FBC Morning Light – May 19, 2022

Well, a good Thursday morning to you. I don't know if you're following along in the Bible reading plan for this year.

If so, then today you're reading in 2 Corinthians chapter 10. In this passage, the

Apostle Paul deals with the challenge of spiritual warfare. Listen to what he says in verse three.

He says, though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds.

Those two words, flesh and carnal, can kind of trip us up a little bit.

They tend to have the connotation of sin, right? Somebody is a carnal person.

We think of them as being sinful, engaging in sin, but that's not what Paul's talking about here. When he says that though we walk in the flesh, we don't war according to the flesh, we walk in the flesh.

We're physical beings, is what he's saying. We are physical beings. We live in a physical and a material world.

We are surrounded by the physical, surrounded by the material. We walk in the flesh.

Getting that helps us understand the second part of the verse when he says, we do not war according to the flesh.

He's saying our warfare is not waged according to material things, material stuff.

Instead, he says, the weapons of our warfare are not carnal.

Again, that same word, is that word again, carnal, they're not fleshly, they're not material, they're not physical, they're not carnal, but they are mighty in God for pulling down strongholds.

Let's first of all realize what our spiritual warfare is not, where it's insufficient.

Maybe you struggle with some particular area of sin, and you have determined some ways to battle against that sin that include or involve material things.

Let's say, for example, you find yourself wasting way too much time watching television.

You have established some parameters, some guidelines, some boundaries. You may have, and a lot of TVs now do, they have a timer kind of a thing where the television is not on, it can't be used except for certain times of the day, say from 7 to 10 or something like that.

You may say, okay, if I do that, then I'm going to fight against this temptation to be a time waster and to squander my days and be a terrible steward of my time.

Well, that can be helpful, but it isn't going to solve the problem, because the problem isn't the television set, right?

The problem is not the television set, the problem is something inside of you. The problem is your way of thinking, the problem is your heart.

All of the physical, the material things that we might do or use to wage spiritual warfare, they may have some help in putting up some boundaries, but they don't solve the problem.

The way we wage our spiritual warfare is not merely with fleshly stuff, because let's go back to the television thing, for example.

A person can say, I waste too much time watching television, I'm going to put these boundaries up, I can't watch television more than two hours a day, the television timer is set and all this kind of stuff, and sure enough, they can't.

But that doesn't mean that they're going to use the time that used to be wasted watching too much television, it doesn't mean they're going to use the time well.

They may simply end up wasting their time on something else. Okay, so they're not watching television, so instead they open up their phone and they watch

YouTube videos or scroll through social media or something like that, they're still wasting time.

So the problem is not that physical thing, the problem is deeper.

And Paul gets into that in verse 5, when he says, after he says in verse 4, that our weapons are not carnal, but they're mighty in God for the pulling down of strongholds.

He says, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.

So what Paul is saying here is that our warfare, our spiritual warfare, has to be waged internally.

There are thought problems, there are heart problems, and remember your heart has to do with your whole inner being, how you think, what you desire, and what you choose.

And so the spiritual warfare is waged internally, ultimately, it has to be waged internally in our thought processes and in our heart and what we want and what we desire.

And our desires are really thoughts put into emotional language, right?

And so we have to deal with those. We deal with our thoughts, we bring our thoughts into captivity.

What is my thought process? What am I thinking that allows me to be so wasteful with my time?

What am I thinking? See, that's the question, and that gets to the heart of the matter.

When I can bring that thought into captivity and then bring it into surrender, submit it to Christ, then

I make progress in waging warfare against that sin that could otherwise so easily beset me.

So again, does physical stuff, does it have a place? Yeah, there's certainly some value to that, especially in the early stages of fighting against some spirit, some sin.

But that's not going to be the answer, that's not going to solve the problem. We have to deal with what's going on inside.

We have to deal with the heart of the matter and deal with the heart of us in the process.

All right? So let me encourage you to wage warfare in the right way and in the right place.

Our Father and our God, we do realize today that we all face battles in this area.

There is an enemy that is out to destroy us, and we can't fight him and his efforts to destroy us merely on the basis of physical, material things.

We need to go deeper. Help us, Lord. Help us to bring our thoughts into captivity. And by your grace, may we cast down those things that exalt themselves against you.

We pray this in Jesus' name and for his sake. Amen. All right, well have a good rest of your