We're gonna read from 2 Corinthians chapter 10, beginning in verse one, and I think we'll stop at verse six for our reading today. Of course, this is Paul here. He's writing this letter to this church that he personally knew and helped to establish. And he writes this in chapter 10 of 2 Corinthians. Now I Paul myself beseech you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ who in presence and base among you being absent and bold towards you. But I beseech you 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. For though we walk, in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds, casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalted itself against the knowledge of God and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ and having in a readiness to revenge all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled. I'm gonna conclude our reading this morning. We're gonna try to talk about most of the things in our scripture text today, and the title of our message this morning is The Battle of the Mind. The Battle of the Mind. A few weeks ago, I was listening to some preaching And the pastor said something that I've probably gone back and listened to 10 or 15 times, just a small little clip, very much ministered to my heart, in part because it expresses my heart. He said, and I won't be able to get this exact, I'll echo this sentiment, that in almost everything that I do, my thoughts, my studies, if I counsel people, preaching the gospel and parenting my children, loving my wife, I want to awaken affections for God and satisfy them in you with God. I want your affections to be the Lord. Churches have at times become distracted by activities that were at first meant to awaken people's appetites for God, and we get so caught up in the things, we forget the base is to cultivate in our hearts a deep affection for God alone. I want you to love the Lord and to know him. Everything about what I do as your pastor is geared entirely towards that. When you're troubled and you're disturbed in the mind or the heart, I recognize that when a man is hungry, you gotta give him a piece of bread. But that piece of bread ultimately is to grant you the strength in that moment that your gaze may turn back to Jesus Christ. Because I know and believe above anything else, that is that last song that was sung by our young people, in Christ alone is life. Everything else, everything else matters nothing in light of you knowing Christ. Not just in salvation, but to just know him. For many years I believed that all of our lives were aiming towards one point and that was death. I don't believe that anymore. Death is just one step towards the final. and that is to be directly in the presence of Christ. That's where I'm headed. To be right there with nothing in the peripheral. Just be in Christ. I'm thankful Sister Megan testified that he gives us his spirit. We could be in his presence today. and come to know him. And this text that we're going to talk about this morning, it is so rich. The King James does a good job, the Greek, if you read it in the Greek, it just is so rich and full. I mean, it's just dripping with imagery that I wanna try to bring out to you today. especially those of you that fight the battle of the mind. Because what Paul addresses in verse five, notice this, and I'll explain some more of this, but one of the things that he is after, look at verse five, he says this. casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalted itself against the knowledge of God. So I want you to imagine this morning that your mind is like a fortified city. and its intent is to be governed by and filled with the knowledge of God in Christ. Every thought that you have, everything about you, when God saved you, but even those of you that are lost, every part of you has been built, that flowing through the streets of that city would be the joyful thoughts of Jesus Christ and his blessings in your life. Raining, sunshine, gain, loss, pain, health, that amidst all of those things, not that we would become superhuman, not that we would not feel hard things and confess, as David does throughout the Psalms, how much those hard things distress us. but that always we know that our thoughts are never against God. They're always in elevation of his name. See, what Paul begins to talk about is that in your city of your mind, we think of a fortified city and we want peace and prosperity and homes and children playing men and women working and school going on and all these things happening. And what Paul is talking about here in 2 Corinthians 10 is when there is an assault on that city. So Paul uses extremely aggressive language that he is going to respond to this assault with a certain attitude. with certain actions. Now, I'm gonna say this. This is my opinion about my responsibility as a protector of my family. I believe it's rooted in scripture. If you differ, that's okay. I am largely in life a pacifist. I'm not interested in fighting. If there is a disagreement, very few things to me are worth clenching a fist and sharpening a tongue to fight against. And the older I get, the more I get that way. Just not worth it. I think the boys have perceived that. And so they've asked this question. If somebody broke into our house, what would you do? And here is my honest response. I would kill them. without thought or hesitation. And I think without guilt afterward too. I don't know that, but I think. Here's the reason why. What lies in the domain of my home is beyond valuable to me. And God has made me, he has entrusted me with the protection of my wife and my children. And though I wish no harm even on my enemies, I believe to fulfill what God has entrusted me with, I have no choice but to protect them. And I will do so at all costs to me and to the intruder. You don't have to agree with that. Here's what Paul talks about in chapter 10. There are ways of thinking that will assault your mind. They will seek to come in and become naturalized in your mind. Now, I didn't intend to get to this this early, but if you'll notice, throughout the text, Hal charged the languages that Paul used with military language, and this is really important. He uses, either in this version or in the original Greek, all these words within a three-verse connection. Courageous, waging war, weapons, Warfare, powerful, destructive, strongholds, demolish, captivity, and punishment. So when he's talking about the mind, He has tried to help us understand what is occurring by discussing it with this military language, thus heightening the degree to which something is assaulting our mind and is also heightening the response that we must have to those things that seek to attack our minds. Your mind is important. Now listen. You can go too far in religion with pushing the mind, and I know that. And many people have been regrettably harmed by putting so much emphasis on the mind and taking the effects of the Holy Spirit felt through the emotions out of religion altogether for fear that man will somehow manipulate religion and thus cause a disruption in a church or a religious gathering. and though I am sympathetic to that possibility, I do not want to dismiss the central place the mind plays both in our service to Christ, in our service to one another, and in our well-being as human beings. There is an overlap very often between the health of your thinking and the vitality of your spiritual life. And if your mind is corrupted, if your mind is being attacked with enemies from all over, and if they have gained control of factions of your thought, listen to me, it is going to disrupt the whole city and every citizen that lies within it and everyone that seeks refuge from it. And so Paul, with no hesitation, wages war against those things that attacked the mind of a Christian. He is ready to fight. And listen to me, so should we. We have to fight against intrusive thoughts that can often come in as a result of our behavior, or I also believe as a result of demonic forces seeking to sway our minds and our lives. Here I've been, calmly doing something full of joy. And a wicked, unbidden, wicked thought assaults your mind. Something that peaks your sinful interests. Something that renews a spirit of anger or bitterness or hatred, lust or covetousness or pride. And what once was a moment of peace, what once were moments of even joy and rejoicing is immediately attacked by unpleasant and frankly, sin. I have come to believe that very often that is demonic forces trying to assault our minds. trying to purge the knowledge of God and the love of God and the joy in Christ and the joy and the blessings that providentially come from above. He's trying to purge all of those things and play into what he knows as our weakness, which is an affection for sin and self. You know, that's one day, that's when I discovered it. is when those things I could trace back that were assaults always came back to myself. How I had been offended, how I had been a victim, how I deserved more, how I was mistreated, how people didn't understand me, how I didn't achieve or accumulate or have the opportunity others did. And those thoughts come unbidden to my mind. In the midst of no, I was at equilibrium. Or better, I was in a state of pleasure with God. A state of peace and harmony with a brother or sister or spouse or a child. And suddenly, that equilibrium is disturbed. And oh, how quickly that our feet slide in due time. How quickly that one uncontrolled, unbidden thought can roam through the streets of your mind and contaminate every single household in the city. How you can begin to see things through the lens of a distortion of sin. and how that can ultimately trace back to not a knowledge of a greater glory of God, but also to the accusations against God in our heart for the things wrong with our lives. Paul, I wanna break down for just a moment a few of these verses because they were very powerful whenever I began to read them. Look at verse five. Excuse me, look at verse four. Let's make sure I wanna start here. Yeah, let's start in verse four. It says this, for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal. You know, I think that's important in our day of Dr. Phil. You go to the Barnes and Nobles and every lost person in the world is gonna give you psychological tricks to war against the mind. When those things are unknowingly rooted in the scriptures, they can be effective. They're not going to conquer the enemy. They can make life a little better. You can learn how to tolerate the gang in your neighborhood. But he's always going to be there. And I think it's an unfortunate reality in the culture, in the Christian culture that we live in, that too often, Christians have run to the world for carnal remedies over what amounts to a spiritual problem of the mind. Listen to me today, those things that assault the mind, God created your mind. He sustains the strength of your mind. And He alone will be the one to be able to help cure the distresses of the mind. And so for people to all together see no need for a cure found in Christ and in God, I can assure you those people will never be healed. People don't find, it's always interesting to me that you don't meet people who are healed through going to those people. They make progress. But I want you to know that Jesus seeks to heal you of the distresses that run through your mind. And he can do that. He has power to cure those things that cause you the utmost stress of mind. And if your mind is already saying, ha ha, Brother Brad just has no idea. What if I do? What if I do have an idea? And what if there's truth in what the Bible reveals that in God alone you will find healing? Maybe you just have to use the analogy, you know, if you only take one ounce of medicine that calls for a pound, you're not going to see progress. And I think that's what a lot of Christians do when they look to find healing. They put their toe into the water of God's healing and you say, you see, I'm not clean. You know what you need to do? You gotta jump in. And sometimes you get so filthy with things, not only you jump in and just use normal soap and shampoo, but you gotta scrub and scrub and scrub and ask for someone else to purge all the filth that have come through your mind. And that one is God in Christ. Verse four, the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, When you come to my office and I talk and I try to help you, you will find not one book in there that is some modern Christian, or excuse me, fad of a book, psychological fad to help you. It's not carnal, but mighty through God. You notice that? The weapons that we have to fight the battles of the mind are mighty through the power of God. And what are they able to accomplish? It says this in our version, pulling down of strongholds. You know what, it says in the original Greek, there's a more vibrant language than pulling down. Decimating fortresses. I love that, I love how expressive that that is in the original. When you decimate something, it means there is no sign that the thing was previously present. Wow. Here's what happens with a lot of people. They have certain patterns of thinking, because we're gonna get to, I'll just get there now. Verse five says this, casting down imaginations. That word imaginations, at least in no version that I could find, is expressed very well. It's meant to say this, casting down or destroying ways of thinking, patterns of thinking. So here's what this is saying here. Here's what Paul is getting at. Paul is not looking to come in and hopefully change the sentiment of the city. He's not looking for rehabilitation. He's not looking to make peace with the gains and the vagrants and those that are present within the city that really shouldn't be there, hoping that we can just learn to make peace and come to an alliance and leave in peace and harmony. No, what Paul is saying here is I have the The thoughts that you presently have through the mighty power and weapons of God need to decimate the fortress that is in your mind. It needs to destroy the ways of thinking and the patterns of thought that currently exist. Only in that will the knowledge of God flourish in your mind and heart. I think what has often happened is that people see others who are exuberant for Christ. They love to sing about the Lord, and they love to talk about the Lord, and they love to read His Word. Their life becomes more oriented those ways. And so, another person says, you know what? What do you do? What was your daily activity? How do you be like that? And they say, well, I read my Bible every morning through the Psalms. or I put Christian music on, or my family does a family devotion. And so the person says, you know what, okay, I'm gonna try that. And so they keep everything in their life intact. Every sinful influence, every way and everything that they watch has not changed. Everything that they think on and dwell about, none of it has changed. They just try to sprinkle on top of that a little bit of Jesus and hope that somehow, by just sprinkling a little hymn on there, it will contain this aggressive, malignant disease that spreads through the mind. And if that's what you've done, I'll guarantee you have failed. because God is not seeking to make an alliance. God is not seeking to bring divisive factions to one city and say, you keep your thoughts, you keep yours, let's just compartmentalize these for this time, this area, and compartmentalize these over here, and we'll live in peace and harmony. That will never happen. One will always win. And you have tilted the scales in the one direction because your and I flesh is full of sin. And so we will feed that dog that is selfish and set for the exaltation of self against the knowledge of God. What are some of those ways of thinking? What are some ways of thinking that you and I can have that can spread like wildfire throughout our hearts and can completely decimate the knowledge of God and the love? Now, I wanna say this about the knowledge of God. We're not talking about just knowing things. We're talking about an intimate, vibrant awareness that is felt and sensed and awakened in the affections as to the person of God and your relationship with Him. I've had days before where singing How Great Thou Art awakened such a knowledge of the presence of God that it compelled the lifting of the hands, and the weeping, and the gratitude to break forth all the way through, and just extolling the name of God and who He is, and feeling humbled that you would even drop down to the ground, not wanting to be consumed by the The feeling of not deserving his presence. That is the knowledge of God. When God fills us with himself. Here, Paul says, I am seeking to demolish fortresses. I love that word, fortresses. A fortress is not built in a day. Ways of thinking and patterns of thought are not developed in a week. Decades, lifetimes, being brought up in families that have been stuck in the mire of thought, in this ditch. And they birth you in that ditch of thought, that pattern of thinking, that worldview And you continue in that way, that mud and that ditch that's just full of all the nastiness that has been pushed off the right way. Sometimes those ways of thinking, those fortresses are so deep, we don't even know they're fortresses. We don't even realize we're living in a Jericho. The cities are feet thick. Ways of thinking. Paul says that through the mighty power of God, like Jericho, now that's what I love about the story of Jericho. I wonder what Vegas would have said, the odds are marching around a city seven times and then the wall is just crumbling. One in a billion chance, probably not even that. But through God. That mighty fortress. Now listen to me, this is really important. In a day. In one day. I think sometimes here's what Satan convinces us about. You know what? Generations of thought. Generations of thought life. Ways of thinking. I've had that for all these years. My parents had that, my great grandparents had that. It's gonna take Years of rehab of my own mind to tear those things down But what if I told you that God through his power through his mighty power In a most unexpected way Can Demolish a fortress It's not that God can does do it God is eager to do it. Why, why, why? Because he wants you to have him. And you have walled him out. So he's saying, listen, you don't have to live behind that city with me. You ever felt that way? You ever had your trust violated? So you wall everybody out with all these ways of thinking? I'm gonna tell you something. You don't have to do that with the Lord. You don't have to wall him out. Oh, one of the greatest, most freeing experiences was I began to realize I can let the Lord in. I can tell him what I really think, how I really feel. I can tell him like David when I feel like I am the aim of his aggression and his hatred. I know you're not, Lord, but I feel that way. and to be able to come before the Lord passionately and call all of those things to him. I don't need a wall to protect me from the Lord. He can have free access in and out anytime, day or night, bring whomever he wants into my city. I can give him a key. You know what some people do? Some influential citizen gets a key to the city. I can give a key to the city to Christ and say, not only are you welcome, anybody and anything you want in here, make yourself at home. Paul wrote in verse four, he has the power to demolish. strongholds, and to destroy ways of thinking through the mighty power of God. So that the knowledge, you know, I love this, I love this. Going back to what I heard that preacher say, he didn't talk about this, but there was an analogy that he gave that, man, really enriched. Thinking is totally cooking and not eating. It's digging for wells, doing all the labor and intensity and work to get a well, but it's not drinking. The aim of my heart as your pastor has nothing to do with you just knowing Bible facts. has nothing to do with you just coming on Wednesday nights or Sunday nights or being a more active part of vacation Bible school or attending revivals. The aim that I have for your heart has nothing to do with the series of behaviors that you can go through. All of those things, including thinking, is like cooking or digging wells. What I want for you is for you to eat and be satisfied. In God, in Christ, I want you to drink rivers of water that will allow you to have peace and joy and relief. That is what God wants for you. And to drink something that satisfies and fills. Oh, the greatest moments of my life. The greatest moments of my life. are when I am most satisfied in God. And those days, I feel like I could live for 1,000 years. I would be willing to endure this terrible place for 1,000 years if I could live there. But then I'm reminded by this corrupted world how you can't do that. So God's prepared a better place. where I can live like that, not just for a thousand years, but for all of eternity. And that's what makes the hungering of my heart that much greater for that place. Less and less and less does death sound like a daunting thing to know I will be satiated forever. This morning, I'm gonna say one more thing and I'm done. How do you do this? He tells us in verse six, and I don't have time to get to, excuse me, in the end of verse five, I don't have time to get to it the extent that I would like, but I have to say something about it. He says, I bring every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. During wartime in these days, Daniel is an example of this. Daniel lived in Israel. The Babylonians came and attacked. and in a way to make sure there was not an uprising and a rebellion since they didn't have quick transportation, what they would do is they would take the finest people, those with power especially, those who could lead an uprising, and they would take them, they would put them in chains and march them back to the original city, and here is an important point. They would try to unculture and reculture them. And so, so that there was not a rebuilding of the fortress, they didn't just destroy it, burn it to the ground. Anything that could possibly lead to rebuilding it was purged out of the city, and then they tried to remake it into something else. You know, that's what Paul is saying. He wants to do with our thoughts. He doesn't just want to decimate them, because He knows this. Inevitably, you will fall and I will fall right back into the pattern of, look at how much suffering I am going through. That's an inevitable thought, and sometimes it's true. Sometimes you are suffering. Sometimes you are in deep pain and anguish, and your spirit is troubled within. But from that realization, how that you build a context around that realization is what you and I must bring captive. In other words, see what they did to Daniel? Is they took him way far away. And they said, you gotta dress different. We're gonna name you something different. Your diet is gonna be different. Your language is gonna be different. The service that you're involved in is gonna be different. You're gonna have a tutor over you to make sure that we are purging any signs of being a Jew and we're making you into a Babylonian. And that pattern is exactly what God, that's why he draws it here. He wants to do that with our thoughts. And I don't have time to get into the specifics this morning of saying what God would do when thoughts go across your mind about your plight, or thoughts that normally lead deeper and deeper down a ditch that is gonna cause trouble to you, is God wants you to bring those thoughts into captivity that would then re-culture them to think elevated thoughts towards God. So we take men in the Bible like Daniel. Why do you think that Job is in the Bible? Why do you think that the story of Joseph or the story of Daniel is in the Bible if not to communicate to the hearts of God's people who are in the throes of suffering how they need to trust that God is doing something bigger than their fleeting feelings in the moment? You know, it's amazing to me what I love reading about those scriptures. is how, and this is something I had a good brother from this church tell me recently, you need to be more patient waiting for the work of God to be done and clear to you. You know what? He's right, he's right. Joseph took 12, 13 years before it became evident why all the betrayal. 12 or 13 years. Have any of you, have I, ever suffered more than that man Joseph rotting in prison, falsely accused? Probably not. And for 12 or 13 years, there he languished. And God revealed the only path to the throne was through the prison. The only way to the salvation of his people was through the false accusation. So what should that story breathe into us? When my heart is gripped, when I don't understand what God is doing, when I'm questioning the promises of God, remember Joseph! Remember! And lead those thoughts captive to Joseph! Submerge yourself in Joseph! What about Job? That poor man, that the purpose of why he was born was to help the rest of the human race for all time learn the deep lessons of God through suffering. I'm glad I wasn't picked out for that job, aren't you? That your story would become one to billions and that in order to show how mighty the power of God is, he had to take Job through what we would all consider the depth of hell on earth. So that we could see how mighty the power of God is. So what do you do when you suffer loss of a magnitude that nobody around you understands? Oh, you take your thoughts and you tie yourself to Job and you say, I'm not leaving. I'm bound to this man until the strength and the faith and the passion and the patience of Job is found in me. You see, God intends, you know, I can't leave out Jesus, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame. This morning, for some of you, for some of us, your thoughts are the greatest enemy from the knowledge of God being found deeply in you. If I had another hour, I could keep going. You know what you have to do? If you've got a crisis of somebody flooding a city, before you can kill those inside that are enemies, you know what you have to do? Close off the ports of entry. There's a port of entry that thoughts are entering through your mind through a certain way. I think Paul hits it when he says, flee fornication. I think Jesus hits it when he says, cut off those things that will be a stumbling block to you. You see how aggressive, just like Paul's is here? Kill it, vanquish, flee, run, cut it off. Friendships do that. TV does that. Cell phones do that. Despondent, discouraged Christians do that. Music does that. Video games do that. Social media does that. Negative people do that. They flood your thoughts with all these things. Friend, cut off those things opposed to the knowledge of God, and instead, Like Paul says, fill your heart with those things that are good, pure, godly, faith-building. I don't have time this morning. For those of you that struggle with the battle of the mind, I believe that your whole life can be sabotaged, not only in what you can accomplish with God, but also how that you can enjoy God or not. For your whole life, because of the ways of thinking that you presently have that are in opposition to the knowledge of God. And it will keep you captive in that fortress all the days of your life. But I am, I've experienced myself, fortresses being demolished. And I've seen those who through God's word have had the same. I don't say this enough, I want you to enjoy life. I want you to find joy in life. I think God wants you to find joy, deep joy in life. Those things will never happen when an enemy presides in the city. I pray today, I really hope, I really hope these scriptures were so real to me as I was studying them. I really hope for some of you this will lodge deep. I really do. Really hope you could be set free.