Human Sexuality, Gender, and God's Creation with Owen Strachan Day 2 Afternoon | Live Conference

Okay, now that everybody has eaten, we're going to begin the next session with a round of calisthenics.

Just kidding. But we will sing, so if you would please stand with us as we begin this session with praise to the

Lord, the Almighty. Praise to the

Lord, the Almighty, the King of creation.

O my soul, praise Him, for He is my help and salvation.

All ye who hear, now to His temple draw near.

Praise Him in glad adoration. Praise to the

Lord, who o 'er all things so wondrously reigneth.

Shelters thee under His wings, ye so gently sustaineth.

Hast thou not seen how vile desires there have been, granted in what

He ordained? Praise to the

Lord, who doth prosper thy work and defend thee.

Surely His goodness and mercy here daily attend thee.

Ponder anew what the Almighty can do, if with His love

He be friendly. Praise to the

Lord, O let all that is in me adore

Him. All that hath life and breath, come now with praises before Him.

Let the amen sound from His people again.

Gladly forever adore Him. Come, Thou Fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing

Thy grace. Streams of mercy never ceasing, call for songs of loudest praise.

Teach me some melodious sonnet, sung by flaming tongues above.

Praise the mount, I'm fixed upon it, mount of Thy redeeming love.

Hitherto Thy love has blessed me, Thou hast brought me to this place.

And I know Thy hand will bring me safely home by Thy good grace.

Jesus sought me when a stranger, wandering from the fold of God.

He to rescue me from danger, bought me with His precious blood.

Oh, to praise how great a debtor, daily

I'm constrained to be. Let Thy goodness, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to Thee.

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the

God I love. Here's my heart, oh, take and seal it, seal it for Thy courts above.

Oh, that day when freed from sinning,

I shall see Thy lovely face. Full arrayed in blood -washed linen, how

I'll sing Thy sovereign grace. Come, my Lord, no longer tarry, bring

Thy promises to pass. For I know

Thy power will keep me till I'm home with Thee at last.

You may be seated. Amen. Thank you so much for that great song by Josh, the man with the best goatee in evangelicalism.

Okay, so what we're going to do now is we are going to consider four types of men from Scripture in this session.

And then in the last session, as I said to you this morning, I've switched a few things around. And we're going to end on a high point with David.

We're going to end with King David as an example of godly manhood and as a type of Christ.

Okay, so that is what remains before us in terms of my material. Then we have a Q &A to close out our time together.

What I want to do first then with you in this session are four deficient types of manhood.

And before we dive into those four types, I want us to understand the context of toxic masculinity.

Men are said, as I alluded to last night, to be toxic today. And I reject the idea out of hand that there is something toxic about manhood.

So I don't affirm that. I think it is very dangerous for us, for example, to tell our young men, our boys, that they are toxic in a special and unique way.

I think that is tremendously damaging to boys and young men and men for them to hear that.

And that's why the book you received graciously from Pastor Jim and the elders for this conference is

The War on Men. Because men are said to be toxic.

And I would encourage you, hearing the sound of my voice, to know that men are hearing that message today, and young men are hearing that message today, and they're internalizing it, and it's not having good effects.

So I really do believe there is a war on men and on manhood more generally.

But that doesn't mean, as we've already talked about, that men don't have sin to face, because men definitely do.

And as we're going to now talk about, there are four major ways, I think, that men fail.

Or, if you will, there are four major types of deficient manhood that I want to cover with you in our brief session now.

The first of them is the lost man. The lost man. This is the kind of man we see in Genesis 3, verses 1 -7.

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman,

Did God actually say, You shall not eat of any tree in the garden? And the woman said to the serpent,

We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden.

Neither shall you touch it, she added that, lest you die. But the serpent said to the woman,

You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be open, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate.

And she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate.

Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.

Let's pray. Father, as we embark on this discovery, this session, this time, I pray that you will bless us, and you will strengthen us, and I pray that you will help us to help men.

I pray that the men in the room will identify sin, and you will help us to kill it. And I pray,

Father, for your blessing on men in this church, that you would remake them by the power of your gospel.

In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. The reason, by the way, we focus on these four types is because the stakes are so high with men.

Because if you do not train men well, you're setting yourself up for disaster. You can't avoid it.

And when men struggle, by the way, very quickly, when men struggle, it's not only men who are affected, right?

It's women who are affected, and it's children who are affected. So you can't simply say, ah, men are struggling, well, whatever.

That's on men. And feminists will argue it's not a bad thing that men are struggling nowadays.

It's kind of good that men would get to wear the struggle hat for a while, because men have had it so good for so long in the world.

Now it's their turn to be in the cultural penalty box. Again, that's not a sound way to think.

That's not a gospel -driven way to think. And furthermore, when men struggle, I'm at pains to say that everyone else will be struggling as well.

So you can't just say, women are doing great. Women have leaned in. Women have leaned forward.

Women are leaders now, and men have stepped back. Yay, feminism. This is going to be great.

This is going to be golden hour in America. No, it's not. If men aren't men, if men are not strong men, again, disaster is coming for you.

This very week, as some of you have seen on social media, the pictures and the videos, numerous veterans of D -Day, on the 80th anniversary of D -Day, were flown over to Normandy, France, and walked the beaches.

There were a number of reporters who were embedded with this group of veterans, basically all of whom now are in wheelchairs, very much in wheelchairs, a number of them 100 years old.

And it was a great week for us as a civilization to reflect on the state of men, because I'm not sure if a

D -Day was needed today in cultural terms. I don't know that we could pull it off.

I honestly don't, and I don't say that ripping the rising generation. In a lot of cases, young men haven't been trained in manhood, haven't been discipled, haven't been helped, haven't been fathered, and so on.

But that's just a little picture of where we are, that there was something in past generations, not that they were all a

Christian, they weren't, but there was instruction in manhood, and I fear a lot of this is lost today.

Well, this is a problem as old as the earth, because Adam is our first lost man in this scene in Genesis 3.

Remember how important it is that the Lord God said that Adam's charge was to work

Eden, and what? Keep Eden, right? Guard Eden. That's the whole call to protection that we've talked about earlier today.

It turns out that Adam didn't heed and respond to that call at all.

He had the Lord God say to protect Eden to Adam directly, and Adam failed in the mission.

The serpent came to the woman, the woman stepped into the man's place, and engaged the serpent, and got numerous things about the command of God wrong, didn't identify the tree of the knowledge of good and evil by that term, called the tree the tree that is in the midst of the garden, added a prohibition to not touch it, and so the woman was not doing well in this conversation, this real historical conversation.

In Genesis 3, then the serpent rounds on the woman and tells her, you will not surely die if you do what

God has forbidden you to do. That's the voice that we were talking about in our previous session. That's the voice of paganism talking, because paganism is a dummy animated by the devil.

The lie that our culture, that pagan cultures believe is exactly that, that you can live according to the flesh and you will not die.

But remember that Paul in Romans 1 said that people who live in that way know that they deserve to die for their sin, and yet they live that way anyway.

This is a chilling passage because it disabuses us of the notion that if God would just show up and do our evangelism and apologetics for us, everybody would obey.

That's a very common way for you and me to think. The reality is the human heart can be so proud and so slow to hear that God Himself, this is a weird thing to say, but it's true.

God Himself can give you divine instruction and then you can have an opportunity to put that instruction into practice and you can completely disregard what

God just said. That's what Adam does here. That's what Eve does here. They don't at all obey

God. They don't listen to God, and that shows us the capacity of the human heart for pride.

Talk about pride month. It's been pride history for all of human history since this moment.

We're living in a pride world, not in a happy way. Don't have a ticker tape parade about it. That's the reality, though, that our hearts can hear divine instruction.

Don't think that your discipleship and your Christian faith would necessarily be all the better if Jesus had just personally discipled you because Jesus can personally disciple you and you can reject what

He has taught you to do. The Lord God Himself can give you instruction and you cannot hear it.

That's what happens with Adam. Adam had a threat come into the garden. Adam had the devil target his wife and he did basically nothing.

All he did was stand there passively and eat the fruit that she gave him to eat.

And this is a sign of one way we men fail. In a place where we need to step forward and we need to show

God -given, God -identified strength, we instead shrink back.

We disappear and we allow ourselves to get lost. And that is happening with men all around us.

We still have men in our midst, but we have men who in many cases have abandoned their calling.

And as a result, many are suffering in our time. That is one kind of deficient manhood that we see in the

Bible. The second type is this, the angry man. The angry man.

We've talked about this some. But we meet an angry man in Genesis 4, in one of the sons of Adam.

Now Abel, verse 1, was a keeper of sheep and Cain a worker of the ground. In the course of time,

Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground. And Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions.

And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering He had no regard.

So Cain was very angry and his face fell.

The Lord said to Cain, why are you angry? And why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted?

And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.

In this passage we see that Cain is rebuked by the

Lord. And Cain does not respond in faith. Cain does not handle reproof well.

And I think a lot of us, man and woman alike, can see a scene like this and know that this isn't necessarily our favorite moment on the monthly calendar.

The time when we get reproved. Is this making sense to anyone? The time when your spouse has a word of slight tweaking in your behavior.

The thought that there could be something that you are not necessarily doing perfectly in all respects.

And someone around you suggests that to you. We all fail in this regard.

Some of us more than others. And it can be hard for us, all of us, men and women alike, boys and girls, to hear reproof.

To hear just critique. And Cain gives us a picture of how to handle criticism abysmally.

The way to handle criticism abysmally is to reject it out of hand.

And to get very angry at it. That's exactly what

Cain does. We know this instinct well. All of us do. We don't all have the same personality.

We don't all respond sinfully in the same ways. But we at least know what it is to have our blood run hot when someone says to us,

I don't know that you want to keep going that way. I think you might have hurt their feelings.

Maybe we should do this a different way. The Lord has no regard for Cain's offering.

And Cain doesn't handle this with humility and graciousness.

And listening, a listening spirit. Instead, Cain handles God's disregard for his offering.

Here again, this is God's verdict. Right? You and I can think, well, if God corrected me, it would be done so well that then

I would just handle it great. But instead, my spouse doesn't know how to say these words to me.

And so it hurts me and it ticks me off. Because they don't say it the right way. And they may not say it the right way.

But even if God said it to you himself, you still could get there.

That is what happens precisely with this man. Cain did not rule anger.

Anger ruled Cain. In fact, it basically took him over.

He lived his life angry. It's not hard to do this, man and woman alike.

It's not hard to do this as a man. Men have that much greater capacity for strength, right?

50 to 60 % more upper body strength on average. Men have on average 2 ,000 to 3 ,000 % more testosterone than women.

Which is why we relax as boys or men by forming sports that allow us to hit one another and collide into one another for fun.

And why when it is time to relax, we turn on a war movie. Which is somewhat ironic if you think about it.

Or even a western like Tombstone where people shoot at each other for fun. Okay, this is what we do as men.

It's not though because we're toxic. It's because we are wired for action.

And we have this capacity in us that a little bit like catnip can make us a little bit crazy on the outer edges of it.

Let's be honest. We have this inner drive. And that can be used for tremendous good.

And that can be used for real evil. And we have to know that we have these capacities as men.

We don't all look the same. We don't all bench press the same. But we have as we become an adult man.

We have some physical strength at least. A lot of us do. And we have that energy, that testosterone in us.

And if those instincts and those capacities aren't channeled for the glory of God.

Specifically, if we are not born again. Those can do tremendous damage to the people around us.

Just as they can be used for amazing good. Cain then is a warning to us.

He's the angry man. He kills Abel. He goes on to do this in verse 8.

Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him. When the Lord shows up in a kind of reprise of Genesis 3.

To ask Cain where Abel was. Cain denied being his brother's keeper. But Abel's blood.

Righteous Abel's blood shouted from the ground. Verse 10 in poetic language.

Let's learn then men. From the image of the angry man here in Genesis 4.

There's other images. There's other examples of this found throughout the Bible. But this is a directly biblical example.

Very early in the Scripture. Of the way of the angry man. And I would just encourage us all.

Sometimes we're angrier than we know. Sometimes we don't even realize how disgruntlement.

Or grumpiness. Or challenges are affecting us. And we're bringing that home.

Again, we may not even be aware of it. And that can have an effect on our wife and our children around us.

And so our challenge here is not to hate ourselves. Or see ourselves as worse than women or something like that.

But our challenge is to think in a gospel driven way. Our challenge is not to be proud like Cain.

But our challenge is to pursue humility. We want to be strong men.

In God. That's a very good instinct. It's right that little boys want to grow up to be strong.

It's right that boys look up to soldiers. Policemen. Firefighters.

Men who put their lives on the line for others. We want that. I love that my son when he sees a policeman.

I'm not telling a story to praise my wife and me. My son has always done this. He looks up to men in uniform.

As so many boys innately do. And he'll go up to them and ask them all these questions. About their line of work and that sort of thing.

We want that. But we've got to recognize that it is not only our calling to be strong.

It is also our calling to be humble. To be humble men. Cain is not humble.

When someone is not humble, they literally don't hear. That's the mark of pride.

You don't hear. And Christian discipleship is many things.

At base, it is hearing. It's listening. It's paying attention. How many times do dads and moms say that over the course of years 0 to 12?

Pay attention. Can you pay attention? Are you paying attention? Did you pay attention to that? Did you hear that? I just said that.

Did you not hear that? Right? We say it to our kids. Our parents said it to us. It will continue down the generations until Jesus returns.

And everyone is paying attention. Okay. Isn't it significant that you hear the trumpet and he returns? Pay attention.

You get my point. It's a congenital defect of humanity that we don't pay attention.

But that's what humility, that's what the Spirit works in us. It's not just pay more attention, Christian. Be more humble,

Christian, man or woman alike. It's the Spirit working in us to produce humility.

It's a fruit of the Spirit. And so, let's embrace this. Let's go hard for humility.

Let's take opportunities to listen. It's not the easy button of the

Christian life. This is not the fun part. When you get critique, when somebody is speaking into your life, when somebody is speaking into your marriage, when somebody is speaking into your fatherhood, when someone is speaking into your singleness, not the fun part.

But this is the part where we grow. This is the part where we grow like crazy, when we are humble and we listen.

So we need to pray that God would keep us from being a cane and God would make us one who listens, who pays attention.

Tomorrow's sermon is on David hearing Abigail when

David is about to slaughter people. And Abigail barely, barely shows up in time.

And on the spot, David and his warriors, with their swords strapped onto their thigh, ready to cut throats, stopping their tracks, and listen to this one woman,

David and 400 warriors, and not, you know, toy soldiers, men who have killed many others in the past.

And instead of acting foolishly, David listens. That's the power of humility.

Everybody wants political power today. And understandably, we can know why people want to put things to rights.

It's actually a good instinct in many respects. But the Bible concentrates power in such surprising places.

It's not the guy who's yelling at everybody and forcing them to go his way who's the powerful man.

You want to know who's powerful? The man who has the spirit working in him and who is self -controlled and humble.

That's spiritual power. That's when you're powerful. Not in yourself, but by the working of God in you.

You're under control. You're not a city without walls, to quote Proverbs. But you're a man who's disciplined.

You're a man who listens. And you're a man who can grow. Because you can actually hear what someone's saying to you.

Cain couldn't hear a word. Even with Almighty God talking to him. What a place to be.

What a powerful thing. The natural fallen heart is. God Himself speaking to you.

And you gritting your teeth. And making excuses. It's a dangerous reality.

Third type. The soft man. The soft man. We find this figure, not in the book of Genesis.

But we find this figure in Judges. We find an example of the soft man, the wavering man, the fearful man.

In Gideon. The figure of Gideon. We find Gideon in Judges 6.

We find Gideon in Judges 7. And so, Gideon is a crucial player.

In the strange, surprising, weirdly encouraging, and troubling book of Judges.

Two of the examples we're covering here are from the book of Judges. One is Gideon and next,

Samson. Gideon's the soft man. He's the opposite of Samson. Who's the out of control man.

Gideon had a father who openly worshipped the false god. Baal.

This is a hard situation from the outset. Gideon was afraid of his dad.

His dad led many men in Gideon's town to worship Baal.

Gideon lived a fearful life. He harvested wheat at night. Because there were evil tribes around him.

Namely the Midianites. Who wanted to destroy Gideon and his family. And so,

Gideon harvested wheat at night when he could be safer.

In Judges 6 -12, the Lord came to Gideon.

And an angel addressed Gideon as a mighty man of valor. This is not actually what

Gideon had shown himself to be. But this is what God was calling

Gideon to be. By his own grace. This is very similar to what we were talking about with Proverbs 31.

It is not that Proverbs 31 is a list that you're supposed to throw at women and say you're failing at this.

It is supposed to be aspirational. And a beautiful picture of what a woman can be by God's power.

Similarly, God addressed Gideon as a mighty man of valor. Even though Gideon was actually a very fearful man.

But what God was signaling is that Gideon, this is what you're going to become. This is what

I'm going to make you. And that should be very encouraging to us.

God takes weak, soft, passive, fearful men. And he changes them.

He changes us into something much greater. The Lord's call to Gideon was a very easy one.

It was to destroy his father

Joash's idolatrous alters to demonic, false gods.

Wow. You tracking that? Anybody ever had some inter -family dynamics?

You ever felt how hard it is to go against a dad or mom who you disagree with?

You tried to witness to family members who aren't Christian and don't want to hear it?

My family back in Maine, sadly. Largely unsaved. One time

I tried to witness to my grandfather. And the conversation started going into church life.

And I tried to witness to my grandparents before. And my grandfather, who was a strong man.

Not a Christian, but a strong man. Looked me in the eye without blinking and said, Stop.

Like that. And that was it. That was the end of the conversation. I know how hard it is, as some of you do, to have family members who are not walking with the

Lord. And you try to be a witness and you feel so weak. And it's hard.

Well, Gideon knew this firsthand. And God didn't just say, have a dinnertime conversation over the decaf about how things are going with Joash.

God said, take a hammer and destroy your dad's idols.

This is quite a calling. Gideon did so. Gideon, in the middle of the night, as was his custom, destroyed his dad's idolatrous altars.

And Joash found out the next day. And in Judges 6, 28 -32, we see that Gideon's God -inspired courage actually turned the tide in his surroundings.

Gideon feared that Joash was going to probably attack him and kill him.

Which was not an unreasonable fear. And instead, Joash, the dad, stood up for his son.

And things changed in the town. And so we're getting a picture here, as we will in our next session with David, of this equation.

Cowardice begets cowardice. But courage begets courage.

And oftentimes, it's one man, one person, who will stand up to evil.

It's not usually in the Bible, lots of people. It's often one person.

It's often one person standing in the gap who will say, no.

And God uses so frequently one person.

Isn't that the opposite of the way many of us are thinking about America right now? Turning America around, whatever that would look like.

How we want that. I'm guessing many of you want that. I want that. Don't you think, well,

I don't know, maybe we're outnumbered and outgunned. I think we might need a revival.

I think we might need, you know, tons and tons and tons and tons and tons and tons of people to turn this around.

And I just, I think that's impossible. Oh, really? Do you know about a book called the

Bible? Where over and over again, there's not an army.

There's no army. Or excuse me, there's an army of one. There's one person.

This is what happens with Gideon. One man turns the tide of a town.

And not an impressive man, an afraid, passive, timid man. And yet God works in him and everything turns around.

Could it be that way in America? Is God weak? Is the gospel not powerful anymore?

Christian, whatever happens in days ahead, don't live in fear. Stop living in fear.

Live in hope. Live in God -centered trust. Your God is invincible.

Your God is not cowed or worried by the opposite side. Your God is strong.

He'll choose to do whatever He chooses to do. He gives people up, doesn't He? He gives societies over.

He lets civilizations crash. He does whatever He pleases. Whatever He does is right.

Yet know this, He's not outmatched. He's not outmatched by paganism. He's not outgunned.

He's very strong. And frequently in history. And in the church.

And with unsound doctrines. And unsound movements. And wokeness in the church. And governments closing the church down.

And terrible things happening among the people of God. You think, oh no, we don't have the numbers anymore.

No, you may not have the numbers. But you know who you have? You have God. You have

God. And as Knox said, to re -quote it. One man with God is in the majority.

Do you believe that? Is that in your bones? Let that sink into your bones.

It's true. God lets Gideon experience this principle keenly.

In Judges 7. Very quickly, Gideon amasses an army of 32 ,000 men.

Yay! Strength in numbers. Here we go. 32 ,000, right?

Does Gideon go into battle with 32 ,000? You learned that in VBS.

You learned that on the flannel graph, right? Remember that? The Lord makes a cut.

He has Gideon do a test with the 10 ,000. He initially pairs the army down from 32 ,000 to 10 ,000.

And then this next major cut is with a test where the men are to lap water.

They're to go to a stream and see who drinks water in what way.

And the Lord God tells Gideon in Judges 7 .6 that He is to keep for His army only those who kneel down to lap water and put their hand to their mouth.

I've been told I'm ranging outside of the camera. Sorry, I'm so sorry. But I'm reaching the point in the preaching and teaching.

This is a lot of preaching and teaching and I'm needing to, testosterone speaking to me, move around a little bit.

Okay, but anyway. Near the stream and the only ones Gideon can keep are the ones who do this.

They lap water. It's not just that they lap water. It's that they scan the horizon.

You see, actually, the only ones Gideon is to keep are the ones who have a warrior mindset.

It's the true warriors. Not necessarily in terms of the bigness of their biceps, but the ones who are protectors.

The ones who, even when they're drinking water, are scanning the horizon.

Later in the Old Testament, this type of man is going to be called, it's one of my favorite terms in the

Bible, a watchman. A watchman on the wall.

That's this type of man. Everybody wants a warm bed at night, right? Then and now.

But there's a certain type, you find them all through the Bible. They're also called mighty men, with David.

These are the types who, yes, they like a warm bed, just like the rest of us, but they have other priorities on their mind.

Specifically, they have the good of other people on their mind, even when they would love to relax.

That's what this type of warrior is. He's always scanning the horizon. That's the type of man we need.

We need men who are watchmen on the wall. We need men who are protecting and defending when they would rather not be on the wall.

They'd rather be down there, where everyone else is, sleeping. But instead, they're watching.

We need these kind of men, young, middle -aged, and elderly.

We need these men single, and we need these men married. We need to train our boys to be these kind of men by the grace of God.

We need men, you see, returning to this concept, who pay attention.

Few things are more deadly than a man who doesn't pay attention. Think about your phone for a minute.

Mine's on the table. One stratagem of Satan, I'm not against smartphones, mine is right there, but one stratagem of Satan is to get us just lured into not paying attention because of a smartphone, which sounds silly when

I say it, but we all battle this now, don't we? So many of us battle this, not paying attention because of a phone.

Just think about how silly that is. But that's the temptation, yes? So, again, considerations of smartphones aside, we need men who, even when they're drinking water, pay attention.

We need men who are protectors. We need men who understand themselves as warriors.

People laugh at that when you say that now. People laugh at warrior manhood.

There's nothing funny about it. I don't mean that you necessarily carry around a Braveheart broadsword with you, you know, all through life or something, you know, one of those seven -foot

Scottish swords. You can try that, by the way. You can try carrying a Scottish broadsword like William Wallace had all through life.

That's a joke. Okay, anyway, I don't know how that's going to go for you, especially with TSA. But what you really need to do is not carry a sword.

You can pack heat, depending on your state. But what you really need to do is be a spiritual watchman and think of yourself as a warrior in the mold of the greater

David, King Jesus. Well, we don't have much time to talk about this story.

I have to conclude Gideon's narrative very quickly. Long story short, with just 300 men remaining, the

Lord gives the victory to Gideon and his forces. The Lord routes the

Midianites. Thousands of them die. And God shows up for this weak man.

Brothers and sisters, the Bible is trying to get our attention, and the

Bible is trying to teach us that the kingdom of God doesn't work according to human metrics.

It doesn't work that way. The power of God is not determined by man's statistical patterns, because there's no reason

Gideon's army should have won, but Gideon's army routed the enemy forces.

Are we reading our Bibles? Are we hearing the Old Testament? Are we knowing that God is loading us up with encouragement in stories like this?

And the message to conclude this little disquisition on Gideon is this.

God takes those of us who are weak men, and he makes us strong, and he uses us for good.

So be encouraged by that. That's an encouragement. That's a very encouraging biblical reality.

Fourth, and finally, the exaggerated man for this session, Samson. Ah, so much to say about Samson.

The figures in the Bible are more interesting than anything Hollywood's ever come out with. Our Bibles are so engrossing.

Samson's real. Samson's real because of the Nazirite vow. Samson has the greatest strength any human being has ever had.

Samson's the strongest human who has ever lived. He's a fascinating figure and character.

Samson is the exaggerated man. Samson is the man that many men want to be. Unregenerate men.

Samson is who, in our natural strength as men, we crave to be. Samson is Andrew Tate, but actually a lot stronger.

Samson is red pill manhood with no gospel. That's Samson. He can defeat anyone.

Samson's exploits seem like someone has fictionalized them.

No one has fictionalized them. Samson is threatened by a roaring lion in Judges 14 .6.

What does Samson do? Well, we read this. The Spirit of the Lord rushed upon him.

Although he had nothing in his hand, he tore the lion in pieces as one tears a young goat.

Samson is attacked by a lion, the alpha predator of the natural world.

And Samson rips its jaws apart. This is strength. This is incredible strength from the

Spirit of the Lord. This is in your Bibles, by the way. You can read this. Men can find this interesting.

It's true. Yes, there's a lot there to study, and it's not made up. Samson goes to Lehi, and he's in Philistine territory.

And the Philistines come shouting to meet him. This is Judges 15, 14, and 15. Guess what happened?

The Spirit of the Lord rushed upon him, and the ropes that were on his arms he's tied down became as flax that has caught fire, and his bonds melted off his hands.

And he found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, rut -row, Nazarite vow, but I digress, and put out his hand and took it.

He took a jawbone, and with it he struck a thousand men. This is mind -blowing.

This is all real. This is all history. This is Samson. This is the strongest man who's ever lived.

He did things that, you know, they have to do CGI to make happen in the movies nowadays and all these superhero movies.

Samson really did it. He slew a thousand men. This isn't Jason Bourne. This isn't

Tom Cruise. This is the real thing. This is all because the Spirit of the

Lord was upon him. Are you picking up the biblical pattern? If God blesses you, no one can stand against you.

If God is not with you, woe betide you. And that's what happens to Samson.

Samson didn't just live by his muscles. He lived by his eyes. His eyes drove him.

It was a theme throughout his life. Judges 16 .1. In Gaza, he saw a prostitute, and he went into her.

He lives by his flesh. He lives by his strongest passions. He followed his heart.

He had no regard for the Nazarite vow. He had no sense of just how immensely blessed he was of God to have these capacities.

Do you know what God gave him this strength for? God gave him this strength so that he could be the alpha defender of the people of God.

He's a one -man army against the Philistines. One man. There's our principle.

One man. But he doesn't care. He lives by his eyesight. So he sees a prostitute, and against all his training and teaching, he goes into her.

But then he meets his match, Delilah, and eventually, as you know in this story,

Samson reveals the secret of his strength. And so Delilah has his hair cut, and the

Philistines rush upon Samson, and in Judges 16 .19, capture him.

And that is the end of his story. Nope.

Nope. The man who lives by his eyes. We're almost done. Break.

The man who lives by his eyes has his eyes gouged out, and he's then taken into captivity.

He's taken into the hall of the Philistines, a great hall, and they host a banquet to celebrate the capture of the greatest warrior who has ever lived.

Human strength. Samson is chained between two pillars. The Philistines are worshiping their demonic god,

Dagon, in this hall. It's feasting, it's revelry, it's sin of all kinds around him. Samson's eyes are gone.

Can't see a thing. But his hair is growing back. The Philistines have forgotten. They're not paying attention.

And so for the only time in the narrative of Samson, the only time he prays,

Judges 16 .28, Oh, Lord God, please remember me.

I'm getting choked up. I don't know Samson, but it's just so powerful to think of what this man had and squandered.

Excuse me. Please remember me, and please strengthen me only this once.

Oh God, that I may be avenged on the Philistines for my two eyes.

The Lord grants his request. Philistines have no idea he's just prayed this, probably prayed it under his breath, standing there bowed in defeat.

And then in one final display of strength, he gathers all his might and he pulls down the pillars and every

Philistine dies because this is the power of God.

And one man with God can do unspeakable things to the kingdom of darkness.

So Samson is such a sad tale. He's the exaggerated man.

He's the alpha, but he's the alpha who though loved by God, blessed by God, I think known by God, doesn't really care for God, doesn't see his life as worship.

Remember that theme? This is the epitome of somebody who has every spiritual gift and blessing and doesn't want to worship

God. He doesn't want to worship God. You know what he wants to be? He wants to be a Philistine.

He's the man under the Nazarite vow who wants to be a Philistine. That's what happens with us when we live for the flesh.

We want to be the world. It's not just that we're struggling with a certain pattern. No, you want to live like the world.

You want to be an unregenerate person. And we have to repent of that. That's what we all do regularly throughout our life.

Lord, forgive me. Ah, for thinking that thought, for having that wicked desire run through me.

Forgive me for that conversation. Forgive me for entertaining that course of action. Woo, that is pagan.

Forgive me for that. We all, we all have to live a life of repentance and confession of sin.

And we're not just forgiven in the moment of our conversion. We all have to keep getting forgiven.

Samson is such a sad story. But you know what Samson is? Samson is a redemption story, isn't he?

Because at the very end of his life, he understands who

God is and who he should be by the power of God. And God uses

Samson, one man, arms outstretched, sound familiar? To deliver his people.

And there will one day come a greater Samson who will not abuse the calling of God, but who will perfectly walk in the ways of God and store up perfect righteousness for sinners like you and me.

And who will then stretch out his arms and cry out for forgiveness and give up his spirit and die for us.

And that's the greater Samson, Jesus Christ. So even in the Bible's cautionary tales, there's hope.

Father, thank you so much for these four types of deficient manhood. It's weird to, sounds weird to thank you for that, but thank you so much that we can learn from these negative examples.

And we're not, Father, man or woman alike, looking down from a skybox, mocking these men.

These men have our weaknesses. These men could be us as men and as sinners all, man and woman alike.

We could easily fall prey to the flesh. Thank you for your grace, Father. Thank you for redeeming love.

Thank you that you took men like the ones we've talked about, in particular with Gideon and Samson, and you turned them around and you use them for your glory.

Do that with us. Any man in here, any person in here, man or woman alike who feels like they've gone too far and they've messed things up too much and they're beyond the reach of your grace,

I pray you'd encourage them and help them to see that they are completely wrong and there is infinite, ever -flowing mercy and grace in the name of your

Son, Jesus. And in that name we pray, amen. Six minutes.

Sorry. That's on me. Who's responsible for the length of these breaks, but it's really sad.

I just want you to know, I'm with you, that I think there should be much more time on these breaks.

So I'll try to talk to, I'm trying to find him and talk to him after. On another note, this is a book

I recently wrote. It's called Little House in the Ozarks. It says

Laura Ingalls Wilder, but I'll sign this copy. So I'm ready.

I was handed this by these kind gentlemen at the break, so it's actually their fault.

But in fact, you can come here, my man, and collect your, there's no name.

There's no name here, so. Kevin found it. Kevin found it? Okay. The only thing you're going to remember from this weekend is

Laura Ingalls Wilder. It's like preaching gym.

They never, you know, they don't remember the, they remember like the weird story you told. Your voice cracked.

Your voice cracked, yes, I mean. So I'm, yeah. All the countercultural stuff, that's going to go away.

We have been talking about up and down men, and in this final session, our last session together, we're going to talk about my favorite biblical character outside of Christ, and that is

David, King David. So this is our fifth type of manhood.

We just did four. This is the fifth type. The strong man.

The strong man. And in saying even that term, strong man, let me just reiterate,

I don't mean David is strong in himself. I mean that David is a man who

God made strong. Okay? So we lock that in. Doesn't mean that a man like David wasn't called to show actual strength, because he was.

We're going to talk about that, and it's a story, of course, you know. But it does mean that we need to locate the source of our strength as Christian men very carefully, and it is not in us.

It is in God. If you had seen Goliath back in the day, you would have thought him unbeatable.

1 Samuel 17, which is the text we are in in this final session. Goliath was nine feet tall, maybe nine feet six.

His coat of armor alone weighed about 125 pounds.

His spear was made of pure iron, and itself weighed about 15 pounds.

It would have made a sickening, and I do mean sickening, thud when it went through a man, which no doubt it did often.

Goliath represented the strength of the Philistine army. Throughout the narrative of David in 1

Samuel, the greatest foe that Israel faces are the

Philistines. The Philistines have a number of giants among them, and they truly were giants.

They were double the size of normal men of the day. That's the rank

Goliath belonged to. That is his bloodline.

The two armies, Israel and Philistia, drew up together for battle, as recorded in 1

Samuel 17, and Goliath went out, and in verse 8 said this, shouted to the ranks of Israel, Why have you come out to draw up for battle?

Am I not a Philistine, and are you not servants of Saul? Choose a man for yourselves and let him come down to me.

If he is able to fight with me and kill me, then we will be your servants.

But if I prevail against him and kill him, then you shall be our servants and serve us.

And the Philistines said, I defy the ranks of Israel this day.

Give me a man that we may fight together.

Let's pray. Father, in this final session, give us eyes to see the power of courage that you give.

Let us not gaze back on David as a museum piece gathering dust in our

Bibles. Fire us up to be a force for good in our day, men and women alike.

But Father, help the men to lead in this respect. I pray in Jesus' name.

Amen. Goliath is offended by the Israelites. Goliath recognizes that the

Israelites are soft. That's why he said the last part of what he roared.

He defied the ranks of Israel. He wants someone to fight. He openly dishonors and shames

Israel, the people of God. This is one of those rare moments in the biblical narrative where there is a direct confrontation between the seed of the serpent of Satan and the seed of the woman,

Israel. In epical form, they're arrayed against one another. Seed of serpent, seed of woman.

They're facing off. This is the way biblical history and extra -biblical history goes.

All of history in Genesis 3 .15, we quoted it earlier today, is framed according to that great conflict.

Everything that is happening around us is the result of the serpent opposing the seed of the woman who ultimately is

King Jesus. This is one of those moments when, as I say, the two sides take physical shape.

Another instance of this kind of conflict is Moses before Pharaoh. Moses represents the seed of the woman, the good line, and Pharaoh represents the seed of the devil, the evil line.

And that conflict is still playing out. From King Saul all the way down to his men in this scene, 1

Samuel 17 .11 tells us that the Israelites, quote, were dismayed and greatly afraid when they heard

Goliath roar. In natural terms, we would have been too. If Goliath split that door right there, somehow got past the elite security team out here that I'm looking at before me, the gentleman who asked me to sign.

I told you I would sign anything you put in front of me, and he put in front of me the catalogs and devotional works and Jim's books.

Anyway, it was a debacle out there. The signing table got overrun. But if Goliath walked in and his head split that opening right there and he started roaring at us, it would be terror unlike we've ever felt.

So Goliath wasn't a fake foe. He was real. He was actually terrifying.

All of Israel was terrified as a result. They were dismayed. What a word.

What a word to use. They're dismayed. It means they saw no prospect of hope.

They were not just afraid. There's no hope. They don't have any solution to the problem known as Goliath, a nine -foot, six inches tall problem right before them.

There was only one person in the entirety of both sides of these warrior groups who was not afraid.

It was a young man who was only at the battlefield because his father,

Jesse, asked young David to come and bring supplies to his brothers who were fighting for Israel.

We read this in 1 Samuel 17, verse 12.

Now David was the son of an Ephrathite of Bethlehem and Judah. Named Jesse who had eight sons.

In the days of Saul, the man was already old, Jesse, and advanced in years.

The three oldest sons of Jesse had followed Saul, the king, to the battle. And the names of his three sons who went to the battle were

Eliab, the firstborn, and next to him, Abinadab, and the third, Shammah.

David was the youngest. The three eldest followed Saul. But David went back and forth from Saul to feed his father's sheep at Bethlehem.

For 40 days, the Philistine came forward and took his stand. Morning and evening.

At this point, in verse 17, Jesse tells David to take a bunch of food to David's brothers.

In verse 21, we pick back up again. Israel and the Philistines drew up for battle.

Army against army. And David left the things in charge of the keeper of the baggage and ran to the ranks and went and greeted his brothers.

As he talked with them, behold, the champion, the Philistine of Gath, Goliath by name, came up out of the ranks of the

Philistines and spoke the same words as before. And David heard him. And the men of Israel, all the men of Israel, when they saw the man, fled from him and were much afraid.

The only figure in this scene who was not afraid was basically a diminutive shepherd boy.

He was not a member of the ranks of Israel. He was not the one who was trained in warfare in technical terms.

He was bringing cheese to his brothers. God wants you to understand something from this scene as a man and as a

Christian. It is a repeated theme in the Bible. The ones

God so often chooses to use are not the ones that man expects him to use.

God does not work in the way the natural mind would think he would work. God is not bound to the natural man's workings.

God is not subject to our preconceived expectations. God isn't bound by anything.

God does whatever He wills. And frequently throughout biblical history, the ones

God chooses to use are those no one would appoint for the tasks

He uses them for. In actuality, David's brothers get mad at him.

In verse 28, I won't read it, but in verse 28, Eliab gets mad at David because David starts showing courage in this fearful scene.

The narrator of 1 Samuel is only highlighting the unlikeliness of David for this role.

And Christian, Christian, Christian, that is so important that you understand. Because it's not the ones the natural man would expect that God uses to do

His greatest works. It's those no one would tap

He so often uses. David hates that Goliath is defying

Israel. But not just Israel. In verse 26, David says this,

What shall be done for the man who kills this Philistine and takes away the reproach from Israel?

For who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living

God? That is David's focus.

David is a God -centered young man. David is akin to a teenager.

We tend to have such low expectations for the group of humanity we call teenagers. And they are working things out and forming and growing.

And so it's good to let them develop in a lot of senses. And yet, David is a young man.

Nobody is expecting to do anything. And David is the one who cares not merely about the honor of Israel.

David, as my friend Grant Castleberry has said, cares about the honor of God. David doesn't even care so much about the rewards that will come to the warrior who faces off against Goliath.

He's asking the men about those rewards. The men care about what they will get if they fight

Goliath. Verse 25, The king will enrich the man who kills him with great riches and will give him his daughter and make his father's house free in Israel.

The men, the soldiers around David, they care about material rewards. What does

David care about? He cares most about God. And that is true of the

Christian. You may not ever find yourself on some wild battlefield somewhere in the Middle East.

You may not be called to testify before the U .S. Supreme Court. You may be, I don't know. But even if you aren't, if you are simply,

I repeat myself throughout this event, a man or a woman who stands on the truth of God and cares about God more than about what anyone thinks of you or anyone else, there is no telling what

God will do with you and through you. Man or woman, boy or girl alike.

Stop telling yourself what God can do through you.

Stop putting yourself in a box of how small your influence can be.

Little old me, doing my little old thing in life. You have no idea what

God can do through you. If David thought that way, we wouldn't be talking about him right now.

David asks the men, not about material rewards. David cares about the fact that Israel's God is being insulted.

That's why, brothers and sisters, we stand up in the public square and we oppose men going into girls' bathrooms.

That's why we run for school board. That's why we run for public office. That's why we serve in local law enforcement.

That's why we run for state representative or whatever it may be. On and on it goes.

That's why we work in a community. That's why we try to have real influence where we are.

Don't just hide out and wait for Jesus to come back. Have influence where you are. Be a

Christian, man or woman like David. Fight against the forces of evil and don't do it out of hatred of flesh and blood.

Do it out of concern for the glory and honor of God and the good, secondarily, of your fellow image bearer around you.

David cares about God, but those around him don't encourage him. When he goes before King Saul, he hears this in verse 33.

He hears only discouragement throughout this narrative. It's amazing. You're not able to go against this

Philistine, Saul says, to fight with him. For you are but a youth and he has been a man of war from his youth.

You can't do this. You're no good here. You're not going to kill this man. You're a fool.

Why are you here? Go take the cheese. Go take the cheese to your brothers. Get the cheese slices to them from the

Velveeta. Give them the Velveeta. That's what the people around David say to him.

They literally say, you can't do this. Relentless discouragement.

The man or the woman of God who is going to get anything done for God in this world is going to have to face relentless discouragement.

Are you ready for that? Right now. Are you ready to face a lot of discouragement? Are you going to melt when circumstances go against you?

When people discourage you? I'm not mocking you. I'm saying this is the way it goes.

Sadly, people around you, when they hear about you wanting to do good things, will discourage you.

Will say, don't do that. You can't do that. And especially men who we need to step up and especially young men who we need to hear the call of God to become strong in God and attempt great things for God.

Expecting great things of God. You need to know that if you're going to make any difference for God in this world at all, you've got to face fierce opposition.

Christian, stop being a wet tissue and start being a honey badger.

Do you know the honey badger? You know the honey badger? Have you seen the videos of the honey badgers on YouTube?

You have fun for you tonight. I'm not commending a lot of things on YouTube for you, but look up honey badger

Africa compound. Repeat that. Honey badger Africa compound.

There is a true story of a honey badger in Africa who is placed in a walled compound and stone walls and honey badgers are amazing animals if you don't know this.

Some of you chuckled a few minutes ago. I think you know a little bit about honey badgers, but for those of you not indoctrinated in the wonders of honey badgers, let me digress for just a second.

This honey badger couldn't climb the walls, didn't have the mobile ability to do that, but this honey badger was so cunning that it found a way to prop up a board against the wall, the stone wall, climb up the wall and get out of this compound that was basically created to hold the honey badger.

Then the honey badger went into the surrounding town and opened a refrigerator and ate all the food in the refrigerator.

Honey badger, okay? It didn't harm anybody. It's not a terrible ending or something like this, but when you study honey badgers, they are creatures who don't have a lot of natural advantages.

You don't look at them and go, what a beautiful animal, but yet they are absolutely ferocious.

There's other videos, honey badger lions, honey badger lions.

We're going to add honey badgers to Laura Ingalls Wilder for the takeaways from the conference. There's other videos. Stay with me for just one second.

There's other videos of honey badgers with like five lions around them. Has anyone seen this?

And the honey badgers get wounded. The lions rake. This one honey badger,

I just pluralized it. This one honey badger gets slashed by a lion. It's not a pretty picture.

And you think, oh, poor honey badger, tiny, you know, lion honey badger. And the honey badger somehow not only manages to survive, but with multiple lions after it like bears its teeth and bites back at the lions, and the lions are so taken aback that they actually draw back from this tiny little creature, one of them, and eventually the honey badger escapes.

You need to not be a wet tissue. You need to be, as a

Christian, a honey badger. And that's the spirit that we see in David.

He's nothing. He's not tall. He's not strong. He's a young man. He's not a warrior.

He rejects the armor of Saul. King Saul says, here's my armor. Take my armor, amazing armor, the best armor that hands could form.

And David initially puts it on himself. Okay, maybe now he's finally able to go out against Goliath.

No, he's not. He takes all the armor off. It doesn't fit him. It's clunky. It doesn't work. It's a symbolic picture.

He doesn't need the equipment of man. He doesn't need what man gives.

So, as you know, you know the story of David. He says this to Saul just before he goes out to battle.

Your servant, verse 36, has struck down both lions. Sorry, lions.

Both lions and bears. And this uncircumcised Philistine shall be like one of them, for he has defied the armies of the living

God. His concern, again, is not himself.

It's not the warriors. It's ultimately God. This is what it means to live in worship of a great and awesome

God in all of life. That's what he's talking about. That's what he cares about.

That's what flows out of him. A worshipful Christian is just, you can't stop them from talking about the things of God.

Man or woman, boy or girl, it just comes out of them. That's who David is.

He cares about God's glory more than his own safety, more than his own well -being.

This is the epitome of a bad life decision in natural terms. For a four -foot -eight kid to go out against a nine -foot -six tall giant, this is not a good strategic assessment of the situation.

McKinsey & Company and consultants would not recommend this in the corporate business plan for the year, but David doubles down.

Verse 37, he's iron confident in God. The Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this

Philistine. He doesn't say, I really think

God will. He doesn't say, I really hope God will. He doesn't say there's a high probability of my deliverance.

He says, the Lord will deliver me. When believers arm up in God, there is no telling what damage

Satan is going to suffer. This is true strength. This is strength that is not found in sinful flesh.

This is strength that is found in God. David is not strong because he has prowess with a sling.

He has a lot of military skill. David is already strong when he goes out to battle.

Do you see that? He's way stronger than Goliath. It's not a fair fight.

Not because of shoulder strength, because David is strong in God and Goliath is as weak as you can be.

God is teaching us. Man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart.

Believe that. Not just when we read an Old Testament story. Believe that now.

Believe that now. Stop letting Satan tell you that we walk in natural terms and we think in natural categories.

We think in supernatural categories. There's levels to the game.

We believe in supernatural power because that is the unified witness of this book.

David was a man of God. He feared the Lord. He did not tremble before Goliath. He trembled before the great and awesome

God of Israel. When David goes out to battle, the Philistine discourages

David. Everyone discourages David. His brothers discourage David.

The men around David discourage David. The king, Saul, who should be an encourager to David, who should himself be going out to war against Goliath, has instead a cheese -delivering shepherd boy fight his battle for him.

That's a picture of what happens in the church even now. There are men who have all the background, all the credentials, all the training, have spoken at all the conferences, have written all the books, have got all the following and all the followers on social media, and you can't find them when there's a battle.

And instead, it's cheese -bearers who go out on the field to fight for the people of God, outmatched and outgunned in natural terms.

This is still happening. This will continue happening until the end of the age, that the supposedly courageous won't go out.

They won't go fight the battle. But the youth, the one who has come to deliver food to the scene, he'll go out to fight the battle.

David is discouraged by Goliath, as I say. Am I a dog? Goliath roars.

That you come to me with sticks? Verse 43. And the Philistine cursed David by his gods.

David is not only demeaned, Goliath curses

David in spiritual terms. This is Satan talking. It's like in those

Lord of the Rings movies when, you know, a character is being overcome by a stronger force and is speaking not of themselves, but of a much darker force.

That is what is happening here. Goliath is the instrument of the devil. And Goliath is doing battle in a visceral way with David and seeking to draw

David off and say, David, you cannot fight this battle. I curse you. So to be a follower of God in a fallen world is a serious thing indeed.

It's to face spiritual warfare in the strongest form. David shrugs it all off once again.

Verse 45. You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin.

But I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the

God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. David is clothed in the strength of God.

And there is no strength like it. And then David gives Goliath a promise. He swears to him an oath.

This day, the Lord will deliver you into my hand. And I will strike you down and cut off your head.

And I will give the dead bodies of the host of the Philistines this day to the birds of the air and to the wild beasts of the earth that all the earth may know that there is a

God in Israel and that all this assembly may know that the Lord saves not with sword and spear.

For the battle is the Lord's and he will give you into our hand. Verses 46 and 47.

This is how you talk when you have a great God. Not when you're a great person.

Not when you're a great man. But when you serve an awesome God. You can say these kind of things.

Brothers and sisters, you can be in corrupt departments, corrupt corporations, compromised schools, difficult communities, fallen neighborhoods, surrounded by unbelievers, facing opposition from all sides.

And if God calls you into a situation where you stand against evil, you can know that you are clothed just like David in the strength of God.

This day, the Lord will deliver you into my hand. That's what the shepherd boy says to the warrior.

And then David, as one does when one is confident in God, ran quickly.

Verse 48. He ran quickly to meet his foe. He slung a single stone.

One small stone. This big maybe. And he hit the

Philistine dead on the forehead and killed him instantly. But that's not all.

Then he took the giant sword, administered a death blow in front of everybody, and cut off his head.

Verse 51. You and I may not be called to cut off Middle Eastern pagan giant's head in our life, but you and I should be tremendously encouraged by this scene.

And I want to call men to take stock of this display of God -centered trust and humility and strength.

We've talked in our sessions together today and last night, and will a little bit more tomorrow, about what we're up against.

And the odds are real and the wind is in our face. But men of God are not those who run when there is a fire away from the fire.

Men of God are those who run toward the fire. That is what it means to be a man of God.

That is what it means to put others before yourself.

We've seen, even in America, numerous examples of this in recent years.

The days are evil in the society. But in Michigan, just a few years ago, a public shooter went onto a school campus and opened fire, as has happened many times in the last 20 years in this country.

And cut many people down around him. And everybody fled the scene. But there was this young football player looking like he was going to play

D1 football in that region, named Tate Meyer. And Tate Meyer, numerous classmates later said, many eyewitnesses, while everybody's running this way, there was this one football player who ran that way.

He ran toward the shooter. And he helped take the shooter down. And he was killed in the process of doing so.

There's little pictures in God's common grace, even today, in 2024, when men are struggling.

Seriously. There's all these little pictures of God's common grace. Men like this.

Men like David. In Uvalde, Texas, a few years ago.

Again, a wicked individual entered a school.

Think about the demonic element of this. Satan targets children, doesn't he, friends?

He targets children over and over again. Jesus calls the little children to himself in Matthew 18 and Matthew 19.

Jesus loves the children. He warmly welcomes them. His disciples say, no, no, no, get the children out of here. In that culture, the children weren't supposed to be amidst the grown -ups.

Jesus overcomes those social categories, those boundaries. And Jesus says, no, no, no, let the little children come to me.

Jesus showed love toward the children. Satan hates children.

MacArthur just wrote a book, The War on Children. Get it. Read it. It's real. The War on Children.

It's out there. It's operative. It's active today. It's because it's because Satan hates children.

Children are the next generation of disciples. Small wonder that Satan keeps targeting them in our midst.

This man named Jacob Alvarado is getting a haircut in Uvalde and his wife works at the school and texts him that there's an active shooter on premises.

And Jacob Alvarado dashes out of the barber shop, grabs a pump shotgun on his way out, goes to the school, gets to the school in Uvalde, finds an entire force of soldiers and policemen standing outside the school because they have orders not to go in.

And there's a lot that's even right now being sorted out. There's been multiple lawsuits in Uvalde and one could argue rightly so along those lines.

But Alvarado doesn't stand down. He goes into the school against orders.

And he leads many teachers and many children to safety.

Days are evil, but strong men are not gone.

They're still here. May it be that in our midst we would be those kind of men.

And may it be that we wouldn't just be those kind of men in physically compromised situations.

But as I've tried to say throughout this event, may we be these kind of men spiritually.

May we find our strength in God and may we find our courage in God.

And may we draw near to God and be loved by God. And love

God. And worship God. And yes, even worship God by going into a scene where death is unfolding.

And may we be the type of man who puts ourself between death and the innocent.

Because the Bible gives us one example after another of men just like that.

And as I talked about in my previous session, I'm going to end early in this one, the very end. The greatest example of this, of course, is not anybody in their last few years showing tremendous bravery under fire.

The greatest example of this, of this courageous manhood we've talked about with David, is not

D -Day, 80 years ago. Amazing as D -Day was. Much as we will honor those men until we ourselves die.

The greatest example of this is King Jesus. Do you know how

Jesus is identified in Matthew's gospel, for example? Matthew introduces his gospel with a genealogy, of course.

As you know, in chapter 1, Andrew Peterson has a great song about the genealogy that I would commend to you.

Family and I listened to it at Christmas time. Do you know the very first name identified with the

Son of God in Matthew chapter 1? The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ.

The Son of David. The Son of Abraham.

In other words, the fulfillment of all that David was. The fulfillment of all the promises to Abraham and the patriarchs.

Jesus is the one who faces down the greater Goliath. Jesus is the one who fulfills the

Genesis 3 .15 promise. What's called the Proto -Evangelion, the first gospel. Jesus is the one who goes to the cross in order, 1

John 3 .8, to destroy the works of the devil. To destroy the works of the devil, that is, by making atonement for our sins and the sins of all

God's elect across all the ages. And Jesus in dying is the one who destroys the devil.

Who crushes the devil's head. Who slings the shot that sinks directly into the forehead of Satan.

It's not that the reign of Satan is ended with all finality at the cross.

It is that the victory of God over the devil is secure. It's D -Day.

It's the theological D -Day. It is that all the sins of God's people are atoned for at that cross.

And then Jesus, of course, does not stay dead, but three days later rises from the grave.

And that is not simply Jesus returning to life. That is Jesus leading a new exodus into eternity toward the new

Jerusalem and the new Eden. The new heaven and new earth. And that is where all

God's people are going. We are passing through the valley of the shadow of death.

There's death all around us. There's a culture of death in this country that wants nothing more than to see one baby after another aborted in the womb.

But Jesus is leading us in the midst of all this blood and all this death and all this carnage that Satan is creating.

And Jesus is leading us to our true home. So, I close my sessions with you.

A final Q &A to come in just a few minutes by trying to take you there. Don't just look around you.

Don't just try to be salt and light in this day and this age. But Christian, remember where we're headed.

We're headed home. Soon we'll be there. And soon all the sad things will be undone.

And all the sad stories will be untrue. And we will be forever.

We will be forever with the greater David. We will be with the warrior Savior. And we will join the warrior

Savior and all the angels and all the hosts of heaven will come with Jesus when he finally, once and for all time, ends the reign of Satan on the earth and throws the devil into the lake of fire for all eternity to come.

And then there will be no marriages that struggle.

And then there will be no unloved children. And then there will be no orphans.

And then there will be no injustices. And there will be no oppression.

And there will be no prejudice. And there will be no need of forgiveness. And there will be no family members who suffer.

And there will be no children who die. And then there will be no pain in churches.

And then it will all be made right. Until that day, in the power of God, fight.

Fight the darkness. And remember as well the words of Jeremiah 29, until that day do the most countercultural thing you can do.

Plant gardens. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for the story of David and Goliath.

Thank you for the encouragement we derive from it. I pray that you would especially call to men to be like David.

We're in the age of low expectations for our sons. Father, please do a counter work.

Do a counter revolution among us. And help us to invest in our boys.

And disciple our boys. And love our boys. And put an arm around their shoulder. And normally, in general terms, to train them and teach them in love and warmth and kindness the ways your word lays out for us.

And please do a work in our boys that they would be strong. That they would be like the warrior

David in evil times. And Father, apart from boys and men, do a work in our girls.

Do a work in our families. Do a work in our marriages, we pray, that we would stand against the forces of evil.

Help us not to lose heart in this evil climate. Help us,

Father, to find fresh hope and fresh faith and fresh love through the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Thank you for your spirit. Thank you that you are more powerful than the darkness. Please, Father, do a great work in our midst, even in evil days.

In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Three o 'clock.

Alright, we're going to start our final session, the Q &A. Alright.

So, I've already looked through these and read through these and I have good news for you. Since I've already read through these,

I know that we're not going to get into another estrogen bath like we had last night with a discussion on Little House on the

Prairie. You said you were sweating during that.

It's because you started menopause halfway through that answer. I don't even know where that came from.

Alright, it's behind us. We're not going to mention it ever again. Except publicly. Maybe publicly, but we're just going to put it behind us.

Alright, in what ways, and we've got quite a few questions here, so I'm going to get through as many as we can. Some of these might be rapid fire answers.

In what ways are we image bearers of God? Is it only the communicable attributes?

Yeah, that's a good question. I don't think that we are supposed to isolate what it means to be the image in terms of one attribute.

There's a lively debate in the Christian tradition over which attribute it is, or is it our relationality?

Is it our reasoning capacity? Is it our capacity for faith?

Luther, Calvin, and others disagree all about what the image precisely boils down to.

In my view, and I wrote about this at some length in my book Re -Enchanting Humanity, if you want to read more about the image of God as I understand it,

Re -Enchanting Humanity, I spell out that I think we are the image of God. So I don't think even that the image reduces to the communicable attributes.

I think it is simply that God made us as a little representation of himself.

Now, we are communicating people like he is a communicating people. We are a loving people like he is a loving God to that question.

So there's truth in that. We are like God in some respects, in terms of our personal makeup,

I mean. He's of a different order than we are. But that would be what I would say. I would say the image is us.

So the attributes that we have, our functionality, our utilitarian functionality, does not undo us with the image of God.

We are able to do those things because humanity is the image of God and the image of God is humanity.

It is our humanness which is the image of God. That's something unique to humanity that other creatures don't have.

That's exactly right. So I'm in a little different place than some theologians and exegetes because a lot of them in the reformed tradition emphasize that the image is lost in the fall or diminished or marred or all sorts of language like that.

I don't actually think that. I think that we are still image bearers. Genesis 6 and 9, if anyone sheds man's blood, his blood will be shed for man is made in my image.

Those kind of texts. I think that that actually signals that the image is an ongoing reality, though I affirm total depravity as was quite clear here.

But yeah, I don't think if you have less reasoning capacity, you have lost the image or you are less an image bearer or things like that.

I don't think that if you're not married, you're not fully an image bearer because the image actually is relationality expressed in marriage.

That was Karl Barth's view. So we could talk more. So if you have, if your image of God is based upon your functionality, then at some point if you lose your memory, you lose your creative ability, you lose your ability to communicate, you have dementia, you lose your memory, if that's what gives you the image of God, those attributes, then you would say, we would have to conclude that somebody who gets older and loses some of those capacities is diminishing in the image of God and we would never say that.

Alright, what guidelines would you recommend for how much time we spend with the world and how we spend time with them?

Thoughtful question. I'm not going to be able to give any kind of hourly allotment or something and it's going to vary for all of us.

We want to exercise two principles. We want to be in the world but not of the world and that reduces in exegetical terms to what

Jesus says in John 17. And so we need a lot of time where we are not of the world.

So for example, we need to be with the church, we need to be with the fellowship of the saints to some degree in our week but then we also need to be in the world to some degree and we need to be around sinners even to the extent that people would label

Jesus as a friend of sinners. There again, I said this in my session but I think a lot of us are on the far end of being away from the world.

We need to be to a serious degree but if we're not in and amongst unbelievers, no one's going to be.

We are the light of the world, Jesus says. I heard testimonies from former homosexuals whose churches didn't confront their sin right away but they still eventually repented and turned to biblical sexuality.

How should a church handle visitors and or regularly attending homosexuals, trans people, etc.?

Yeah. That's become a thing where you don't address homosexuality head on.

You kind of say like Tim Keller did a version of this. We're going to set that aside because that's kind of a nuclear issue and what

I'm going to do is I'm just going to talk to you about idolatry and sin and that was kind of Keller's approach in Manhattan.

I don't have a biblical basis for that because for example in Matthew 14 with Herod, John the

Baptist called out Herod for having his brother's wife being in that sinful pattern publicly and directly.

All throughout the Gospels Jesus engages sinners and he doesn't just say this thing you're doing, that's wrong and disappear or vanish, you know, in a cloud of smoke.

He works through the heart. He asks them questions. There's a broader discussion but fundamentally he identifies the sin of the people he's talking to, the woman at the well.

In John 4 he doesn't say let's set aside adultery and sexual promiscuity for right now.

I don't want to be too on the nose with you. Let me just establish a general rhythm of sin is bad and we'll get to that six months from now.

No, he says you've had five and the one you're with now isn't your husband. I don't think he's doing that in a hateful way.

I think he's doing that in a very kind way but he's also quite direct with sin. Homosexual or trans person shows up in a church service, should they be allowed to stay there?

Should they be allowed to become members? No, I mean upon repentance.

We've got to be clear about that. We used to have more of a view in some conservative circles where conversion was like a bug zapper with homosexuality for some strange reason.

Homosexuality was treated like if you became a Christian there's a way to sort of pry out that sin and you would never have that again.

And there got to be some pretty interesting and strange if you follow them down the line efforts at things like orientation change.

And I would affirm some of what was attempted there but not to the fullest extent because we are in winning people to the

Christian faith, helping them leave behind sin patterns but a lot of us who get saved have to battle heterosexual lust throughout our lives.

Just to cut it straight for a second. We didn't think that when we got saved there was a kind of bug zapper way for us to never experience lust in that way.

I don't know why the church 40 years ago was saying if you convert to Christ you can kind of get zapped and you'll never have homosexual lust in your heart.

So I don't want to communicate to somebody that if they get born again that they'll never battle that.

They might. That's not the sign that they're not born again though just like somebody having to kill lust in a heterosexual way.

That's not a sign they're not a Christian. So you got to be careful. Is it possible for a man to be truly saved if he is passive and checked out, angry, neglectful of family, not growing in fruits of the

Spirit, prideful, and not willing to hear correction or rebuke? Will the saved always manifest being a new creation?

That's a tough situation right there it sounds like. From that litany of qualities sadly.

If that doesn't immediately sound like somebody who is experiencing a whole lot of victory in Christ I guess somebody who's living that kind of life could be a

Christian but be in a bad place. I think we have to have a category for that. We know that Peter wandered from his

Lord. We know that we can all stumble. We all stumble in many ways. James 3 2.

But over the long haul a godly man will be able to hear correction at some level.

Will want to grow. Will fight his sin. Will confess his sin.

And so that person that is being described there it sounds like could either be a man who's unregenerate that thinks he's a

Christian that might be the most likely reality. Or he might be a Christian who's just really not doing well.

And he needs kind of the electric clamps to his chest from the Spirit. And he needs to wake up and start repenting and confessing a whole lot of sin.

At the very least he should be warned that given his current trajectory and his current manifestation of those qualities that that is indicative could very well be indicative of the state of his soul.

For sure. And if honestly if that is representative of a situation in this room then

I would encourage a woman who has a husband who is professing faith and maybe smiling on Sunday morning but then is living in the utter gloom of misery

Monday to Saturday. I would encourage her in a respectful way to reach out to godly women in the congregation.

Talk to them and then it really may be the case that there needs to be elder care for that couple.

Not in a kind of, you know, navy seals break the door down in the middle of the night on the guy.

Handle him carefully. But try in a gracious way to get this couple with a wise and godly elder and maybe his wife and talk through some dynamics of marriage.

Had a lot of questions about this so if I don't get to your specific question just know that I'm trying to hit this subject and probably incorporate a whole bunch of different questions that all kind of do the same thing.

If a family rejects you because you won't use their pronoun requests, do you step back and wait or try to engage and if you engage, how?

To put it another way, do we go ahead and honor people's requests that we use their preferred pronouns?

No. No. I don't think so. No. I don't think we can.

This is a sticky one because I don't think that we have to go in and like if we're trying to engage family members,

I don't think we are trying to have an explosion socially from the outset.

We're trying to talk to that family member to have some kind of communication going on so we're using wisdom in how we address people.

If there's a transgender individual, I don't know that I would be trying to use a ton of pronouns or something like what

I'm trying to say is you don't need to be obnoxious as a Christian to be a witness. You don't need to say well what he is doing is he is saying this and what

I would disagree is he, right? You can do this I think in honestly a wise and careful way but you should not consent

I would say to we will use your preferred pronouns. I think I cannot use the preferred pronouns but still exercise some degree of pastoral sensitivity in that situation.

Does that make sense? If you do bend to that and use their preferred pronouns then basically you're affirming a lie.

You're saying something with your mouth and with your demeanor that is patently untrue and in fact is affirming their rebellion against God as creator and the created order.

Yeah, like I can't use their pronouns if they want to be called kitty cat. I'm not trying to be silly like if that person, if that family member,

I'm trying to be a witness to them and we finally get to the table and they say I will talk with you but you need to refer to me as kitty cat and I'm a cat and my pronouns are cat pronouns.

Seriously, I can't do that. But I'm not necessarily, if they say that going to then go ballistic about I am going to try to be try to engage them well.

What do you say to them specifically? They make that request this is your niece or your grandchild or your aunt.

What do you say to them? How do you respond to that request? I'm here at Thanksgiving and I heard you speaking about me in the other room.

You said I'm a she and I'm not. I identify as a he or they them and I want you when you're referring to me and I'm not in the room to use my preferred pronouns.

I think you need to do what we were trying to talk about throughout the conference and you need to have that good open honest communication and you need to say something like I love you to the core.

I want your good. I am not here to get in a fight over what you are called.

I cannot use those pronouns that you request that I use, but what

I can do is I can talk with you. Let's talk together and seek to hear the other and reason together and I want to show you love and just like you wouldn't be loving me if I was doing something wrong in my life and I said affirm this from where I stand

I can't affirm you but again I want to talk to you I want a relationship with you and let's see if we can reason things out and at least have a civil mature conversation.

I would start there and in that conversation I would try to get to the gospel and sin and those kind of things.

That's a better answer than I would give. I would tend to be far more sarcastic and biting and flip the premise on them and say okay every time you refer to me

I want to be referred to as handsome and brilliant and when you're speaking to me in any situation any time you refer to me

I get my own adjectives. You get your own pronouns I get my own adjectives handsome and brilliant. Maybe that's the best strategy.

How about on a similar vein your somebody was once known as Jackie and now they want to be referred to as Jack.

Those are well other than Jackie Chan I guess I was trying to think of non dual gender names or Michael wants to be referred to as Michelle.

Do you go along with the name change and begin to use a different name for that person? There again my personal approach would probably not be to aggressively repeat their birth name 20 times in a 10 minute conversation honestly.

Just like if I'm talking to a gay person let's say I'm probably not in a 10 minute conversation going to say 20 separate times being gay is a sin.

What I am trying to do is be truthful you know hue to the truth stand for what is true and I'm neither afraid of using their birth name nor am

I acting as if that is the ultimate issue. The ultimate issue is the heart and that's where I'm not where those churches are that say we're not going to talk about homosexuality put that to the side for 8 weeks just hear us out on idolatry you know the idolatry of identity and chasing work and satisfaction and money that's what we're going to talk about.

I'm not there. I'm not there. I'm not willing to say let's set that to the side. But I'm also not the guy who's going to come in and use a bullhorn and shout at you directly about the one sin

I know that you're enmeshed and I'll talk about it with you but I am happy to talk about sin more broadly and I don't think we have to have what

I'm trying to say Jim is and what these questions are getting at is I fear that sometimes we feel that we're being unfaithful in evangelism if when we're face to face with a sinner we don't only say this sin is wrong like repeatedly if you don't do that you're a bad evangelist you're compromising the gospel and what

I want to say to people is no look at how Jesus converses with sinners of many kinds look at where the conversation goes he's able to talk with them he's able to reason with them

I think we can laugh with them I think we can form a bond with them if there's something we like in terms of movies or culture or sports teams

I think we can forge that connection Christians don't have to be the weirdest most offensive person in conversation that they possibly could be to be a faithful conversant when

I talked earlier about Rosaria Butterfield the pastor there I think his last name was Smith the pastor who engaged

Rosaria you can read her testimony some of you probably read this secret thoughts of an unlikely convert if you want a good book about a pastor engaging a professor of queer theory which is all these situations right he did it well

I didn't say perfectly but he did it well and he was clear from the outset in a gracious firm way he didn't agree with her being a lesbian but he let the relationship develop and he let the conversation go all sorts of places she had lots of questions about the

Bible and he would patiently talk through Old Testament passages you know oh so you do believe in mixed fabrics being sinful you know all that sort of stuff right and he wouldn't say no

I'm not talking about that you must repent now he would he would talk all the way through it and it took her time

I'm not saying we don't share the gospel in a given conversation I think we do but it took her a long time to become she calls it her train wreck conversion because it was just an unfolding series of smashes in her life and it took a long time so I think the church today

I think our wing feels too much pressure to kind of get the bull horn out click it in and just go at level a thousand

I think we need to calm down and we shouldn't do relational evangelism in terms of setting sin aside but we should feel free to be friendly and kind and nice and hospitable and loving and funny and and truthful on a similar vein this is going to get increasingly more difficult your

HR department more difficult than this? your HR department sends out an email saying we would like you to include your preferred pronouns in your email signature from now on so that everybody else in the company knows how to refer to you do you go by that do you abide by that or is that affirming a lie

I don't know that it is a lie for you to say that you are he him or she her so I don't know that that's in itself sinful for you to say but isn't it a lie to affirm that any of us has a right or responsibility to prefer our pronouns pronouns are a feature of reality so it would be a lie to affirm the premise because really what we're talking about is the premise of their position is that we should abide by other people's preferred pronouns the premise of their position is that one can choose their pronouns and make that known so that they can be referred to however they want if that's the premise the premise of that is a lie the premise of that is rebellion and if we go along with that with our

HR department isn't that affirming a lying or an untrue premise yeah I mean it could be

I want to leave open that possibility I guess I'm not convinced that if you ask me am

I a he her or a they them I think I can say I'm a he him I might have said that wrong just a minute ago

I think I said he her it's 3 .20 at the end of seven sessions today after last night's book episode we had we're all a little confused

I'm starting to get a little bit internally confused myself no

I don't know about that you were confused before you showed up here I think go ahead listen you just need to like literature more there's some good literature out there written by women so yeah

I don't I wouldn't these are hard questions and I want to be a little bit careful about like this is the line in the sand

I just want to be careful because people are in humongous corporations where you have to give your you have to say your pronouns

I want to leave some room for conscience this is me you may be in a slightly different position your position makes sense to me

I don't think it's unsensible but I want to leave a little bit of room for like here's the line for me here's the line for you

I can't say I can't even play by the preferred pronoun game that's that's defensible someone else might say

I'm going to say I'm he him not he her I'm he him but I what

I can say as a red line is I don't think you should you should use preferred pronouns of someone who is going against their god -given sex that to me is a clear red line okay how about a

I'll give you a tactical response to this would it be appropriate this is how I would suggest handling it tell me you think about this yay or nay

I would email back and say I am a biological male so you use what pronouns are appropriate for biological males good by me right

I'm not picking pronouns because you're I reject the premise that I can choose my own pronouns but the reality is the truth is

I was created as a biological male therefore use the language that is appropriate to refer to biological males

I will not give you my pronoun you use English try that again back to this this is my default sarcasm is my spiritual gift so I go back into the default sarcasm and I have to always pull back from that to be gracious like Owen right so there's sarcasm and there's then there's

Owen I don't know about the standard is Owen but I don't want that pressure but I would yeah

I like that and that's actually that was maybe not articulated on my part a minute ago but I can actually say my my pronouns are he him that's not a preference so I think that's a statement in a very similar position this is how you should refer to me

HR I'm a he him there's no preference so you know yes something like that is great by me yeah all right a little bit more difficult situation and I bring this one up not because anybody asked it but because I know that there is a family in this room here who knows somebody who has family there's a person in this room who has family members who are in this situation who have dealt with this situation recently yes you own a business you hire somebody as a receptionist

Michelle comes in she does a great job you refer to as she her it's Michelle Smith this relationship goes on for five years then you find out that this was once Michael yes

Smith and because of surgery because of drugs because of the presentation you had no idea that this person is actually a biological male they pull off the female act very very well now that you know this information how do you refer to this person you refer to this person as he him do you refer to him as Michael because you do that you're going to jail in the state of California almost at that point how do you handle a situation like that that is a very difficult situation from the outset so let that be said but it's probably one that a number of us are going to face because in that situation you've been affirming a lie for five years not knowing it you've been going along believing what you thought was true in acting according to what you thought was true now you find out that something else is true you continue to do that then you are living by lies and affirming something affirming an act of rebellion the employer relationship is a sticky one because you get into discrimination law and so you have a place as an employer for as a

Christian I mean for going this does not cut it with what

I know to be true from scripture but that can be a very sticky reality in terms of getting sued and those sorts of things so someone just has to know that you know to make it a little more of a hand hold morally this premise you're giving me would be similar to you have friends who you find out one of them is transgender so to speak one of them transitioned the way that you're talking about they didn't actually become the opposite sex but they tried to and you've been affirming their marriage you know can you go on affirming that marriage if one of the individuals transitioned so to speak and I would say no no

I don't think I can I can't pretend you're Kathy when you're Michael but that is going to be a whole barrel of monkeys fun you know and trying to be a witness to people in that situation

I think that there we come back to the principles the underlying principles is we have to be truthful and honest we have to speak the truth and love this may sometimes cost us and I think unless the

Lord brings revival and changes some things in our nation there's going to come a point where we are going to be it's going to cost us to affirm things that are basic truth yeah

I agree dial off a little bit those were tough ones let me back up a bit what about those who want to dress as a boy when a girl or a girl when a boy and they want us as family to support their change how do we deal with friends who support their child's or grandchild's change even when they are believers

Christians who have children that have gone through the people who claim to be Christians their children are doing this and they want to affirm it how do we handle those people who are affirming that yeah very similar kind of approach to what we've been talking about we're trying to be as loving as we can and we recognize there are broader issues than just the clothing decisions but we cannot affirm that and I believe that love would especially with a child in question call us to try to have a conversation over that where we would warn them of the danger of what they are doing what is first wave feminism second wave feminism

I am so sorry to be rude but that's what kicked up in our circles a few months ago that's exactly what happened with a certain very famous preacher and it's all over the nature of what it means to be loving of people living in lies and the broader principle that you and I are getting at here there's going to be some gray areas there are in this we need to honor that but at base to find the wall behind us in all the fog of this gender confusion it is not loving to affirm somebody's lie and so the grandparents who have a grandchild who is getting married to someone of the same sex they are not being loving in going to that ceremony in sending a gift in any way affirming that all the loving thing for that genuinely loving grandfather or grandmother what a horrible situation to be in we have great compassion for that but the loving thing is to do what we're talking about it's to have hard conversations we're so terrified of having hard conversations by the way we're just terrified of it and I understand why because there can be severe consequences that come to us but we can't be terrified of hard conversations we've got to draw on in a

David like way the power of the spirit and we've got to pray a lot of prayer we need a lot of prayer a lot more prayer than a lot of us are giving about these things and we've got to then say to grandma who is very confused about going to the gay wedding of her grandchild do not go do not send a gift that was terrible counsel that was given publicly devastating awful damaging counsel instead what needs to happen is hopefully you grandma or whoever it is but you try reach out to your beloved grandchild set up a time to talk to them and say

I love you so much I love you because of the gospel of grace that is forgiven a sinner like me

I'm a sinner just like you and I've got to say to you you you are putting your soul and mortal peril by going further down the road in this sin of homosexuality please in love

I beg you don't do this run away from your sin and run to the forgiving arms of Jesus he will wash you clean to the uttermost you are not in a different category of super sinner over me because I'm a heterosexual sinner you are just like me that's the advice that should have been given not because I'm perfect but according to scripture that is the advice that should have been given to that precious grandmother facing a hard situation never to affirm the sin of any sinner not just homosexuality that's culturally palatable now but of any sinner you have to try to do the hard work of having

I'm sorry having a hard conversation but a true conversation a gospel conversation and pray for their soul and pray for them to come out of that.

You're talking about Alistair Begg just in case anybody didn't catch the illusion. What is first wave feminism second wave feminism third wave feminism what are the distinctives between that quickly just you just kind of give a brief description of it.

Yeah first wave feminism centered in the right to vote the right for women to vote in public elections and related related issues women in the workforce some of those kind of things sometimes first wave feminism is presented as like yay evangelicals affirm all of that I'm personally good with women voting

I don't have any biblical basis to say women shouldn't vote which would be a separator with me and some in the patriarchy camp who would say men of rulers of the household they're the only ones who should vote

I find that an extension beyond what scripture would say I understand how you could get to that position

I'm not saying it's wicked of the devil I just think that's probably a click or two beyond where scripture is and there was a lot of feminist energy and some very bad theology in first wave feminism second wave feminism is 1950s and 60s feminism it's women rejecting traditional gender roles third wave feminism is feminism of the 80s and 90s it expands to feminism expands to include homosexuality lesbianism as a cause that's linked up with feminism and then fourth wave feminism embraces even further transgenderism as a dimension of the feminist project and so feminism has gone reversed the direction has gone further and further to the left to the degree that now the feminist cause has lost its way because there are men who are supposedly feminists who are presenting themselves as women and that does not fit in particular with the second wave feminists who were totally about womanhood a real understanding of womanhood we would disagree with them strongly on a number of issues but they really did believe in womanhood and so the movement is eating itself

I've heard an analysis of all four waves of that basically saying that the seeds for fourth wave feminism second third and fourth wave feminism were laid we would look and say women should have the right to vote but the arguments that they used and the way they went about doing that paved the way and laid the foundation for second third and fourth wave feminism so basically the fourth wave feminism today is not a refutation of women have a right to vote with the arguments that they used fourth wave feminism now is a it's really the fruit or the flowering of that first wave feminism yeah there are for example first wave feminists who believed in the motherhood of God, God as mother like clear as a bell and that is a no bueno reality they may have argued for some things like you just said that I think

I can affirm from a biblical standpoint not their standpoint I think women can vote

I'm personally good with that but yes the seeds that were planted were not actually all good seeds from women being equal to men to women don't need men to women can be men kind of a full circle it's not even a spectrum we'll get right back to the point now where they're eating their own yeah and you would expect that the feminist movement would be up in arms at men, transgender men entering girls bathrooms and changing rooms for example and there are a few of the old guard feminists who have spoken up but largely they have been silenced and these are all secular people, very secular people largely the older feminists have been silenced by the newer pagan forms of feminism and so they're not defending girls much at all and now you've got a video of some hulking kid in an 8th grade girls basketball league in Massachusetts like smashing these little girls and all the liberal parents are just watching and clapping and you're like oh my word but this is a missions moment for us because there are people out there on the left and middle and right who are not

Christians and we can say, I think we should point them to these things and say do you believe this is right?

Do you believe, guy at the local grocery store if you get into a conversation, do you believe it's good that men are going into the little girls rooms?

And you should absolutely take that as an evangelistic opportunity to say the reason you know that's wrong is because God gave you a conscience and we ultimately need

Jesus so use these moments, everybody wants to sorry Jim, everybody always wants to evangelize the left, the far left what about people on the right?

What about conservative people who actually agree with us on some of these things but they're not born again not even a little, we need to use these moments to evangelize them too.

And show them that the reason that they objected to these things is because they're borrowing a world view that they will not affirm by faith so but basically feminism now has ended up resulting in an attack upon women totally.

The second, third and fourth wave of feminism has now resulted in women under attack. As one podcast host I heard recently said, if you think that this country is horrible under the patriarchy, wait until you see it under the matriarchy, that's going to be bad.

Is there a difference between gender and sex? There is in the handbook of the left okay, more on the biblical handbook in just a second but gender is how you perceive yourself sex is your anatomy sex is your biology so if you're at a public school around here and it's a secular public school, kids are being taught these things.

Your gender is different from your sex in the same way your body is different from your gender identity so you might have the body of a girl but you perceive yourself to be omnigender which is a real thing, beyond gender all the genders and so your gender identity is your true self and what we need to say is and that's why

I've used the word sex most here, there's some reasons why you don't always use that because it can get confusing but the best term is sex to talk about manhood and womanhood because sex refers to something that is fixed and sex means the correlation of body and identity so I don't actually like the term gender very much.

I try not to use it. I'm sure I have used it just because it's in the stream but the best term is sex and to stay away from the term gender entirely because gender, not necessarily for somebody you're talking to in a church might hear gender and mean sex something fixed by God but on the other side talking with a leftist person let's say, you might use gender and they will hear you to be saying oh that which is your perceived self identity so it's best not to use gender to refer to one's sex, simply because of the way that the world is using it.

So to back up, until about 5 minutes ago in human history, we all recognized that sex and gender were synonyms, they were the same thing.

So sex, the world would say, refers to your biological reality, whether you're XX or XY, gender refers to your perceived reality, how you feel on any given day and therefore they have divided these things so that they can talk about, your sex is a fixed reality,

XXXY but gender is how you feel and so that what they want to do is conform the body to the way that they feel, never questioning whether or not their perception of reality is accurate, they always assume that the presentation of their body is what is the problem or inaccurate not their perception of themselves and so they want to try and change the appearance of their sex to match their gender and this is where the confusion comes in so it would be helpful for you guys to recognize the distinction between gender and sex in terms of how the world is talking about those issues which

I think creates a lot of confusion in people's thoughts. Exactly, that's very well said and yes I should have just answered that myself using that whole framework is you building a house in midair because this is what we see with youth who embrace some kind of cross gender identity you know,

I'm not, my identity isn't the same as my body when you do that you are rejecting the firm ground of your

God given identity, not that that's saving, you're not saved in affirming that but God made you that so that's good and you are then catapulting yourself into the heart of a hurricane and that is why tragically so many

LGBTQ etc affirming youth end up committing suicide and it's not first and foremost because lots of people say hateful things to them at Starbucks in the drink line it is,

I'm sure there is sin that occurs in that way in our world, there's not always love toward people in those situations, that's true, but the major reason is because you are leaving behind firm ground and you are entering the whirlwind and outside of the grace of God you will not come out of it.

If you start leaving behind your God given sex and if you start beginning to experiment with dressing like a girl, if you're a boy or even haircuts and these kind of things, you should watch out because that is a way that Satan wants to lure you away from the solid ground of your

God given identity this is something that's important it's not that there's a perfect hair length in terms of how long a woman's hair should be, but we do want to honor

God's design for example in 1 Corinthians 11 and we recognize that Paul, in a very pagan context, a context where temple prostitutes are shaving their heads the

Apostle Paul does not say to the Corinthians, hair length doesn't matter, your hair doesn't matter, what matters is your heart and trusting

Jesus Paul says the woman's long hair is given to her for a covering he goes on to say it is her glory so what my point is here, especially with our younger people

God's glory is in presenting ourselves as a man if we are a man, and presenting ourselves as a woman if we are a woman of course there's some gray areas there, right, what is the perfect hair length?

people always ask me when I say this, I don't know but what I know is, honor and glorify God and don't go the way of the gender neutral androgynous culture, we want to raise our girls understanding girlhood and womanhood is good we want to raise our boys understanding boyhood and manhood is good and they're distinct and so since we're on this subject, 1

Corinthians 11 the head covering, is that something for today? Should women be wearing hats and head coverings in church?

I think that is a possible position, and some are convicted because of their study of 1

Corinthians 11 that a woman should wear a, you know, kind of head covering on their head in that way.

The passage 1 Corinthians 11 goes back and forth in some interesting ways Paul's talking about the angels for example in it, and so it's a challenging passage, you know, preachers and teachers can affirm that there are some passages that are more challenging than others, that's a challenging one

I land, personally I do think what is happening in Corinth is that some women are using a hair shawl or whatever you want to call it to show that they are under authority the authority of their husband but if you actually read through the whole passage,

I think what he says in verse 16 that her long hair is given to her for a covering, means that you actually don't have to be wearing a kind of hair covering your long hair is your covering it is your glory, it's the woman's glory so that would be my position which doesn't mean a woman has to have, you know, waist length hair until she's 90, in a lot of cases women can't because of how a woman's hair changes over time it does mean that a woman is trying to distinguish herself in a godly way, joyful way for men that's my position okay, is it cutting out back there?

I'm sitting on my belt pack mercy, sakes of life I'm getting heat for my literary choices,

I'm sitting on the belt pack the sound guy's blaming me I'm having to handle head coverings in public no,

I'm just kidding, I'm just kidding alright, we've got 15 minutes left, as someone who grew up with an angry harsh Christian, quote unquote

Christian father, how do I now learn to submit to and respect men as leaders and someday as a husband, seeing as how the only example

I know has lost my respect, I have an embittered view of men and I struggle to trust them to lead me without causing great pain and harm

I absolutely love the honesty and open communication of that question praise

God, whoever wrote that and had the courage to say that in public we need more of that it's going to be hard it's going to be hard for that woman young woman perhaps, to trust a man what a young woman in that position needs to know is that it is possible for her to read that experience which is a real experience, sounds like onto all men and if she lets herself do that that won't necessarily be a good place to be, because that man sounds like he was harsh, let's just assume he genuinely was harsh, but not all men are that way, and not all men who lead in a genuinely biblical way are harsh and so be careful, whoever this is in the room, be careful treat each man as he comes, don't make the devil's mistake that the devil wants you to make, and read one man onto all men that's what has happened so much that's why there's so much, one reason why there's so much discussion of toxic manhood because there are nasty men out there who have caused terrible damage and I think a lot of feminists out there are people, at least some of them are women who went through genuinely bad circumstances but you know the mistake they made?

they made the mistake of now writing off men and if you read feminist literature, you read it and you try to be perceptive, you're like whew, this woman was sexually abused, and now she thinks that all men are out to get all women it's not at all true, even outside of Christianity, it's not true of all men it's just not, but then within the church,

God saves men, God changes men and God will help this young woman if she finds a godly man, he will help her, it's going to be a process though for her, it's going to be hard probably to trust that this man she would marry if that happens loves her, and if he gets upset at her, as even godly men do in marriage in the early years in particular as they're working things out, that may flare for her, and she may need a godly woman to call and talk to like really, someone who's kind of on notice, because she's like I'm about to freak out, and I'm about to drive to Tacoma here, because this guy,

I think he's just like my dad, and she really might need godly women around her to say okay,

I don't think he talked to you the way he should, that's not good, but you know, that's also not blow the marriage up and leave and from a pastoral counseling perspective you should have that conversation with your prospective fiance to tell them this was my experience,

I don't want to judge you by that, but understand that there's stuff there from the background that needs to be known walking into that marriage that's the kind of honest, healthy communication we have to have a ton of, exactly right where she signals to him,

I may freak out if you get a little too upset with me, I don't mean he's doing something horrible to her, but even just the way it happens in marriage, right?

It fights and she needs to say to him to any man who would win her heart yeah, exactly like you said

I may freak out stay patient with me, stay calm stay gentle, that's going to help me you don't want to ramp up,

I've learned this in my own marriage, sometimes if my wife is upset, I ramp up and get upset, and that is oh man, it's just so often the case with a girl in that situation that you need to calm down, you need to be gentle, does it help to tell her calm down, you need to calm down how does one know if they've been called to singleness or marriage it can be hard to know this can be one of those difficult gray areas of the

Christian faith, the Christian faith is not all perfect black and white, sliced and diced like cold cuts on a tray the

Christian life can be difficult and sometimes you're not sure, but in general, a lot of people are driven toward marriage because they want to be married and so that desire drives them to then be in the market, if you'll excuse the crass terminology, and then you know, if there's a suitor on the other side or if there's a girl they potentially like, that pushes them off the sidelines, right?

But then there are difficult situations, and that may be behind this question where you have the desire to be married but you don't have the circumstances to be married and that can be challenging in that case, if that is what is behind the question then you keep praying, you keep trusting the

Lord you keep storming heaven with your requests if you want to be married sadly, I alluded to this there are a lot of people today in our delayed marriage culture who want to be married, there are a lot of young women who want to be married, but the young men are not mature and are not pursuing marriage and that leads to hard circumstances that doesn't necessarily mean though that you can't get married okay, if Adam tried to stop and warn

Eve, but she didn't listen, would God still hold him responsible? This would go for husbands who warn their wives um

God would still hold Adam responsible, yes, but not he wouldn't be in the wrong you know, so, not culpable he's not culpable, he tried husbands this is a very important question actually if you double click on it, husbands are not responsible for single handedly keeping their wives from sin and this is part of what troubles me about some of the patriarchy stuff including some of the stuff that's in Idaho I have real concerns with any language that is like husbands, you are the one who keeps your wife from sin no, you are not you are not the one who keeps your wife from sin you are a voice in your wife's life, and you have authority to shepherd her, and so yes there's responsibility there but you don't have charge of her heart or mind, and the more you try to take that over the less good

I think occurs, instead do all the things, I think, hopefully we put some things on the table that are helpful from the

Bible, do all the things to be a godly husband, to love her well to point her to the Lord, to have a culture in the home of going to the word but don't think that if your wife and this is part of your joking about you know, calm down or whatever ugh

I'll just tell on myself here some of us may have been in a situation where our wife, you know, maybe wasn't hitting an all time high in the

ESPN top ten list of submissive moments in marriage, and maybe we said something to the effect of, you know, would you just please just submit and now

I lost the women in the room after the conference but honestly, as a young man, this is the honesty we need to have, husbands say these things to their wives, and wives say some pretty spicy things to their husbands too if that's your approach to dialing up submission in the home have fun with that better to hear me in the right way let her sin if she's not in a submissive moment don't try to forcibly stop unsubmissiveness instead, choose godliness on your part you ramp down,

I mean this genuinely you ramp down and you effectively say to yourself I will meet her when she calms down but I'm not going to try to wrangle you stop being unsubmissive to me that is not that's not the model for us

I mean that genuinely, I think though with some of the patriarchy stuff the rule of the man

I think men are tricking themselves into thinking this sort of overbearing leadership that's the way a wife is going to become godly no it's not, she might even conform to you she might even perform the behavior you want from her, but probably what you are doing is creating a little legalist or fomenting a little legalist or a man dependent wife not a god dependent wife it's hard to live with a sinner, husband to wife wife to husband, but we have to be pointing each other to the lord not taking control of each other women do this too, with men women try to control men too this is what the sexes do in a sinful world, we try to control each other and honestly, we influence each other we speak truth to each other yes, all sorts of ways, but we don't control each other so stop, stop the controlling project wife to husband too, don't control him don't nag him to death don't oppose him don't make nasty passive aggressive comments that are communicating anger at what he's doing you've got to lay off of that and you've got to do what we've tried to talk about, you've got to say alright

I'm really ticked right now off this man he's a sinner and it ticks me off but I'm going to let my blood cool

I'm going to ask him if we can have a calm time to talk and then I'm going to say this I don't think is you at your best, can we kill sin together in this area, you know those kind of things that's a way better approach than him controlling her or her controlling him you just had an episode of your podcast a couple weeks ago should a man dominate his wife which was excellent,

I would point you to that episode of truth and grace, since you brought up Doug Wilson your thoughts on Christian nationalism what is it, good or bad, does it focus too much on patriotism for America and not enough on the sovereignty of God, or maybe not enough on the gospel, and then what are your thoughts on Doug Wilson I think we got into some of it last night, but to reiterate

I don't agree with Christian nationalism I don't think the

Great Commission teaches that we are called fundamentally as believers to Christianize our nation

I don't think that we are called many Christian nationalist people emphasize this, to bring

Old Testament civil law to bear on the public square when you look at Paul's this is such a big conversation,

I just wrote a 20 ,000 word article for G3 about Christian nationalism you can find it on my social media if you can find my social media, good luck with that but if you find it,

I wrote a 20 ,000 word response to Christian nationalism it took me months when you look at what

Paul talks about in the New Covenant for government, Romans 13 1 Peter 2, 1 Timothy 2

Matthew 22, Jesus words, you don't see any call to change

Caesar to stop Caesar from being Caesar, you actually kind of see Jesus and the

Apostles saying you're under Caesar so the call of the church, the mission of the church is not to make

Caesar Christian that may happen, leaders may be Christians in nations, and if so that's wonderful, they should make good law but the church's mission here's how

I'll, here's the last thing I'll say, the church's mission and the state's mission are distinct the church's mission is to make disciples and be the church corporately and then scattered the state's mission is to restrain evil and to reward those who do good, so create a civil order,

I think it's a pretty minimal mandate, frankly, for government in the New Testament, but that's what the state does, but the state in no

New Testament text in the Old Testament, it's different, there's a covenant switch in the New Testament, the state does not police doctrine the state is not responsible for recognizing the lordship of Jesus even and you say that on Twitter and people then say you don't love the lordship of Jesus?

don't you want it expressed everywhere? well, I want it expressed everywhere it's supposed to be expressed, but I don't go to my local donut shop and pressure them and harangue them and yell at them, you should be recognizing the lordship of Jesus I recognize

I'm in a world where people may recognize it or not, but my mission is not to get the donut shop or the local police office to have a

Christian flag flying over it, the mission of the state is to punish evil and reward good, and it is not to get into theology, it's not to say what is blasphemy it's not to hold heresy trials and so I am in a different place than men in Moscow, men in Moscow have done good work on a number of issues,

Doug Wilson has said a lot of true things about manhood there are some things he says about manhood I disagree with, he called for men who are courageous but not careful men he said the careful men will come later and write the biographies of the courageous men and I think that very idea, that picked up a lot of steam in COVID days,

I know why it did, because there wasn't a lot of courage so Wilson has been a voice among the public leaders of the church,

Wilson has been a voice who has showed courage for example, but if you are not both courageous and careful you will end up in the territory

I fear the CN movement is in, the Christian nationalist movement is in and it is not being exegetically careful it is not careful about the mission of the state and it is not careful about the mission of the church, it is fusing them it's fusing them in part because we're in evil days and it's very hard and so Christians are going, oh no we're losing

America, we've got to Christianize it, and that's fusing the missions and I think that's even though it's very hard to be in these evil days, we need to be exegetically careful,

Joshua 1 7 says that we should both be courageous, Joshua needs to be courageous and very careful to do all the law, so for this is a pioneering mission

Joshua's on, you would think the Lord God would say just be courageous, just go take the promised land, right?

It's not what he says, he says to a strong young man, be courageous but also be very careful, so I think

Wilson's error starts out small and ends up big part of the problem with the

Christian Nationalist movement is that you don't have clarity on what it means to be a Christian Nationalist so probably 5 -6 weeks ago you had somebody on the left who said if you believe that your rights are given to you by God, that makes you a

Christian Nationalist well I happen to believe that but I'm not a Christian Nationalist so it's best to avoid that title altogether in terms of what my political philosophy is and say

I refuse to let you label me and then define your labels I agree, yeah alright what do you think about women saying that they should have a right to vote, is that feminism?

I guess we covered that one, sorry is Samson in heaven? I think he is

Samson prays at the end of his life and he seems to recognize the truthfulness of God and the need for God and so I read

Samson, I mean there's debate in the commentaries among scholars but I read Samson as a very flawed but true follower of God I mean

I think the door to heaven might have hit him on the way in on his ankle

I think he kind of bumped into the King I think he got in Isn't Samson in the

Hall of Faith? Hebrews 11 Hall of Faith? He's a man of faith so I think that would be your answer

I think the door to the hall closed on his ankle I think we're going to see him there.

How far do you take the Biblical directive that men are to lead and women are to nurture and help? Does it apply only within marriage?

Can women lead men in business, in industry, in government positions, women soldiers female marriage counseling, counseling a man?

Oh my word You're throwing this at me at 4 o 'clock? Well Okay, let's do this

Can women lead men in business? Yes or no? I think so, yeah. I don't want to that's where I'm trying to be exegetically careful as a complimentarian.

She can. I think she can. There might be situations though where we would say I think she can, that might not be what

I'm training my daughter to be like I'm not training my daughter to be a CEO we're more ordering our daughters, pointing our daughters that is in the direction of you know marriage, family, homemaking,

Christian ministry, that sort of thing but I'm not going to say it is sinful if my daughter becomes a manager at Panera and there's a young man under her.

I'm not going to say that I don't have any biblical text that I know of to say that's wrong Okay, so when I say this or this it's like a yes or no for the next part of this

What about in government positions? It's okay yeah

I'm serious I think it's permissible I'm not being squishy

I mean you have Isaiah saying in Isaiah 3 .12 that it is not good that women are ruling over Israel That was a judgment of God It's a judgment of God and Deborah knows

Deborah, Deborah who's acting courageously and righteously and did what she should have done is saying to Barack you are being a wuss and this is not good basically, right?

But we're not in the Old Testament so what I'm trying to do is say it seems like the biblical trajectory is that men lead in the home church and in public but I'm not willing to say on the other hand it is absolutely sinful for a woman to hold public office or something like that.

That feels like a step too far. That feels like I'm going beyond what scripture says and I want to affirm what scripture affirms and I want to prohibit what scripture prohibits.

Okay, rapid fire The cult of death, abortion, euthanasia was the foundation for the Nazis in the Third Reich How do the proponents of this modern day cult of death deal with that reality?

How do they interact with that? Do they recognize that those things were part of the Nazi regime? That the cult of death is the culture of death is part of that?

Ah, some of them probably do but I think they they've taken

Rawlsian rights, this is political philosophy language, but they've taken that concept of rights. Every person has sovereign rights basically and they've applied that to their bodies and they say, yeah the

Third Reich devalued life but that's not us we're not trying to put anybody in a concentration camp. This is just about me as a woman reclaiming my body and by the way there's all these horrible patriarchal men who force us to have all these kids and we don't want to have them.

So that's how they get a lot of steam in the public square and what we have to say to them is yes

God has given you your body but God has also given you the child in your womb, their body. Yeah, so the problem with the

Third Reich is they just didn't have the right people in charge The problem with socialism all the past attempts at socialism is they just didn't have the right people in charge.

It failed. They never tried it the right way. That's right. What was your toughest conversation and how did it end?

Toughest conversation, what? And how did it end? This one and it's ending soon. Alright.

This one should be quick. How are we as leaders and parents to emphasize God's non -utilitarian purposes of humanity as we obey

Him? What are God's purposes for us as His image bearers? Huge question.

Very good question. We have to show people in part by the way we live that we value human life and human life is itself valuable.

It's not valuable because of what we extract from it. We need to communicate to people that humanity has intrinsic worth, not extrinsic worth.

Extrinsic worth identity means that you have worth as you prove your merit or you prove your value or you earn your capital and we are saying something very different.

We are saying that human beings have intrinsic merit by virtue of being human and then the whole human experience is itself

God given and in moral terms valuable and meaningful and all dimensions of life have meaning and so we're not simply saying as I talked about earlier that for example worship is only what happens on Sunday morning.

We're saying that all of life is enchanted by the glory and the grace of God and just living honestly we're always trying to figure out this like how do

I what's the secret to evangelism? The secret to winning a post Christian culture and there's no secret.

It is to plant gardens, build homes and have sons and daughters meaning by which

I mean it's to live out the Christian life but to not live it out in a compound closed off from people.

To live it out where you're inviting others in and you're trying to be a witness and not to shame people but to show them what

God does in sinners like us. Is there a war on women? Yeah.

Yeah. Feminism is a war on women. It's a war on women that weirdly conscripts women into the war against themselves.

Yeah. But that's been the war of prior decades. Now there's a war of men.

How much fun was it to drive squirrels Miata that got thrown in here? Extremely. Extremely fun. And I think

I'm going to do it again. Are you going to sing the Christian rap song that people wanted you to hear?

I got what's hidden. Shock is his optimism. It's optimistic and avoided like a logarithm. Can't stop it. Keep it. Drop it. It is locked in prison.

Not a cop. A cop's song is to see God within him. Robbed of venom. Rest in grace like it's softened. And let him in. He's sinning. Winning. Grinning. Winning. Awful. And it's blend of venom.

I will present on the scale while so many transgress the shine. So momentic. So find the lines between some of the cons of divinance. Climb the beam.

Then realize the real prize is feeling what's real. Not to tame or strain or maintain. But to heal.

Disgust is a must and the dust to kneel. I must appeal to the God who defies. The man denying in his soul what he sees with his eyes. This might be the first time anybody's ever spoken tongues in this church.

The first and the last. We are a cessationist church so Owen will not be preaching tomorrow.

Alright, just a couple of closing announcements. First, thank you kitchen staff and volunteers for all your help in putting together food.

For Brian Ashby and his boys who spent the night in a tent outside here next to the smoker so that they could make that meat for you.

Wow. Wow. And one last round of applause for Owen.

Thank you. In the midst of, hold on, in the midst of all of your moving and all the chaos that you got going on in your own life, your own busyness, you still came here to do this when you could have just called me and said, hey, is there any way

I can get out of that because things are in chaos. So that was a huge sacrifice and I'm grateful for it brother,

I really do. Give him a round of applause for that. Thank you. Alright and then next year's conference is

Jeff Williams. Jeff Williams is on the board of directors with grace to you. He has the notable distinction at one time of holding the record for the most time spent on the

International Space Station in consecutive days and he's somewhat of an amateur photographer so he's taken a bunch of videos and photographs from his time on the space station.

He's going to be here next year, the first weekend in June, talking about the Christian worldview in science and whether there is a conflict between science as it is rightly done and the

Christian worldview. He's going to be dealing with the science that is necessary to put somebody into space and to keep them alive in space and then he's going to be backing up sort of that science and that Christian approach to science with not just scripture and what scripture teaches about those issues but also with photographs and videos of his time spent on the space station so that's going to be a very curious and interesting one.

He's going to do the very same thing Friday night, Saturday night and then preach and do Sunday school and preach on Sunday morning.

So Saturday day, right, correct. Friday night, Saturday day and then preach on Sunday morning.

So that is next year and registration for that will probably open up in February sometime. I'm going to close in prayer and then

I would just ask for some of the gentlemen who know how to set up tables and chairs to give us a hand with that to set up for church tomorrow and Owen can be at the back signing books and we'll get this ready for church.

Let's pray. Father we are grateful for the time that we have had here for again bringing Owen out here and we pray that your rich blessing would rest upon him and his family during this transition time.

Thank you for the work and effort that he has put into preparing this for us and ministering to us and we would pray that it would be abundantly rewarded and that you would make this transition easy for him and for his family and keep them united in their purpose and intention of serving you.

Alleviate their stress and anxiety over these things and pray that this new phase of ministry may be abundantly blessed by you.

You would use them mightily to advance your kingdom and your truth. Thank you for the fellowship that we enjoy with him and with one another around these things and we pray that the truths that we have heard here would sink deeply into our hearts and that we would rejoice in your word and your goodness and your good nature and your love for us.

Thank you for reminding us again of the power of the gospel and how these things apply in the lives of those around us, in our families and in the difficult challenging decisions that we have to make in the future.

So we pray that you would equip us and encourage us to stand bold in the truth and be willing to pay the price whatever that may be and to do so with joy trusting you for the outcome and looking to Jesus who is the author and perfecter of our faith for it is in his name that we pray.