The Battleground – 2 Corinthians 10:4-5
Intro.: The true knowledge of God is more than a good quiet time or meditating on the Word – it involves the manifestation of the life of God in & thru us. The true knowledge of God is a powerful, experiential knowledge that goes much deeper than an intellectual agreement. If believers had a true revelation of the knowledge of God as Healer, we would have a healing revival that would eclipse the one of the 1940’s. Instead, the North American church appears more like the church that boasts in a form of godliness, but denies the power.
I. The Essence of Idolatry
NOTE: There is a more serious problem than abortion, murder, immorality and drug addiction: it is a lack of the true knowledge of God. It is rampant in our churches, from the pulpit to the pews.
A. The #1 hindrance to knowing God, is knowing about God!
1. This is more poisonous than we can imagine
2. When we think we know God, we get complacent
3. We begin to worship our idea of God instead of God Himself
QUOTE: A.W. Tozer calls this the essence of Idolatry, defining it as “the entertainment of thoughts about God that are unworthy of Him”
B. The true knowledge of God is the foundation for true Christianity
1. The battleground is what we believe in our hearts about God
2. This is where the enemy stages the greatest warfare
3. If the enemy wins here, he wins everywhere in our lives
II. How did we get here?
A. Satan is the father of lies
1. He has bombarded us with lies about God since we were born
2. He has polluted our fountain with false beliefs about God
3. From polluted fountains flow streams of sin
B. We find ourselves in sin and don’t know how we got there
1. We have a vague idea & can point to the final decision of sin
2. But how did we get that close to the line in the 1st place?
3. It comes down to what we believe about God
4. Satan has planted false ideas about God in our hearts
a. How could God love me enough to die for me?
b. Is God really able to deliver me from my past?
NOTE: Most of these questions come from past experiences with parents or other authority figures who have directly or indirectly communicated to us that God is distant from us, detached from our circumstances or unable to bring change.
III. The Transfer of Knowledge
A. We live in a nation that has spiraled out of control
1. 50 million abortions over the last 30 years
2. Divorce, sexual perversion and promiscuity have steadily increased
3. Relationships are more broken & dysfunctional that ever.
4. Faithfulness is no longer a value, love is cheap and meaningless
5. Commitment only lasts as long as everything is going well
NOTE: I believe that people unwittingly believe that God relates to us in the same way that people relate to one another.
B. These experiences have caused us to misunderstand God’s heart for us
1. Just as an improperly laid foundation weakens a building…
2. Our spiritual foundations can crumble if built on wrong concepts
C. The spiritual climate today:
1. Has reduced God to whatever suits the current mood
2. Has worked Him into their agenda & boxed Him into their plans
3. Has made a god in their own image
NOTE: No wonder, there is almost no healthy fear of the Lord in most churches anymore. The only kind of fear found in most churches is the fear of man. There is little awe, little true worship and little holiness. We have made Him into a god that we can control, manipulate and use for our own plans and ideas.
IV. The results of these images of God
A. It corrupts our ability to receive the full power of the Gospel
B. It relegates the birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension of Christ to
Sunday School lessons
C. God is seen as a weak, impotent, hap-hazard man upstairs that is just
glad we show up for church each week
Concl.: We need to be willing to put all that we think we know about God on the altar. We then need to ask the Lord to send His purging, cleansing, consuming fire. After His fire has purified our sacrifice, we need to embrace what remains (if anything) because it is pure and let the water of the Word refresh us.
At this point, we will have positioned ourselves to step deeper into the true knowledge of God as that powerful, experiential manifestation of the life of God in and through us.
This will send drive our spiritual foundations to the bedrock of God’s truth and will bring strength, stability and purpose to our lives.
We will encounter His heart and His vision and we will begin to know the mind of Christ. Intimacy with the Father’s heart will become a way of life rather than a random experience.
