Welcome back to Aspastor John. This summer Pastor John is out of the studio preaching in Belfast in Scotland before returning to the States for a 40-day writing leave to finish up a book on Providence on the sovereignty of God a book he started last summer and hopes to finish this summer I cannot wait to see it and all of it the travel the book writing in this very podcast is all made possible by you we are supported by the prayers and the funding of God's people so thank you for generously

investing in this important and eternal work so with Pastor John busy we're diving into our archive of 1500 episodes and this summer we're pulling out some of your favorites about once every 50 episodes we release one that touches a nerve and touches the 300,000 play mark these are the elite episodes in our six and a half year history we only have about 30 of them and here's one of them

Sarah writes and ask of this Pastor John what does it mean to take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ 2nd Corinthians 10 5 how can I take this commandment and apply it to my incorrect or sinful thoughts that I may obey Christ and have joined him well here's the text let's read it and and then we'll see if we can figure this out 2nd Corinthians 10 and 2 verses 4 and 5 for the weapons of our warfare are not up

the flesh that is they're not merely human this is not a mere battle within one philosopher with the human wisdom against another philosopher with the human wisdom but the weapons of our warfare have divine power to destroy strongholds and then he defines this powerful stronghold

destroying activity in two steps verse 5 first we destroy arguments and every lofty or proud opinion raised against the knowledge of God and 2nd we then take every thought captive so like you move in a battle and you destroy the fortress and you take captives we take every thought captive to obey Christ

so Sarah asks how can she take verse 5 taking every thought captive and apply it to herself to be more obedient to Christ in her thought life the first thing I think that needs to be said that when we apply this to ourselves we have to make sure we're in the right place in the text

when Paul says first he's destroying arguments and arrogant opinions against God and 2nd that he is taking thoughts or minds captive we need to realize it's the minds and thoughts of others

I'm talking about taking his own thoughts captive these the thoughts of others I'm I'm moving into these rascals in Corinth who are so boastful in their philosophical prowess that I am going to demolish them not by counter philosophy but by divine power I'm going to show power and they're going to collapse in their thinking

and then I'm going to take their thoughts captive so that they now obey Christ so he's the warrior and the enemy is these people whose minds and arguments are proud and lifted up against God and when Paul defeats those minds and arguments in the power of the Holy Spirit

their thoughts and their minds are taken captive and they become people with the mind of Christ or obedient to Christ so I think Sarah might be misreading just slightly I'm going to come around and say she's she's on the right track but this might be misreading the verse when she says how can I take this command and apply it to my incorrect sinful thoughts it's it's not a command it's it's a statement about what Paul is doing to his opponents

he's demolishing their worldview and then taking their defeated thoughts captive for Christ so that they become thinkers rightly they they're obedient in the way they think about Christ so verse five is not a command to do this ourselves but Sarah's question is still a very good question

there is a way to apply this to ourselves we just have to get ourselves in the right place and the place we belong in is the group whose opinions and thoughts Paul is trying to demolish that's where we belong

we destroy arguments in every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and we take every thought captive so when John Piper reads that or when Sarah reads it

I should say or she should say okay Paul here I am do your demolishing work on me do your captive taking work on me destroy in my mind any faults or proud thoughts that I have about God

which means really two things I think that Sarah and I anybody else any Christian should do one we should listen to Paul and submit all our thoughts and ideas and feelings about God and about life

submit them to Paul's teaching God's apostle for scrutiny and if anything is out of sync with Paul's teaching we should let it be destroyed

I have experienced this very painfully I mean if you put your mind and thoughts really at the disposal of the Apostolic teaching and say anything in my thinking that needs to be destroyed

destroyed it can utterly undo you there have been seasons in my life where I have wept over the dismantling of what felt like really important structures in my brain

so I think that's the first thing we do we listen to Paul we submit everything we think all of our ideas all our worldview all our viewpoints to God and we say Paul let your word dismantle me if necessary

the second thing we should do is we should ask the Holy Spirit to work because Paul said we don't we don't fight with mere human fleshly arguments our ministry has power

so we should expose ourselves to that power verse four says the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power in other words he's tearing down arguments and God belittling ideas but he's not doing it merely by argument

so when I come to the Bible there's a lot of study I do and I love to study and I love to assess arguments and figure them out but I should also be crying out oh God I know that mere intellect will not dismantle the deeply rooted errors of my mind

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