15. Worship Like Men!

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Welcome to the podcast where we prod the sheep and beat the wolf. This is episode 15,

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Worship Like Men. In many ways, we went from being a culture of excess to a nation of shortage.

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We have seen shortages in toilet paper, common sense, reality, leadership, shipping pods, supply lines, gas lines, trucker lines, and grocery lines.

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But I am convinced that the most damaging shortage that we face in this country right now is not in our supply lines, but it's a shortage of biblical masculinity.

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You see, a culture rises and falls on the back of its biblically faithful men.

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When the men in a nation are healthy and confident, and when the church is training them to be biblical and to act like Jesus, and when they're faithful in all of their various spheres of responsibilities, then the nation itself will flourish, and it will thrive, and it will succeed.

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Why? Because those men will not only work hard, but they will love, care, and protect their wives.

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They will be present at home. They will be loving fathers. They will be faithful, wise, sagely grandfathers, and they will prepare the next generation well.

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The rising tide of biblical masculinity will raise the entire nation, one state, one city, one country, one community, and one family at a time.

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But unfortunately, we don't live in that kind of society. We live in a society that attacks men at every possible angle.

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You think about childhood. You've got a very masculine boy who's being inculcated into a world of dumbbells, body image, heavy metal, sports performance, eventual womanizing and porn, producing this macho blowhard that looks nothing at all like a biblical masculine man.

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He's not being taught. And then on the other side of the perspective, you've got boys that have less testosterone who are being marketed to and pushed towards feminine social norms, gender studies, sexual ambiguity and depression, where big tech algorithms are offering constant apologetics for the

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LGBTQ movement, turning these poor boys into confused effeminate drones. On every side, our boys, our young men, and our older men are being attacked by a society who hates masculinity.

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And we wonder why our society is in decline. When you add all of this up, especially when you add absent fatherhood crisis, critical race theory, feminism, our advertisement media entertainment world, the colleges, government, woke corporations, when you start to add all of this up, you begin to get a very clear picture of just how perniciously and ubiquitously

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Satan has waged an all out war on manhood. When you spend the last several decades training up women and children to attack men as toxic, weak, stupid and useless, and when you mobilize the government to step in as surrogate fathers, should we really be surprised when we see men checking out, throwing in the towel and taking their ball and going home?

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That is the legacy of what Satan has done in this society over the last 50 years.

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At every turn, our nation hates biblical manhood.

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It's either ridiculing our men, mocking our men, setting them up for failure, castrating them, refusing to train them, or trying to seduce them into becoming women.

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The ones who follow through with their own depravity to the most obscene, extreme, chopping off appendages to be

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Mr. Potato Girl do so because their deepest cravings as a man to feel familial and societal honor, because that's what men want.

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Men want to be honored. So they follow these base cravings and they're satisfied by a perverted society who's more than happy to cheer for their perversion and to subsidize their moral depravity.

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If you want to be honored in this society, chop off your penis and call yourself a girl and you will have raving crowds saying that you are so courageous.

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It's sick. Our society has confused men into thinking that they have to butcher themselves in order to get what their hearts desperately crave, which is honor, respect, and to have someone looking up to them.

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Sadly, the evangelical church has really not been a hedge against the downfall of masculinity in the

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West by adopting the church growth strategies that the church has done over the last several decades, which prioritize emotional worship experiences, introspective prayer time, share your feelings at small groups, and a neutered vision of true masculinity.

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It's not that complicated to figure out why men obviously don't feel comfortable participating in the church.

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You doubt me? Then why is the majority of churches dominated today by women and weak men, effeminate, demasculinized, neutered men?

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That's the kind of men that you find in the evangelical church because the church, along with culture, has hung a huge sign over its entrance saying real men are not welcome here.

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We don't have to wonder why men have not been interested in the church, in culture, and in true religion.

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We just don't. But it doesn't have to remain that way. It doesn't have to remain that way.

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And listen, we've all got a part to play. This broadcast is still young. It's new.

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It's relatively small. It's got a modest audience. But I want to spend what time and energy

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I have trying to encourage men, trying to encourage you to grow up and be a man, to not listen to what society has told you about yourself and to lean into what

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God has spoken about you. I want this show and the next several shows to be focused on encouraging you to step into what

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God made you for, which is your biblical masculinity that He called very, very good.

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And today we're going to be doing that by looking at what it means for you to be a worshiping man. What does it mean for a man to worship?

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Now, again, in the weeks ahead, we're going to be looking at other aspects of this, like what does it mean to provide spiritual leadership for a family, for a wife, and for children?

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But today, I simply want to focus on you. What does it mean for you, brother? Whether you're single, whether you're married, whether you're young, whether you're old,

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I don't care. What does it mean for you, brother, to be a biblical man, to be a worshiping man?

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That's what we're going to look at today. And that begins with worshiping like a man. And in case we're cloudy on that and what that looks like, there's plenty of examples in Scripture that teach us what men, how men worship.

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And what I mean is we have countless brothers, men of faith, all throughout the Old Testament and New Testament, who worshiped

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God faithfully that we can look to as our older brothers in the faith, and we can imitate, and we can mimic them, and we can learn from them because we're not called to worship like women.

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We're called to worship like men. We were made unique and distinct for a purpose. We can't continue to flatten out the genders and say that, oh, everybody just needs to worship

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God in the same way. No, we were made to worship God like men, so we need to imitate godly men if we want to worship like true men.

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For instance, think about it like this, Abel. Abel worked tirelessly. He labored out in the fields, and he offered to God the very best that he had.

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So us, as men, we need to offer God our best. We need to work hard. We need to labor in whatever field of industry that you're in, and we need to give

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God our best. That's what it means to live like a man, and that's worship. Our brother

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Enoch, he prioritized his walk with God. He prioritized it so much so that he walked with God continuously.

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Well, we need to do that too. We need to walk with God like men. We see Noah resisting the whims and the fancies of godless culture and making these great preparations for the

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Lord because he's going to obey God. He's not going to obey culture. In Christ, my brothers, you and I can be like Noah resisting the waves of secularism and standing against the winds of immorality that we see encompassing us on all sides in this culture, resting in the truth of Christ as the true ark of our salvation.

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That is worship. When we resist the paganicity of this culture, we are acting like faithful Noah, and that's worship.

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When we see our father Abraham with courage and great faith dropping everything in order to follow

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God, how much more should we in Christ have the courage to believe the promises of God that have already been revealed, to hold to those promises with a lifelong tenacity, even if we don't see them coming to fruition early or quickly or whatever, and then offering up to God the things that God requires, resting in the perfect sacrifice of Christ on the mountain mountain, and following God wherever God calls you to go?

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That's worship, brothers. Look at the courage and the tenacity of a man like Abraham and see in that a beautiful picture, not a perfect one because Abraham didn't do everything right, but in the moments where Abraham got it right, that is a picture of what it means to be a biblical, faithful, worshiping man.

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We see Joseph, Daniel, men with skill, wisdom, and knowledge, and integrity using their gifts that God gave them to bring life and healing to the nations and to the nations that they were called to, which were pagan.

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But much the same way, brothers, you and I can take the gifts and the talents that God has given us and go into a secular workforce and bring the blessings of God to the pagan societies and the pagan vocations and the pagan jobs that we live in, bringing life and benefit and bringing wisdom.

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We can do those things with integrity and authenticity like David, like Daniel, like Joseph because of who

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Christ is. That's worship. It says whether you eat or whether you drink or whether you go to work or whatever you do, do everything to the glory of God.

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That is what Joseph did, Daniel did. That's what you and I are called to do. That is worship.

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We see men like Moses, ready to endure hardships for the people of God, given his entire life in the service of God, leading

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God's people to know this holy God. How much more, brothers, shall we who know

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Christ, who know more than Moses knew, endure hardships with humility, serve

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God with faithfulness and integrity, prioritize godliness and holiness, and lead the people that God has entrusted to our care to worship and serve this great

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God. They're not always going to want to follow us like Moses. They're not always going to want to catch our vision and understand where we're taking them.

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But like Moses, with faith and humility and trust in the sovereignty of God, we are called to lead, brothers.

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That's worship. You remember the paragraph in Hebrews 11, where the author of Hebrews has been detailing these godly men, men that we are supposed to imitate.

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He says, what more shall I say? For time will fail me if I told you of Gideon and Barak and Samson and Jephthah and David and Samuel and the prophets.

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He's saying, there are enough examples in Scripture for you to find what it means for you to be a godly, biblical man if you will just open up the

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Scriptures and look. He says, who by faith, they conquered kingdoms. They performed acts of righteousness.

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They obtained promises. They shut the mouths of lions. They quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword.

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From weakness, they were made strong. They became mighty in war. Put foreign armies to flight.

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Women received back their dead by resurrection, and others were tortured, not accepting their release so that they might obtain a better resurrection.

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And others, other men, experienced mockings and scourging, yes, also chains and imprisonment.

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They were stoned. They were sawed in two. They were tempted. They were put to death with the sword.

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They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, and ill -treated. And then it says in verse 38, they were men with whom the world was not worthy.

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Brothers, that is what we're called to do. We are called to be men of integrity, men of honor, in which the world is not worthy, but in the world can get a glimpse and a picture of who

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Christ is through us. Why were all of these men accounted as faithful? It wasn't because of their obedience.

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It wasn't because of their manliness or machismo. No, it was their commitment to the

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Lord Jesus Christ. Everything about these men's lives pointed to the Lord Jesus Christ.

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They didn't live their life by their own strength and masculinity. Their strength, their manhood, their masculinity, their whatever else, all pointed to the true man, the strong man, the

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God man, Jesus. They not only acted like men, which is what we learned last week, but they worshipped like men, which is what you and I must give ourselves to.

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Our ultimate goal in life is not to jobs, cars, widgets, sex, cravings, savings, vacations, power, influence, retirement, entertainment, or anything else.

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Our goal in life, the thing we wake up in the morning for, the reason we have a purpose, the reason we go to sleep with a smile on our face, as godly men must be to worship and serve the

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Lord Jesus Christ. And there are several ways that God has called us to do that. The first is to read like men.

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You look at David. He had the largest home in Israel, the most influence, doting women all around him, obedient soldiers who were willing to go to war for him in a moment's notice.

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And he had a heaping pile of bodies behind him from the people that he had maimed and killed on the battlefield.

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And by secular standards, this sort of braveheart kind of masculinity, you would have said that this man, because of those things, was a real man.

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But biblically speaking, those things were not what made him a man. Those are the things, in fact, that ruined and soiled him.

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What made David a real man, a vibrant man, a courageous man, and a man worth imitating was not those things, but it was his love for the word of God.

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You look at what David says in his very first psalm, the very first psalm, the very first verse in those psalms where he's introducing the entire concept of worship to the people of God.

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He says this, blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or set foot in the path of the sinners or sit in the seat of scoffers.

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So you have to be holy, but his delight is in the law of the

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Lord. And on his law, he meditates day and night. Brothers, a man, a true man, meditates on God's law, ponders his precepts, delights in his commands, memorizes scripture, puts himself in front of the word of God both day and night.

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A man patterned after biblical definitions of masculinity does not avoid the word and does not allow themself to become spiritually lazy when it comes to the word.

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Real men wake up, open their Bibles, read, study, meditate, and learn Holy Scripture, and they pattern their lives after that.

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A real man opens his Bible. That's the first thing. You can't be a biblically faithful masculine man, which is what our culture needs, what our families needs, it's what you need.

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You cannot be that with a closed Bible. You just can't. The second thing, men, is we have to pray like men.

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Paul says in 1 Timothy 2, 8, therefore, I want the men in every place lifting up holy hands without wrath and dissension.

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Paul is telling us that godly men pray, and not the kind of half -hearted compensatory prayers that any ogre can mutter under his lips, no.

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He's talking about sincere prayers, ardent prayers, holy prayers, where the men are so fully submitted to God with their body and soul devoted to the

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Lord and their mind and heart committed to the perfect unity among their brothers that they're willing to pray like their lives depended on it.

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Men pray in that way, and when they do that, it blesses God, it blesses their community, and anything short of that is not manly prayers.

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The Bible also says that the prayers of a righteous man availeth much. Well, gents, that means that God has an expectation on you.

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He has an expectation that you're going to be a man, and that you're going to be striving after righteousness because that's what men do, and you're going to be meeting your

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God in prayer because that is what brothers and fathers and men do.

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They meet God in prayer. You cannot be a man in the way that God designed you to be if you do not open your

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Bible and open up your heart to pray. Third thing, the

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Bible calls us as men to uphold the truth. That is a job for men is to be truth keepers, truth tellers, and truth upholders, knowing this is an act of worship for you.

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For instance, he says in 1 Timothy 4, 7 through 8, but have nothing, this is talking to men, have nothing to do with worldly fables fit only for old women.

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On the other hand, discipline yourself for the purposes of godliness. Bodily discipline is of a little profit, but godliness is profitable for all things since it holds the promises for the present life and also for the life to come.

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Some are going to chide Paul in this section as being a sexist. He's not.

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What we need to understand that there is a fundamental difference between the way men and women think, and God made our brains unique and different as men, not called to think in feminine ways, but to think in masculine ways.

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And the way that we do that is by disciplining our minds for the sake of godliness. To be a man, to think like a man, to uphold truth like a man means subduing our thinking to be like Christ, not to be given to wise tales and fables and gossip and slander and all of those things.

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No, we subdue our minds so that it will be patterned off of the lordship of Jesus Christ.

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And that's not just profitable for us. That's profitable for everyone around us. And as you're noticing a theme here, men have a responsibility to care for the ones around them.

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We do that by being men of the word. We do that by being men of prayer, and we do that by upholding the truth of the word of God.

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Paul continues this line of thinking in 6, chapter 6, verse 11 through 12. Again, that's 1

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Timothy. He says, but flee from these things, you men of God, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, and love, perseverance, and gentleness.

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Fight the good fight of faith, take hold to the eternal life to which you were called, and you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.

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We were not created to be spiritual daffodils or delicate lilies, my friends. We were made brothers to pursue righteousness, to run after godliness.

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We were made to aim at true faith, to capture biblical love, and to pour it out on those around us.

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We were made to fight our enemy with perseverance, even while showing the ones in our tent the most sincere and tender affection.

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Do you see what this means? Half -hearted and apathetic men don't exist in a biblical category.

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They're not considered godly. Men with low drive, no motivation, and riddled with passivity are not manly, and they're not righteous.

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There's far too many men, this is epidemic since Adam, there are far too many men who are sitting on the sidelines of their faith, sitting on the sidelines of their family, not doing what they've been called to do, not standing up, not leading, not being intentional, sitting down in their sin, quiet and passive while their wives take the lead, their mothers take the lead, their sisters take the lead, living in rebellion against their own masculinity.

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That is not what God designed you to be, brother. You've not been made to be weak, quiet, docile, and slothful.

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You were made for intentionality and to fight. I want you to heed the words of Paul, and I want you to become active in your faith.

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Fight the fight of faith. To fight means you have to be active.

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To fight means you need to pick up a weapon. To fight means you're not sitting on the sidelines and watching other people do it for you in passivity or abandonment of your godly responsibilities.

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No, men, stand up and fight. Fight the fight of faith.

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Take hold of the eternal life that you've been given in the Lord Jesus Christ. Keep the good confession that you've been given in the gospel and share it constantly in the company of many witnesses.

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Don't follow your father, Adam, into godless passivity, watching your wife stumble into sin, watching the women in your life take leadership in your life.

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Stand up, brother. Follow Christ, who is the most deliberate, ardent, zealous, passionate, convicted, and active godly man who ever lived.

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Stand up. Live your life intentionally, actively, and boldly. Don't let

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Satan squalor you into silence. Rebel against that. Rebel against that and be a man.

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Rebel against that and go to church. That's the final thing I want us to mention. Churches, as we've mentioned before, have been abandoned by men.

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And we can understand that because churches have tended to prioritize women. The church following after Satan has prioritized women over men and men check out.

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What a victory for the kingdom of darkness. So what? Does that mean we give up, brothers?

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Absolutely not. Grow a backbone and go to church. Stand up and sing the songs.

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Praise your God. Marry a woman. Raise a family. Contribute to the well -being of the community. Don't think that you are a man just because you get to sit at home and play video games or avoid your family by drinking beer and watching football.

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That's not masculine. That's a joke. Go to church. And if the

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Lord calls you to an office in the church, stand up and be bold and let them train you towards that office and do it.

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The Bible says that it's a noble aspiration for men to serve in leadership of the church. The Bible has an expectation that men will be developed and raised up and prepared and installed as leaders in his church.

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Embrace that brother. Step into that brother. And if you're not ready for it, train for that brother. Go to church.

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Go as often as you can. Adopt the attitude that the only thing that's going to stop you is a vacuum bomb or a nuke dropped right on top of your head.

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If that's not the case, you're going to be in church. You're going to be in church when there's a foot of snow. You're going to be in church when no one else is.

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You're not going to relocate your responsibilities to God to another day. You're not going to sit at home and watch

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John MacArthur or John Piper or some other John on television just so that you can stay at home and watch a playoff game.

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You're a man. Go to church. Serve in the church. Aspire to leadership in the church.

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That's what men do. And as you're imitating Christ along with the faithful brothers from old, and as you're giving yourself over to the scriptures day and night in service to God like David, and as you're becoming a man who prays and a righteous man who upholds the truth and a man who works for the good of Christ's bride, the church, remember that when you sin, because you're going to, you have an advocate in heaven at the right hand of the

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Father who will always forgive you when you confess your sins to him. Do not imitate our father Adam who blame shifted, who pointed the finger at his wife and refused to take his licks like a man.

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Stand up like Job, gird your loins, shut your mouth while the Lord rebukes you, and walk away praising your

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God. It is better to be rebuked and chastened by a loving father than to go on living in your sin, right?

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As we end our time today, I want to remind our men listening that being a man is not easy.

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Of course it's not. Of course it's not. Satan will attack you at every single point, every single opportunity, every single bump in the road, and you've got to be convinced that you're going to act like a man, that you're going to love like a man, live like a man, worship like a man.

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It's not easy, but that doesn't mean that it's complicated. In today's episode, I've given you some very basic things to do in order to be a man.

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So live like Jesus, read your Bible, pray, uphold the truth, live a life of righteousness, be committed to the local church.

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These are not complicated concepts. Even a child can understand them. The real test of your masculinity, the real test of your courage, the real test of your conviction and your sincerity is whether you'll do it.

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Will you be the kind of man who hears the word, repents, and walks in the fullness of life with Christ? Or will you be like the man that James describes, the crazy person who sees their reflection in the mirror of God's word and immediately walks away forgetting who they are?

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My prayer, brother, is that you would have the courage to obey God. The conviction to live the way that God has called you to live, the commitment to the people that God has given you to serve.

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And if you will do that, then you will see yourself, the people around you thriving under your leadership.

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If you prioritize God, brother, everyone around you is going to thrive too. If you choose you, if you choose passivity, apathy, slothfulness, or some worthless idol, you're going to bring nothing but misery upon yourself, your family, your friends, your neighbors, your church, and everyone else.

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Men were made to act like men. Men were designed to worship like men.

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And as you'll see next week, men were designed to love like men. That's it for the broadcast today.

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If you liked what you heard, I hope that you'll share it. I hope that if there's a man in your life who needs to hear this, that you will share it with him and that he will be encouraged by this content.

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Men were called to stand up. Men were called to act like men and worship like men.

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And I pray that this broadcast would be an encouragement to all of our men out there. Until next time, God bless you.