Manning Up (part 1)

Father, thank you for this morning and for our time together, where we're able to talk about things that make us laugh, but certainly talk about things that make us motivated to see

Christ exalted in our lives, where He's not currently enjoying that place of exaltation.

So I pray for these men who are here, and for their sons, for their nephews, for all the people who've gathered here in the name of Christ, that we might be challenged, that we might be moved by your

Holy Spirit to see Christ exalted. May that be our passion, may that really ultimately be what happens as a result of today's conference.

Help me to make things as clear as I can, and help these men to be able to be clear -minded by the power of your

Spirit. And we ask all these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, men, we do have a problem, and it is a huge problem.

And the problem can be seen in our churches, the problem can be seen in our homes, the problem can be seen all around us, even in our culture.

And that problem that we have around us is the problem of men, men like you and men like me, not acting like men and leading.

And really, that is going to be the focus of all three sessions this morning, trying to get men to act like men, the way

God made us, and to lead in a way that is Christ -like. This problem is a massive problem, whether it be in your life or around you and those you minister to.

It's just undeniable, it's everywhere. And yet, this morning, what I would like to do in this opening session is focus on the problem itself.

So in one sense, this is one long introduction to motivate us for the next two sessions.

This is the kind of message I would never preach alone, because it is not really emphasizing the solution, and in so many ways, it's way too devoid of the truth.

But this is one big introduction to get us motivated to talk about what will follow after this session.

So what we'll do, we can divide it up into four different aspects or points. Number one, we're going to look at evidences of the problem, and that will be a focus during this first session.

Number two, we'll look at problematic ways of dealing with the problem. Number three, we'll look at the cause or the origin of the problem.

And number four, ever so briefly, before we take a break and then really move on to the solution, number four, we'll look at the solution to the problem.

So evidences, problematic ways of dealing with the problem, the origin of the problem, and then how to solve the problem.

Then following this session, we'll talk about manning up in marriage. Then we'll talk about manning up in parenting.

And I think, it won't be today, but tomorrow at the Sunday school hour here at BBC, we'll do manning up in the church.

So I know some of you are from other churches. It'll be online, and I think it still will be helpful for you.

I trust it will be. So that's the plan. I understand some of these things won't directly apply to all of us.

I see there's some young men here, and I'm glad for that. I'm glad your dad or your uncle or your friend brought you.

These are things you'll learn from, no doubt. But some of the things are going to be related to your dad or to your uncle or someone like that.

And you can pray for the rest of us. So that's the plan for now. Let's jump right in and talk about evidences of the problem.

And I suppose we could do open mic and share testimonies regarding the evidences of the problem. But for expediency sake, let me talk to you about some of these evidences.

And all you have to do is look at our culture, and you see it all around. Men are not manning up.

Men are not acting like men and leading. Take, for example, this comparison.

50 years ago, Father Knows Best was a hit TV show. How many of you have seen

Father Knows Best? Maybe 40%. How many of you have at least heard of it? Maybe a few more of us.

Here's Father Knows Best. Insurance agent Jim Anderson, actor Robert Young, would come home after work.

Each evening, he would trade in his sport coat for some kind of sweater, something to be more comfortable in.

And then he would deal with the everyday growing up issues of life. He was the problem solver.

He was the honored father, the honored leader of the home. And he would solve everyone's problems and help his family to grow up.

And he would be a good leader. He could be counted on to resolve the crisis with a combination of kindness, fatherly strength, and common sense.

Speed up a little bit to today, 50 years later. Today, television virtually always portrays husbands as bumbling losers or contemptible, self -absorbed ego maniacs.

Whether in dramas, comedies, or commercials, the patriarchy is dead, at least on TV, where men are fools.

Unless, of course, they're gay. Then they're not fools.

On Queer Eye, for the straight guy, the Fab Five, as they're called, are supremely knowledgeable in all things hip.

Their life's highest purpose being to help those less fortunate than themselves. That is, straight men learning to become cool.

Pretty interesting contrast, wouldn't you say? Pretty interesting contrast, absolutely.

I'm not suggesting that 50 years ago everything was righteous and good. But there's definitely been a dramatic shift, and we see it in our culture.

Who is bold and courageous and has backbone and is willing to stand up for truth and justice today on TV?

Other than Jack Bauer, of course. What's interesting is we've kind of become desensitized to this.

You don't even stop to realize, we don't even stop to realize how weak and effeminate men on television have become.

My wife and I were having a conversation one night. I finally said, I can't watch this TV show any longer.

I'm turning this off. I am done with TLCs, what not to wear.

How many of you have ever watched TLCs, what not to wear? Those men who live with their wives in an understanding way are the ones who raise their hand.

We'll get to that later. Well, on that show, let me bring you up to speed.

Stacey and her effeminate sidekick, Clinton Kelly, help people learn what not to wear and what to wear.

Did I say Clinton Kelly? I should have said Clinton. Well, Clinton Kelly is effeminate.

Clinton Kelly is a homosexual. And Clinton Kelly drives me crazy. Clinton, right?

He's going to drive you crazy if you've never seen the show before. And so I said, I can't watch this anymore. I can't watch

Clinton anymore. And just parade his gay self all around the TV screen. And we got into an argument about this.

And she said, he's not gay. I said, he's so gay he buys everything with $3 bills.

I mean, he is off the charts gay. No, and Molly and I are arguing back and forth.

I said, all right, I'll concede. He's at least effeminate, right? No, no, no. Well, I wish my wife were right, but I had to prove the point and go to the website.

And sure enough, he buys his clothes with $3 bills. Case in point, my godly wife, who's a pretty clear thinker, was not even ready to see him as effeminate.

And so we do see, as the water is turned up in the kettle, we just kind of get used to it.

We don't have any clear thinking about these things at times. Well, moving on, we see another evidence of this, and it's in the church, still dealing with this problem, and that's the emasculation we see in the church.

Just listen to sermons that you hear. Hopefully not here, or hopefully not from your pastor who brought you here,

Ted. No, not in churches that we would love to go to where God's word is boldly preached, but listen to some other sermons.

Listen to lots of other sermons, emasculated sermons.

In his book, Why Men Hate Going to Church, David Murrow, which I'm not endorsing the book, it's not the best book, other than to provide some interesting data, he writes, 95 % of the senior pastors in America are men.

That might be encouraging at first. But you could not tell it by the sermons they preach,

Murrow writes. Weakness, relationships, communication, support, and feelings are constantly held up as the ideal values of a

Christian. Again, men get the message, get this, that Christ's likeness is synonymous with mommy likeness.

Interesting. Listen to the emasculated songs that you hear so many times in so many churches.

You know, the Jesus is my boyfriend kind of songs. You're trying to masculine it up a little bit.

You say Jesus is my girlfriend. But when in fact it's Jesus is my boyfriend. Where I live,

I don't listen to Christian radio because if I listen to the songs on Christian radio, I'm afraid I'm going to start to feel gay.

It's just wild. I hope it's better here than it is where I live. Look at the teachers.

Look at the teachers in the churches. Are they strong men leading with strong theology that has a backbone?

Typically the answer to that is no, they're not. Look at the seminaries.

Again, Murrow observes, America's seminaries are building an army of female pastors. Women are being ordained to the clergy in unprecedented numbers.

The number of women who identified themselves as clergy tripled between 1983 and 2000.

Most Christian colleges and some seminaries are struggling to recruit men. Some observers believe the pastor will reach a tipping point in a generation or two when most men abandon the profession and women take their places.

The revolution is already underway in the Church of England. Get this. In 2005, for the first time, more women than men applied for ordination.

And we go where they go. Think about leadership in the church.

I want to say publicly before you men, and I've said it before, if I get one more phone call from Sally So -and -so from a pastoral search committee interviewing me about someone who referenced me on their resume,

I am going to yell. She's leading before the guy even gets there by interviewing references.

It is crazy. Most references or calls I've gotten have been from women on pastoral search committees.

It's crazy. Observe who's buying the books. According to the

Christian Booksellers Association, over 70 % of all book buyers in Christendom are women.

Now, please don't misinterpret that. I want women to read and I want women to lead where appropriate. But we'll talk about this a little later.

If you're not reading, you're not leading in the area of theology and Christianity.

And if this isn't bad enough, when men do lead, they're effeminate too often. Listen to what one source said about that.

Society never regarded pastors as the manliest men. Now the Catholic priesthood, the nation's most visible pastoral group, even if you're not a part of that, you need to know, it's the most visible, quote -unquote,

Christian pastoral group, is said to be more than 50 % homosexual. The upcoming generation of Catholic priests may be up to 70 % gay.

And like it or not, that represents Christianity to a watching world. Interestingly enough, the person who makes that observation is pro -Catholic.

That wasn't from Dave Hunt or someone like that. Protestants don't score a lot higher on men acting manly.

Think about who the most masculine preacher is that you know on religious television.

The most masculine preacher I know on religious television is

Joyce Meyer. You watch, or don't.

You watch her, and you know something is strangely, strangely wrong.

In olden days, they would say queer, when the women act like men.

And the men act crazy to watch this happen. Well, we could shift gears, we could see the culture, we could see the church, maybe even husbands and wives and their relationship.

Men, think with me now about how many men you know who really are godly men and lead in their homes.

They lead their wives, they lead in church roles, they lead their children.

And I don't mean the public facade, I don't mean the dictatorial steamroller blasting everyone and no one really respects the leadership.

Just think about how many men you'd want to be like. And I realize the numbers might be higher in a group like this.

But there aren't so many men, sadly. How many of you ever watched the television show,

King of Queens? Put your heads down, put your hands up. Interestingly enough, the reason that the marketers say that people have found

Doug and Kerry so funny is because when we watch King of Queens, we watch

Doug and Kerry and we laugh because in them we see whom?

Ourselves. That's how they market the show. Because we can relate to Doug and Kerry and they are, let's just use

Doug. Doug is pathetic. He is pathetic when it comes to being a man.

And so we see it in our relationship between husbands and wives.

Parenting, we see the same thing. Lest we all get too depressed, I'll make this one brief and we'll move on.

Men in their homes leading. We don't see a lot of that.

One foreign dignitary came to America and said this. The thing that impresses me most about America is the way parents obey their children.

Yeah, we have a reputation, all right. We have a reputation for not leading.

And it's all around us. And if anyone is leading, it's not dad.

Men, did you know that the book of Proverbs was written to be a guide in your hand as a man so that you could train your boys, your sons in how to not be a fool, in how to be wise, how to be skillful in living?

I'm not trying to suggest we shouldn't use it with our daughters as well. And I'm not suggesting our wives shouldn't read it also to learn these things.

But it was originally written to train a son how to be wise and to not be some sort of fool or idiot.

But how many times do we go to the book of Proverbs thinking that? This is my guide.

I'm going to train my boys so that they cannot be idiots in life.

Well, too many times we're not like that. We're not like that.

At Omaha Bible Church where I am, one of our pastors named Chris Peterson works with those just outside of college, that age group getting ready to get married a lot of times.

And it's amazing to hear Chris talk. He doesn't name names. But his pastoral heart is broken so many times when he says, you know, we have these young men and these young women in our church and they've grown up in Christian homes, homes at our church where we're unashamedly proclaiming the

Bible. And how many of these young people don't have a clue about some of the basics of how to live life, how to live life wisely.

And he's not saying, and he's not being this specific, but what he is saying is these are the young people coming from leadership families.

And their kids don't have a clue on how to live wisely. And this is motivating for us as a church.

It should be motivating for you as well as a man, whether you're leading others or you're just leading in your home, because it's that big of a problem.

Well, let's move on now to number two, problematic ways of dealing with the problem. So what do we do?

Well, some suggest, at least when it comes to leadership in the church, some suggest this is actually what is supposed to be happening.

You know, this is a product of evolution. Or to use theological fancy terminology, they'd say, this is actually the intended trajectory.

This is the way God wanted leadership in the church, and so we're evolving and getting to where it should be.

That's kind of sad. Others suggest, and many suggest, what

I call mere masculinity. All right, you know, we can gather like this, and I could say, it's a problem, here are all these examples.

All right, men, we need to do something about it. And so what can we do to get the testosterone pumping?

Mere masculinity. Our culture even sees it. There are enough men in our culture that are in effect saying,

I've had enough. I've had enough of being emasculated. But what does our culture do?

They don't really know what to do, so they do something. They drive their Ford F -150s, which is not a problem, and then they hang bulls balls from the back.

You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, I'm going to be a man and hang some testicles from the back of my pickup truck.

How crazy is that? But you see, our culture understands that this is a problem.

I was going to buy some bulls balls as an illustration, but I didn't want to waste my money. But you can go to pickupspecialties .com

and buy some yourself if you want to, and I'll laugh at you, too. It's evidence that the culture sees it's a problem.

Now, somebody needs to give those guys a memo, though, to help them understand that that's, first of all, not attractive to women.

I'm going to pick up some chicks, man. I've got some testicles hanging from them. Never mind. It's so ironic.

It's just crazy. Now, someone did tell me I was doing this somewhere else, and they said, I actually know a woman who has them on her

Ford F -150. And I thought, that illustrates an entirely different point.

We see this in families with mere masculinity. You know, the dad is tired of having everything out of control, and so he just, you know, raises the decibels in his voice and barks out more orders and is more of a jerk.

But even then, he sees things are out of control, and he needs to lead.

He just doesn't know how, and he doesn't know how to get from point A to point B. But he sees it's a problem.

Sadly, we have all met such men if we have not been such men. Inside the church, we see the mere masculinity happening as well.

Instead of bulls balls for trucks, we have Christian, quote -unquote, men's groups.

And we get together, and it's just all about how can we crank up the testosterone. Remember years ago when Promise Keepers first started?

It's all gone now, but remember when it first started, the first book that they had come out was called The Masculine Journey?

I have a copy hidden in my office so no one could ever find it. I think I've probably written on the front, too, something.

I don't want to die on my way home to Omaha and have my kids find The Masculine Journey and think dad has lost his mind.

I'm talking about how we as men, because we have a phallus, need to worship

God as phallic kinds of guys. It's a disgusting book.

It's a stupid book. It's an idiotic book, and it was the first book they ever put out, endorsed by a bunch of Christian leaders who should be ashamed of themselves.

You wonder why my wife didn't want me to go to Promise Keepers? Yeah, honey, I'm going to go to Promise Keepers, and we're going to worship guys like, you know, guys.

Because we have a penis, we're going to worship God in a special kind of way. How retarded is that?

It doesn't make any sense. It's mere masculinity is what it is, and it doesn't solve anything.

God Men is the new version, apparently, but it has more testosterone and more vulgarity.

There's Church for Men. I've been to their website. There's Wild at Heart, which again, men see as a need, so they say,

I'm going to grab onto this because it's tough guy stuff. Never mind the fact that Wild at Heart tells you to disobey

Jesus. And pastors say, oh man, we're going to have a men's group.

Let's do this. That's just the Christian version of bull's balls.

Not to mention the fact that it's going to tell you to disobey the Bible and to train your boys to disobey the

Bible. And so you see, we see that it's a problem, but we don't know how to deal with the problem.

The cause or origin of this, you guys nervous you haven't opened your Bibles yet? At Omaha Bible Church, they'd be nervous, thinking, what's the pastor doing?

We don't even have our Bibles open. I told you it's a long introduction. Open your Bibles with me if you would, and let's turn to Genesis 3.

We're on number three now, this long introductory session. The cause or origin of the problem.

It's a major problem. There's wrong ways of dealing with the problem. So where did this come from?

Where did the problem come from? Let's not just talk about the symptoms. There are lots of them, but what is the cause?

Why is it that it's so hard for me to lead my wife and my children in a godly way? Why is it that culture is so messed up when it comes to all this?

Where did all of this garbage come from? Well, we know where it came from, as a matter of fact.

It came from our dads. Well, not in some sort of psychobabble way, that it's my dad's fault that I act this way, but it came from our dads, dads, dads, dads, dad, dads, dad, dad.

It came from Adam. We're all chips off the old block. We're acting like our father who represented us.

And so we need to at least understand this. Genesis chapter 3, it says, to the woman he said, this is a result, this is consequence, this is the curse.

To the woman he said, I will surely multiply your pain and childbearing. In pain you shall bring forth children, your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.

Now at first glance, let's just at least observe, whatever that means, it's not good. This is not the ruling over that is the kind we're looking for.

This is not the kind of desire we're looking for, because this is in the wake of the fall. This is the curse.

To quote one Puritan, unpacking this simply, if man had not sinned, he would always have ruled with wisdom and love.

And if the woman had not sinned, she would have always obeyed with humility and meekness, and then the dominion would have been no grievance.

But our own sin and folly make our yoke heavy.

Pleasant, enjoyable, right kind of relationship between men and women, and no doubt that would have meant right kind of relationship with children to follow, if they had followed at that point in time.

But Papa Adam leads the human race into sin as our representative.

We are sinners by nature, we are sinners by choice and following, and now we have an explanation as to why we have the problem, where this comes from.

We won't take the time to go to Romans 5. The world is populated with sons of Adam and daughters of Eve.

There is the problem. I haven't checked since February, but right now, or in February, there were 6 ,803 ,610 ,847 people on the planet.

Eastern Standard Time at 12 .16am.

8 billion people on the planet who are sons and daughters of Adam.

That's why we have a way. Number four, the solution to the problem.

This sets us up for the remaining sessions. The solution to the problem is what?

Correction, the solution to the problem is whom? Who's the solution to the problem?

Man, we need to have a special class if you guys don't know the answer to the question. Let's just pretend like this is

Bethlehem Baptist Church or something. Didn't it used to be? Let's just have a Baptist moment and talk in church.

Who's the solution to all of this? It's Jesus Christ is the solution to this.

It is Christ, and that ultimately is what we need to be talking about in the other sessions. Ultimately, Christ is the solution, and I realize everybody says that.

Maybe not everybody, but a lot of people say that. But truly, genuinely, we need Christ, the second

Adam. We need him to be, as Hebrews says, our captain.

We need to have the right man on our side, as the song said this morning.

I'm glad we sang that song. We need Christ. How about this, guys? You need Christ to atone for your manly sins.

You need atonement because you lead a jacked up life, and so do I. People need

Christ's atoning work. We have violated God's plan, and we need Christ for atonement.

We also need Christ for righteousness. We need

Christ's righteousness. We need to be not only forgiven of our sins, but we actually need

Christ's righteousness so that we can enjoy this right relationship with God. Not only that, we need

Christ's resurrection. We need Christ's resurrection, a la Romans 6, so that we can have power over enslavement to sin.

So we need Christ. We need Christ. We need Christ. We need the Gospel. We need the

Gospel. We need the Gospel. That ends up being key to this whole disaster we're in.

And so what we don't need are just more isms. We don't need more trends.

We don't need more movements. We just need Christ. And not to just say we need

Christ, we literally actually need Christ. And we only need

Christ ultimately and in the end. And I would like to say as we close out this session regarding that, if you don't have

Christ for forgiveness, for His righteousness, for His resurrection, you can't man up and act like a man and lead.

Let me say this. It is very, very hard to live the

Christian life if you're not a Christian. In fact, it's impossible to live the

Christian life if you're not a Christian. And some of you men might be those kinds of men.

That was so revolutionary for me as a Christian and as a pastor. More counseling, more help, more counseling, more help, more discipleship, and nothing ever changes.

Light bulb moment. Epiphany. It's really hard.

So if you're banging your head against the wall and you just can't do the manning up thing, maybe you should stop trying to live like a

Christian. Yes, that's right. You heard it here. Bethlehem Bible Church. Stop trying to live like a

Christian. If you're not one, it doesn't make any sense.

You have no power. You have no resurrection power, no Romans chapter 6 power. You still have the noose around your neck of guilty for sin.

You've not been forgiven. You still can't meet God and have Him accept you because you have no righteousness.

The righteousness of Christ. It's no wonder you can't do it. And so do business with God first and then let's move on to the quote -unquote how -tos because quite frankly all of the how -tos are going to be expressions of praise and worship to God for saving us.

And now we want to do the right thing in what we're calling manning up, but manning up is just a matter of worshiping

God for His great and perfect provision in Christ. And that's what we're going to focus on in the next sessions.

But I can tell you this, we won't stop focusing on the gospel. We're going to go back to the gospel, back to the gospel, back to the gospel, back to the gospel because ultimately that is key to all of this.

Let's stop now for now and pray. Father, thank you for these men again and for the time we've had in this sort of disastrous session of looking at the problem and looking at the mess that we're in, but how great it is to end and to acknowledge that it is about Christ and it is about His perfect provision.

And so I'm going to pray for these men now. And so God, I ask that you would open eyes to see the truth for those men who are here who perhaps are not regenerate, they have not experienced new life, that they might be convicted of sin and repent and trust in Christ and Christ alone for His provision so that they actually can worship

Him and do the right thing. And for the other men, Lord, I just would ask that they would not move past the gospel.

As a speaker, help me to not move past the gospel, that we would be clear about worshiping

Christ because of His perfect atonement. And that would be why we want to lead our wives and that would be why we want to lead our kids if we have them.

And that would be why we want to be the men that you would call us to be in your church and in this world.