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for today's program. welcome to our program today
i'm i have two messages i'm going to begin part one today entitled
true christian warfare true christian warfare this is part one and
then next week uh... i'll do part two but what i want
to talk to you about in these messages is what the bible God's
Word teaches concerning the warfare and it's a spiritual warfare
that true Christians are to be engaged in while in this world. And this is a subject that should
perk your interest. You know we have so much going
on in our world today And there's so much warfare, there's so much
friction among nations, among religions, things like that.
We talk about the radical Islamic terrorists today going to war
with guns, knives, even the possibility of nuclear weapons. We live in
fear of that. And it wasn't long ago that the
president, in trying to understand, I believe that's what he was
doing, seeking to understand the radical Islamic terrorism,
he sort of compared it to the past atrocities in history that
were done in the name of Christianity. And I think he mentioned the
Spanish Inquisition, you know, the Catholic Church in Spain,
when they commissioned an inquisition to go after heretics and Jews
and imprison them if they did not submit to the Catholic faith
and even torture them and kill them. And then he mentioned other
things like that, the Crusades, for example. marching into war
on horseback with swords and shields, things like that. And then I heard a popular talk
show host talking about the same thing. And this lady who was
on this talk show, she said that Hitler was a Christian. And then she mentioned Timothy
McVeigh, the Oklahoma bomber, that he was a Christian. Well,
these things get thrown around and they get confused, don't
they? What I'm interested in is what does the Bible say? But
let me say this, and I want you to turn to the book of 2 Corinthians
chapter 10. This is the scripture that I'm
gonna use as the basis for these messages on true Christian warfare.
And here's the truth of the matter, and I need you to understand
this at the outset. Christian warfare is never, never
a physical warfare fought with physical weapons. It never is. Christian warfare never, true
Christian warfare never results in the shedding of physical blood. True Christian warfare is based
on the shedding of the blood of Jesus Christ for the sins
of his people. That's the foundation. Christ's
work on the cross. Christ went to war with sin on
the cross. And he won that war. He died,
he was buried, he arose again the third day. And in doing that,
the scripture says, as prophesied in the book of Daniel, that he
made an end of sin He finished the transgression and brought
in everlasting righteousness. And His righteousness is the
victory of the true Christian over the world, the flesh, and
the devil, the three great enemies. And I'll talk more about them
later. But true Christian warfare is never a physical warfare.
The Crusades. done in the name of Christianity,
but they were not Christian. Now, I'm telling you, I know
that sounds harsh. You say, well, you're just making a judgment.
Listen to me now. Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory,
never mandated, never commanded His people, true Christians,
to go to physical war in order to promote His glory and to promote
the gospel and promote the salvation of sinners. He never did. In fact, he forbids it. Hitler
was not a Christian. He called himself a Christian,
but his Christianity was a perversion. The Hispanic Inquisition, my
friend, that was a perversion of Christianity. Timothy McVeigh,
there have been people who have done atrocious things in the
name of Christ. But they were false Christians,
and I need you to understand that. Now listen to what Paul
writes in 2 Corinthians 10. And I'll begin reading at verse
one. My text is really verses three
through five on true Christian warfare. And Paul writes in verse
one, he says, Now I, Paul, myself, beseech you by the meekness and
gentleness of Christ, who in presence am base among you. Paul's
talking about his physical presence. base, meaning he didn't consider
himself to be a charismatic fellow, somebody who naturally draws
people to himself, but being absent and bold towards you.
In other words, he's not there with them, but being bold, he
says, but I beseech you, verse two, that I may not be bold when
I am present with that confidence, wherewith I think to be bold
against some which think of us as if we walked according to
the flesh. In other words, the Corinthian
church had a lot of problems. And Paul was writing to correct
those problems, to admonish the people, to reprove them. And what he's saying is, I hope
these things are corrected before I get there so that I won't have
to be harsh with you. And maybe harsh is not the word
to use, but stern. Yeah, like a stern parent has
to sometimes deal with his children. Now look at verses three through
five. He says, for though we walk in
the flesh. Now, the word flesh is an interesting
word in the New Testament, and it can only be defined by its
context. The word flesh. Sometimes the
word flesh refers to sinful, fallen human nature. And I'll
talk more about that, but we war against the flesh. The flesh
meaning our sinful desires, our sinful thoughts, our sinful motives,
our sinful goals, that which proceeds out of the heart, that's
the flesh. He's not talking, when flesh
refers to sinful fallen human nature, it's not talking about
this physical flesh. This physical flesh suffers the
consequences of sin, that's why we get old, that's why we get
sick, that's why we die. But the sinful fallen human nature
has to do with all of the corruption of our sinful desires, motives,
goals, thoughts, everything, the lust of the flesh, for example.
But here Paul is saying this, Verse three, for though we walk
in the flesh, I am a physical person walking in this physical
world. Now, if I've been born again
by the Spirit, listen, if I've been redeemed by the blood of
Christ and born again by the Spirit, I'm now a spiritual person. That's what it is, you must be
born again or you cannot see, you don't have spiritual eyes.
You cannot hear, you don't have spiritual ears. You have no spiritual
desires, goals, and motives. But I'm still walking in this
human body. I'm not a phantom, I'm not a
ghost. And while in this human body, I'm still a sinner. I'm a sinner saved by grace.
I have a new heart, a new spirit, I have spiritual life, I've been
raised from the dead spiritually. But I still walk in the flesh.
I walk in this physical world, in this physical body. And that's
what Paul's saying, verse three, for though we walk in the flesh,
we do not war, fight after the flesh. Our warfare is not physical. It's not with knives and guns
and tanks and nuclear weapons. We cannot conquer the world that
way. And then verse four, he has a
parenthesis. He says, for the weapons of our
warfare are not carnal. They're not fleshly, they're
not physical. But he says mighty, the weapons of our warfare are
mighty. In other words, just because
they're not physical doesn't mean they're not powerful. They're
not carnal, but mighty through God. There's the power of it
all, God. And he says, to the pulling down
of strongholds. And then in verse five, he identifies
the stronghold. It's kind of like he's saying,
our weapons are not physical, but they're powerful because
of God, who is the power. You see, the Christian has no
power of himself. And people today don't understand
that. For example, multitudes of people
call themselves Christian, and they see their salvation not
totally in the power of Christ on the cross, the one who came
to die for the sins of his people, and by whose power righteousness
was established for them to secure and demand their eternal salvation. People today think that the power
is of their free will or of their faith. I make the difference,
you see. But the powers of God, well, what are these strongholds
that we're aiming the weapons of our warfare against? He says
in verse five, casting down imaginations. Now, if you have a concordance
in your Bible, you may have the word reasonings. You remember
back in Isaiah 118, the prophet said, come now, let us reason
together. Right now, you're reasoning.
Reasoning about your state before God. Reasoning about your salvation. And man by nature, his reasoning
is off. You see, that's the result of
our fall in Adam. We fell in Adam into sin and
death and were born spiritually dead. And our reasoning, our
imaginations are not in line with God's way. We want salvation. but not God's way, we wanted
our way. That's why people today believe,
that's why people all the time by nature believe that salvation
in some way, at some stage, to some degree, is conditioned on
them. There's something I have to do
to be saved. And I know the arguments that
come against it, I used to use them. You say, but don't you
have to believe? Yes, you must believe. Nobody's going to enter the kingdom
of heaven apart from believing. But what the Bible teaches us
is this, that by nature we will not believe. By nature we will
not repent. By nature we will not submit
to God's way of salvation in Christ. We want it our way. And
that's the reasonings of man. But the reasonings of God, where
do you find the reasoning of God? The thoughts of God. The way of God. The Word of God. You find it in His Word. Specifically
in the Gospel. And let me tell you something.
That is the weapon of the true Christian's warfare. The Gospel.
The Sword of the Lord. The Gospel of how God saves sinners. How God justifies, that is, pronounces
not guilty, declares righteous, a sinner who deserves nothing
but death and hell. How can God do that? How God
saves? Well, the scripture says the
gospel is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth,
to the Jew first and the Greek also, for therein is the righteousness
of God revealed from faith to faith. as it is written, the
just shall live by faith. There's the weapon. Our weapon
is the word of God, the sword of the Lord. Our weapon is the
gospel. I preach the gospel. Right now,
I'm engaged on a battlefield of the mind and the heart. And
the weapon I use is not a knife, not a gun, not a bomb, but the
gospel. The dynamite, you know that word
power in Romans 1 16? It's the Greek word that we derive
our English word dynamite from. And what I'm aiming to do, what
I pray that happens as I preach the gospel is that God will take
that gospel and blow everything out of your mind and heart except
the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. That's what
I want. That's what I want for myself.
So he says in verse 5 of 2 Corinthians 10, casting down imaginations,
and listen, and every high thing that exalteth itself against
the knowledge of God and bringing into captivity every thought
to the obedience of Christ. Now that obedience of Christ,
there's two ways of looking at that, but the main way and what
I believe he's talking about here in this construction of
language is this. Every imagination, every thought,
every reasoning that I have concerning salvation, concerning a right
relationship with God, concerning how God saves sinners, must be
brought down to submit to not what I do for Christ or for God,
but what he did for me. His obedience, the obedience
of Christ. And what does the scripture say
about his obedience? It says he was obedient unto
death, even the death of the cross. What does that mean to
a true Christian? My friend, that's my hope. My
hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness.
I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus'
name, on Christ the solid rock I stand." All other ground is
sinking sand. You see, here's what he's saying.
Our weapon is the gospel aimed at the mind, the heart, the affections,
the will. That's the battlefield. And our
prayer for ourselves and for our hearers is that God the Holy
Spirit, in invincible, irresistible grace, will bring down every
thought I have, every imagination, every reasoning that exalts itself
above Christ, Jesus Christ, the God-man, the one way, the one
truth, the one life, and what he accomplished on Calvary's
cross in his obedience unto death. And to show me and to bring me
to submit to his righteousness imputed, his righteousness charged
to me, and his righteousness, you see, is the merit, the value
of all that he did in his obedience unto death. to show me that my
only hope of salvation, my only hope of forgiveness, my only
hope of having a right relationship with God, my only hope of dying
and being resurrected to live forever with Christ is what He
did on the cross in His obedience unto death as my surety and my
substitute. In other words, I must be submitted
to Christ as the Lord my righteousness. Now that's what Paul writes here
as he's inspired by the Holy Spirit. The weapons of our warfare
are not carnal. And here's what I'm saying now.
No true Christian has any right or any mandate to physically
go to war or physically harm anyone. in this warfare against
the world, the flesh and the devil, this warfare against sin.
You don't have that mandate. We are to fight sin, we who are
Christians, we are to stand against sin. But now, for example, we're
against abortion. But now I hear people, you may
hear of somebody who calls themselves a Christian, draw a gun and shoot
a doctor who performs abortion. My friend, let me tell you something.
Abortion is wicked, but so is murder. That person has no mandate
from Christ. You know what a person who does
stuff like that, you know what they're trying to do when they
do it in the name of Christianity? First of all, they're going against
the teachings of Christ. It's not that we condone abortion.
For example, we don't condone homosexuality, but we have no
mandate to physically harm anyone like that. We're against it. And we're to tell them the truth.
Somebody says, well, we're to receive them as brothers. Oh,
no. Oh, no. We can't speak peace where there's
no peace. We need to tell them the truth. We're all sinners. And our only
hope of salvation is the grace of God, the blood and righteousness
of Christ. But we have no mandate. I have
no mandate to take upon myself to go avenge society, to harm
or to shoot. That's evil. That's wicked. And
a person who does that, do you know what they're doing? They're
trying to play God. And you know how I know that?
In Romans 12, God says, is mine, saith the Lord." Vigilante justice
is not Christian. It's never Christian. And though
those people call themselves Christian, they are not. They
are not. Well, think about the scriptures
now when we think about Christian warfare. Christianity is truly a religion
of peace. I even hesitate to call Christianity
a religion, but that's okay. There's so many false religions,
and religion just, to me, conjures up a negative connotation in
people's minds. But Christianity is a religion
of peace. Christ, when Isaiah prophesied
of the Messiah to come, one of the names that he gave him was
the Prince of Peace. When the Christ child, was born,
the angel came to the shepherds in Luke chapter two. And the
angel said, glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, goodwill
towards men. Now let me say this about that.
Every time that is quoted and that's in the season, people
think that means peace between nations or peace between men,
it doesn't mean that. Christ is peace between God and
His people. That's what that's talking about.
And literally, it would say, glory to God in the highest and
on earth, peace among men with whom He is pleased. That's really
what it says. Well, who is God pleased with?
Only those who stand before Him in Christ, washed in His blood
and clothed in His righteousness. In Matthew 5 and verse 9 in the
Sermon on the Mount, One of the Beatitudes, Christ said, blessed
are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children
of God. So there's peace, you see, we're to promote peace.
Now, the main issue of being a peacemaker to a true Christian
is preaching the gospel. Ephesians 6.15, when the apostle
is listing the whole armor of God, incidentally, there's a
warfare there, that's a soldier, you know, And he says, have your
feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace. Now that
doesn't mean when we talk about preaching the gospel of peace,
that doesn't mean that we're here to tell the world what they
want, tell people what they want to hear that makes them feel
good. You know, I've had people say, well, well, I go to this
church because I feel good about myself when I leave here. That's
not the gospel of peace. The gospel is not intended. to
make you feel good about yourself. The gospel is intended to make
you feel good about Christ and your relationship with him. You
understand? Now, upon what ground is peace
found between God and sinners? Well, it's the cross. That's
what Paul wrote in the book of Colossians. He made peace. Christ made peace between God
and his chosen people by the blood of the cross. That's peace. That's reconciliation. And then
in Hebrews chapter 12 and verse 14, listen to this. We're commanded,
it says, follow peace with all men and holiness without which
no man shall see the Lord. Christians are to be peaceful
people. They're not to be brawlers. They're not to be agitators in
this physical world. Now, true Christians are constantly
in a warfare, at war with the flesh of the world, the flesh
and the devil, war against sin. I'm gonna talk about that. But
Christians are to be responsible, law-abiding citizens. And we
are to obey the laws of the land as long as those laws do not
violate or go against the law of God. And we're to do that. And so we follow peace. But it says we follow peace with
men, all men, and holiness. That's separation. We're to be
separate from the world. That separation, a lot of people
have different views of what that means. To most people, when
they think of being separate, being holy in the sense, they
may think about moral perfection. Well, we're to pursue moral perfection,
but we are not morally perfect. My friend, the only perfection,
if you're thinking of holiness in the realm of moral perfection,
Sinless perfection. I'm going to tell you right now.
I hate to disappoint you. I don't have that. And if you
think you do, you don't have it. Let me, let me qualify that
in yourself or in myself. I do have a perfection, a perfect
holiness, a perfect sinlessness, but that's my legal objective
standing in Christ. His righteousness imputed. charged, accounted to me. And
I'm separated from the world by the grace of God. But most
people, when they think about holiness and separation from
the world, they think of taste not, touch not, handle not. And
that's not what it is. In fact, Paul, in the book of
Colossians, he called that worldliness. That's the reasonings that we're
talking about over here. That's got to be cast down. Now,
are there things that Christians should not do? Yes. But my friend,
that's not my righteousness before God. My righteousness is the
Lord Jesus Christ. And I'll continue with this next
week. I hope you enjoyed it. Join us next week for another
message from God's Word. We are glad you could join us
for another edition of Reign of Grace. This program is brought
to you by Reign of Grace Media Ministries, an outreach ministry
of Eager Avenue Grace Church in Albany, Georgia. To receive
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today and may the Lord be with you.