Highlight: The Need for Biblical Masculinity

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So the first verse is one I just shared. 1 Corinthians 16 and 13, be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.

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And I mean, it's just, it's such a concise, powerful verse. It literally defends what it, or defines what it means to be a man in that verse, be watchful, stand firm in the faith, be strong.

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So that's one verse. And before we get into the second one, I will open it up to you. Rusty, go ahead.

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You're our guest. What are your thoughts on that verse? Well, you know,

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God defines himself as a male. He's the father of the fatherless.

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Obviously our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ didn't come as an animal. He came as a human being and he chose the gender male, a man.

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And so when you look at the outlay or the theme of scripture, you see a lot of references to the patriots, the patriarchy.

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And, you know, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, right on down through redemptive history, we see men of God taking the role of the, you know, prophet, priest, king, you know, things of that nature.

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And it's interesting because in that passage of scripture, you have

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Heavenly Father pretty much getting up into the face of men and commanding certain things from them.

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Number one is they got to be watchful. And we have to watch.

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In other words, men need to be that watchman upon the wall. You know, fathers need to be in the home.

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You're like, what's coming into my home? What's going out of my home? Has the enemy somehow invaded my home, captured my kids under my watch?

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It's very, very important that men are watchful, that we are alert. There's a lot of danger, a lot of evil, a lot of threats in this world, and we have to be watchful.

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It also says something about the manly virtue of firmness, you know, stand firm.

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In other words, we have to develop within men a firm foundation of faith because that's the anchor that holds.

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Men who are tossed to and fro, men that are unstable, obviously, that brings great harm into their marriages.

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It brings great harm into the family. It impacts the church in a very negative way.

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And so we need to have that, develop that immovable faith within the male of the species.

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Now, the King James says, quit ye like men.

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And I remember the first time I came across that, I said, like the American male, be a man and quit, right?

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When the tough gets going, take off. You know, that's a lot of how masculinity is defined today, but that is not what

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God is saying to men. He is literally commanding men to act the man, you know, to be the man, to play a man's part and role in this earth.

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And then he says, be strong, okay? So be watchful, stand firm, be the man, do your duty as a man, fulfill your responsibility as a man, and then strength.

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So God presupposes strength to the male, to the man.

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Now, I know this is fighting words today, but he said that the woman is the weaker vessel, okay?

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And so the Christian ethic, you are strong, you help the weak, right?

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And it's that understanding, by the way, brothers, where men being strong and women sort of fulfilling what the

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Scripture talks about, where God prizes a meek and mild spirit, that combination between strength and masculinity and meek and mildness and femininity, that is the best environment, that is the best place to nurture and raise children.

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And it's critically important that we understand the different functions and roles in that regard.

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Yeah, man, it's crazy, because I was just talking to a young guy who had called in, you know, we don't only counsel members of Apologia, but we try to do our best even, and we had a lot of people reaching out to us, you know, wanting to know about evangelism, just trying to help them make it through life.

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And I talked to a young guy, I think about a week ago, and he had just got out of basic training at Fort Benning.

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So I think his MOS was infantry. And he had told me within 13 weeks, so you go eight weeks of basic training, then you go about four or five more weeks of AIT, which is advanced training.

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He had said six guys committed suicide, like a sergeant, a first sergeant.

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Yeah, I couldn't even believe it. And then I've been getting into like suicide rates, and they have astronomically risen among young men.

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And it's because it's like this, they don't know what it means to like you just said, be firm, stand strong, be tough, make it through a time that you think that you can't make it through.

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And so we got a lot of these young men just putting bullets in their mouth and eating bullets. It's a horribly horrendous thing.

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It's because that aspect, just one aspect of biblical manhood, a true manhood is not being taught to the masses.

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And it's so crucial. I couldn't even believe these guys killing themselves at 18, 19. And then the sergeants were killing themselves too.

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You know what I mean? It's insane. Well, that goes perfectly into the next verse I want to share then.

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It's in Proverbs 24. And if anybody listening that follows us and knows about an abortion now, you know, our main verse is 2411.

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Rossi, you know, these verses like the back your hand, rescue those who are being taken away to death, hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter.

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But before that is verse 10. And that goes perfectly with what we're talking about here. Verse 10 is if you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small.

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And so that's been a big, a big verse for us as we're approaching this conversation is,

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I think that perfectly defines, again, what you guys are, the both of you were just talking about that perfectly defines what it means to be a man.

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You know, when, when you face the day of adversity, like don't faint, being a man is not fainting.

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It's, it's showing that you're strong and you're holding your ground, even though, you know, as they say in the military, even though you're in the suck, right?

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You're, you're, you're withstanding that and you're being strong, you're being faithful. And so that's the other verse

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I wanted to mention. And so I'm glad you said that, Zach, but Rusty, you look like you wanted to say something. Well, you know, obviously

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I don't think it's a coincidence that that's the order of that scripture because before he's commanding his people to rescue those unjustly sentenced to death, obviously

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God knows that's going to require a lot of inner strength to be able to intervene, to interpose on the behalf of the vulnerable and those being led to slaughter, you know, and that's, and that's not just talking, and it's not talking like bravado and machoism or anything like that.

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It's talking about the strength of the inner man to be able to put himself in harm's way, to sacrifice, to help serve others and protect them.

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And again, this gets to the heart of biblical manhood, like true biblical manhood.

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What is that about? Well, that's about taking these two kind of extremes in manhood, the fierceness, the anger, the rage, the explosiveness of manhood, you know, coupled that with the ability to be gentle.

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And it's interesting, C .S. Lewis said that it's the knighthood model that brought those two things together, okay?

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And so it's pretty important that men master their passions, their appetites, their lusts, and to use it in a redemptive way.

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And so biblical manhood, you know, the scripture says, be angry, but don't sin.

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Be angry is a command. But for men, we get anger, angry for all the wrong reasons.

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And they're typically selfish reasons. You're interrupting me. You're in my way.

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You're knocking me off my game. And we get very upset, and we explode on people, okay?

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But the anger that God is talking about is a righteous indignation. And quite frankly, if men do not have righteous indignation, where women are being turned into murderers, and their children are being tortured, and innocent blood that is being shed, if that doesn't strike a moral chord of righteous indignation, then yes, something is very wrong with our manhood.

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And it's critically important that we understand that true biblical manhood puts women and children first.

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We talk about being servant leaders, the head of the home. Very, very important. But what does that entail?

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That's talking about being a protector. It's talking about being a provider.

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That's talking about loving and caring for women and children. That was the great cry of the

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Birkenhead ship. That was the great cry of the Titanic. Women and children first.

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Well, where do they get that from? They got that from the Christian worldview. They got that from the

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Christian faith. They got that from the Christian ethic. That's what Christian men do.

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This is how we roll. This is who we are. And brothers, we see the state of our nation.

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We see the state of the family and our culture. The restoration of biblical manhood is so critically important for our future and hope.