What Kind Of Man Are You?

Manhood, Masculinity is whack in our country, . So it's femininity. Don't get, don't get all cocky women. Next week I'm going to talk to you guys, but I might have my wife sit up here, just so she can nod when I say stuff.

So it that affirms that I talk to her about this first.

But I had to start with the men because if I lean into them the right way, then next week you might be, just that much more receptive to what the Lord brings through his word. Today we're going to be in Genesis chapter, chapter 3. A little bit of context: God's created the heavens and the earth. In chapter one he creates humanity, And then in chapter 2, he takes a man, Adam, places him in the middle of the garden and tells him to guard it and keep it.

Now, just to be clear, in Genesis chapter 2, based on that, not based on our culture, but based on Genesis chapter 2, who did God give the task to guard and keep the garden?

Adam, the man, Right. So this is kind of a microcosm of how God has called us to operate. And in chapter three, they've been walking with God, living in the garden, going forth and multiplying. Adam and Eve run into a situation with one of God's creation, a serpent, And I'm going to jump in chapter six, because many of you know the story.

It's the story of the first sin, where Adam and Eve were kicked out of the Garden of Eden.

But jumping into chapter six, I want to go and read this for you before I give you my sermon title, unless it's up there already. Good, Starting in verse six, when the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were open and they realized that they were naked.

So they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves, which is such an interesting thing that we do.

Do we try to put fig leaves to cover ourselves of our nakedness, of our sin and of our shame, failing to recognize that it's only God and his son Jesus, at this point in history, that will cover us of our sin? It's the blood shed on the cross that covers our door and enables us to walk into eternity confidently, But we try to cover up with fig less. Now I need you to know in the physical sense, fig leaves, go look them up. Not the greatest covering.

Just if people walking around with fig leaves, we'd have to call the, call the police and talk about indecent exposure.

What a good covering. And then in the next verse, verse 8, the man and the wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, And they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man: "Where are you" He answered: "The man did. I heard you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid- Verse 11.

And he said: "Who told you that you were naked?

Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from". The man said: now watch this. "The woman you put here with me. She gave me some of the fruit from the tree and I ate it".

Then the Lord God said to the woman: "What is this you have done".

The woman said: "The serpent deceived me and I ate". I want to give you my sermon title and then I'm going to break this passage and then another passage in the New Testament down to help you understand a little bit more about what I believe to be what I think Scripture says is biblical manhood. My sermon title is: what kind of man are you? Because culture's gotten it all jacked up.

I'll be honest with you.

The cultural version of a man is either overtly feminine or overtly masculine. In the aggressive sense is jacked up. And I've been trying to hear from the Lord for quite a time on this, And it's not as often as you might think. Every time I read God's word he gives me Revelation, but something new that speaks- speaks specifically and explicitly to our culture.

That doesn't happen very frequently And I believe about six weeks ago God gave me a word.

I was talking to my wife while I was taking a shower. It's when I talk to her, That's when I get Revelation from God. I don't know where you get it, For for me it's always in the shower. So I take I mean, our water bill is crazy.

So anyways, I heard from the Lord.

I think it was the Lord. Time will tell. But what I've seen in the church is I've seen a push for the last 50, 60 years almost against what they would call toxic masculinity. This has happened a lot in the last 10 to 15 years, just a push against toxic masculinity, toward more empathy, And we've seen a move toward femininity.

Now I need you to know God created man and woman with different characteristics.

I think we're called to uplift femininity and we're called to uplift masculinity, but we've got to do it in the right ways. And so what has happened in our culture is that we've moved in the feminist I say toxic fe, femininity, I think that's the word. Yeah, We've moved in that direction, And that was kind of the push even in the church over the years: Be more empathetic You should be, Be more this, Be more this, Be less this. And so I've seen men move from probably toxic masculinity to something different.

And then over the past few years, especially postcoid, I've seen a push in the church again against that type of feminism.

And what it's starting to create, in my personal opinion, based on what I see and based on what I think the Scriptures told us would happen, is we see an overcorrection, even in the church, to a type of masculinity that mimics more of the world than it does what I think biblical manhood would be. But here's the danger of it. It sounds a whole lot like what the Bible says And I hope today to move away from the ditches into this narrow pathway that God's called us to walk in. Jesus tells his disciples when they go into the world, he says: "Be wise as serpents, innocent as doves".

The way I take that is: a serpent is crafty and it can, like, slither through tight spaces and a dove is white, clean, the metaphor, the illustration of innocence.

So we're supposed to navigate through tight spaces while remaining innocent and not getting stained. That's. That's a complex task and I hope today to just dive a little bit into this conversation on biblical masculinity and hopefully accomplish this task just a little bit with you all. And when you look at this Scripture, I think we see the two ditches.

We see the first ditch I talked about moving toward this femininity.

I might even call it passive masculinity in some ways. We move toward this ditch of passive masculinity And we see this in the fact that Adam was with Eve when she ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the center of the garden. He was with her And I'll talk more on that in a second. We see in another portion of the Scripture, we see kind of this toxic aggression that lifts oneself up by diminishing another.

And when God comes to Adam in the center of the garden, what do we see?

We see he says: "The woman you gave me, the woman- her fault, God, you made her Your fault. The woman you gave me didn't operate the way that you told me to operate". And what do we see there? And we see, it's just as wrong, just as much of an abdication as the passivity he had when he was with her, But it came out in blaming as opposed to taking ownership.

I, I think those are our two ditches And I want to walk you through those ditches.

Add something that happens in the middle, that's probably also a bad direction. And then what I want to do is give you what I believe, based on Ephesians 5, biblical masculinity, husbanding and parenting should look like. So I hope you're cool with that. You may take some notes so that, like, if your husband's not here right now and you're the wife and you're taking these, you better have the notes written down, Otherwise you're going to say, "He didn't say it like that, though", And you may show them the Scripture.

I just This is not ammo for you to go talk to your husband about how he should be.

You go seek Jesus and we'll talk to you next week, But for you husbands, fathers in the room, people who will be husbands and fathers in the room, take note, because the culture is jacked up, but the Bible is so beneficial. So the first ditch that we tend to fall into- it's a pretty problematic one- is this: aggressive masculinity. You know who I'm talking about, right? Aggressive masculinity.

Just say yeah, if you know who I'm talking about.

My wife knows Why. Do you know? I'm just kidding, I fall into this. We, we- I think we all probably fall into these categories, categories in various ways.

But the aggressive man- I know a lot of you guys are thinking about it.

This might be what you would consider a toxic masculine person. I hate the term toxic, but I'm utilizing it because that's what everybody knows. But this is a person who, rather than walking the narrow road that God has called them to do, that is actually really complex in practical situations. You want to make it super simple, So you become overtly aggressive.

This is like Christian Tyler Derdanism.

If you know who I'm talking about. Anyone ever seen Fight Club? One person raised their hand in the bat. You're a real man, I got you.

We don't talk about it much, but, it was a movie called Fight Club.

There's a guy named Tyler Deran who was able to assemble a large group of passive males who wanted to feel like they had control over their life, because their bosses or their spouses had complete control over them. He built this group called Fight Club and they all felt welcome in that group. They would punch and hit each other and then they go blow up buildings eventually. I think that's a good metaphor for what I would say overt toxic aggression.

Masculinity is Right, It's this.

Hey, act like a real man. Here's what some of these aggressive men do, And I'm not talking mess about it. I've tried to move in that direction. Genetics has failed me in a couple ways.

I just can't grow that beard, like some of you.

But you hunt, you fish, you lift, you grow the beard, you drink the whiskey and since you've read enough John Calvin, you mentioned that the Bible allows for a little bit of whiskey, as long as you don't get drunk. You smoke the cigars, you shoot guns. Did I say shoot guns? No, I didn't say you shoot guns.

Yet, like you, have strong opinions about leadership, whether you're a leader or not, especially as a person.

At your workplace, You judge your manager, but you're not operating as necessarily. I'm not gonna say anything about you. You, You have frustrations toward what you would call weak men and what's wrong with our culture. You go to the men's retreat.

You carry the wooden cross up the hill and you feel something, but your wife is still stuck at home lonely because you miss.

You've mistaken what looks like masculinity for actual masculinity. You would even pass the test. You would get a eight to a 10 on the man scale at my college. You pick up the check.

You'll open the door for people.

You change the tire. You pay for other people's meals as kind of an announcement of your madness. You shoot guns and grow beards and show your madness. You, I've clearly got some axe to grind about beards and guns, but you wear the costume, but inside you're just as passive as the other version I'll talk about in a second.

Just because it you look manly doesn't make you a biblical man or a biblical husband or a biblical father.

The thing about these men- and I say this with love, because I am right there with you on occasion- is it's easier for you to fight against something like feminism than it is for you to actually become a biblical man. That that's your trademark Man. The culture is so feminine these days- I don't know why the person is always a hick, but that's how I bring out my Arkansas accent- is talking about a toxic man. Anyways, you're fighting against something that that only Jesus can win the battle to, but you think just pulling up your bootstraps is going to solve the problem.

Now hear me.

There are some things in that camp that I actually really appreciate and I wish we had more of. But, taken the wrong way, without Christ at the center, it becomes just as toxic as what you ran from and overcorrected. The person who is aggressive might say something like: "I find God in the woods, in the mountains". I'll never forget.

I went on this men's retreat and it was a bunch of men and you could tell they had low EQ.

Because of what they would talk about. They complain about their spouses u and they say: that's so good to get out here with you guys, and what they would do is they would shoot ski. In the afternoon They would go fishing. There's nothing wrong with that.

I actually love both of those things.

Then they woke up the next morning. It was super cool. I'm not doubting it, but kind of, I guess I am. Anyway, they woke up in the morning and they took this big wooden cross and they hiked up a hill with it and then they worshiped in a low key to How Great Is Our God.

It was actually a great worship moment, But here's where I got turned off.

It really frustrated me. We then go back from that moment, eat lunch and then go into evening worship And after evening worship I'm sitting with this large group of guys- Half of them were worshiping really hard on the hill with that cross- And they're- they're cussing up a storm. They're smoking cigars, drinking beer, half of them getting drunk and then complaining about how bad it's going to be when they get home. And I'm looking at that and I'm like what is that?

What kind of man is that that is crazy aggressive, has to go on a men's retreat to cry on somebody's shoulder but comes back to their family and is emotionally unavailable.

Christ sympathizes with weaknesses. When someone touched the hem of his garment, he felt it. He was mindful of the present. He saw the needs of those who were in need of a shepherd and he multiplied loaves for them.

He was able to carry the weight because he understood his own capacity to do it.

Yet many men who fall into aggression: they'll go do the pre-workout and they'll lift and they'll look the part, They may even post about it, But when they come home they don't live as a person who is hard after God, who is following him wholeheartedly and who leads their family in that pursuit. That's the aggressive man. The aggressive man needs a little bit of humility. They need to know what it's like to hang on a cross like Jesus did.

We might call that crucifiform humiliation, But that's not the direction of Tyler Duranism.

That's not the direction of aggression. Aggression says: "I'm going to lift myself up so that I can push others down", Not in a way that hurts them. That's just your view of how you lift them up. But what Jesus tells us by his life, death and resurrection is that he needed to humble himself to the point of death, even death on a cross, so that we may be exalted and experience salvation and sanctification and eternity.

It wasn't wrote aggression, It was crucififor humiliation.

Some of us need to know what self-sacrificial love looks like in our families. That's what the aggressive person needs. But I've seen a whole lot of people because I grew up as a millennial, but I don't. I don't act like all the millennials that I know.

My dad was one of those who didn't like participation, trophies and such, And so he, I got, goodness gracious, I, you know the hunting, the fishing, the, the backpacking, the survival, all that stuff, the military mindset.

I got that growing up And what I've seen lately is I've seen that push toward, maybe, femininity, but really it's just people who don't take ownership of their lives. This is the passive masculinity that I've been seeing lately. And I don't want to be mean, but, like men, you're not called to be overtly aggressive and punch people through the rest of your life, but you're. You're also not called to be a crybaby.

He's like: "Why me?

Why does this happen to me? No one understands me, My boss is so mean, and all this other stuff. Like, don't complain your way through life, sitting there on a Netflix binge, frustrated because it didn't work out the way you wanted it to, but you never did the thing you needed to make it happen. That's passive masculinity that blames the world, that stands there with my wife and kids while they do something that the Lord has told me not to do.

I'm called to keep the garden, just like Adam was, And if I let again, you can do what you want to do.

You have autonomy. But if I lead a culture that allows you and enables you and the kids to do whatever they want to do, even if it doesn't honor God, I'm not leading my household. Well, this isn't me standing up here and saying, "Do what I tell you to do". No, that's.

That's not what I'm talking about.

That's overly aggressive. It's following Jesus in such a way that they want to follow him too. Paul says: "Follow me as I follow Christ". I'm calling: act like Paul.

It's just like: hopefully they follow me as I follow Christ.

Hopefully I'm following Christ. You're not called to be passive. A passive man is someone who operates. I mean, their signature complaint is: no one understands me.

I told a group of guys recently because I feel it like I don't know if you know this about church planting and starting and things like that.

But, we started this church in 2024. We launched on February 25th of 2024. So we're just over two years old and we moved out here from Arkansas- as you can tell by my accent, California. People always pick it up immediately And you can tell that we came from a place that's different than here.

So I came out here, about 10 to 12 people came with us and we started trying to build a launch team And then we launched this church And I'm telling you it was culture shock because you guys are different than I grew up in.

It is starting a business, Even though it's not my business, it's the Lord's business. I'm in the process of helping manage that business. Praise the Lord that he's given me that opportunity And when you have hundreds of people coming in every single week, it's easy to come home and be like it's so hard Somebody leaves the church. I feel like I got to take a six-hour binge and say you know what?

I'm going to treat myself to a binge because this person left.

I'm not saying it's bad to take a break, take time processing in prayer, but early on, when I first got here, there was a level where I felt like I invited the guy to be an executive pastor before we ever came out here. One of my good friends and they said no, Like a whole 24 hours of me just sulking a little bit. It's like: how am I going to do it now? I think the spirit of God just like came in and maybe I was reading the word, or maybe my wife just said something: mean one day.

And like: get up off your butt, Do something about it.

If my spirit is in you, then in your weakness I can still do something really powerful and strong. So get to work, trusting that I can multiply loaves through you. But you got to be standing up and looking for the loaves and trying to bring them to me in the process. What I'm trying to say is God has given you autonomy and by his power you can do abundantly, exceedingly more than you would have ever thought, because he's in you.

So that passivity, it doesn't make sense in the kingdom of God.

You're, you're. You're saying they don't understand me. Well, this group of men I was talking to, I told him, I said: "They never will". Why?

Because, as the husband of the household, just like Adam in the garden, you're called to carry something that they're not called to carry.

But in your passivity you're accidentally- not intentionally, you're accidentally making your kids and your spouse carry the very weight that God assigned to you. And now they're coming to you frustrated. You're like, "Why are you always mad at me". Well, it's because they're carrying something they weren't assigned to carry.

Because you're sitting there, passive, not stepping into the calling of God on your life.

And then some of us, we have the audacity to blame them for not understanding the very thing God gave to me. They're not called to. They're called to do a different thing, And your job is to love them so self-sacrificially that they elevate to their calling. And in order to do that, you need to continue elevating into your calling.

Don't complain your whole life because your boss doesn't understand what you're going through, or because it was a long day at work, or because someone was mean to you.

I get it and it hurts, It's painful, You need to process through that. But your wife can't fix your problems in every situation, Your friends can't and your kids definitely can't. There's one, It's Christ Jesus. So bring it to him so that you can effectively lead your household.

I can promise you, even the women in this room who don't necessarily like if you got a spouse who doesn't follow well, you might say that they heard what I just said about you stepping up, and that's what they desperately want.

And I don't say that to shame you. I say that because that's a calling of God on your life And there are consequences for your family when you don't elevate to that level of calling. Be a man who seeks after God so wholeheartedly that you're not sitting there in passivity blaming the rest of the world for what you didn't accomplish. God called you to do something And I want to give you one more type of man.

There's the passive man, There's the aggressive man, But then there's another ditch: I'll call him the functional man.

The functional man. This is a person who's not really passive, They're not really aggressive. They pretty much do everything well. They're a decent husband, They're a good father, But Jesus isn't at the center of their life.

I'm telling you this: fathers, husbands, you can do everything really well, but if Jesus isn't at the center of your life, there's a whole piece to your calling you have yet to apprehend.

It's time for you to move from functional to faith driven, mission focused, because this is what God called you to. Honestly, the most dangerous man in this room isn't the aggressive one or the passive one. It's the one who hasn't obviously blown it, but who's done just enough that nobody can quite pinpoint what they lack. Our culture is full of those men- Great dads, great husbands- no Jesus in their life, And so their priorities are all out of whack, because Jesus isn't at the center.

And your role in this isn't just to bear a cross, It's not just crucififor humiliation, It's actually going deeper into your faith, And so what I want to do now is I want to read a Scripture for you that I think will be really helpful.

It's in Ephesians, chapter 5. We're going to start in verse 25. It's pretty quintessential. You've heard it before: Husbands love your wives.

Just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.

He did this to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing of the water through the word, And to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. In the same way, the same way, Not a different way, not a lesser way, Not looking at Christ that and saying like: "Well, that was Jesus. I'm different, I sin and fail". Yeah, you sin, you fail.

This is the standard, though.

In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body just as Christ does the church. The image that Paul gives in Ephesians, chapter five, of a man is not one of overt aggression, It's not one of pacivity.

It is one that walks that fine line that Jesus talks about: Wise as serpents, innocent as doves, chasing after Jesus and understanding every aspect they can of his character, so that his character would, through osmosis of some sort, make its way to me, so that I can love my wife and my kids the same way that he did.

Oh, he didn't think it anything, He didn't think it much at all to be considered equal with God, but he humbled himself and died. That's biblical masculinity. It's self-sacrificial love in order to lift other people, our wives, our kids- up. And I've read a lot of this stuff and there's a lot of language that I've utilized and will continue to utilize over the next several years that I think culture is hijacked And so we misunderstand it.

The moment I say something about the husband being head of the wife, people hear it the wrong way because of culture.

So I want to say to the men in this room: culture has hijacked the biblical masculinity, the, the words of biblical masculinity and utilized it for something toxic To the women in this room. I want you to know if you get triggered by any of these phrases. There's a biblical definition that stands far above what the world has given you so far. So I'm going to give you a few of these and I want to correct them in the name of Jesus.

I want to correct them.

First one: men are the head of the household. That's what your taxes tell you. Yeah, Men are the head of the household. That's been taken all wrongly over the last several years.

It's been hijacked to mean I, as the husband, am the decider, I get the final vote.

My preferences set the direction of our household. Seen people do that all the time. Time I've had men come up to me and they say: "My wife just won't submit to the head of household. I'm the head of the household, I'm supposed to be leading in this way".

I'll get there in a second.

But what it actually means is you. You don't let your preferences set the direction. It means you bear final responsibility. We all want the authority without the accountability.

What this means as head of household is.

It means you're accountable for your household. It doesn't mean you make every decision in the household. It doesn't mean your preferences ass, you assign your preferences to everybody else. It doesn't mean you come in here, say I'm the head of household, We're not bringing this into the house anymore.

People do it, People do it.

That's not what it means. It means you're responsible. So if something happens in your household, just like Adam and Eve, who does God? Adam's the one who responds and he assigns blame to his wife and his wife assigns blame to the serpent.

But who did God go to?

Again? The man he told to keep and guard the garden, the household. Take responsibility. Don't blame your wife for not submitting.

Don't blame your kids for not just following.

Now things happen. I'm not going to blame you for every single thing that happens under your household, But there is a responsibility God gives each one of us as men in terms of leading our household. So if something happens, if an environment is created wherein something occurs down the road that's still on me to repair, to go to Jesus about to pray like crazy that it would, may it may be solved Again. I'm not blaming you for it, but I am saying responsibility comes to us as the head of household.

It was Eve who did it.

You were there and did nothing about it. That's out of household. Another one: Men are strong. Hijacked to mean hardcore, Tatted up like: got your job, Masculine job: Go to the gym Working out, Make sure you take them supplements.

Masculinity- it's like men are strong.

What it actually means is it me means men are capable of carrying weight. So to the aggressive person, I'll tell you this: Just because you can go bench a lot in the gym or do some squats or never miss leg day or whatever it is, that'll make you strong spiritually. That doesn't make you strong for your household, That just makes you strong physically. When it says men are strong, that is, you're able to carry something substantial, like Jesus, who carried the cross up Calvary, the heavy cross, And it wasn't just a physical carrying.

You can get that from a gym, can't you?

No, it was a spiritual reality that he was taking the entire sin of the world on himself. He could carry weight. To the passive person, I'll tell you: start bearing weight, Man up. Jesus carried the weight of your sin and he has assigned to you the same responsibility for your wife.

So you were called to carry the weight of your household.

So take responsibility. Don't sit there in guilt and shame. Step up, Take responsibility. Don't do what Adam did and assign blame.

Don't do what Adam did and stand there while all the wrong things are happening in your household, then come to me later or go to God later and say, "Well, that's just going to help".

No, you weren't paying attention. No, you weren't taking it seriously. No, you weren't taking ownership of the very thing that God assigned to you. If my kids are in the wrong spot, you're welcome to come to me and tell me how I can get better.

I take ownership of where my kids are and they're going to screw up, And I take ownership of that too.

I don't take blame for it. I take ownership of being the person that God put in place to raise my kids to love my wife. Don't let somebody else do that. You do it yourself, And if you do it in the way that Christ loved you, your marriage will be so much more successful.

Spent too much time on that one.

Men are providers. I went through a season without a job. You remember that one. How depressed I was.

Dude, Everything like that was.

It was terrible. Like one of those moments. As a man, you're indoctrinated from. Like the womb.

You better provide for your family.

Like, don't marry him unless he'll provide for the family. And I agree to an extent with that statement. But when I couldn't provide, I got so discouraged Everything dipped. My motivation dipped, My libido dipped, Every single thing dipped because culture has convinced me that I'm called to be a provider.

And the truth is, you are called to provide, but not like an insecure, guilt-ridden man who works a job to put a roof over their heads while constantly looking at porn or drinking beer under the same roof.

You're called to provide. And this is what's cool about the word in verse 29. He, he essentially says cherish, But the, the, the weight of that word is best explained through a metaphor of a bird sitting on eggs. I don't know about you, but as a man I've never thought of myself as a bird sitting on eggs to keep them warm.

But that's what you're called to do for your household.

You're called to create an environment where they are encouraged, nourished, cherished, warmed, developed into the people who can follow Christ. But that is not aggressive, It's that fine line. Wise as serpents, innocent as doves. Men are providers.

Hijacked, Oh sorry.

Men are leaders. Sorry, I can't read anymore, I'm getting old. Men are leaders, Hijacked to mean deciders, rulers, the one who picks where we eat and pays for other people's meals as a show of authority, What it actually means. And let me give you a quick lesson on that one.

If you have to force it and discuss I'm the leader of the household, you're probably not a good one.

I can tell you, in my household I rarely talk about being a leader in the household I actually spend more talking, more time talking about how, how she leads me or how I- I don't do as well as I could when it comes to following Christ on my own. There's actually no question about whether I'm the leader in our household. We don't talk about it. It's not saying that I'm the best leader.

It's not saying I'm the worst leader.

It's simply saying that if you have to articulate I'm the leader of the household, then you're not creating an environment where people naturally follow you, And that's what you're called to do. You're not called to look at them and say, "Am I your leader". No, you're called to look at God and he'll develop you into their leader. This is what happens when we follow him effectively.

And if you think like a leader, you'll understand more and more about that accountability that God gave to Adam in the garden, that Paul's telling us to take ownership of, like Christ took ownership of when he died for his bride.

Next one: wives should respect. Respect their husbands, And this is the phrase that I've I've heard people say- I may have even said something similar myself. I apologize up front. I'll look at the Bible and say: "Husbands, love your wives, Wives, respect your husbands".

I'm like: "Sweetie, I don't feel very respected right now".

I've heard people say: "My wife just doesn't respect me" and then it's followed by a bunch of either excuses as to why you're not respectable or, frustrations about her who doesn't respect you, for whatever reason it is. See, I'm, I'm putting food on the table, I'm doing this, I'm doing this, I'm doing this, But my wife, she just doesn't respect me. And here's the reality. The Bible does say: wives, respect your husbands.

That's for you, guys next week, girls, Next week, I'll talk to you next week about some of these things, And you are called to respect your husband.

It is biblical, It is God's design, But just like that design has been broken and many women struggle to follow their husbands- husbands, I'm gonna talk to you If you want your wife to follow you and respect you. Be respectable, Operate in such a way that you're followable. Follow Christ in such a way that you're worth looking at and saying "That's my model". Husbands, you want to be a model for your wife?

Strut your stuff all the way to heaven.

Follow Jesus. Thought that'd be funnier than it was, but it was off the cuff. So give me a break. Just grow up.

Stop blaming the person you're called to love for not changing and you change And make it happen.

You might say to me: "Oh, my wife just doesn't follow me". I've seen this. Usually the person complaining about is actually living in toxic passivity and they don't realize it. And I want, I want to just help them understand.

You, bro, you lazy, Yeah, and you're crying like a baby.

Go be respectable and your wife actually deep, deeply wants to follow you. But there are some cases where the wife just won't follow the husband. I could talk to them next week, but, but I'll tell you this: even if they won't, the best pathway for you to get that environment in your marriage is to follow Jesus, Because if they follow Jesus and you follow Jesus, they're going to look to you and they're going to recognize that you're worth respecting, Say "I don't know Jesus. They sure won't if you keep acting that way.

But if you follow Jesus and create that environment, I found in 90% of the cases I've interacted with, The wife actually does want to follow the husband, but she don't want to lower her standard.

So get your stuff together and raise yours. That's what Christ did anyways. He died on the cross so that you could. It is not impossible for you to raise your standard.

Nothing is impossible with God.

Luke 1:37. And I learned that in VBS. Now we're full grown adults. Stop waiting on men's retreats to make you feel better about your lack of activity.

Do it now.

Christ is accessible now. Last one: Real men, don't cry. Jesus wept, but he wept over the death of his best friend. No, Because it didn't work out the way.

He wanted it to Get up.

Like you, you have full autonomy to get up and start moving in the direction of Christ Jesus. Even if you can't physically get up, you can still bear your cross. You can still follow Christ into this crucifiform humiliation that says you know what? It's not about my will.

It's not about my success metrics.

It's not about all the stuff that someone told me to pursue. It's about pursuing Christ Jesus, humbling myself and bearing the weight of a cross so that my family can follow me and actually enter into eternity one day. That's my job, . So I got to stop crying over stuff that really wasn't that big of a deal to God in the first place.

So what?

You lost your job Hustle, Get a new one. So what? Your sales metrics are unreasonable. Go find a new job, But in the process work alongside the Holy Spirit and make a miracle happen for your employer.

See what happens then.

Like I, I know the world and their metrics are really difficult to apprehend for us, but complaining about it and living beneath our calling- while we have the power of the Holy Spirit- They can do immeasurably more than we can ask, think or imagine- does not seem like it makes sense. So stop living in passivity, Stop taking it on yourself too aggressively. Walk that fine line, Follow the leading of Christ Jesus and the Holy Spirit will change every fabric of your life. This is what he's called you to do, And we look at all the wrong models in Scripture.

I got to tell you I read the book Wild at Heart a while back, And how many of you read Wild at Heart.

It's a good book. I love that book. It's phenomenal. I don't want to talk too much mess about it, but it gives you this image.

It focuses primarily on David, the king in the Old Testament, And there's this one point in the book where his kids getting bullied and he tells him to punch him back, Which is weird because it's kind of in contrast to what Jesus told us to do.

When someone hits us on our cheek, He says "Turn the other cheek". But it was. It made sense because we got a lot of passive men living out there. And this guy says: "Hey, go pay for people's meals now.

Go hunting and camping and fishing, Go be like a real man.

Look at David". And I'll tell you this: David wrote the Psalms. Bro was in tune with his emotions, David. He bro hug Jonathan in the wilderness, This men's retreat.

You know like David wrote songs.

David danced before the Lord in a linen ephod which is like underwear. We all make him out to be the masculine men. Why? Because he slayed Goliath.

It's like the first thing he did, Cuz he killed his tens of thousands where Saul only killed his thousands.

He was emotionally in tune, But I still don't think that we should look at him alone as our model, because he kind of stunk. I'll give you a quick list. His daughter, Tamar, was raped by his son Amnan. David did nothing which led to his other son, Abselum's rebellion and eventual death.

He wouldn't relinquish his kingship in an orderly way, which contributed to his son Adinijah's rebellion and eventual death.

He let Bath Sheba's situation, the woman he cheated on MCL with, who had a husband. He let it unfold in a way that Uriah got killed. David was a man of enormous, in a lot of ways, biblical masculinity. He's a man of covenant- There is the Davidic covenant- and also he's a man who, whose passivity cost him his family.

One of his kids actually died and the Bible says that that was the consequence to his sin with Basheba.

He's not your, He's not your masculinity manual And some people say Samson, because he pulled two pillars down over all the Philistines And then he went home before that to Delilah and let her rule the roost. He's not the good model. I think. If you want to look at models in the Bible other than Jesus, you do have.

You have Nehemiah.

Nehemiah very in tune with the empathetic side for the people of Jerusale, people in Jerusalem, but also like he built a wall, like he made it happen, Ezra. He reinstated the law. He was a strong leader. You got Daniel in the book of Daniel, Daniel in the lion's den.

That dude's like: "Bump you, Nebuchadnezzar, I'm going to follow the Lord".

You got Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, who got thrown into the fiery furnace because they worshiped the Lord, in spite of what the government told them to do. They're better than the first two I gave you, But there's one very clear and obvious model that you need to be looking at And don't scapegoat yourself out of it and excuse it, because it's Jesus, The fourth man in their fire. Jesus is the person that we've got to be looking at, And there are three things I want you to see from this passage. I'll say them really quickly.

First, he gave himself up.

That's verse 25. Paul uses this same word for Jesus. Handing Jesus over to the soldiers is not romantic sacrifice, It's surrender, Not resistance, not negotiation, It's surrender. That's what your love needs to look like for your wife and your kids.

The model for your marriage is a man handing himself over to the Lord and to them.

Second thing I want you to see is the actual stated goal in verse 27. Okay, Do what you got Like. The purpose of Christ's love for the church is not only that he would be glorified, It's so that he might present the church to himself in splendor. And it's radiance.

Literally It's dim, It's foggy, dusty, and he is washing it in the water of the world so that it can be shiny and radiant again, . So your call with your wife- I'm. Not saying she's dusty, I'm saying your call with your wife, is to cherish her and love on her in such a way, Not that she subordinates to your every preference, but that when people look at her, when you look at her, when God looks down on her, that because of your interaction with her she's gone from seeing dimly into a mirror to seeing fully face to face. The shine is there again.

You see, you're in all of her radiance.

She's operating at her full capacity. She's reached her potential in Christ Jesus. You can't make it happen, but you can love her into that trajectory. The third thing: he nourishes and he cherishes.

He nourishes and he cherishes.

The Greek words there, efo and thalpo one, is to, to nourish toward full maturity. It's the word used for raising children into adulthood. You, you nourish it, You pay close attention to it. The next word is to keep warm, Again that image of a bird brooding over her eggs, warming them with her own body heat, into life.

You're called to love your wife in such a way that she feels cherished, warm, comforted, established, able to do all that God has called her to do, and more.

And if you don't create that environment because you're too aggressive or you're too passive, you're missing out on the calling of God. That is more important than your job. It's more important than showing up at church. It is a covenant between man and woman where you are called to carry weight like a cross, And you're called to crucify pride by hanging on one.

And you do this so that they would be lifted up.

And what I want to do now is I'll just give you kind of a big idea, because you got to leave with something. Your role as a man, a husband and father, is to give yourself up in order to lift others up, crucifying your pride and carrying your cross. I want to take a moment, really briefly, for all the men in this room to stand up. I don't care if you're 5 years old or 50, 80, 90 years old.

If you're a dude, you got the, the chromosomal makeup of a dude.

I want you standing up right now. If you're a wife and your husband's standing next to you, I want you to grab their hand or touch them on the arm. What I want to do is I want us all praying for the men in this room. I want us to pray that they would be able to carry more weight.

I want us to pray that we would crucify our pride in service of Christ and men.

After we pray this, I put you on the spot for your family. I want you to pray this, believe it, follow Jesus and lead your family toward Jesus. Let me pray, Father, God, I thank you for the men in this room. I pray for the passive one in this room.

I pray that you would enable them to understand how difficult it is to bear a cross.

To look at your son, Jesus, who did it even when he might have preferred a different way. He owned it all the way until death, and it was heavy. Our sin was heavy, God, I pray that every passive man in this room chooses right now, this day, to bear more weight. I pray for the aggressive one in this room who is filled with pride and, rather than uplifting the people in their household, they're subordinating them, because culture told them they needed to be a real man.

Now, God, I pray that they would crucify their pride and that they would hang humbly on a cross, enduring the public shame, so that others might be forgiven, so that others might be lifted, so that the people in their household might feel the love that comes from Jesus.

More than anything, I pray the men in this room honor their assignment.