Submitted by admin on Mon, 23/08/2010 - 7:55am
MP3 File:
We've been looking the last couple of weeks at the lies we tell ourselves-
○ Those false beliefs and fears that hold us back from fulfilling God's plan and purpose.
○ Those deceptive, negative, earth-bound ideas that undermine our faith in God.
Today we're going to talk about how to fight back against the lies, distortions, misbeliefs, exaggerations, fears, and anxieties that hold us hostage and keep us from living in victory.
○ Are Christians supposed to fight? Yes! When the cause is right; when we are defending truth and innocence.
○ When we are motivated by God's pure purposes; when we rely on and use God's spiritual weapons.
○ We're talking about a spiritual battle-spiritual warfare. It's different from human warfare.
We know how the world fights-"all is fair in love and war." The flesh has no standards and no conscience. The world's rules are essentially "whatever you can get away with...just don't get caught."
People in the world cheat to get ahead or to have their own way. The world uses threats, coercion, and manipulation to come out on top. People in the world throw their weight around. They twist arms and make bribes.
2 Cor 10:3-5 (NIV) 3 For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. 4 The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. 5 We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.
(2 Cor 10:3, Message) The world is unprincipled. It's dog-eat-dog out there! The world doesn't fight fair. But we don't live or fight our battles that way...
You can see how the world's methods are driven by lies, deceit, and corruption. The world's ways are susceptible to deception. They're not typically going to rely on truth. Honesty is a rare commodity in the world's system. People will try to fool you all the time-whether you're dealing with a high-pressure sales pitch, a politician's "spin," campaign "attack" ads, or a pollster's statistics, the real truth is hard to come by.
We come to expect this kind of thing in the world. And that's why we need discernment. That's why, as Jesus said, we need to be wise as serpents. We need to be on guard from the ways of the world.
But we sometimes forget that the world's ways can seep into our own thinking. Sometimes the untruths we have to guard against and fight are the thought patterns and ideas that form in our own heads! Sometimes the deceptions that manipulate and control us are the lies we tell ourselves-the misbeliefs, the distortions, lies, and exaggerations the devil plants in our heads.
Paul was dealing with conflict in the church in Corinth-and much of it stemmed from human nature (the original word he used was "flesh"-meaning sinful nature). He faced conflict because of human nature, the way the world does business.
So Paul served notice to the church in Corinth. He would deal with the problems head-on, but he would not use the same methods that the world used. He promised instead to use divine weapons-God's power-to destroy false statements, mistaken beliefs, and wrong-headed thinking in the church.
We deal with conflict too-sometimes with others, but often in our own hearts and heads. That's when we become "conflicted." That's when lies, arguments, and objections battling within our hearts within need to be put down and destroyed!
Gal 5:17 - For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want.
God's "divinely powerful weapons" are still available for us to use today. And they're not just available to tear down bad thinking in others! They're also available to destroy the wrong-headed ideas we have ourselves-speculations, imaginations, exaggerations, distortions.
God's weapons to "tear down strongholds" of bad thinking, to "destroy fortresses" of lies, to "smash warped philosophies" rely on God's supernatural power-not the methods or techniques of human wisdom.
The Bible says that spiritual weapons are what we need to demolish strongholds in the mind (2 Cor 10).
The battle for the mind is a spiritual battle. The flesh (sinful nature) must be conquered by the Spirit so our uncontrolled thoughts do not destroy us from the inside out. We can take every thought captive.
Notice that this passage teaches us some important lessons about spiritual battles.
1. Our hearts and minds are a battle field. Spiritual warfare is fought daily within us. Spiritual warfare isn't just about witch doctors in Africa. It's also about thoughts, ideas, and attitudes in America.
2 Cor 4:4 - The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ...
But the Word of God is clear! We are not to be victims; we are to be soldiers. We don't have to think like victims; we can think and behave like victors! Life's events or circumstances should not conquer us; we should conquer them! In the end, believers can be overcomers-"more than conquerors."
The Bible says - "in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us" (Rom 8:37). Paul writes to Timothy (2 Tim 2:3) - "Endure hardship with us like a good soldier of Christ Jesus."
The original phrase "wage war" in this passage was "stratos" which meant "an encamped army." In fact, we get our English word "strategy" from two Greek words: "leader" + "army" (stratos). So the phrase "wage war" was the picture of a band of soldiers, on a campaign, joined together in a common cause against an enemy. When we come to Christ, we are saved-not just to escape sin and punishment-but to be soldiers, to fight spiritual battles in the name of Jesus!
So are you waging war like a soldier? Or are you a victim? Do negative thoughts discourage you and get you down? Or do you resist crazy speculations or wild imaginations in the name of Jesus?
2. We cannot rely on "worldly" weapons. We do not wage war as the world does...[with] the weapons of the world.
Human wisdom, man-made plans, and natural methods cannot defeat supernatural, spiritual powers. Human resources are useless against spiritual powers.
It would be like waging war against bacteria with a sword! You can't fight malaria with guns and bombs! Did you know there are about two dozens wars currently being fought around the world? We never hear anything about most of them. A couple of them have been ongoing for over 60 years. In all those conflicts nearly 3.2 million people were killed in total over the course of all those years.* That's pretty bad! But malaria, spread by tiny mosquitoes, kills nearly 3 million people every year-the equivalent of 1,000 September 11ths every year!* The invisible protozoan parasite responsible for malaria kills more than the visible weapons of war. You cannot defeat the malaria parasite with guns and swords, and you cannot defeat spiritual powers with human weapons. [*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_political_conflicts and http://www.wrongdiagnosis.com/m/malaria/deaths.htm]
Eph 6:12 - "...our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms."
3. Believers can use God's powerful weapons.
God gives us natural abilities, talents, and intellect but that's not enough to fight spiritual battles. Hard work, discipline, determination, and will-power are good, but those are human methods and they're not enough to defeat the devil. We need more! We need spiritual weapons-God's divinely powerful weapons: his miracle-working, supernatural power; his anointing and presence; the baptism of the Holy Spirit; the dynamic gifts of the Spirit.
Goliath ridiculed David when they faced off in the Valley of Elah (1 Sam 17). "Am I a dog?" he roared, "that you come against me with sticks?" And David answered, "You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the LORD Almighty."
In the Psalms David wrote: "Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God" (Ps 20:7).
Are we going to trust in human resources-chariots and horses? Or are we going to trust in the name of the Lord our God? Are we going to fight the Goliaths in our lives with ordinary human weapons-sword and spear and javelin? Or are we going to wage war with the powerful name of the Lord Almighty?
Often, God's spiritual weapons are counter-intuitive-that is, they appear to be weak when, in fact, they are strong. They seem the opposite of what the world considers powerful.
The world tries to win by power, control, force, might, manipulation, threats, cajoling, arm-twisting.
But that's not how Jesus came! Jesus' power is in the spiritual realm-something the world doesn't know about, something the world can't comprehend.
○ Jesus didn't come to rule in power like the world's leaders; he came to serve in humility.
○ He didn't come to take control from others, but to give his life as a ransom.
○ He didn't come like a king, a dictator, or a potentate; he laid aside his rights, he humbled himself and came as a helpless baby.
○ He taught that we don't win by clawing our way to the top of the heap; it's when we take the lowest place that we are raised up.
○ He taught us to be truly great by serving others; to be first by being last; to be strong by rejoicing in weakness, to find our lives by losing them, to be blessed by suffering for what is right.
In other words, Jesus' methods-the tools and weapons he provides his followers-don't make sense according to worldly standards!
The best way to tear down lies, speculations, and false notions in your mind? Use spiritual weapons!
What can we do with God's powerful weapons?
1. We can demolish strongholds...
In ancient days, cities with strong walls were hard to conquer. Before the Israelites could possess the Promised Land, they had to root out the wicked and idolatrous people who lived there. You remember the story of Jericho? It wasn't until the walls came down that the people of God were able to conquer the city. As long as the Jericho stronghold stood firm, God's people couldn't root out the enemy and claim their promises.
It's still true today. As long as strongholds remain in our hearts and minds, we cannot be victorious. As long as the enemy's lies, fears, imaginations hold territory in our lives, God's promises will be limited in our lives.
That's why God gives us spiritual weapons to demolish strongholds-literally, the word meant "pulling down, tearing down, or knocking down"-the enemy's strong places.
MSG: "smashing warped philosophies." In other words, God gives us the power we need to over power and completely destroy the ideas and the godless thinking of this world. We can smash the world's warped philosophies!
2. We can demolish arguments...
Arguments is "logismos" meaning "a reasoning, a thought," and related to our word "logic"-only in this case these arguments are false, what we would call "rationalizations." They are fallacious reasonings, excuses, fabrications, objections to the truth. KJV says "imaginations"; NASB says "speculations"; MSG says "barriers erected against the truth."
When our heads and our hearts get filled with deception, lies, and false beliefs that prevent us from living up to our full potential in Christ, then we're dealing with "arguments" that need to be "demolished."
When we start rationalizing or making excuses for our disobedience or our inability to follow God, then we need to tear down those false arguments.
When the citizens of Troy accepted the gift from the departing Greeks and pulled the large wooden statue of a horse into their city, they didn't see it for what it really was. They didn't see that a few of their enemy were hidden inside the Trojan Horse. What seemed to be a gift was a false gift. In actual fact it was the very thing that destroyed them.
False arguments do the same thing! They will destroy us if we don't destroy them first! That's why God has given us powerful tools to tear down and demolish them.
3. We can demolish every pretension...
A "pretension" is a proud or arrogant idea that is opposed to the knowledge of God-a pompous attitude that is antagonistic to God's truth. The original word meant "that which is lifted up."
A lot of people think they know better than God. And there is a danger for us whenever we resist God's plan or his mysterious ways.
When we are tempted to think, "If I were God, that wouldn't be how I would do it," we are dealing with pretensions.
When we question whether or not God really has our best interest at heart... When we doubt that he's really interested in us... When we think we know more about what we need that God does, we have a "pretension" that must be torn down before it destroys us.
4. We can take captive every thought and make it obedient...
Capture your rebellious thoughts! If crazy ideas run rampant through your mind, if doubts discourage you or undermine your faith, if worry and anxiety paralyze your ability to do something... you've got to take those thoughts captive. Make them POWs! Lock them up and throw away the key so they can't keep running free through your mind.
Col 2:15 tells us that Jesus "disarmed the powers and authorities [and] made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross."
Ancient Rome gave honored their greatest generals with a triumphal procession. They would parade them through the streets of Rome with great fanfare. The people would line the streets and shower them with flowers and shouts of praise. The general would ride on his horse or in a chariot, his victorious troops surrounding and following him, many carrying the spoils of war-the wealth and possessions of the conquered land. What's more, the prisoners of war, were paraded through the streets. These were men who were conquered, defeated, led in chains or shackles, knowing full well that many of them were destined to die by execution or in the games at the Colliseum.
This is a picture of what we are to do with the thoughts that plague us. It's what we are to do with the ideas that cause rebellion against God. We need to take captive the temptations that undermine our loyalty to the Lord-what the Message calls "...every loose thought and emotion and impulse..."
We can't do this on our own! But with God's powerful weapons, we can take control over rebellious thoughts and attitudes. When we are ruled by God's power, there can be no mental anarchy against God. We can take captive the ideas and temptations that undermine our allegiance to the Lord.
Jesus already has disarmed those powers and authorities! So we're just rounding them up and parading them as a spectacle of what God has done.