This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Welcome to our look at 2nd Corinthians chapter 10, this is day one of our look
through this chapter. We're going to look at verses 1 to 4 today. As we look
through this chapter we're going to be looking together at what I would call a
cure for criticism.

You've heard the phrase "everybody's a critic" and you know why? Because it's
easy. It's easy to be a critic.

You don't have to work at it, you don't have to do anything, it's the lazy thing
to do. And the truth of the matter is, often times critics are popular. People
love to listen to criticism, it makes them feel better about themselves.

People love to listen to criticism because it helps us to set aside some of our
own bad feelings about ourselves. Critics are popular and critics are also
secure, they're always going to have a job because people always love to listen
to critics and also critics are secure because they're getting people to focus
on other people's problems instead of looking at their own problems. But don't
forget this, critics are extremely dangerous.

They can keep God's work from happening, they can discourage God's work in your
own life. Now the truth of the matter is God's servants, and 2nd Corinthians is
a servant survival guide, God's servants inevitably face criticism. So how do
you survive it?

Paul faced criticism. Chapter 10 adds to the truth of what we've been seeing all
through this book, that he faced criticism over things like his past, the way he
had come to know Christ and what that meant. He faced criticism over things like
even his appearance.

There's one early book about the Apostle Paul, sort of a fantasy book, but it
has this description of Paul in it. He was a man "of small stature, with meeting
eyebrows, bald or shaved head, bow-legged, strongly built, hollow-eyed, with a
large crooked nose. " Criticism comes at all angles and in all ways, and
sometimes people even criticize silly things like your appearance.

His letters were criticized, the way that he wrote, by the way those letters
were inspired by the Holy Spirit. So even the most inspired thing that Paul ever
did was criticized. Never think that because it's criticized it means that God's
not in it.

Oftentimes, the fact that it's criticized means that God's right in the middle
of it. Not always, but oftentimes it does. Paul was also criticized for his
meekness, that he expressed gentleness in the circumstances and situations he
was facing.

And as Paul walks through the criticism he was facing, this chapter is filled
with wonderful advice from God's Word, wonderful truth from God's Word about
what to do when criticism comes. In some ways, as people outline the book of 2
Corinthians, this begins the third major section of 2 Corinthians. First major
section is Paul explains his ministry, that's chapter 1 through chapter 7.

The second section is Paul encourages their generosity, that's chapters 8 and 9.
And the third major section is Paul enforces his authority, that's chapters 10
to 13. So chapter 10, what does he have to say?

It begins in verse 1, and let me read through verse 4. "By the meekness and
gentleness of Christ, I appeal to you. I, Paul, who am timid, went face to face
with you, but bold went away.

I beg you that when I come, I may not have to be as bold as I expect to be
towards some people who think that we live by the standards of this world. For
though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons
we fight with are not the weapons of the world.

On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. " Now as we
walk through this chapter this week, we're going to see four specific ways that
you and I can handle criticism in our lives, in a way that points people to God
instead of points us to one another to argue with each other. And the first
truth is this, you've got to choose your weapons wisely.

Choose your weapons wisely. Now the critics' weapons, or Paul says here the
weapons of the world, their weapons are deceit and conceit. Conceit lies about
others and conceit lies about yourself.

That's how you wage war when you're waging on the world's battleground. But
those are the wrong kinds of weapons. Those kinds of weapons only lead to pride,
only lead to lies, only lead to the breaking up of relationships.

And Paul says, "I'm not going to fight that way. " He says, "Although I live in
this world, I do not wage war as the world does. " In fact, he's so intent on us
understanding this, he says it again, "The weapons we fight with," he says, "are
not the weapons of this world.

" So what are the weapons of Christ? How do we fight in a different way? Well,
he talks about two specific things here.

He talks about gentleness and meekness, and he talks about the divine power to
demolish strongholds. First, gentleness and meekness. He says, "I fight with the
gentleness and the meekness of Christ.

" Meekness, gentleness. In a nuclear power world, those don't sound like very
powerful weapons, but those are the weapons that you and I need in order to deal
with criticism. If you deal with a critic by attacking back, they have won the
spiritual battle already.

Oh, you might seem to win in the moment. What you say might seem to be sharper
than what they said. It might put them down and silence them in the moment, but
it doesn't invite them to faith.

It doesn't invite them to change. It doesn't invite the circumstance to faith
and change. You can win, but at the same time lose.

If you want to win the spiritual battle, you've got to act like Jesus acted.
You've got to act with meekness and gentleness. When you do that, you are
modeling trust in God's power.

So Paul, in meekness and gentleness, kept pointing people to Christ. Kept
pointing people to God. Kept saying, "I'm not the most important one here.

Christ is the most important one here. " That's meekness. That's gentleness.

I read a while back this from the founder of one of London's largest department
stores about real leaders versus prideful bosses. It's the difference between
meekness and gentleness. The leader, he says, "Let's go.

" The boss says, "You go. " The boss knows how, but the real leader shows how.
The selfish boss inspires fear, but the real leader inspires people.

Someone who's just a selfish boss fixes the blame, but the leader fixes the
problem. The selfishness of a boss can say, "I," but the spiritual leader says,
"We. " So how are you going to deal with criticism?

Is it going to be with personal power, or is it going to be with meekness and
gentleness? Are you going to fight with the weapons of this world, or are you
going to fight with the weapons of Christ? That's the choice we have to make.

The weapons of this world might have a more immediate result, but the end result
is pushing people toward pride and pushing people apart. The weapons of Christ,
they may take longer to work, but the end result is inviting people to faith and
inviting an organization to change and do things differently than it ever has
before. The weapons of Christ, first meekness and gentleness, and then Paul says
there's a second weapon, and that is the divine power to demolish strongholds.

Paul's weapon was God's power, because he was able to see this as a spiritual
battle and not just a personal battle, what they had against him. Paul was able
to call upon this spiritual power, and he says the weapons of Christ, we've got
this divine power to demolish, and he says the word strongholds. Now what is
that?

What is a stronghold? A stronghold is a place that is hard to defeat. In his
day, people understood it very well.

It was a walled city that would be up against a cliff that would be very
difficult to attack, very difficult to defeat. In your life, it's a place of
sin, it's a place of pride that is difficult to defeat. It's that sinful habit
that just continues on and on in your life.

You can't seem to defeat it. It's that pride that wells up in you, and it just
seems to keep welling up in you, and it creates anger, it creates jealousy again
and again and again and again in your life, and you can't seem to defeat it. As
a new believer, you'll find there are some things in your life as a new believer
that immediately you stop doing, but there are a few other places in your life.

These are the strongholds, these things that you're going to battle with the
rest of your life as a believer. So how do you defeat a stronghold? Well, let me
just picture it as this walled city that somehow you're trying to come against,
and it seems like it's so strong that it just has a strength that's in and of
itself you cannot defeat.

When you came against a walled city in ancient days, there were three things you
had to do, and it applies also to how you and I defeat strongholds in our lives,
the stronghold of a sin, of a pride in our lives, of a jealousy, of an
unforgiveness. In that day, the three things you had to do to defeat a walled
city, too strong for you to defeat, was you had to surround it, you had to
starve it, and you had to secure it. You had to surround it, get a lot of people
around it, you had to starve it, make sure that food and water didn't get in so
the people became weak, and then once they became weak enough, you had to secure
it.

You had to go in and take the city with your own forces so that now you owned
it. Same thing we have to do in our spiritual lives. How do you deal with a sin
that just keeps coming up again and again in your life, a jealousy that you
can't let go of, a forgiveness that you cannot seem to grasp?

First you surround it, and you surround it with people, with prayer, and with
promises. The people of God encouraging you, prayers of God supporting you,
promises of God giving you power. Second thing you do is you starve it.

You starve that sin by running away from that sin and instead pursuing the godly
alternative. Don't let yourself be anywhere where that sin happens. The minute
you sense temptation, go somewhere else.

Go somewhere else that's right. Don't be around the kinds of circumstances that
allow that sin or that jealousy or that temptation to be said yes to in your
life. You starve it, and then you secure it.

Once you've starved it, once it's beginning to drop off in your life, the way
you secure a victory in that area is by praying for and serving others who are
struggling with the same sin. You're not facing this alone. Others are facing
the same thing, so you begin to help others.

We're going to talk about this more tomorrow, but let me just end by saying
this. Strongholds are bolstered by willpower, but they are demolished by divine
power. Now as long as you try harder and harder to defeat that stronghold, it
just gets stronger because you're using human weapons, and it just makes it
stronger and stronger.

The resistance just comes stronger. You need God's weapons, a different way of
dealing with it. And we're going to take a deeper look at that as we look at how
to demolish strongholds tomorrow.

Father, as we end this day, we pray that you'd help us to fight with your
weapons and not the world's weapons. It's easy for us to choose lies and deceit.
It's easy for us to choose pride and a personal conceit in our lives.

We don't want that. We want to choose meekness and gentleness, but we need you,
Jesus, to do that. We want to choose divine power to demolish strongholds rather
than depending on our willpower.

So Jesus, would you begin to do a miracle in us? Start something new in us? Help
us to see this situation that we're facing right now in a new way.

We need your strength and power. We ask for it humbly. In Jesus' name, amen.