manifestation or incarnation of truth. Which is why, you know, John talks about Jesus being the Word in John chapter 1 and verse 1. And so what is truth in a Word? The truth is Jesus Christ, because He perfectly aligned His life with God’s Holy Word.

So to know the truth, we must know Jesus. We must know Jesus’ life, Jesus’ teaching, and His example. And this is revealed to us in the Word of God, the Bible. In John 17 and verse 17, Jesus said this regarding His apostles. Sanctify them by your truth. Your Word is truth. And so the Word of God is truth, and it aligns perfectly in the life of Jesus Christ.

And it is important, then, that we desire truth for our lives. Most people, I think, like to think that what they think is true. And as we’re going through our life, each and every day, we have thoughts, and a lot of people in their thinking just automatically accept their thoughts to be what is right.

And then they pursue those thoughts, and a lot of times those thoughts are motivated by feelings. The biggest barrier, however, to not knowing truth isn’t what is outside of me, but rather what is within me. For me to know truth, I’ve got to put aside my own desires, my own prejudices, and my own thoughts. Because so many times, we can be wrong. And we are wrong. And our thoughts are wrong. And our feelings can be wrong. And our desires can be wrong.

And as a result, we do not think truthful thoughts. We must pursue truth. Truth is something that is outside of us, not something that is within us. And so in Proverbs, or John chapter 8, in verses 31 and 32 here, Jesus said to those Jews who believe Him, “‘If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed, and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.'”

And so it’s in Jesus’ word that we find the truth. And that is what is going to help us more than anything else. Now Proverbs 23 and verse 23 says this, that we must buy the truth and not sell it.

Also wisdom and instruction and understanding. Truth is not something that comes from me and it’s not something that comes from you. This is something that we get from God and from His Son, Jesus Christ. And so we need to get that truth. And it should be more precious to us than anything else.

Jesus told two parables regarding the pursuit and the acquisition of the kingdom of heaven, which is based on and comes through understanding and knowing the truth. Matthew 13, verse 44, “…the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which when a man found and hid, and for joy over it, he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.”

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls, who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it. Now think about what Jesus is telling us here. He’s saying that there is something that is so precious, something that is so valuable, That it’s worth giving up everything else in order to acquire it. The Kingdom of Heaven.

And the Kingdom of Heaven comes to us through Jesus Christ and the truth that He preaches and teaches. And so for us to think on things that are true, the first thing we need to do is recognize the source of truth, And that is Jesus Christ and the Word of God. But then secondly, for us to think on things that are true, we’ve got to correct untruthful thoughts with truthful thoughts.

You know, the fact of the matter is, is that everyone, doesn’t matter who you are except for maybe the youngest among us, everyone has untruthful thoughts. Have you ever wrongly suspected someone of stealing something from you? I have. When I was very young, I suspected a neighbor stealing $5 from me.

And it didn’t end well. Let me just put it like that. But sometimes we think things that are not true. Have you ever judged someone unrighteously and then later on found out that, well, yeah, they weren’t the person that you thought they were. They were much better than what you thought they were. Have you ever been wrong about anything, made a statement, and then later realized that statement was just flat out.

It’s not incorrect. Why do we do these things? Because we had untruthful thoughts. Those untruthful thoughts can motivate us to say things that are wrong. They can motivate us to do things that are wrong. And then our pride kicks in because heaven forbid that I should be wrong, right? Or heaven forbid that you should be wrong.

But the fact of the matter is, is that we are wrong from time to time, and we have untruthful thoughts, and our pride prevents us from correcting ourselves with the truth so very often. Proverbs 11, verse 2 says, “…when pride comes, then comes shame, but with the humble is wisdom.” We’ve all been in that situation where we’ve said something or done something that later we learn is wrong, and then we are ashamed of it, and our pride undid us.

Oh yes, you know, we want to think that we are right, and that’s very common. Most people do want to think that they are right, maybe about some statement of fact that we believe, or maybe about someone else who has told us something, and we want to believe that person and what they’ve said.

You know, it’s interesting in the Bible that we have the story of Joseph and his brothers, and you may remember that they sold Joseph into slavery, and then they took his coat of many colors and dipped it in some blood of an animal, and then presented that to Jacob, and they all said, Joseph, your son is dead. He’s been torn by wild beasts.

And Jacob, wanting to believe the story of his sons, believed it. Believed that Joseph was dead and for many years he had that untruthful thought. And how much suffering did it cause him? How much pain did it cause him? Because he believed something that was not true.

Oh, when we think we’re right, pride causes us to judge, pride causes us to believe things that other people say, and we’re often motivated to come to conclusions with little or no evidence, and our senses can deceive us as well into thinking that what we think is right, all because of our pride.

But to think on things that are true, we’ve got to humble ourselves and correct untruthful thoughts with truthful thoughts. And that takes humility. It takes saying, you know what? I could be wrong. My thoughts could be wrong. My words could be wrong. My actions could be wrong. It takes humility to do that.

It takes humility to learn. Proverbs 25 and verse 9 says, “…the humble He guides in justice, and the humble He teaches His way.” We can only learn when we’re humble, when we’re willing to admit we don’t know everything, That we could be wrong about some things, and that we’ve done things that we shouldn’t have done. It takes humility to learn.

But blessed are the meek, Jesus said, for they shall inherit the earth, Matthew 5 and verse 5. We need to receive correction. That is such a great challenge, to receive correction. Proverbs 10 and verse 17 says, “…He who keeps instruction is in the way of life, but he who refuses correction goes astray.”

We’ve got to receive and accept correction if we want to be faithful to the Lord. Proverbs 15, verse 15 says, “…a fool despises his Father’s instruction, but he who receives correction is prudent.” Yes, in order to think on things that are true, we’ve got to be able to correct ourselves when we’re not correct.

Think about 2 Timothy 3, verse 16. The Scriptures themselves are given for our correction. Yes, for doctrine, for reproof, but for correction, for instruction in righteousness. We need correction. And so 1 Peter 5, verse 5 says, “…Likewise you younger people, submit yourselves to your elders. Yes, all of you be submissive to one another and be clothed with humility. For God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”

To think on things that are true, we’ve got to correct untruthful thoughts with truthful thoughts. But then finally, to think on things that are true, we need to be completely honest with ourselves. I need to be honest with myself. You need to be honest with yourself. And that’s where it needs to begin. That’s to have these truthful thoughts.

We’ve got to know the source of truth so that we can go to the standard of truth and bring those truths into our thoughts. Secondly, we’ve got to be able to correct untruthful thoughts with truthful thoughts so that we can get out the things that shouldn’t be in there.

And then third, we need to be completely honest about it. And maybe this is one of the more difficult aspects of thinking on things that are true, is being honest with our own selves. We really like to deceive ourselves a lot.

I was trying to think of some great examples of deceiving ourselves. I think the greatest example is this, this statement in society. I’m not talking about the church or anyone here in particular, but just in our culture and our society, I think the greatest deception that we tell ourselves, and there may be others that are out there, this is just from my perspective, But the greatest deception is this, quote, I don’t have enough time, end quote. I usually find that not to be true. Most people have enough time to do the things that they want to do. The problem isn’t we don’t have enough time. The problem is I just don’t want to do what it is that someone is saying they want to do, they want me to do. And that’s the truth of the matter.

But we don’t want to say, I don’t want to do that a lot of times to people because we think, well, if we say that, then they won’t like us or they’ll reject us or something like that. And so we tell them a convenient lie, I don’t have enough time. Greatest deception that’s out there, I think.

And we even tell ourselves that. And the truth is, we have time to do what we want to do. And so we’ve got to want to do the right things, we’ve got to want to do good things, and we’ve got to want to do what God wants us to do.

But to do that, we’ve got to be completely honest with ourselves about thinking about true things. Luke 8 and verse 15, Jesus says this, But that, that seed that fell on the good ground, are they which in an honest and good heart have heard the word, keep it, and bring forth fruit with patience.

It takes an honest and good heart to take truth within our lives, to let it germinate, and let it grow. An honest and good heart. The word honesty means to tell ourselves the truth. Sometimes the Bible refers to this attribute as being upright. You know, a man who is upright is an honest person. The word faithful also comes to mind.

We need to be an honest people, an upright people, and a faithful people, and honest enough to open up to God’s truth, and the truths that are around us in the world, and especially those truths that we really do not want to hear, because it’s when we tell ourselves, I don’t want to hear that, that we really need to listen the most.

And that means accepting what God’s Word tells us about our true nature. Think about Ephesians 4 and verses 14 and 15, and what the purpose of truth is, is so that we should no longer be children tossed to and fro and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, and the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but speaking the truth in love, May grow up in all things into Him who is the head, Christ. You see, speaking the truth helps us to become mature. It helps us to grow up. It helps us to be more like Jesus Christ. And that means being honest with ourselves.

Peter wrote in 1 Peter 1, verse 22, “…since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit, in sincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart.” Purified your souls in obeying the truth. And there’s an area where a lot of people don’t accept truth.

They don’t accept that obeying the truth is part of the process of purifying their souls. But yet that’s exactly what Peter says it does right here. And so that means telling the truth to ourselves, about ourselves. Do we think that everything we tell ourselves about ourselves is true? Do we overestimate ourselves? Do we underestimate ourselves? Do we tell ourselves convenient lies? How are we talking to ourselves?

We’ve got to tell the truth to ourselves and we’ve got to tell the truth to others. Proverbs 12, verse 19 says, “…the truthful lips shall be established forever, but a lying tongue is but for a moment.” Ephesians 4, verse 25 says, “…therefore putting away lying, let each one of you speak truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.”

And, for those who don’t tell us the truth, but tell lies, and want to sell lies, and engage in lies, and do business in lies, we’ve got to be far away from them. Jesus said, beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves.

And there are so many of those out there in the world today who would take advantage of us and gobble us up just like a hungry wolf would. 1 John 4 and verse 1 says, Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

Think on things that are true. How do we do that? First of all, by knowing the source of truth, Jesus Christ, as the one who perfectly exemplified the Word of God. Secondly, by correcting untruthful thoughts with truthful thoughts, having a humble attitude and being willing to change when we see that we are not living and practicing the truth.

And then third, by being completely honest with ourselves. Telling ourselves the truth at every moment. Telling others the truth. And letting the chips fall where they may. And following the truth in our life each and every day. Maybe this morning you need to adopt or accept and adopt and incorporate the truth within your life so that you can think on things that are true. We invite you to study God’s Word with us. It’s the source of truth.

And then we invite you to see where your life needs correction. This is God’s plan for our salvation, to hear the truth, believe the truth, repent of untruth, confess Jesus as the truth, and be baptized to correct the untruths Committing to living the truth. Maybe you need to do that this morning. Maybe you need to become a child of God today and let Him lead and guide your life. If you need to do that, we’re happy to help you while together we stand and while we sing.

End of transcript. Thank you for reading along!