From His Heart

Speaker 1

Today on From His Heart with Pastor Jeff Shreve, learn how to destroy the strongholds in your life.

Speaker 2

Well, it could be that you're dealing with a stronghold, a satanic stronghold that you have allowed the enemy to build that keeps him in your life, defeating you on a regular basis. He can heal every scar with real truth, real love.

Speaker 1

Are you living the abundant life in Christ or are you living in defeat, chained to a sin you cannot get a victory over? This is From His Heart with Pastor Jeff Shreve, and today we have a powerful lesson about defeating the strongholds in our lives. We all face them, and we all need to know how to come out victorious.

The message is titled "Destroying Strongholds." It's the fourth in the six-lesson series, "This is War: Overcoming the World, the Flesh, and the Devil." This series is also our special thank you gift for your support to From His Heart this month of any amount. You can make that gift and get the series in the format of your choice when you go to fromhisheart.org.

But don't go there now. First, open your copy of God's Word to 2 Corinthians, chapter 10, and let's learn how to destroy the strongholds in our lives and learn how to share that truth with others.

Speaker 2

In 2 Corinthians 10, Paul talks about strongholds. Fortresses he calls them. It's the only time in Scripture that he refers and uses that word that's translated strongholds or translated a fortress. It's used many times in the Old Testament. The stronghold. David would go to the stronghold 41 times in the Old Testament, but only one time in the New Testament.

When Paul wrote Second Corinthians, he was dealing with false teachers. He had established the church in Corinth on a second missionary journey around 52 AD. But it was a church that, as my friend wrote in a commentary on First Corinthians, he called it the Troubled Triumphant Church. They were born-again believers, but they had so many problems and so many issues. Paul said, "I couldn't talk to you as to spiritual men. I could only talk to you as to men of the flesh, carnal men, babes in Christ, because you're still on milk and I can't give you the meat of the word."

The church in Corinth had lots and lots of problems. After Paul left, he was there for a year and a half when he established the church. Lo and behold, false teachers came in. The false teachers would follow Paul. The devil had those guys that would come in and try to pervert the message. Paul told the Galatians, "I am shocked that you've so quickly deserted the gospel that I gave you for another gospel." The Corinthians were doing the same thing.

In Second Corinthians, Paul defends his apostleship and goes after those false apostles, those false teachers. He says this in chapter 10: "Now, I, Paul myself, urge you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ, I, who am meek when face to face with you, but bold toward you when absent." That's what the false teacher said about Paul. "Oh, he talks a big game in his letters, but when you're with him, he's very unimpressive in his person."

He continues, "I ask that when I am present, I need not be bold with confidence, with which I propose to be courageous against some who regard us as if we walked according to the flesh. For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses, for the tearing down, the pulling down of strongholds. We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God. And we're taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. And we are ready to punish all disobedience whenever your obedience is complete."

"Hey, you, Corinthians, you get away from those false teachers and you get your obedience complete. Then we'll go after the disobedience and the false teachers." Teacher Boy talks about the strongholds and pulling down those strongholds. So we want to learn about strongholds today, and we want to answer this question: How can we successfully wage war against the devil's strongholds that he builds?

Somebody said, "What's a stronghold?" A stronghold is when the devil seems to have a stronghold on you. It's a particular sin that seems to have a stronghold on you. So we want to discover three important truths concerning this issue of pulling down strongholds.

Number one, how can we wage war against the strongholds? Well, first, we can understand the meaning of a stronghold. What did Paul mean when he talked about these fortresses, these strongholds? As I said, it's the only time in the New Testament that the word that's translated fortress or stronghold is used. The word means a castle or a fortress or a strong place.

So, some things about a stronghold: What's a stronghold? It's a fortified place. It's a place that you would say, "Well, that's a strong fort." David, when he was fleeing from Saul, fled to Gath. Gath is the hometown of Goliath, the guy who defeated Goliath of Gath. David was fleeing from King Saul, who wanted to kill him because he didn't like the fact that people were saying, "Saul has slain his thousands and David his tens of thousands." Saul said to himself, "What more can he want but the kingdom?"

David had to flee for his life. He ends up fleeing to Gath, of all places, thinking he could go there incognito. He goes before King Achish, but someone tells Achish, "This is David, the one who killed Goliath." David got very afraid, let the saliva run down into his beard, and started scribbling on the walls, acting like a crazy nut job. The king said, "Why do you bring me this crazy nut job? Do I lack for madmen in my kingdom? Send him away."

The Lord delivered David, and he left Gath. He went through the valley of Elah, where he defeated Goliath, and ended up at a place called Adullam. He went to the cave of Adullam, which is up on a high hill. In that cave, he wrote Psalm 34: "I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul shall make its boast in the Lord. The humble shall hear it and rejoice. Oh, magnify the Lord with me and let us exalt his name together." He wrote that from Adullam, the cave of Adullam, which is called the stronghold because it was up high, a fortified place, and a place to hide out.

We have a map that shows you where this place was. Underneath the word Judah, right under there you have Adullam. Saul is from Gibeah of Saul up to the north. David could hide out there in the stronghold. It's a fortified place, that stronghold, that cave. But not only is it a fortified place, a stronghold is a secure place. It is such a strong fortress, a strong castle, that you feel very secure in a stronghold.

To give you an example, we have strongholds in the Old Testament. Jericho was a city that had high walls and was a stronghold. How were the Israelites going to defeat the inhabitants of Jericho? They didn't. They could only do that through the weapons of God's warfare. God had to topple those walls. Jericho was a strong-walled city. Jebus, which became Jerusalem, was another walled city. David conquered Jebus, and the people of Jebus said, "You can't get in here. You see these walls? The blind and the lame will turn you away." But God gave David the victory, and he took the city of Jebus, which became the city of Jerusalem.

Another place in the Bible known for its strong walls was Babylon. Babylon was perhaps the greatest of fortresses, the greatest of strongholds. King Nebuchadnezzar, the 5th-century BC historian, said the walls of Babylon were 335 feet high and 85 feet thick. He said you had 250 towers around, like military towers where you could put soldiers in these turrets around the city wall. You had a moat in front of the wall. So, it was like, "Who could ever get in there? Who could ever scale this wall?"

They said that the top of the wall was so wide, 85 feet wide, that you could have a chariot with four horses that could actually turn around on top of the wall. In Daniel chapter five, Belshazzar, the king, has the enemy Medo-Persia surrounding the city, and he's not worried in the slightest. He throws a big party. Daniel 5 is where the Lord shows up and has the handwriting on the wall: "Mini, mini, tekel, upharsin," which basically means in Terminator speak, "Hasta la vista, baby. You're done, pal."

But Belshazzar wasn't concerned in the least about the enemy outside. Why? Because he was behind those high walls. This is a stronghold. If you remember the little nursery rhyme about the gingerbread man, "Run, run, as fast as you can. You can't catch me. I'm the gingerbread man." That's basically the way Belshazzar and the people were. They weren't afraid because they were behind these high walls.

It's a fortified place, a secure place, and an entrenched place. Now, we know that strongholds were physical places on the earth—in Jericho, in Babylon, in Jerusalem, Jebus, the Jebusites. They're physical places. The stronghold that David went to, the cave of Adullam, is a physical place. But when Paul talks about the pulling down of strongholds, the destruction of fortresses, he's not talking about a physical place; he's talking about an entrenched place in a person's mind.

A stronghold is an entrenched place. The dictionary describes and defines entrenched as an attitude, habit, or belief so firmly established that change is very difficult and highly unlikely. Well, the stronghold in a physical sense was entrenched. Man, you're not going to move this. This is an immovable object. How are you going to get into Babylon? Because you have this fortress, these walls that are fortified and secure and entrenched.

Well, that can be built up in our minds. Our first discovery is that we can understand the meaning of a stronghold. Secondly, we can understand the building of a stronghold. How does a stronghold get built? You know that the walls of Jericho had to be built brick by brick. The walls of Babylon had to be built brick by brick by brick.

How does a stronghold get built into someone's mind? Because that's what it is. We are destroying speculations—those are reasonings, musings, and human philosophies. We're destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God. A stronghold gets built in a person's mind.

Now remember this: once you give your heart and life to Christ, you're off-limits to the devil. He can't possess you. No Christian can be possessed by a demon because the Holy Spirit of God lives inside of us. We're sealed (Ephesians 1:13) with the Holy Spirit of promise. But the devil can still mess with you, and he can still come at you. He prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. He works on the mind, so we can understand the building of a stronghold, the building of these human philosophies and lofty ideas raised up against the knowledge of God.

Now, how is a stronghold erected in a person's mind? It's erected with lies. It's lies that we believe. The devil's really got, when you boil it all down, one bullet in his gun, and that's the bullet of lies. He's a deceiver, a liar, and the father of lies. Jesus said whenever he speaks, he speaks a lie because there is no truth in him.

So how does the devil work? He works by lying, by deceiving. He deceives, as the scripture says, the whole world. He's not just a good liar; he is a master liar. He's a liar like we've never experienced before. The world has never seen someone who could lie like the devil can lie. I mean, the devil can make you believe that up is down, left is right, and black is yellow.

The devil is a master liar, and that's how he starts to build a stronghold in your mind. It's erected through lies. The Bible says twice in the book of Proverbs, Proverbs 14:12 and Proverbs 16:25, the same verse: "There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." The devil will come with a lie that seems very reasonable, that seems very plausible, and so many people believe it.

I remember I was talking to my aunt years ago. My aunt was Catholic, and my uncle, Uncle Harry, whom I loved very much, was Jewish. He rejected Christ outright. I couldn't even talk to him about Jesus; he would just get angry. I remember asking my aunt, who would call herself a Christian, "What do you think about Harry? What about his soul? What about his eternity?"

She said, "Well, Jeff, I just think that heaven is a place for all good people." That's what a lot of people think. That's what the vast majority of people think. And that's a lie. That's a lie. Why?

Speaker 1

Well.

Speaker 2

Cause there is none good save God alone. Jesus said to the rich young ruler, "Why do you call me good, Good teacher? What shall I do to inherit eternal life?" Why do you call me good? There's none good save God alone. Do you understand that I'm God? Or do you think you're a good person? You don't recognize the fact that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, that there is none righteous, not even one.

Jeff, I just think heaven is a place for all good people. It's like, well, okay, that's nice that you think that, but it's not true. You know, you can create a God out of your own imagination and say, well, I heard Kamala Harris. She was asked this question. She said, "Well, I just think that God is a God of love." Well, he is a God of love and a God of justice and a God of holiness. Well, I don't like that stuff. So I just create this own God in my own mind that he's just going to approve of everything I do. He's just this God of love. Well, yeah, the devil would love for you to believe that. That's a lie. And so a stronghold is erected with lies. That's all he has to go by.

Interesting. In Second Corinthians, chapter 11, verse 3, Paul said, "I'm afraid for you, Corinthians. I'm afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your mind should be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ. For if one comes and preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or you receive a different gospel which you have not received, or a different spirit you have not received, or a different gospel which you have not accepted, you bear this beautifully." You're all ears when these false teachers come in to talk to you about another Jesus, a Jesus of their own imagination, a Jesus who's not really Jesus. You know, you hear some people, and I've said this before, but some people that said, they'll say, "Well, my Jesus wouldn't do that, and my Jesus wouldn't judge. And my Jesus is just kind and loving and gracious." And it's like, yeah, and you know what? You don't have a Jesus. Your Jesus doesn't exist. There's just Jesus.

What did the Lord say to Moses at the burning bush? "I am who I am." I'm not who you want me to be. I'm not who you create me to be. I am who I am. You didn't create me. I created you. And so the lies. The devil will come with lies and get you to believe the lies. And what does that do? That creates a fortress of wrong thinking that leads to wrong acting. You know, it all starts in the mind. Sin begins in the mind. So a thought, reap a deed; sow a deed, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character, reap a destiny. And where did it start? It started in the mind. It started with the thought.

So the stronghold is erected with lies, and the stronghold is erected, watch this, with a lack of vigilance. We can put our guard down, so to speak. So the scripture says, First Peter, chapter 5: "Be on the alert. Be of sober spirit." Peter says, "Be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour, but resist him, firm in your faith." He's out there. So it's red alert. It's Captain Kirk hitting the button. Red alert time. So if you're on guard, your hands are up, watch over your heart (Proverbs 4), with all diligence, for from it flow the issues of life. Watch over your heart, guard your heart. Get your hands up. Be on the alert. But if we're not vigilant, if we let our guard down, well, the adversary who's out there, he's going to gobble you up. You can't rest on your laurels, so to speak.

Many of us saw the movie from some time ago now, doesn't seem that long ago, but it is, Saving Private Ryan. That was the big movie way back when. And there's a scene in that movie where the soldiers are taking the beach at Normandy. One soldier gets a bullet that grazes his head and dings his helmet, his pith helmet. And he's like, "Wow, I was saved by this helmet." And he takes his helmet off to show his buddies. And as soon as he takes his helmet off, another bullet comes and shoots him in the head, and he's dead. He let his guard down. I mean, what kind of an idiot in the midst of gunfire is taking your helmet off? I don't know. That kind of idiot who's now a dead idiot, but you just don't do that. That's not smart.

And so a lack of diligence, that's why the Bible says in Romans 13:14, "But put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh with regard to its lust."

Speaker 1

Well, this has certainly been an eye-opening and fascinating study in the book of Second Corinthians. Today, on From His Heart, Pastor Jeff will have part two tomorrow of "Destroying Strongholds." This message is one of six messages in the series, "This is War: Overcoming the World, the Flesh, and the Devil." And that title cuts to the chase. We are in a war, a real battle, and we're learning how to tear down the strongholds that hold you back. You can be victorious when you discover how to stand strong in this spiritual warfare.

This month, we're airing this series as our gift of thanks to you for your support to From His Heart. This month, of any amount, in the series, he shares From His Heart, acknowledging that many people feel under attack, but they don't realize that they are in a spiritual war. God's Word equips believers for victory, and that's why we at From His Heart want you to get this series to encourage you in the spiritual battles you face. You can get it on a USB flash drive, CDs, DVDs, or MP3 download to get this series, "Overcoming the World, the Flesh, and the Devil." Call 866-40-BIBLE (866-40-BIBLE) or go online to fromhisheart.org. Thank you for joining with us to help reach the world with this good news.

Speaking of good news, let's close with a scripture that will surely qualify for good news. It's found in 2 Corinthians 10:4-5: "For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, 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."

Well, we hope that verse and today's broadcast has been a blessing to you. I'm Larry Nobles, with a sincere thank you for joining us, and trust you'll return tomorrow for part two of this dynamic lesson called "Destroying Strongholds." Join us then when we'll again open up God's Word and share real truth, real love, and real hope from God's heart here on From His Heart.

Speaker 2

There is tremendous truth. There is hope that you always dream of. He can heal every scar.

Speaker 1

From his heart is the listener supported Broadcast Ministry of Dr. Jeff Shreve speaking the truth in love to a lost and a hurting world.

Remember, no matter what, God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.

Find out more at promisheart.org.