12/02/2001

Let’s pray

Father we do that this morning. We know that we have many gifts and abilities and talents and skills and friends and blessings and all kinds of things from your hand. Father we are able to do things and we are able to accomplish great things, at least we think. But Father this morning I pray that you would help us to understand our size in comparison with you and the great things we think we can do in comparison with the great things you do. Father we can’t control the weather, we can’t control the universe, we don’t sustain life in all forms. Father we think we can run our own life and we can’t. So Father this morning we ask that you help us to truly lay our crowns down to your feet understanding that we have little and you have much. In comparison we have nothing and you have everything. So Father help us to understand that when we pray we are a people who fall down upon our knees and cry, “Holy, Holy, Holy.” We are also those who fall upon our knees and beseech you. We pray and beg you, Father, for your blessings and you give them freely and we thank you for that. Father this day is a day that is yours. We have set our time apart for you this morning. We have come here to this place with express purpose of honoring you. Father help us not to be seeking a blessing. Help us not to be seeking something from the service instead help us to give ourselves to you completely and holy and lay ourselves at your feel. In Jesus Name we ask it. Amen

If you have been watching the news at all in recent days you will know that every day there is an update on what is happening over in Afghanistan and other places where we are having the war on terror. The effort to rid ourselves and the world of terrorists like Osama Bin Laden and his cohorts and his like. It is interesting that the things that were so important to the news media just before September 11th are now gone by the wayside completely. How many of you remember Gary Conden and Shondra Levy? Haven’t even heard there name mentioned on news cast for the last two or three months since September 11. But it was exciting news, it was on all the cable news channels that was pretty much the only thing they talked about for months, now they are totaling out of the picture. Because the focus has gone somewhere else. We have an enemy that is visible and out there and our whole nation has come together, at least in some degree, to fight this enemy. But the visible enemy has taken all the attention so the invisible enemy, the enemy within our own nation the things that we deal with here, have become less important. Campaign finance which was a big issue to be talked about for some time is not even talked about any more right now. A whole lot of things have just kind of taken a different place in our priorities because of the perspective we have gained now because there is a real, real enemy out there that is now very visible to us as a nation. Personally we do that too. We see a certain thing that is happening so other things that are less visible get less notice. But sometimes the most important things that we deal with are the least noticeable in terms of visibility. It is interesting as I have watched the process the last couple of months since September 11, early on many of the people who were in the towers that were killed, about 3300 or 3400 people now that they believe are missing. Which is an amazingly small number for the number of people who could have been in the towers when the planes hit. It is amazing how the shift has gone from, they were almost saints the day of the thing and now as time has gone along we have seen that people are really just people too and now we are finding out about fraud, people trying to get money when they did not have loved ones in the towers, insurance fraud, we are finding out that the Red Cross is a human institution also and questions about how they have dealt with money that they have been given and we are finding people going into the towers to steal things and it is like, we find out that human nature is really the same even though we find out that something big and bad has happened to people who are not at war with Afghanistan we find out the people are still people and we are still sinners. But the visible thing is the war. The more invisible battle is the fact that we still wrestle with things or should wrestle with things that are of a spiritual nature. In fact Saint Paul as he writes in any of his writings, Ephesians, Romans, Colossians, a lot of places he says we need to understand that the primary battle is not the visible battle, it is the inner battle. It is the battle of what we think, of what we believe and what our heart does. He says we are not wrestling against flesh and blood we are wrestling against principalities and powers and things like that, that are invisible to us but are just a real and are in opposition to our Christian faith and to our Christian obedience.

If you have been listening on the New Testaments tapes you should be about in II Corinthians Chapter 9 thru 12 today. II Corinthians is a very interesting Book because Saint Paul was writing to the Corinthian church, which is full of trouble, and of course we find, you can turn there. II Corinthians Chapter 10 is where we want to be today. Verses three thru seven. But Paul emphasizes the inner battle that should be going on. My fear is that sometimes we don’t actually have any battles going on and we should. We tend to get so earthly in our thinking that the things we are going are mundane in sense of the physical things, the material things, the financial things the shopping trips, the going to work and coming home from work, the shoveling all the snow that we haven’t gotten yet. Although last December we had all kinds of snow. So all the different things that we need to do, all the preparation for events that are coming up all the things we are going to be doing this week as a church, all the things that you need to do in preparation for family and friends coming to your house or are you going somewhere else, trips you might be taking. All the things get the attention of our life because they are so visible to us. They are the things that take our time planning and attention. But Paul says, ‘remember that they is an invisible part of life that is actually the more important than the visible. Says in Colossians three, that we should set our minds on things that are above not on things, not the fleshily things but the heavenly things, the spiritual things because they truly are the more important. Because what happens is the things that we believe cause us to act. We act in accordance with what we believe. Jesus said our mouth speaks out of the abundance of the heart. The things in our mouth says is because it is already in there. He says people are defiled or made spiritually unclean because of things that come out of their heart. The drunkenness, the debauchery, the attitudes, the malice, things like that, are in the heart so therefore they lead into action. So the most important battle we can fight is one with ourselves. That’s why I titled this “The Enemy Within”.

Notice what is says in II Corinthians Chapter 10:3, ‘ For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, and the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, and we are ready to punish all disobedience, whenever your obedience is complete.’ So he says, We think so much of the mundane of the thing that is visible, the human things, the temporal things, that we sometimes let go of the eternal, more important things. And so there ought to be actually a battle that regularly goes on in our mind, in our heart, of the opposition that the flesh, our desires, have against what the Holy Spirit wants us to do. In Philippians Chapter 3, it tells us that there is always opposition between the flesh and the spirit. And there will never be rest. Paul tells us in Romans 7, ‘In my mind I think I should do what’s right in my body, in my flesh, I want to do what’s wrong’. So there is always a struggle. He says, I want to do what is right but I find myself doing wrong. I know it is wrong, I don’t want to do it but I find myself doing it anyway. Me, who really wants to do right. So there is a continual battle in Paul’s life, in our life sometimes we quit fighting, or sometimes we don’t realize there should be a fight going on because we have allowed ourselves to have fortresses, or some people call them strongholds. It says our weapons of warfare are divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. A fortress is a way of thinking that we have allowed to settle in our mind that is contrary to the truth of God. It is contrary to the truth of God, it is when we have accepted a lie as if it were the truth. We have accepted a lie as if it were the truth. There are lots of them out there. There are lots of them out there. Maybe God can’t forgive me because I am to big sinner. Well God doesn’t say that, that is not true but people tend to believe that sometimes. People will do things and they say, ‘ well I am doing this because I am sure God would approve’. Well God wouldn’t approve necessarily of everything we do. But we tend to allow ourselves to think a certain way for different reasons and that is like I’ve drawn pictures before, in fact our small group leaders are studying this right now, and so I am a wonderful artist that’s why I am drawing for you today. You have to use your minds eye, do you have one of those? I don’t know if we do or not? My teachers used to say picture it in your minds eye, picture a heart in there and right over here there is a corner of it, there is a little castle on there, a little fortress, and it is property that God should own but it is property that we have given over to Satan. It is in our thinking, it is our way of thought, it is an area of thinking that we have accepted Satan’s lie as if it were the truth of God. And we have allowed Satan ground. The Bible says there is certain ways we give Satan ground. We give him a place in our heart. So we have given him place, kind of like squatters rights, once he has been there long enough we tend to quit fighting over it and we tend to allow it to take place and we just kind of ignore it after awhile.

Kind of like pains that you have once in awhile. Most of us like with pain once in awhile of some sort of another, no names please, but I have pains. I get up and down and we have talked about Bill Stough and his groaning and he still does it by the way. In a staff meeting if he gets up out of his chair he has certain groans, if he sets down he has certain groans, and we all, as we grow older, have pains that we live with. Sometimes you have all experience tooth aches probably once in awhile, you have experienced broken bones or sore muscles and so pain is something that we just learn to ignore or just live with it. Some of those things are in our mind, there is a piece of ground that we have given over to Satan. We no longer think about it, we no longer put up any struggle and that is dangerous for us because that means we have learned to live in accordance with that truth, that is not a truth. We have learned to accept it as if it were true.

You can name almost any area of life. One of the most grievous areas of life right now is pornography on the internet. Dr. James Dobson was on a commission years ago, about 20 years ago or maybe a little longer with Edwin Mease, I think it was, commission on pornography. They came back with about 20 recommendations for the government to act upon to get porn out of the hands of children especially and they passed all 20 of them. Shortly thereafter came the internet. And everyone of those is no good anymore because now you can get pornography right while you are setting there in your living room. In fact, my computer in the office I get letters from Stacy and Lynn and any of the girls name on there and it will say, ‘Open this because you are going to see things you have never seen before’. I have never opened one, I don’t plan to but what I find out is there is a whole list of addresses there and they are almost like my name and somewhere in there is my name. Somebody has some kind of search thing and it just picks out everything with this sort of name and they send it. Hoping you will open it up so you will spend money to get more. I block the addresses and I keep getting more, keep getting more, you probably find the same thing to be true. You don’t have to go to an adult bookstore, you don’t have to go the drug store and hide behind the corner or hide behind things if you are going to sneak a look at something. Pornography is an area of a stronghold. Where a person says I can look at these pictures and it really won’t effect me. No, it will effect you, it will effect you. We can say it won’t, but we can say it all we want to and it does. So therefore we have to be really careful with it because it hurts us, we begin to accept things that are untrue about life as if it the truth of God. And there are many other areas like that. Dishonesty, I have talked to different businessmen and they say you know in the business world, it is tough to be honest because so many people are dishonest and it is just a matter of life, a manner of life in the business world to be sneaky, to do things under the table and take cash and give no receipts, rather than give a receipt which is honorable. And so there are ways we have allowed ourselves to think and behave that are wrong. But we no longer call them wrong, so we no longer struggle and we need to struggle. Paul says you are looking at things as if they are outward, as if outward things are more important than the inward. The inward God says I look on the heart, I look on your heart. Why are you doing what you are doing?

Well Paul says, there are four areas of strongholds. He lists four different things here. He says in Verse 5, ‘We are destroying speculations, lofty things raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of God and we are ready to punish all disobedience’. So he talks about speculations. What is a speculation? Speculation is a thought that you have on your own. True or false. A grand slam home run is when the batter hits it into the second deck of the stadium? Well it is a grand slam but it is not technically a grand slam. A grand slam is when the bases are loaded and somebody hits a home run no matter where is goes. Even if it is inside park, I guess, it would be a grand slam. Well when I was small and my brother was smaller, and I hate of admit this but he was right. I had speculated when I heard the term, I thought grand slam meant it was in the second deck because I had seen a home run hit to the second deck and they called it a grand slam home run. So I speculated ok so a grand slam home run is when it is hit in the upper deck of the stadium. I didn’t realize that the bases were full. So when I mentioned to my brother something about this, we were just young kids, and he said, No, a grand slam is when the bases are loaded. I said No it is when they hit it in the upper deck. And so we had to go to the expert, which was my Dad, of course and he said, Sorry a grand slam is when the bases are loaded and a guy hits a home run. Well I had speculated because I didn’t know any better. In my ignorance I had assumed something that wasn’t true. A lot of things have been assumed that were not true. The earth is flat, right? You knew that Columbus had four ships, one sailed off the edge, well there were people who believed the earth was flat, believed we were the center of the universe. Everything revolved around us, well it doesn’t we found out that is a little bit different. We are not the center of the solar system, we are a part of the solar system. There are many things that people believed but were not true when they began to actually investigate. So a speculation is when we assume something to be true about spiritual things when we have never really looked to see. I am afraid this is probably one of the biggest dangers of every Christians life, is that we speculate. We assume that we know what is true because we are a Christian. When we have never actually looked to see what God says about it. When I ask a question a person quite often says here is what’s truth. Well, it is not always the truth it is what they assumed to be the truth. In fact you can tell somebody’s speculating when they say, ‘My God would never do that’. Well, he is not our God to define. He has defined himself for us. So we look in his word and say ok here is what God says so therefore this is the truth. Rather than saying here is what I always thought so therefore it must be the truth. Because I call myself a Christian. No. There is truth and there is speculation. We need to follow the truth and not our own speculation. In fact, speculation results from our own refusal to acknowledge God as the authority in our lives. Paul tells us that in Romans 1. He said, ‘When people saw God as who he was but failed to acknowledge him as God. God gave it over to there own foolish speculations.’ That means when we are on our own we come up with all kinds of things. If you let your child make the decisions for the day what are you going to do and where are you going to go? Well, you could be eating food you shouldn’t be eating, you could be going places you shouldn’t be going, and watching things you shouldn’t be watching. And they would probably not go to bed on time either. Well, we are many times children in our thinking and God says no this is the truth and we say but here is what I like. Here is what I thought. Well, we have to weigh our thoughts according to revealed scripture.

Lofty things he says are raised up against the knowledge of God. These are arguments against what God said. Our children quite often do that when we give an instruction and say something that is truth. They will raise up an argument against it. We have been dealing with an interesting argument here in the last few weeks with a professor who has been hired on at our college, we have been discussing some of the things that he says he believes. One is called the Openness Position. Open theology, which means what God does not know the future, he knows the present and past and he can kind of guess at the future because of what has happened in the past but he really doesn’t know th future because it really hasn’t happened yet. And so therefore he does not control the future, he only understands the future as we kind of open his eyes by our own decisions. I believe that is a lie of Satan, personally. And an awful lot of people agree with me. Well, I believe this is a lofty thing raised up against the true knowledge of God. And so lofty things are fortresses, ways of thinking that need to be controlled. Need to be rid of. May be arguments against salvation, it may be arguments for false doctrine, it may be arguments that all religions are equal. All roads lead to Rome, kind of thing, everybody who believes and hopes to go to heaven gets to go. Well, that is not what the scripture teaches, the scripture teaches we are saved only in Christ and by accepting him as our Savior. And so we have all kinds of lofty arguments up against the knowledge of God, the true knowledge of God.

He talks about disobedient thoughts. He says, ‘We are destroying speculations and lofty things raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ’. This means taking what we think captive to obedience. Not just what we do but our thoughts. Says we need to take those and bring them into obedience with Christ, to what Christ said. Now if you tell your child to do something, they may raise an argument against it because they don’t want to do it. And many times when God has given us a clear scripture of instructions in scripture we may say, I have a good excuse not to do that though. There is a circumstance here God. I am sure you were not aware of this. Well, it is like Moses when God said to Moses, ‘I want you to go into Egypt and lead my people out of Egypt’. Well Moses raised up six excuses. Said God they won’t know who you are, they don’t know who I am, I can’t talk good, I can’t got no couth. They won’t follow me. So God gave an answer to every excuse and finally says, Ok Moses you are going no matter what. And so we raise up excuses and God says I want you to tithe and we say but God you don’t understand. I can’t afford to tithe, God I don’t really think the Bible says that. I don’t really think that is for me, I think that was for people way back when not today. Well, there are all kinds of excuses we can give to a clear instruction from God. And it is our thought that makes the argument. By the way we are talking about tithing this evening, on Sunday evening we are studying the Biblical principles of finance. So if you want to talk about tithing and debt we are going to talk about that tonight. Very interesting study about what God says about money. We can raise up all kinds of arguments to his clear instructions, that is when our thoughts are disobedient. If our thoughts are disobedient what is going to happen in our actions? They are obviously going to be disobedient also that is where he goes in the next place.

In Verse 6 he says, ‘We are ready to punish all disobedience, whenever your obedience is complete’. So our disobedience takes place first of all when we argue with God over what he said and then completes itself in the action. He said, then action becomes punishable. We need to obey him. We tend to think though that our actions is what God is most concerned with. God is not most concerned with our actions, he is most concerned with the thing we start thinking. The fortress we have allowed to take place in our mind where be begin to accept a lie of Satan as if it is the truth of God and live according to lie and don’t even fight it anymore. He said, No you have to take every thought captive. You have to weigh this thought and say ok is it in conformance with God’s word and God’s character? If it is not, we bring our thought under control of him. We allow him to be authority of our thoughts not just of our actions. If we just think our actions are important we become kind of like the Pharisees, who thought as long as they acted and behaved properly, they were right with God. Jesus said, No, no, no it is the heart that I am concerned with. Your words come out of your mouth, your actions come out of your heart. So you have to be careful of your heart first. And that is what he is talking about. Speculations and lofty things raised up against the knowledge of God. Taking thought every captive to obedience to Christ and making sure then we don’t disobey by action. So these are fortresses where we allow Satan to get ourselves into believing a lie as if it were the truth of God. Paul says we need to renew our mind. We are not to be conformed to this world but transformed, changed, by the renewing of our mind. Changing what we think about life, no longer speculating but searching. No longer assuming but finding out what the truth really is. No longer accepting a thought as if it were true until we check it out to find out it is. And if God says differently we don’t say God would you change your mind? We say God I will change my mind. I’ll change my ways to conform with you and that receives God’s blessing. Because Jesus says, ‘Blessed is he who observes, who hears my words and observes them’. Who hears them and says ok and then does something about it. Who observes them actually. Those are the ones who are blessed by God.

About 200 years ago in France there was a doctor named Simowise. I think he was actually an Austrian but he was in France at the time. He was a obstetrician, began finding that most of the people who were in his care died. Ladies who had babies, he would deliver a baby and go one and deliver another and do exams and things like that and he found out that a good share of the people were dying under his care. He began to think about that and began to think that if maybe I washed my hands between patients it might help. So he began to wash his hands, believe it or not, between patients and many of his patients began to live that had been dying. He said you know what. That sounds like a good idea. I will have all my students begin to wash there hands also. Well, they started washing there hands and found out that fewer women died from them. Well, the establishment said, ‘No this is not an established practice so quit worrying about that. We are sure that is not it. We are sure that is not the problem so go ahead and examine all of them you want to and don’t worry about washing your hands because it is not that important. Well, it is that important, we kind of know that by now, right? And God said that in fact back in the Old Testament Law he already gave a process of hand washing that actually cleansed your hands before you touched anybody with diseases and things. So if they had just followed scripture they would have already had the wisdom even if they didn’t have the understanding. So finally, I think if I remember this story correctly, he actually ended up being kicked out of the medical profession in that area because he was bucking the system. Well there is speculating because they were not aware of what germs really do and so they went by there practice. It became an ingrained idea that this is how you behave and therefore it is right. Because we have accepted it as being right even though it is totally wrong. If you don’t watch out there will be things in your life that you will assume to be true, you will speculate that are true and begin to act accordingly and it becomes ingrained in your thinking and in your walk. God is up there saying, No, no, no look at the scriptures, look at what I taught you. It is different than what you are doing, it is different than what you are thinking. So he says, “we need to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ’. Our thoughts are not our own. Our thoughts are designed to follow Christ. If we are really in him we seek what he says and follow his word. Not our own speculation, not raising up arguments against his instructions, not disobeying him because we disagree with him but saying God you are the boss, I am the servant. So you tell me and I will obey you. And those fortresses will start falling. It says we have actually destroy them by rejecting the lie, accepting the truth, and live accordingly.

Lets bow our heads:

Just like you to stop and think for a second, are there things in your life that you happen to know that God has said maybe you shouldn’t be doing that? Are the truths of God’s word that we come up with great excuses for so you don’t have to believe them or don’t have to follow them? Are there ideas that somebody who has got some Godly wisdom says you know that’s not what the Bible teaches and you have made up an excuse to say oh no, no that is ok I am doing it anyway I am sure God approves. Because he loves me so therefore he will accept what I am doing. Well, no God hates sin of all sorts. He is separated from sin, he is holy, he is set aside from it and he does not like it. He calls us to obedience to his word. We are not free to make up our own standards that is why we do have absolute truth. Why we have standards that God has set that are outside of our own. Cause if we set the standards we do whatever we want to. So maybe there is an area of stronghold in your life where you have accepted a way of thinking, a way of life, that you actually know is contrary to God’s word. You need to conform your life to his worth. Not ask him to conform to your life. We sometimes expect that our morality will dictate our theology when it should be the other way around. It should be our theology dictating our morality. Don’t ask God to approve sin just because he loves you. And don’t throw up excuses saying, Well God I know what you say but I don’t have to do it because there are circumstances that are unique to me and nobody else would have. Don’t speculate. Don’t assume that you know what God thinks till you find out what he says.

Father we ask that you would touch our hearts this morning. Help our mind to begin to understand what our heart is doing because you said our heart is deceitful above all else. In fact you said in Proverbs that the person who trusts his own heart is a fool. So Father we know our heart is not setting out to follow you, our heart usually sets out to follow ourselves. Paul says I struggle with my own self because I have in my flesh the desire to do my own thing. In my mind I have the desire to follow God and so I struggle all the time. Father help us to never give up that struggle. Help us to weigh every thought according to your word and bring it into obedience to you. Help us to set aside the pride that would keep us doing what we want to do as opposed to what you want us to do. Reveal to us Father your word and illuminate it. Make it so it shines in our hearts and our minds so that we can see if clearly. So we can conform our lives to your word and your truth. Father help it to become such a part of our life that people see our good works and glorify our Father who is in heaven.
In Jesus’ Name we pray. Amen

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