Wednesday: Think on These Things . . .
Daily Lesson for Wednesday 11th of February 2026
The peace that surpasses understanding will also “guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7, NKJV). Our inner life needs protection. Interestingly, Philippians 4:7 uses a military metaphor in connection with God’s peace. The Greek verb (phroureō) is used to describe a garrison of soldiers guarding a city against invasion (2 Corinthians 11:32; compare Acts 9:24).
Another very important aspect of inner peace involves living in harmony with God’s will. “Great peace have they which love thy law: and nothing shall offend them” (Psalms 119:165).
Read Philippians 4:8-9. What specific actions are urged?
Image © Rolf Jansson at Goodsalt.com
Paul introduces Philippians 4:8-9 with “furthermore” (GNV) and a list of six virtues, followed by a succinct summary of them and encouragement to imitate Paul’s example. This closing cross-cultural exhortation fits well within the Greco-Roman setting of Philippi, with its dual emphasis on virtue and example. Interestingly, though, the focus is on biblical virtues, which is quite obvious from Paul’s omission of the four cardinal Greek virtues (prudence, justice, temperance, and courage).
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True—not accidentally, the list begins with the cardinal biblical virtue of truth, which Jesus (“Truly, I say . . .”) and the whole New Testament frequently emphasize (see, for example, Acts 26:25, Romans 1:18, 1 Corinthians 13:6, 2 Corinthians 4:2, Ephesians 4:15, 1 Timothy 3:15, James 1:18, 1 Peter 1:22, 1 John 2:21).
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Noble—the Greek word refers to a personal virtue (compare its other uses in 1 Timothy 3:8,11; Titus 2:2, where it is translated as “reverent” in the NKJV).
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Right—this virtue is defined by God’s righteous character (compare its use in Philippians 1:7).
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Pure—thought and action flowing from God’s justifying righteousness received by faith (see 1 John 3:3).
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Lovely—aesthetic beauty, seen widely in God’s creation.
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Admirable—“kind and winsome and gracious” (AMPC).
Paul gives two further qualifications, lest a pagan meaning be imputed to any of these virtues: “If anything is excellent or praiseworthy” (Philippians 4:8, NIV), we are to think on these heavenly virtues. Then, to remove all doubt and potential misunderstanding, Paul calls us to practice what we have learned, received, heard, and seen from his own example (Philippians 4:9).
Before I went to bed last might I had a deep conversation with Gemini. I observed how much time I had spent developing algorithms and data structures to support concurrency control mechanisms to support concurrency in transaction systems, Artificial Intelligence could create those same mechanisms within a few seconds. Then Gemini gave me quite an interesting response pointing our the value of the sort of work I do. It described its work as, “an LLM can now hallucinate a workable B-tree implementation in seconds”. That was in the midde of a several paragraph answer, but it stuck out as a contradiction, and I asked for an explanation.
Then Gemini gave me one of those mind-blowing answers that was not only important from the AI angle, it had deep ramifications for our spiritual experience as well.
Gemini said that its work was essentially that of a “Stochastic Parrot” (I love that description). It did not provide answers from reasoning from first principles about computer hardware, and programming strategies. Rather it assembled it from predicting each “word” in the algorithm from thousands of examples. It was hallucinating a workable illusion without reasoning it. It went on from there to describe the work of a modern computer engineer.
There was a lot more to the answer, but I slept on that notion of a “Stochastic Parrot” and awoke this morning with my comment for Sabbath School Net in my head.
Today we are reading one of the most powerful scriptures about the Christian experience. Many of us will remark on its importance and we will cobble together a few ideas and quotes from Scripture and maybe Ellen White about their importance. Think carefully! Are we acting like Stochastic Parrots, putting together a few sentences for a Seventh-day Adventist audience, hallucinating a “workable” experience? Or are we using the principles of experience to guide not only our words but our interaction with one another.
Paul said:
“Put into practice”, goes beyond the stochastic parroting of Christian words. I could, given a big flock of Galahs (Australia’s talkative pink and grey parrots), teach them to say the words of the Bible, but they would still be Galahs, not Christians.
I’m really interested in your comment Mr Ashton. I am a final year computer science student and in our final classes last semester, our lecturer emphasized on how he uses Gemini for his bible discussions and everyday questions.
You’re “stochastic parrot” metaphor is pretty accurate about how it works but I believe if it’s due to lack of experience which gives an individual a personalized opinion on a matter.
I’m replying to you sir because I feel like an AI when it comes to Christianity. I am 24 and I only got to leaning about God a few years back and I come from a Christian home. I feel like I don’t have the necessary experience to process and practice the said six virtues. It feels like I have the pseudocode, but lack experience which would be knowledge of the required lines of code, functions needed to run the program.
What steps do you take when after prayer and supplication God still doesn’t answer your prayers, how do you keep strong?
I apologize for the long message, I have a lot of questions but I’ll keep it short.
I am kind of an anxious and quiet person and I have noticed it tends to rub people the wrong way. How do I still maintain peace and love with the people/classmates around me who usually just bypass me or ignore me even though I didn’t ask to be born this way?
Currently I am working on my final year project using Gemini as an assistant to identify new concepts to learn and implement. If you have the time Sir, I would really love to hear your expert advice and opinion on what I’m working on.
You may already be familiar with the four levels of knowledge – sometimes called the DIKW model: Data, Information, Knowledge, and Wisdom. It is my contention that current LMMs function typically between the information and knowledge levels. They can organsise data and relate data together in ways that are for us are either too long or computer intensive. That is a good thing. But we must not forget at the top of the pile is Wisdom. Because LMMs are essentially statistical machines, they lack wisdom. Wisdom is more than just knowing when to use knowledge, but has a deep understanding of the human (and spiritual) relationships involved with the use of knowledge.
That is one reason for understanding that an LLM should not be used to state a moral, ethical or spiritual outcome. To do so shows we do not understand the fundamental limitation of LLMs.
It is fine to do a bible study to find the distribution of references to Sabbath Keeping in the Bible for instance. It can give us some insight into how the Sabbath was treated or mistreated in Scripture. But to infer that the LLM is making a statement about the importance of Sabbath Keeping is an extrapolation outside the boundary of an LMM’s capability, no matter how eloquently it states the case.
Technology has provided some real moral dilemmas for us in the past. We live with the wonderful discovery of the nuclear model of the atom and enjoy the medical benefits of our use of that understanding. But in the background lurks the moral dilemma of thousands of thermonuclear devices that could ultimately destroy us. The moral wisdom rests on the somewhat capriciousness of man’s free choice!
Paul reminiscing on his life’s journey was able to pen down six cardinal principles that guided him through with the help of Christ. Paul was bold to recommend these principles of “true”, “Noble”, “right”, “pure”, “lovely”, “admirable” including “excellence” and “praise-worthy” to us, identifying them as tools that aided him to live a Christ-centered life.
As leaders in various fields of life endeavors, courage may fail us recommend our principles and approach to life issues to people around us, but consistency is key especially in the right principles that are yielding the best results. People may not openly confess their admiralty or appreciate every effort, but are watching and adapting with kin interest while coping and emulating every move secretly. CONSISTENCY is the watch word.
May God continue to help us, amen.
I first learned of computers after high school and was able to interact with them in college, where I remember we used to share one computer among ten students because they were few. In my class, there were a few who knew how to operate a computer, and those of us who did not know made numerous mistakes. I used to think it was the computer that was faulty until our lecturer taught us a universal truth in the computing world: if the raw data is not good, the computer can only generate bad output—GIGO, meaning Garbage In, Garbage Out.
The human mind, being far more complex than any advanced computer ever designed, also operates on the basic principle of GIGO. On any normal day, the human mind processes over 10,000 thoughts, translating to 3.5 million annually. If one lives to be 75 years, this amounts to over 26 million different thoughts. Negative thoughts, at best, poison our minds and ultimately our souls. These thoughts range from self-pity, blaming others instead of ourselves, victim mentality, to anger and bitterness.
Paul, in Philippians 4:8, prescribes a solution by saying, “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” The truth is that sin is so sinful that we must stay as far away from it as possible. One does not have to open a sewer in order to know it stinks. As Jesus said, “Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”
True indeed,many a times when we are faced with challenges we tend to shift our focus from God and see our problem to be bigger than God. We complain so much. But Paul is challenging us to think on these things: which are true,noble,right,pure, lovely and admirable.
Paul is admonished the Christians to come up a little higher. Set your affections and thoughts on what will allow for Christian maturity and growth in Christ. To my thinking truth is the greatest virtue of them all as it fits right in with love not minimizing the other virtues but there is something very special about the truth. When we come face to face with truth, it changes everything.
The world is constantly telling us what to think. Paul is teaching us how to think. If we feed our minds the ways of the world then we shouldn’t be surprised when we are both thinking and acting like the unconverted and fallen people of the world. We will be conformed to the image of the world. In computer language there is a term called “GI-GO,” which translated means garbage in, garbage out.
If we feed our minds the “garbage” of the world’s ways of thinking, meditating on and observing it, we will produce the same “garbage” in our lives. We will become the complete opposite of what Paul admonishes us how to think.
How can we who call ourselves Christ followers entertain and amuse ourselves with things that caused Christ to die? Do the things that we watch, the music that we listen to reflect heaven’s values or the dark side? If Christians enjoy violence then there’s something not fully connected. To do so reveals a lack of spiritual development and maturity. Do the things that break Christ’s heart, break ours too, or do we feed it to our minds and expect to have a desire for heavenly things?
There is a real spiritual battle going on in the world and there is no place of neutrality. We choose which side we are on by the things we feed our minds. This is the battleground. This is what it is all about. Will we choose to reflect on the attributes of heaven or hell? Never forget “GI-GO!” If we want a better output we must first start with a better input. The mind of Christ doesn’t fall out of the sky upon us. It is built within us bit by bit by reflecting on the things that Christ did when he was walking on the earth.
We can all do better, and by His Grace, we will. We should fight against the flesh and bring it into submission to the Spirit. The dog wags it’s tail, not the tail wags the dog. This takes surrendering to the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. The battle is real, but so is the victory. So, help us, God!
Our values and virtues guide our lives. They guide our lives, our practice of our values and virtues. In other words, we do what we uphold to be to be true and right and good. The source of virtues and values matter because some sources are ungodly. Children of God tap their virtues from God and that is what Paul is drawing our attention to. Sometimes, in the midst of prevalence of corruption, there seems no need for virtues and values. But my brothers and sisters “let our light shine that they may see our good works and glorify our father in heaven”.
The Bible was not available at the time Paul wrote the letters to the believers in Philippi and others. The only written testament regarding God’s Truth, was often shared verbally and through letters sent to the believers by those who went out to spread the Gospel – the Good News contained in the Word of God.
In my understanding of God’s Truth, our Lord and Savior did not introduce anything ‘new’ to the heart and mind of man. He only established, confirmed and reasured us that following God’s Truth as spoken of and demonstrated by His life is paramount to our Salvation by faith.
Paul introduced the living Jesus, exhorting/pleading with the believers in Philippi to “stand firm in the Lord in this way” – so preserving and assuring the unity of their faith – Phil.4:1-7. How would the believers know what was virtous unless Paul shared with them the virtues of Jesus Christ as being part of our every day living by faith?
Our days are filled with choices of what to dwell on. Listening and spreading ‘gossip’ is one of the snares we are to avoid. Who would not recognize the virtues as described in Phil.4:8-9 as beneficial to life? Only those who reject Jesus Christ.
I understand Paul’s guidance to be the effort of impressing on his followers the need to elevate their conduct, to focus on virtues taught by Jesus’s Gospel as exemplified by himself by faith –
v.9 ”Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me – put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.”
Paul raises the standards high! The truth being the base, and Jesus being the truth! The love of Christ unites every Christian, and this is a shield of peace.
We should keep our minds on the One who gave His life for us. That is what and who Isaiah suggested. Isaiah 26:3. Then Paul, throughout his letters, told us specifically what to do to keep our minds on Christ.
1. Be true.
2. Be noble.
3. Be right.
4. Be pure.
5. Be lovely.
6. Be admirable.
7. Be able to teach patiently. 2 Timothy 2:24. James 1:22. Let’s be faithful to God. 2 Timothy 2:11-13. Does that include sharing your faith? Absolutly.