if you would stand as we, and turn to 2 Corinthians chapter 10 for our scripture reading this morning. 2 Corinthians chapter 10, beginning in verse one. I, Paul, myself entreat you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ, I who am humble when face to face with you, but bold toward you when I'm away. I beg of you that when I am present, I may not have to show boldness with such confidence as I count on showing against some who suspect us of walking according to the flesh. For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments in every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ. being ready to punish every disobedience when your obedience is complete. Amen. May God bless the reading of His holy word to our hearts and minds this morning. Please be seated. Well, before we get started with the sermon, let's go ahead and go to the Lord one more time. Oh, Heavenly Father, we thank you that you have given us your written word. Father, we ask that you would use this word within our hearts this day, that you would bring about a transformation, a change. Father, that you would hide this word in our hearts, that we would continue to be transformed by it. Father, we thank you for the power that is the gospel. It's in Christ's name we pray, amen. Well, the title of this morning's message is Removing Lies and Liars Requires Spiritual Warfare. So we're going to deal with that issue of spiritual warfare today, but I want to get us thinking about this. And I want to pose the question, how many of you personally know someone that was drafted, not volunteered, but was drafted into the military. So that would mean that you would know somebody that was drafted into either the Korean or the Vietnam War. And as you start to postulate that in your mind, you start to think about that, you start to realize as we start to advance in age and time away from those two wars, those men are becoming less and less. And the likelihood of us knowing someone personally becomes less and less. unless you stop to consider that in actuality, Christians, every professing Christian in this world has been drafted by God into this thing we call spiritual warfare, God calls spiritual warfare. In fact, much like last week we were making much of the fact that the issue last week was not a choice, but it was a reality, such is the case as seeing ourselves as embracing the truth that we are in a war and we are soldiers within that war. We have to understand it. It is not a choice. You don't get a choice when you say Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior. That statement of allegiance to him means you have engaged in and have entered into this spiritual war. And we need to grasp that, we need to hold on to that, we need to be reminded that all around us there are battles taking place. We can't see them, necessarily. There are battles taking place in and for our very own minds. In fact, those are the battles that we are most cognizant of. We realize those battles as we struggle with understanding what is the truth of the matter, particularly in our environment now, where everything is so politically charged. At the end of the day, you don't know who to believe. One side says this, one side says that, and you're left wondering, where is the truth in all of this? Well, Satan is on an attack, and he's after taking your mind and making it a stronghold for him and his lies. But at the same time, we have hope, because as Satan is on the attack, Christians aren't on the defensive. Christians are on the attack as well. And we understand that, and we understand that God gives us a unique spiritual weapon or weapons, we'll see in here in our passage today, to fight. We know that ultimately we will be victorious because Christ was victorious. But we have a battle each and every day to fight in our minds to win the battle of truth. But we have been given a spiritual weapon that is able to defeat lies. If you'll do me a favor, flip to the back of your bulletin. I'd like to make sure that we all are tracking here. Let me read what the takeaway today is. Today we're gonna look at how the spiritual war is fought by soldiers of God's kingdom, God's kingdom known here in the spiritual outpost we refer to as the church. Have you considered that this church and every church, that local church is really a kingdom outpost in enemy territory? That's what's going on here. Well, our takeaway today is this. God provides the powerful spiritual weapons of gospel truce, the spiritual weapons are gospel truce, to destroy oppositional strongholds of the mind designed by Satan to corrupt the church. And that's the church individual, you and me, and that's the church corporate, as we have to defend against what walks in that back door in the form of false teachers, or at least at the very least, false teachings that we can be corrupted by. So we have to know the truths. Let's take a look at a little bit of the backstory before we get into 2 Corinthians. We all know that Paul was a missionary. He took the mission of the gospel, he took the truth of the gospel, excuse me, and spread it around. He'd go from location to location, he'd stand up a church, And then he'd move on to the next church, and he would get reports back from those churches to find out how they were doing. And then wherever he was located, whether it be at another city or even in a jail cell, he would write back to the church to let them know how to deal with whatever they were facing. Well, in our book here, our letter today that Paul has written, 1 Corinthians, he has already founded the church at Corinth, he has moved on, and he's received a report indicating that things aren't going well. And so he ends up writing 1 Corinthians. Well, we're not in 1 Corinthians, we're in 2 Corinthians. Well, what happens between 1 Corinthians and the writing of 2 Corinthians? Well, actually, after he writes 1 Corinthians, it appears as though a number, or at least I might even be so bold as to say many of the Christians rejected his authority for him to tell them what actions to take to correct themselves. And we see that, and we actually can see that in 2 Corinthians 2.1, we can see that taking place. And so Paul makes what's called a painful visit, is how he refers to it. And he makes sure that they understand, you need to do these things. And then it's followed because they still don't. continue to do them, or at least correct it and do them, he follows with what is referred to as the severe letter. And he references that in 2 Corinthians, excuse me, chapter one, verses three and four, and then again in chapter seven, eight through 12, where he rebukes them and calls them into repentance. Now this severe letter, remember we had the painful visit, and then we have the severe letter, This severe letter actually gets lost in history. We don't have that letter. So what we know as 2 Corinthians, based on what Paul has told us in the letter of 2 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians should really be called 3 Corinthians. This is the third letter that he is writing now. And he is writing because he's gotten a report back that indicates that the people are finally repentant. The people want to reconcile with Paul. The agitators in the church that caused him to have to make the painful visit, the agitators in the church that caused him to have to write the severe letter, finally they've separated or they've started to separate themselves. They started to fall in line with Paul again and what he taught from the very beginning. So we see the first nine chapters of 2 Corinthians, he's letting them know, I love you, I care for you. And then chapters 10 where we start, 10 through 13, Oh, he's gonna hammer on those that brought the division. He's hammering on the false teachers. And so we need to understand what this hammering, if I can metaphorically call it, looks like, and what he uses to understand how he defeats them. So with that in mind, turn your attention, and we'll take a look at it. We're gonna run through verses one through four of 2 Corinthians 10 together. I'll give you a little editorial running comment on it, and then we're gonna park in our passage today, is really on five and six. So let's take a look at 2 Corinthians 10, one and two. He says, I, Paul, myself entreat you. Now, let me just say this. We don't use the word entreat very often. You might be able to think of, gee, when was the last time I said, hey, I entreat you to do X, Y, or Z? I can't think of a time where I've used it in a contemporary format. It's kind of a church word. The idea of entreat here, it actually comes from the verb that means, I come alongside. Almost like that, it's the same verb where we get paraclete, Holy Spirit, parakaleo, which we get the paraclete, the Holy Spirit is the one who comes alongside us. Well, Paul is saying, I'm calling you to come alongside me. See the difference he's delineating between the false teachers and what they have been teaching and what he is teaching. So I, Paul, myself entreat you or call you to be by my side. How does he do this? What's the manner? By the meekness and gentleness of Christ, he's demonstrating Christ's likeness when approaching them because they have, again, he got the report back that they're repentant finally. And then we see that little dash there. If you've got the King James Version, you actually see parentheses. Parentheses are helpful because we know what parentheses mean. They mean a parenthetical or sidebar statement. Sometimes a dash can mean more than that, but here it means He's speaking and he's speaking sarcastically. Something interesting about the Greek. When the Greek means sarcasm, sarcasm means to tear the flesh. So when we're sarcastic, someone on the end of your sarcastic comments always receives a tearing of the flesh. You'll see the way Paul uses it, Paul always uses it against those that are bringing false into the church, whether they're false teachers or false beliefs, anything to do with false. He saves that literary style, that form of communication for those that are the enemy of Christ because he intends to tear the flesh on them. He intends to demonstrate to them that they're wrong. So listen to how he sets this up. He's sarcastically speaking. He's using the accusation that they are making about him. So when you hear this, I'm gonna try and give it the right tone so you can get it as far as an accusation or sarcasm kind of thing. I who am humble, in other words, I who am subservient, or in the Roman culture, that meant you were weak. So the false teachers are dissing him. By them calling him humble, they're not saying, oh, he's such a humble guy like we Christians understand it. They mean it as a cut upon him. I, who am humble when face to face with you, I'm this weak person, but bold to you when I am away. In other words, I'm this hypocrite around you. I kind of am weak, and I kind of tiptoe around. I serve you. I don't put myself first. And then away, I become this super guy. I'm super bold. These false teachers are painting him as a hypocrite, and he's gonna deal with that hypocrisy in just a minute. At least he's gonna let us know how he's gonna deal with it. And then you see the dash ends as we begin verse two, so we know we're done with that sarcastic statement, and now he gets back into his sincere begging of them. I beg of you that when I, excuse me, that when I am present, I may not have to show boldness, in other words, firm, almost forceful, hey, we gotta deal with these air kind of things, kind of like the painful visit and like the severe letter had to be. This is, I hope that I don't have to be that manner with such confidence as I count showing against some who suspect us of walking according to the flesh. He says, Oh, stand by, you're still gonna see that, that manner, but that manner's gonna be directed towards the false teachers. I will be bold with them, they will understand what it means for me to be firm with them, but with you, you who are demonstrating you want to reconcile with me, to you I come with gentleness and meekness with Christ, imaging that which we are called to image, Christ himself. And he says that, he's talking about the false teachers accusing him of walking according to flesh. Well, that's not a compliment. He's saying that this Paul is hypocritical. He walks according to the strength of man. He walks with the methodologies of men, the motives of men. This Paul is nobody. He's not an apostle. And so that's what he's gonna deal with, Paul's gonna deal with, with these false teachers. He's gonna deal with their accusations, which also are false, on top of the lies they're teaching the people of Corinth. He continues on in verse three, for we walk in the flesh. He's saying, look, we, notice he changed the pronoun there. He's talking about he and Timothy. He opens the letter saying, hey, this is from Timothy and I. We, those who are with me, those who are my disciples, my proteges, we, yeah, we walk in the flesh. We walk in the weakness of humanity. We are all weak. In fact, he even will talk about later how when we are made weak, when you see our weakness, then you recognize it has to be God working in us that is allowing you to comprehend what we are saying. There's nothing in us. We're not super humans like these super apostles, he's going to call them in the next chapter. He's going to accuse these guys that are these false teachers as being super apostles. built up in their own mind. They are arrogant, they are just puffs of wind. He continues on, for the weapons of our warfare, and when he talks about for the weapons of our warfare, he's talking about, and we're getting a little bit more into this, the gospel truths that Paul has been teaching. The gospel truths. The law gives him the road to righteousness to walk on. The gospel truths give us the power to walk that road. Our salvation is not by our own ability, it's by the power of the Spirit. In chapters 2 and 3, Paul talks about, hey look, I'm bringing forth the ministry of righteousness, the ministry that brings forth righteousness, and he talks about it also, the ministry, he calls it the ministry of the Spirit. He's tying them together as if they're synonymous, saying, look, the only way we're able to walk in righteousness is by the power of the Holy Spirit. I'm not coming in the weakness of what I've got. I'm coming in the power of the gospel, backed by the power of the Holy Spirit. That's what he's going to deal with. And he says that our weapons are not of the flesh. They don't originate from human witness or inability, but have divine power. In other words, spiritual power, which is therefore effectual power. Think about that. If it's coming from God, it's effectual. It's going to do what it's going to do. And then look at the word there. It says there's a purpose statement there, and the purpose statement is to destroy strongholds. The picture is to tear down the fortress of anti-God thoughts, the fortress, that stronghold of the demonic world system of reasoning, that which is in opposition to what Paul has been teaching by God's own revelation to him. So now, we get to deal with this stronghold, which is the fortress. Think back with me for a second. In Genesis, remember the tree that they took the fruit from? You don't need to say it. It's the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. What happens when they take that fruit? In fact, the devil continues on and tells them, he doesn't want you to take that because you will be like God. All human beings, all of us, before we are saved, struggle with identifying. Pastor Pete talked about it in his prayer. We take that which God calls evil, we make a determination, an assessment, and we call it good. We take what God calls good and we call it evil. We totally get it wrong because we're bent towards ourselves now rather than bent towards God. And that's the challenge and that's what the devil used to trick Eve. Did God really say you can't have from any tree? Come on, he's holding back. He doesn't want you to be like him. See the lie that's there? This is what Paul is dealing with, with the false teachers in the Corinthian church. So the first point we look at there on the back of your bulletin is what we destroy. And there's two components of what we destroy. It's dealing with arguments and lofty opinions. So first, let's talk about what are the arguments. Well, the arguments are simply the vain philosophies or the, I like this terminology that one commentator wrote, Imaginations of men and women. Oh, our imaginations can be great. It's a wonderful thing of creativity when it honors God. But some of the philosophies that have come out of the humanistic thinking, humanistic thinking is that thinking that never pierces through the truth of God. It's all based on that which humans use to understand their environment. without God in the picture. So when I say humanistic thinking, it all falls short because it all falls short of God and his lens by which we should be viewing our world. So we see these arguments as philosophies, their imaginations of sinful men and women, and I pose this statement to you. These are actually Satan's schemes. These are Satan's systems. They're his strategies to oppose the advancement of the gospel, whether it's in the world, whether it's in the church, or whether it's in our minds. That's what is happening with these lies in our head. And you might say, well, how do you know that, Nick? Isn't that being kind of, I mean, I didn't get that directly out of the passage. He didn't quite say that. Well, he's going to say it in the next chapter. In 2 Corinthians, let me just read to you chapter 11, 13 to 15. If it's close and you just want to flip the page or it happens to be on the other page, that's great. Follow along with me. He's going to lay it out here about the men. For such men are false prophets, deceitful, i.e., they tell lies, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. Remember, he's going to call them super apostles in a sarcastic way. And no wonder. For even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light, so it is no surprise if his servants also, speaking of these false teachers, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds. It is clear Paul has on his mind this picture of a stronghold, of being the enemy's, Satan's stronghold in our minds, of the lies that he has gotten us to believe, or that before we even knew Christ, this is where a lot of us struggle, we bring that same garbage and baggage that we don't even realize were toting behind us, And we wonder why our lives don't seem to quite work sometimes. It's because we're dragging those past lies. We haven't dealt with them with the truth of the gospel yet. And when this difficulty comes in our lives, it makes us assess again and say, oh, I need to deal with that issue. That's wrong thinking. I've carried it forward. So let's take a look at these lies. These lies are the enemy's arguments or reasonings These lies are, they will eventually fall apart. I want you to think about this. Lies are inconsistent. You can't keep lying without developing inconsistencies in your story. Trust me, as a police officer, you keep people talking. You keep suspects talking because they will talk themselves into an obvious state of, this can't be, this is false. We all do it if we talk long enough. With many words, there is sin. It's just the way it is. We're just so prone to it. The more lies you spin, the more new lies have to but can't connect right with the old lie. So if you were supposed to connect here in order to make your story sound plausible or believable, all of a sudden it's looking like you're connecting here. And the person's looking at you like, well, that doesn't make sense because of this or that. You can't keep it up. You may have heard this quote before. Oh, what a tangled web we weave. when first we practice to deceive. Oh, it's true. It's absolutely true. The symmetry, I'm thinking of the web, the symmetry of a web made out of lies is a messed up web. You'd almost think that the spider was drunk or had been drugged of some sort because it's all messed up. Or maybe, I've come across this before as a child, you watch the spider repairing the web and it's not like the original was. That's the idea, the picture there. When you continue to believe these lies, there is a mess in your head trying to make sense out of this world we live in. But counter to lies are the truth. The truth of the gospel, interesting enough, Pastor Pete, he didn't know exactly what I was going to say up here. He knew the idea of what I was going to preach on. You were using some of my sermon in your opening prayer as we were bringing adoration to God. The truth is, he used the word immutable. It is unchanging. It doesn't change. That's why you can say it over and over and over again and not worry about it not having consistency. It is consistent. It perfectly connects to the plan of salvation and any point on the plan of salvation. The picture there is the lines of symmetry are perfect and beautiful. Just as you look at that spider web and you think to yourself, man, that is intricate. How did that spider make that look so perfect? That's the beauty of what God does in the truth. All of the gospel, as we look back from the New Testament, or where we are right now, and we look back towards what God has done over the plan of salvation over the course of time, and we see all the places it connects, you go, oh my goodness. God is amazing how he connected that. That perfectly aligns with what happened 2,000 years ago. It's just a beautiful picture of the consistency that truth brings us, and particularly gospel truths. Well, not only does Paul bring forth that the gospel truths, these spiritual weapons, destroy arguments and the like of that nature, but they also destroy what he calls lofty opinions. In fact, what's interesting, if you have a King James Version, it actually will say lofty or elevated thing. That's because in the Greek, the word opinion isn't in there. It's an adjective acting as a noun. And I don't want to get geeky on you. You just need to fill in the word thing. Well, the writers, the transcribers, those who were giving us the ESV took it a step further. And they took the thing and they gave it a name. And they were right. They are opinions. That's the lofty thing that's elevated. But I think what Paul had in leaving that open and not actually classifying is this, remember, we've got this picture, this visual working of this military thing going on in the mind. Well, what is this elevated thing that is before or about this stronghold of the mind? It would be common in that warfare, and that would be that there would be an elevated wall of defense that goes up in front of and all the way around the stronghold. And this wall of defense as described by Paul, this metaphorical wall is nothing more than opinion. It's all it's got going for itself. It's not based on truth. It certainly is calculated and corrupting, but it's not based on truth and therefore it has no stability. With God's word, with the gospel, it is inherently based in God. It is inherently based on God's authority. It has founding. It has a foundation. Think of a wall on a big, thick foundation. That's the authority of God. But what we see with these opinions, they're built on sinking sand. There's nothing there. All they are are heavy walls of lies But I want to give you a correct picture. It's not like you can walk up to them and just push them over. The weight of them is extensive. It requires effort. It requires the person of the Holy Spirit acting in our lives to do the work of battling the strongholds. The Holy Spirit, through the truth of the gospel, is able to topple those walls, but it doesn't happen without exertion on our part. taking those truths and applying them in our lives. And then we see the truth that these are just merely, as we just got done singing, built on sinking sand. They have no foundation. They have no ability to stop God's work of his spiritual weapons to destroy them. And then we see, continuing in verse five, we take every thought captive, and then we see a purpose in there again, in order to obey Christ. That's the purpose for taking every thought captive. So what does that look like? I mean, if you can't, if you don't understand what it looks like and it's just kind of like this fuzzy thing in your mind, I can send you out today and you will be no more armed with the spiritual weapon, know how to use it, than you were before you came in. The idea isn't that you just forget. In so many ways, we can't forget. The more we try and forget, the more it's on our mind. It's not forgetting. We take the defeated thoughts, the captured thoughts, and we place them in a place in our minds, I might continue on with the idea of military, in a military cell. And over the top of that cell, we make sure that it's written clearly, that we can remember destructive, dangerous. These are the thoughts that destroy the thinking of the mind. They have been captured, they have been defeated. I put them over into this cell where I do not allow them. I know them well because I have had to fight them and I make sure that they are no longer able to to infect. I think this is a wonderful way for us to think about COVID and this situation. We don't allow those thoughts to infect our mind so that now we assess wrongly good and evil. We now have the power of the spiritual weapon of the truth firmly planted in our minds, and we have put those off, we have captured those, we have taken captive those thoughts that were destructive and damning. But notice I said that we know them well. Why? Because we don't want to forget, because we're going to see the next series of enemies coming in. Just because, and we know that, if you spent any time walking in the Lord, The next lie is coming. It's right on the heels of the last lie you dealt with. The world has a ton of lies to generate and send our way. And we know that, so we want to know, oh, I recognize that lie. Oh, I know what to do with that lie. That goes right here with the other lies under dangerous and destructive. We make sure that they're not part of our thinking, our assessing. And then lastly, in verse six, it deals with we are ready to punish every disobedience. Well, you know, interesting, I remember years ago trying to grapple with this particular part of it and thinking, Is this some form of asceticism? Do I punish myself? Do I punish my members? What is this punishing disobedience that Christians do? I mean, I know God disciplines us. What is Paul talking about here? Well, remember, keep in context what he's dealing with. He's dealing with false teachers. He is saying here, look, on the latter part of that verse, he talks about when our obedience is complete. Okay, first we need to deal with the stronghold in our minds. First we as a church need to deal whatever is coming in our door and make sure we understand what is the nature and every aspect of this lie that's trying to come into the church. We put it off to the side. Once we have demonstrated that we have got it over there and we're living in a way that obeys Christ, then we have to deal with either the false teachers or the false thing that came in the door. And Paul is saying, remember, he opened this up reminding us of the false teachers that had said, he doesn't have the authority to talk from wherever he was talking from. He doesn't have the authority to send you guys letters. You don't have to listen to him. He's not, listen to this one, he's not the boss over me. How many times have we said that as kids? Yeah. Paul is the blessed apostle that has been giving them the truth. He is God's representative, and God is the boss over us in a loving, caring, shepherding way. So we're reminded of that. And so Paul is saying, now that you are in a place that you are obeying because we've moved these thoughts, It's time to deal with the false teachers, and they are to be removed. Never again to infect the community. Think about this. We're not talking about believers in the church. We're talking about false teachers, wolves in sheep's clothing coming in here. But you know, we're a small church. We're small enough that we can still look around and go, yeah, by God's grace, we don't have any of those false teachers. but we have lots of false teaching trying to come in that front door. In fact, in talking to Pastor Pete and Deacon Mark, I asked them, hey, would you mind if, based on this, I feel really convicted to go into a sermon series after we finish Genesis, we're in Genesis 47, but after we finish Genesis, Do you mind if I take the congregation into a series? We've got to take on some of these cultural issues. We've got to take on things such as critical race theory. We've got to take on what is this thing that's called gender dysphoria. Dysphoria is a nice scientific pseudoscience kind of word that means dissatisfied. I'm gender dissatisfied. and it's getting crammed down the throats of children that you are satisfied with your gender, therefore you need to call yourself this. Or we won't call you any gender at all because that might upset you. We're talking about some gross, corrupting lies that are trying to get in the church. How about abortion? Abortion is, it's there every single day. We're reminded of how there is liberty to kill. Really? Liberty to kill? No. No, we don't have that liberty as Christians. That's wrong. So our goal is to deal with that as a church. Let's conclude here. Romans 1 16 says this, and this is Paul writing again. For I am not ashamed of the gospel. And listen to how he categorizes the gospel. It is the power of God for salvation. To everyone who believes, to the Jew first, and to the Greek also. It is the power of God. Think about our takeaway. The gospel truths have the power to destroy oppositional strongholds of the mind. And who and what designed those strongholds? Designed by Satan to corrupt the church, whether that be individual or corporately. Jesus Christ has made this power that he has given to us in the form of the gospel possible by dying on a cross for us, but not just dying, but rising above death. He has demonstrated that the power of the gospel can defeat the death, the spiritual death that we were all born into. It has the power to bring us out of death spiritually, but don't think it stops there. That power of the gospel continues on in sanctification, and continuing to change us, to change our thinking, the gospel has the ability to renew our thinking. So we truly are being made more and more new creations in Christ. We are more and more imaging Christ for his glory and for our good. If you have never accepted what Christ has done, you have weighed the balance and you're thinking, I might be good enough to get in, No, we're not good enough to get in. Repent of the lies that the world has taught you and that you hold on to and believe in the truth of the gospel. It is only the gospel that will save us. We need to hold on to those truths. And if you have trusted in the work of Jesus Christ to save you, trust in that work to continue to save you or sanctify, or use the word, make you more holy as you venture to walk in a way that honors your king. Let us go to the Lord and thank him. Oh, Heavenly Father, we thank you that we have these gospels truths. We thank you that you have set us free from the bondage of sin and that you continue to set us free from the strongholds of sin, the strongholds of the wrong thinking that we have. Father, I'm the first to admit that I thank you that you have allowed me to look back over my life and go, why do I do this? And realize it's wrong thinking I'm still doing. Father, thank you. Thank you that your truth is able to show us the path. And your truth is able to give us the power to defeat the wrong thinking, to live lives free of the bondage of sin. It's in Christ's name we pray, amen.