Destroying Strongholds | 2 Corinthians 10:1-6 | 06/14/26

We've been with us the last few weeks.

We've been teaching through a series on

giving and generosity through 2

Corinthians 8 and 9. And we wrapped it

up last week. I really encourage you if

you have not heard biblical teaching on

generosity and giving before, go back

and listen to those messages. God has

something great for your life as you

give and pour out and bless others with

what he's provided for you. And we get

to participate in God's kingdom and

God's mission.

But Paul this morning shifts his

attention away from generosity and away

from giving and back to his discussion

around the false teachers in Corinth and

the impact that their false beliefs had

on the holiness of the Corinthians.

He is swaying them away from the

influence of these false teachers,

specifically

speaking out against false beliefs that

were keeping the Corinthians trapped in

sin.

And this was happening through a battle

for their minds, a battle for their

thought life.

And this should hit close to home for us

because we live in a world today that

offers us many false stories,

many false beliefs that try and teach us

a view of the world that explains what

went wrong with the world and how to

make the world right.

It captures our attention. Whether we

know it or not, there are false stories,

false narratives that are playing in the

background of our mind.

And these false stories, they

over-promise

and they under-deliver.

And they keep us trapped. And And often

until you are out of that

pattern of belief,

that pattern of behavior,

you can't see fully how much you are

shaped by it.

How much you're shaped by them. And I

think this is illustrated beautifully in

the rise of reality TV in the late

1900s, the late 1990s,

um with this movie called The Truman

Show.

Any of know if The Truman Show, but it

exposed this idea of being captured by a

false story beautifully. In the film,

I won't spoil anything cuz you probably

should watch it. It's

a very interesting movie. Um not fully

endorsing everything. I don't know if I

can even say that, but just in case.

Um a movie studio adopted a baby boy.

They named Truman.

He's given up at birth and they created

a world

where they could watch him 24 hours a

day,

every day of the week as he grew up.

Now, this is kind of like a meta

narrative on reality TV back in that

time period.

But, what happened is there was

artificial world that they were they

made, hidden cameras everywhere, a fake

town populated by actors, and a director

behind the scenes scripting the beauty

of Truman's life.

The whole world was made up from the

weather to the job he had, even to his

love that he experienced. Everything was

made up in this story without him

knowing about it.

And in order to control him, they

orchestrated a secret fear of water and

set the town on an island so he'd be

trapped unless he was able to realize

what was happening and overcome that

fear someday.

And so, over time, Truman starts to

realize that things were off. He starts

to realize that he was living out a

false story, that things around him were

being scripted.

And I don't know that I don't think his

name was an accident, either. I mean,

Truman, true man, true man. Like, he's

journeying through this pattern of

freedom to overcome fear and reject

these false stories around him and

embrace life that was taken from him.

Now, the thing with these false stories,

the thing with this like kind of

worldview that captures us and leaves us

trapped from what really is true about

God and God's world

is that they're never 100% wrong.

They're never fully wrong.

They're not easy to spot.

In The Truman Show, he lived what felt

like a mostly normal life. He ate and

slept. He fell in love.

He dealt with being discontent. He dealt

with the sense of things not being

right.

And in our world today, there are so

many false stories that guide our

thought life and therefore our actions.

Um an author named J.T. English wrote a

book on the biblical story, the

Christian story, what the Bible's all

about. And he kind of in the beginning

rehearses some of these false stories

that might be guiding our lives without

us knowing it.

There's the false story of romanticism

that teaches that you are your feelings.

This is the look inside your heart. Find

your identity.

If your feelings don't correspond to

reality,

change your reality.

There is consumerism. You are what you

have.

The good life's found in buying,

consuming, maintaining, clicking add to

cart.

There is individualism.

The story that you're the center of it

all. Be true to your heart. Be true to

yourself.

There's hedonism.

Pleasure leads to meaning.

Um there's fatalism.

As false story that thinks there's no

hope in the world.

That things are only getting worse.

There's politicalism.

Everything will be all right when the

right human government, the right

politicians in place.

I'd add naturalism. This idea that the

material world's all we can see.

That all That's all there is.

And the thing is that we are like

Truman.

None of us think we're living out a

false story.

These false stories run on autopilot in

the backgrounds of our minds, but you

can see them at play in your life when

it comes to what makes you angry, what

causes you to sin, what is the thing

that you're dreaming about, what happens

when things don't go all right in your

life.

And so Paul presents our thought life as

a battleground.

He uses warfare language around

spiritually fighting for godliness in

our thought life.

So we can walk in obedience to Christ.

And so get this.

Sin and fighting sin is not just a

matter of discipline or habits.

Though those things can be helpful.

But you usually at the root of sin is a

false belief.

And Paul tells us in our text that it

can be a spiritual stronghold

rooted in believing lies.

And so he tells us that he destroys

arguments and lofty opinions to take

every thought captive to obey Christ.

Successful Christian living involves

taking thoughts captive.

And so the main thing this morning I

want you to see is that God calls us to

grow in godliness by believing the truth

of the gospel in our thought life.

In our thought life, in our minds.

Or another way to think of this is that

the only way we can fight the lies of

this world

is with the truth of God's word.

Let's read the text of scripture

together and we'll break this down and

talk about how this lands in our lives.

This is the word of the Lord through

Paul.

Second Corinthians 10 verse 1. I, Paul,

2 Corinthians 10:1

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'm present, I

may not have to show boldness with such

confidence as I count on showing against

some of 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 and 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.

The first thing Paul wants us to see

this morning is the savior's humility.

When it comes to battling our thought

life to bringing it into submission to

God, he wants us to see first and

foremost the humility of Jesus.

Verse 1 and 2 point to this. Paul says,

"I 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 am away."

This is the beginning of a new section

again in 2 Corinthians addressing false

teaching from the false apostles to

correct their understanding of power and

weakness. The next few weeks we're going

to be talking about those very things.

The Corinthians had bought into a false

teaching that emphasized worldly power

and success and fame as a sign of God's

blessing.

And at the same time, they resisted the

call of Jesus to repent of their sin.

Now, one of the main complaints they had

with Paul was, "Paul, you are weak.

Why should we listen to you? You suffer,

you're being persecuted, you are a weak

apostle."

And they also thought that he was

disingenuous.

Look at verse 1.

They mention him being

uh

humble face to face but bold when he was

away.

If you go down to 2 Corinthians 10:10,

2 Corinthians 10:10

this will be in our passage for next

week,

the complaint was

this, for they say, "His letters are

weighty and strong, but his bodily

presence is weak and his speech is of no

account."

Does that match your idea of Paul?

Their complaint was that you're being

disingenuous with us. You act soft in

person, but when you get behind a pen,

when you start typing out that email,

man, you really can let it fly, Paul.

Now, earlier in this series, we learned

about the 2 Corinthians and this

follow-up letter that um 2 Corinthians

is to what was called Paul's severe

letter,

a letter that came between 1 and 2

Corinthians and we don't have it in our

Bibles. It wasn't preserved as inspired

scripture.

But we can determine that in that

letter, Paul was really direct around

some specific sin issues that had this

church um

been battling through and they had come

through a place of repentance, which is

great. But one of the things that was

preventing some of them from repenting,

preventing some of them from growing is

that they were still bought into the

false teaching from these false apostles

who were flashy and successful and

{quote} gifted {end quote}.

And so Paul starts off by telling us

something about boldness.

He tells us that humility,

meekness, and gentleness

are the most important aspect to

boldness.

At first glance, it doesn't sound super

humble for Paul to say that he's humble.

But the reason he did this is that he

wanted them to understand that their

false view of power and success wasn't

rooted in the gospel.

Rather, if we're going to be more like

Jesus, we are actually called to

humility and gentleness as the people of

God.

We're called to be people of character

more than being people of charisma or

gifting.

And so Paul in verse 1 says,

"I entreat you by the meekness and

gentleness of Christ."

In all of Jesus' teaching,

only one time does he specifically tell

us

what his heart is like.

He says in Matthew 11:29, Jesus said, "I

Matthew 11:29

am gentle and lowly in heart."

He talks a few verses later

about how he served and loved people who

are caught in sin, and he said, "A

bruised reed I won't break.

I won't quench the flax."

Meaning,

he did not heap burdens on weak, broken

people who are fighting their sin.

He did not heap burdens on those who

face the unique hardship.

He was gentle and humble

with them, leading them to life.

And so this is Paul's mentality when

ministering to the Corinthians.

Corinthians had come in, they've been

battling these like false apostles were

bullying and spiritually abusive in

their midst,

teaching them about power and and fame

and success, who were eroding their

trust in Paul himself, and therefore

their trust in God's word.

And he comes in with a humble heart

wanting to help lead them to life.

But the Corinthians had misinterpreted

Paul's humility as feebleness.

They saw his humility as weakness.

And these false teachers had gained a

crowd because they were charismatic,

they were powerful, but they were

bullying.

And they used power and ungodly forms of

persuasion, weapons of the flesh, to

control people.

Now, it may sound weird, but it isn't

shocking or strange that people back

then were attracted to false teachers

or bullying leaders, cuz guess what?

That's who many people today are

attracted to.

Many of us are attracted to, for some

reason deep down, to bullying and

controlling leaders, people who

demonstrate power

in our world.

Because I think deep down we want to

feel like winners.

We want to feel like winners. We want to

feel like I'm part of something

great. And humility in a leader doesn't

sell.

When this kind of bullying power dynamic

happens in a church, it is called

spiritual abuse.

Michael Kruger defined this in his book

on spiritual abuse this way, "Spiritual

abuse is when a spiritual leader,

such as a pastor, elder, or head of a

Christian organization, wields his

position of spiritual authority in such

a way that he manipulates, domineers,

bullies, and intimidates those under him

as a means of maintaining his own power

and control, even if he's convinced he's

seeking a biblical or kingdom-related

goal."

That sounds a lot like Corinth.

It sounds a lot like Corinth when Paul

was absent. A lot like their challenge

and struggle.

And so how does this happen in a church?

How does this happen? How How can we get

to the place where we prefer the wrong

kind of leader?

Well, I think the first thing, just two

things under this point, the first thing

happens when we prioritize giftedness

over character.

Today we like to imagine Paul as this

powerful speaker, the kind of person who

would own the room, this intellectual

giant who's matched by a similar

powerful personal presence.

But that doesn't seem to be the case.

That doesn't seem to be who Paul was.

Now, don't get me wrong, Paul was one of

the smartest human beings to ever live.

One of the most gifted, intelligent,

wise, logical people in the history of

the world.

And the Lord used him to plant churches

and author much of the New Testament.

And we'll see later he powerfully

reasoned and argued against false

arguments and teachings,

but he was not the life of the party.

He was not entertaining.

He put someone to sleep in the book of

Acts and they died.

Kid fell out of a window.

The Lord lovingly brought him back to

life, but

he can go he can go past the clock a

little bit.

Sometimes people's outgoing personality

and gifting can actually camouflage

their lack of character

and their humility.

And and and humble leaders can be hard

to recognize because

humility doesn't draw attention to

itself.

And so we got to be aware of not

preferring giftedness over character.

And the second thing the second way we

can prefer the wrong kind of leader

is we can prefer human power

over godly humility.

First two tells us this, "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."

Uh Paul's saying he's going to go back

to Corinth. He plans a return trip to

Corinth.

He did not want to have to come back and

show boldness or confidence to them like

he planned on with confronting the false

teachers who were saying Paul's walking

in confidence according to the flesh and

not walking with the spirit. They were

just getting eroding the trust of the

Corinthians for Paul.

And Paul plans to confront them. He

plans to

remove those false teachers from their

midst.

But he's asking them that he when he

comes back he doesn't have to do that

with the congregation itself.

And so he's committed to not waging war

according to the flesh.

He would not want to use human power or

worldly strategies to influence them.

He's choosing the gospel path.

He's choosing the path of humility and

gentleness, the path of Jesus.

And this is why Paul's opponents thought

he was a bully with his pen but a

pushover in person.

Essentially calling him a hypocrite or

dishonest cuz they saw him as being

weak.

But Paul wants them to understand it's

meekness and humility. His gentleness

was not a worldly strategy. He wasn't

just manipulating them.

It wasn't a trick.

It was who he was, who he strived to be,

and even in his severe letter, he sent

that to wake them up

not to heap on guilt and shame.

He wanted to shake them out of their

false beliefs.

And so personal holiness and humility

are always more important than gifting

and human power.

And so he wants them to understand that

he's not posturing or playing games with

them

and in front of these false leaders.

And the reason why is the second thing

we see in our text here around our

thought life and our minds is that

the Corinthians

were

bait their thoughts are basically

trapped in a spiritual stronghold.

Paul wants us to see his mission to

destroy spiritual strongholds. Look at

verse three.

So he's he's

building his mission, his ministry among

the savior's humility to destroy

spiritual strongholds. For though we

walk in the flesh, we're 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 and every lofty

opinion raised against the knowledge of

God

and take every thought captive to obey

Christ.

Our mind is a battleground and the Bible

uses warfare language to describe it.

Specifically saying that we wage war and

our weapons are not weapons of the

flesh.

Meaning that it's a spiritual battle,

it's a spiritual weapon that we use to

fight this this battle.

And the goal was to destroy spiritual

strongholds, which are defined as

arguments

and lofty opinions raised against the

knowledge of God.

These are false beliefs, false stories,

these are worldviews that are hostile to

God. And so,

where do these false beliefs come from

that fill our world? What's motivating

these false teachers? Well, skip ahead

with me to 2 Corinthians 11:12-15.

2 Corinthians 11:12–15

I don't want to pull too much from the

coming weeks, but I want you to see that

this is not just some sort of kind of

random human thought. This is a

spiritual battle happening in their

midst. This is what Paul says in 2

2 Corinthians 11:12–15

Corinthians 11:12-15.

And what I am doing, I will continue to

do in order to undermine the claim of

those who would like to claim that it in

claim that in their boasted mission,

they work for the same terms as we do.

Speaking out against the false apostles.

Verse 13. For such men are false

apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising

themselves as apostles of Christ. And no

wonder, for even Satan disguises himself

as an angel of light.

So, it's no surprise if his servants

also disguise themselves as servants of

righteousness, their ends will

correspond to their deeds.

These strongholds

were spiritual in nature,

and I think we can infer

that Paul was saying these false

teachers were being used by demonic

influences.

That they were servants of Satan.

And he made the connection that Satan

himself does the very same thing, that

they disguise themselves as servants of

righteousness.

And this is backed up by Paul's words

that our weapons of warfare are not of

the flesh.

This is similar language to Ephesians

Ephesians 6:12

6:12.

For we do not wrestle against flesh and

blood,

but against the rulers, against the

authorities, against the cosmic powers

over this present darkness, against the

spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly

places.

Our enemy

is focused on the big picture.

Sometimes you say the devil's in the

details, right?

I mean

that's a different expression. I'm

mixing metaphors here.

But

he is focused on the big picture.

He's focused on influencing culture

and worldview

through false stories and false beliefs

to distract people and keep them

entrenched in sin.

And so these Corinthians were stuck in a

cycle of sin because of the spiritual

stronghold.

It was not just a matter of needing more

discipline

or better habits. Again, that would be

helpful,

but it was a spiritual issue

around their sexual morality,

their lack of forgiveness,

their criticism of Paul,

their greed.

All of these things can be spiritual

strongholds for us.

And so I wonder, Jesus called the devil

the father of lies.

Of course, his main weapon of warfare

are lies and accusations.

When it comes to fighting lies, we need

to identify the lie and replace it with

the truth.

We'll talk more about that specifically,

but it takes

more than persuasive words. Persuasive

words help. They they arguments help. It

takes sound doctrine.

It takes compassionate reasoning.

But we also need spiritual weapons,

weapons not of flesh and blood.

And this word in verse four for

stronghold here

is important.

Uh also verse five, Paul talks about

lofty opinions raised against the

knowledge of God.

Stronghold and raised, these are words

in the Greek language here that implies

siege warfare.

These are words like ramparts which are

like the the fortifications defending a

city, the walls around a city.

Now I'm not like the military guy here.

I don't lean into spiritual battle

language but I'm going to lean into that

right now a little bit because our text

does. Our text wants you to think about

the mind as a battleground. Paul

imagines the mind as a city with

fortified walls around it, ramparts,

strongholds. And in order for our mind

to be free those ramparts need to be

taken down and every thought of unbelief

captured. Now many of us think that we

need to harden our minds, right? That

our minds are like these these

firm structures, these strongholds that

are hardened against these attacks from

outside sources. But Paul twists the

image actually.

He he actually says the the ramparts are

those false beliefs protecting your mind

from believing the truth. And so he

imagines himself not as the defender but

the attacker.

That he's laying siege

for the Corinthians' minds.

When a city's under siege an army

surrounds the city, tries to weaken the

resistance by blocking access to food

and water and supplies while the

defenders try and hold out and use the

walls to protect.

Siege warfare is super interesting.

1400s,

thought this is a fun fact.

Siege warfare changed

in the ancient world

with the fall of Constantinople,

the last remnant of the Roman Empire.

It was considered impossible to conquer

because of its ramparts, because of its

walls.

But the Ottoman Empire built a 27-ft

long cannon,

the first of its kind,

to destroy those walls.

Paul pictured himself

with that

kind of idea in mind.

There are these ramparts, these

arguments, these worldviews, these false

beliefs that kind of surround our mind

from being able to bring it our mind

into submission to God's truth. And Paul

says, "You know what we're going to do?

We're going to destroy those arguments

and lofty opinions. We're going to bring

down those walls."

He imagines weapons of siege warfare to

pull down

those arguments, to pull down the lofty

proud opinions of the false teachers,

so that the individual thoughts that

flowed from those worldviews could be

taken captured,

could be taken and arrested and brought

into submission to Christ.

Thoughts in our minds that flow from

these false teaching, thoughts like,

"I've committed too much sin for God to

love me."

Thoughts like, "Just one more purchase

will make me happy."

Thoughts like, "Since this world is all

that there is, I should live however I

want." Thoughts like, "Jesus is just a

great moral teacher, but not God."

Thoughts like, "Every path leads to the

same place."

These thoughts that come into our minds

may false worldview, Paul wants those to

be captured and brought into submission

to Christ, we could obey Christ.

And so Paul regularly tried to destroy

these false arguments. He reasoned in

the synagogues, which were those places

of Jewish learnings spread throughout

the ancient world,

that became a foothold for him to be

able to bring the gospel.

He debated philosophers in Athens.

That can be helpful,

but we cannot forget that we also fight

a spiritual battle with spiritual

weapons, what Paul calls divine power to

destroy strongholds.

To give you an example,

I want to share a story um

that I heard recently on a a podcast. It

was an interview and I found it really

encouraging.

Um there are certain people in our mind

we think that will never hear the

gospel, that will never like change

their worldview, change their mind,

right? We have those people in our

lives, I think, that we think, "Oh, that

person's just like their worldview is so

different, the way they think is just so

different. They'll never hear the

gospel."

And there are arguments and lofty

opinions in our culture today.

There are false stories in our modern

world.

And one of those false stories I

mentioned before is that individualism

piece that meshes with our emotions,

that we think we can only find happiness

in being true to ourselves.

And so this interview focused on a woman

named Kyla,

who grew up in Canada,

and um you probably can get where this

is going pretty quickly, but she loved

playing hockey.

And her parents tried to put her into

figure skating, but she she begged and

cried to play hockey with the boys. And

so they switched her to the hockey team.

And she was really, really good.

She played with the boys and just kind

of fit in until she hit her teen years

and started to develop same-sex

attraction.

And so she had been connected to a youth

group and a church throughout all those

years.

But during that season her parents got

divorced.

Her dad got remarried and this mixed

family popped up for them.

And she confessed to feeling placeless

at that time in her life.

Get this, her dad ultimately told her

that she did not dad did not want her in

their life because it was just easier

without her there.

He can start over with his new family.

You imagine being a 14, 15-year-old

hearing that?

During her young adult years she joined

the Canadian women's hockey team

and started to experience gender

dysphoria and at the same time developed

a substance abuse problem at age 19.

Uh given the size of this room,

I just know that there are people in

this place. There are families that have

been impacted by gender confusion and

gender dysphoria. We should be cautious

just as Christians, as followers of

Jesus, we should be cautious

not to speak about that in a way that

demeans the individual or belittles

the anxiety and depression and search

for meaning that they're going through.

But at the same time,

you have to recognize it's not the

answer.

She walked away from attending church at

23

thinking that she had no place to talk

about this. The church wasn't a safe

place to actually seek counsel and

guidance and help.

And looking back, she admitted that she

had a really distorted view of God and

she wasn't being filled up by the word

of God even though the peace she thought

that she loved Jesus.

Now, flash forward 11 years, her

mid-30s,

things were changed when she heard that

one of her former pastors moved near

where she was living

and she reached out admitting that she

needed help with her alcohol addiction.

He invited her to a recovery ministry

and she told him about her lifestyle

and said, "I'm ready to give up alcohol

but wanted to continue to transition to

being a man."

And so things changed for her though

later on when another pastor, a few

years later, another pastor and his wife

took her into their life.

They took over the recovery ministry.

They made a friendship with her, created

a home group that she went to.

And her walls broke down

when she shared her story and the pastor

said something like this,

"We're all in if you want to follow

Jesus.

We're all in.

We have the authority of the Bible to

guide us.

But they asked her this question, would

you give us grace?

We've never walked with someone through

this before.

And that's where they started a

relationship where she began studying

God's word

in community.

And several months later,

she said that she cried out,

"God, can I follow you as I am right

now?"

She's going by a different name at the

time, but she said that she heard the

Lord

call her by her given name, Kyla, return

to me.

Now, a lot more happened after that, but

that was the beginning of her

life back to Christ.

Her de-transition back to her

biological sex.

Worldviews, arguments, lofty opinions,

but defeated that in her life.

Word,

prayer,

community.

Word, prayer, community. We're often

blind to the lies that we believe, and

we need to invite others into our lives

to help see us and help us to know the

truth.

What if the divine power to destroy

arguments,

what if the spiritual weapons God has

given us are the simple things?

What if it's confession of sin? What if

it's checking in on a friend? What if

it's Bible study and prayer

for each other?

That these are the things that God uses

to change our lives, that help us to

break free from cycles of unforgiveness,

cycles of shame, these spiritual battles

that take heart in our lives. What if

it's the simple things

that the Lord uses

to form and shape us?

I think that it is.

I want to look at the last thing here.

So, the savior's humility

foundational.

Paul imagines that we're destroying

spiritual strongholds. Let's get

practical.

How do we fight these spiritual battles

as followers of Jesus?

Look at verse 5 and 6.

We destroy arguments, 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.

His goal is their obedience. His goal is

that they would follow Christ in their

actions. His goal is that they would

fight sin and obey Jesus.

Now, our world again is filled with the

false stories, lies, broken promises.

The goal of destroying these arguments

and taking the thoughts captive is so

that we would obey Christ. Obedience

flows from living out the right story

with godly thoughts.

How do we fight these kinds of spiritual

battles?

First,

we have to identify

what story is playing in

our head.

What false story, false belief are we

tempted to play in our head?

It's like background music at a coffee

shop.

You're not aware of it until something

clicks and then you can't unhear the

lyrics.

You're like, "Why are they playing

that?"

That's a weird song for a coffee shop.

Paul helped the Corinthians identify

their false beliefs. They lived out a

story that said the blessed man was the

powerful man who had influence and

outward success.

And that what you did with your body

didn't matter so much because, you know,

God cares only about the spiritual. That

was a false story playing in their lives

as well that led them to a lot of sexual

sin.

And it was keeping the Corinthians

stuck. And so, Paul's saying, "I tore

down the rampart. I tore down the

arguments.

I brought the walls down.

That's what 1 Corinthians is all about.

I brought the walls down of the

arguments and world views. So, the city

is conquered.

Now, arrest the individual thoughts.

Take them

capture.

Paul wanted us to identify the false

stories that we're tempted to believe to

tear down those arguments. Church, where

do you find yourself drifting from God?

What's the background track in your

mind? Many of you know, uh I struggle

with discouragement. I think for me, the

false story of fatalism is probably the

one that I have to fight against the

most often.

The false story that there is no hope.

The false story that things are only

going to get worse.

And this is a bit vulnerable to share,

but it can often be easier to stay

discouraged.

It can often be easier to stay

discouraged than to live in the tension

where we can have hope, but the reality

is hard.

Discouragement in a weird way can be

comforting. It can be that spot on the

couch with the blanket

that everyone fights over.

You have that spot?

And I think for me personally, I've been

really helped by an old pastor

uh from England named Martin

Lloyd-Jones.

And he wrote a book on spiritual

depression, spiritual discouragement.

And he asked the question,

"Have you realized that most of your

happiness in life is due to the fact

that you are listening to yourself

instead of talking to yourself?"

Now, what he means by that,

he's not saying don't like search your

heart, don't examine your life, don't

He's not saying that.

You may be thinking like,

"Man, the pastor's telling me to talk to

myself. That's weird."

But this comment came from his teaching

on Psalm 42:5,

Psalms 42:5

where the psalmist wrote, "Why are you

cast down, oh my soul?

Why are you in turmoil within me?"

And then he speaks to his soul,

"Hope in God,

for I shall praise him, my salvation and

my God." Instead of listening to his

heart, he speaks to his heart. He speaks

to his soul, "Hope in God." This is what

people call preaching the gospel to

yourself.

You ever hear us say that?

This is what we mean.

When you identify a belief in your life

that has control over you,

preach the truth to yourself.

Second Corinthians 10:5, you can destroy

2 Corinthians 10:5

the argument, take it captive so you can

obey Christ, so you can fight sin, you

can flee from sin.

And so once you identify

the false story, the false belief,

second thing to fight the spiritual

battle

is to replace the lies with the truth.

Replace the lies with the truth.

Again, our world's filled with the false

teachers, false stories. Just think

about the sheer amount of influence we

have from different cultural stories in

our world today. This is the sheer

amount of volume of noise. If you think

about it, it's like a like in the

background track in the coffee shop, the

volume's just turned up really high

right now.

And

research suggests that the average

person in America, this is back in 2022,

spent 2 and 1/2 hours a day on social

media.

Now, you might be like, "David, I spend

0 hours a day on social media." But your

aunt spends 5 hours a day posting like

AI videos of Jesus. So,

that's that's an issue, okay?

But there are probably other cultural

influences in your life, okay?

That are taking your thoughts, that are

driving your background track to be

turned up. Now,

just consider how many hours a day

somebody spends in what we can call a

discipleship place.

A place where you're learning to be more

like Jesus, like a small group, a Bible

study, church, daily quiet time.

at best, it is a fraction

of the time we spend on YouTube and

Netflix and Facebook.

At best, it's a fraction.

Now,

a reminder,

our culture is not neutral in its

worldview.

Everything we take in has an argument,

an opinion, a goal for us. It'd be silly

to think that once a week in this room

is enough to combat that.

I don't mean to say that you're foolish.

I just want to identify that that is a

silly belief. If you think that this

time This time is so important,

so powerful that God uses,

but we need more.

And so this idea of taking every thought

captive, it's really popular in modern

psychology, it's really popular in

counseling today, especially cognitive

behavioral therapy. But I think there's

an important distinction to make here.

Paul's not just talking about intrusive

thoughts that come into our minds and

our our hearts, right?

He's not just telling us to reframe our

thinking.

He's not just saying think positive

thoughts. He's not saying we just need

to believe or hope or trust more and

it'll work out.

The idea of taking every thought captive

is not just us having self-control over

our thought life, though that is

helpful. There's an important

distinction in verse 5.

Who took the thoughts captive?

Paul said, "We."

Paul's talking about a couple things

here, him and his associates,

who are bringing the gospel truth. They

took the thoughts captive.

And I think also this implies the need

for community

in understanding and fighting against

the false beliefs that we have in our

life.

Just to be clear,

it wasn't the Corinthians taking the

thoughts captive, it was Paul. Paul

said, "We tore down the ramparts of our

arguments. We've taken the thoughts

captive." What Paul was teaching here is

that the truth of God's word

displaces the lie.

And where do we find the truth of God's

word?

When we open God's word,

we exchange the lie we're tempted to

believe with the truth. We submit

ourselves to God when we open the word.

We ask God to destroy the arguments. God

uniquely uses his word to take our

thoughts captive.

Romans 1 24.

Paul wrote this, "Therefore, God gave

them up in the lusts of their hearts to

impurity, dishonoring their bodies among

themselves, because get this, they

exchanged the truth about God for a lie,

and worshipped and served the creature

rather than the creator, who is blessed

forever. Amen."

In Romans 1, Paul described the downward

spiral of sin where people rejected the

truth about God, gave themselves over to

ungodliness, and a key to that was they

exchanged the truth about God for a lie.

Follower of Jesus, you are to exchange

the lie about God for the truth.

As Jesus taught, John 8:31,

John 8:31

"If you abide in my word, you are truly

my disciples. You will know the truth,

and the truth will set you free."

Knowing Christ in his word, abiding,

trusting, resting in that is what God

often uses to set our hearts free from

these cultural lies that we have. God

the Son entered creation, taking on a

human nature like ours to show us what

it looks like to live in perfect

relationship with the Lord, with God. He

died for our sin

to remove the barrier that separated us

from God.

God desires

Do you know this? God desires for you to

know him.

God desires for you to abide in him and

to walk in

the truth.

And God will give you strength to do

what he desires.

Bible calls that faith.

It happens as we repent and trust in

Christ. We confess our sin, our need for

him. We receive his grace and

forgiveness and mercy and we are brought

into a new relationship with the Lord as

dearly beloved children. And God will

always empower what he commands and what

he desires in our lives.

And so, if you're not a follower of

Jesus,

today is the day you can turn from your

sin. You can walk with him. You can say,

"Lord,

take my thoughts captive to obey you."

And if you're a follower of Jesus, you

can ask him for help in your ongoing

fight

to find freedom from sin.

And so, knowing God's word forms our

thought life to combat the lies of the

enemy. And so, church, false gospels,

false stories, false teachers, they

thrive

when the church is biblically

illiterate.

When the church doesn't know the story

of God.

We don't know the Bible, the big

picture, we can easily believe the false

stories of this world.

And we need the real thing. We need to

exchange the truth. We exchange the lie

for the truth.

And so,

if you feel like you don't know

the big story of the Bible, I've taught

a class on this

a couple times in the church here.

It's an 8-week class.

We cover beginning to end

of the scripture.

If you want to grow in this,

come talk to me. Let's get a group

together. Let's find a time this summer.

Let's learn

the big story of scripture.

Let's talk about the truth. Let's

replace the lies we tend to believe with

the truth of God's word.

Church, God calls us to grow in

godliness by believing the truth of the

gospel in our thought life. We are to

wage war against false stories, false

beliefs, be shaped by God's word so we

We

follow and obey Christ. Let's go to the

word in prayer and we'll continue to

worship through receiving communion. But

let's ask the Lord to work in our minds

today. Let's pray.