14. Act Like Men!

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Welcome to the podcast where we prod the sheep and beat the wolf. This is episode 14,

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Act Like Men. There is a masculinity crisis in the modern world.

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And what I mean by that is not Neanderthalian, fart contest winning, beer bonging, grab happy, chest bumping, caricatures of manhood that we've all been conditioned to accept as entirely normative.

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Anyone can grow up and become like a child with a penis. That's not what it means to be a man.

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What I am talking about is real men, biblical men, and we need them now more than ever.

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Kind of ironclad warriors who bravely sounded the alarm nearly 200 years ago against the coming plague of feminism.

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But the world was far too foolish to listen to them back then. Now, as a result, we are the recipients of an emasculated world where men appear in dresses, on magazine covers, and the perverted laud them for their courage.

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We need real men. After decades of manlessness, the majority of men don't even have a clue of what biblical masculinity looks like.

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And frankly, it's not their fault. Most men do not have fathers, grandfathers, pastors, mentors, or godly masculine men in their life.

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And as they were growing up, they didn't have anybody to look to, so they have no vision of what that even looks like.

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And because of that, the next generation of boys are gonna be just as blind as we were when they take over at the helm.

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For this reason, we need a revival of true masculinity. We need to return to God, return to his word, and return to this

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God -blessed reality of true manhood, which God himself calls very good.

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And when we do that, we can actually change the world. If many, maybe even most of our problems in this world are plagued by unhealthy, failed masculinity or impotent, emasculated men, then producing a new culture of biblical

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Christ -like servant males would be a blessing not only to the church, but to the entire world.

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Just as every ship in the harbor is lifted by the rising tide, all people will be benefited by the rise of biblically faithful men.

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No more excuses. It's time for us to open up our Bibles and to get to work. And we're gonna do that over the next several weeks where we're gonna be looking at six fundamental characteristics of what it means to be a godly man.

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And what my hope is in all of this is that this would be an encouragement to any male in any season, at any point in his life, in his journey, because it's never too late to repent.

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It's never too late to see what Scripture says and to orient our life towards that. And I know for a fact that it will be a blessing to the women and children and people that God has entrusted to our leadership if we will act like men.

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Now, what I'm gonna share in this is not things that I have perfectly mastered either. There's areas of my life where I need to grow.

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There's areas in your life where you need to grow, but you need to be man enough to own that. And you need to be man enough to, instead of puffing your chest out and getting frustrated at the things that are gonna be said, taking your licks, going to the

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Scriptures, and repenting. That's what all of us have to do because we need godly men.

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In this series, it's gonna be six parts. We're gonna speak about what it means to act like men, what it means to worship like men, what it means to love like men, fight like men, live like men, sorry, lead like men, and then build like men, six topics.

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Today, we're gonna talk about what it means to act like a man. And I can think of no better place to begin that by considering what

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Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13, verse 11, where he says this. When I was a child,

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I used to speak like a child and think like a child and reason like a child. But when

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I became a man, I did away with childish things. This verse really does present the entire case for biblical manhood in two basic words, grow up, stop acting like a child, stop thinking in childish ways, eliminate the immaturity from your speech, and step up to the plate into the maturity that God has designed you for.

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And I don't wanna speak in generalities here. I wanna speak in very clear examples so that we all understand what this means.

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For instance, in the family, the infant is the purest distillation of egocentrism on earth.

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Dads, you may feel like that you exist in order to entertain your children. Moms, you definitely feel like that you exist to serve them.

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It can feel like that your children actually believe that they are the center of the universe, demanding their every need be met by you.

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They act as though their needs are the only ones worth caring about and the only ones that matter, and they don't seem to mind at all, mom, when you're on the phone and they're screaming or interrupting your precious sleep, or they seem totally oblivious to the essential task that you were doing, the infants in your home are saying, stop and feed me.

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Stop what you are doing and change me. Stop the things that are important to you and figure out why I am crying, and if you're lucky,

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I'll stop. Essentially, the baby lives like his needs are more important than yours, and your husband gets a break by being able to go to work, and if you don't believe that's the dichotomy, then you haven't had children.

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I think God makes them so cute so that mothers can't help but love them.

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They laugh and smile and ooh and ah and take pictures and everything else because they're adorable, even while the infant is treating them like no other adult would ever treat them in their life.

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If you think about it, an infant is the most needy, whiny, self -absorbed, time -sucking person in your life, and you love them unconditionally.

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It's a miracle in the way that God has created your heart, your emotions to so sacrificially love and care for this child and how your love is actually maturing that child out of their self -centeredness and egocentrism.

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It is a beautiful thing that God has designed the family to do, and again, it's sort of this endearing quality in a helpless infant who needs his or her mother so incessantly for their entire existence that when they cry, it can be beautiful, and when they're hurting or broken, it breaks your heart for them.

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Those things are endearing in the infant, but they're nauseating in the man. No woman on earth wants the responsibility of parenting children and a husband, and yet so many women end up feeling like that, that they have adult babies for their spouses, and I've heard that consistently from women over the years, that I feel like I'm a parent to my kids and I feel like I'm a parent to my husband.

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Your wife was not designed to parent you. Your wife was not designed to think of you like a child.

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Your wife was designed to follow you. You have to man up and grow up because far too many men have not.

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I don't know what it is. Maybe they didn't jump through the necessary hurdles in their maturation, but unfortunately, many men have graduated into manhood with a male body, but a fetal mind.

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The kind of man that acts like their needs are the most important needs in the family, they prioritize themselves, their emotions, their wants, their priorities, their desires, their cravings, they act as spoiled as the screaming toddlers at their feet.

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The only advantage is is that they get to go and have sex with their wives who are struggling being attracted to them because they're acting like children.

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Many men have traded in a bottle of milk for a bottle of beer, toddler tantrums for big boy problems, and when they prioritize themselves, their needs, their wants, their desires, their opinions, they're telling their wives, they're telling their families, and they're telling the world that I want you to approach me as that moody, egocentric babe.

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Serve me, care for me, me, me, me. That is not what men do.

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Men grow up, and a pivotal part of growing up is learning how to shift the focus off of yourself and to direct your attention and your care to those around you.

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A man doesn't need constant cathartic coddling from a wearied wife to boost his fractured ego.

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A man is not a victim in need of a support group. A man was created to provide support for the people in his group.

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Men are called to wake up, get before their God in worship, get dressed, comb their hair, find a job, make a living, provide for their family, and point them to Christ.

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We don't live to serve ourselves. We don't live to focus on our needs and our priorities.

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We live to serve other people like Jesus who came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.

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And you will know, brother, how well that you've matured as a man by how selfless you are.

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And if you're not sure, to get a very clear answer on this, ask your wife, how selfless am

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I? If you're single or if you're young, ask your mother, ask your father, ask your pastor, how selfless am

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I? On a scale of infants being the most selfish and men, grown -up godly men being selfless like Jesus, where do

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I fit on the continuum? And if you're anything other than Christ -like, which

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I wanna be clear, that's all of us. There's areas where we all need to repent. Then what

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I want you to do is take that energy that you have and repent before your God and move forward.

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Don't make excuses for yourself, brothers. Grow up, stand up, and act like men.

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Paul continues this thought in 1 Corinthians 16, 13, where he gives five essential qualities of manhood that we're gonna look at today.

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He says this, be on the alert, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong, and let all that you do be done in love.

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The first essential quality that Paul mentions about biblical godly masculinity is for you to be on the alert.

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When Paul says to be on the alert, he's talking to men called elders in the community who were tasked with protecting the church.

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Their job was to be on constant alert and guard to the attacks that were gonna be happening that would come in and would damage the bride of Christ.

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And because they were men, not selfish, but selfless, they spent the necessary time and energy to look out for the needs of the group instead of looking out for the needs of themselves.

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That is how men protect the things that they care about, by directing their energy and their efforts to being on the alert.

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Now, while not all of us are gonna be called to be elders in a church, most men are gonna be called to be husbands.

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Some men are gonna be called to be fathers, but all men are called to care for the people in their life who they love.

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Knowing that, we must all live out the character of an elder in our various spheres of people groups that God has assigned us to care for and to love the ones that we are called to serve.

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For instance, the primary act of defense that you, brother, will be providing is spiritual.

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Spiritual leadership. For instance, if you're a father, when the kids wanna watch a movie that promotes or even hints at homosexuality, you, my brother, are a bulwark of faithfulness that is not going to allow that filth in your home.

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You have every God -given right to say no, even if it doesn't win you any popularity contest, people misunderstand you and they get frustrated at you, you are there to protect your family no matter what.

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You're the one who sets the network password. You're the one who imposes parental controls. You're the one who doesn't allow telephones into your home with young children so that they can be on YouTube and Instagram and Twitter and TikTok learning how to become transgender from men who wear makeup.

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You're protecting them from those scoundrels that exist online. You are the frontline defense for your families.

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And it's not just the negative things. It's also the positive things. You're teaching them, instructing them.

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You're opening the Bible with them and sitting down with them for family worship. You're teaching them how to think about every single thing that they're going to interact with in a secular world from a biblical worldview.

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You sit down with them in family worship and you point them to Christ and his gospel. You are the one who is safeguarding their little souls and teaching them how to provide this ministry one day to their future families.

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You are the one who protects the reputation of your wife, who stewards her soul, cares for her and loves her, supports her, points her to Jesus.

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You're the one who's looking out for your property and protecting it from theft. You're the one who sees any offense on the horizon, whether that's spiritual, cultural, financial or meteorological.

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And you're the one who's making the necessary provisions to care for your family. So what I mean by that is if it snows, get out and shovel the driveway.

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Don't ask your wife to do it. Protect your home, protect your homestead, protect the members of your home, be a man.

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Don't allow your wife to mow the grass just because she doesn't mind. Take the initiative and go mow your own grass and let her see you sweating, looking all masculine outside and you will be rewarded when you go in.

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You're the one who protects your family, cares for your family and serves your family.

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A man who does not protect and is not on the alert for his family, his friends or the ones that he loves is not yet a man.

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He is still stuck on a continuum of boyhood and this passage is a humble reminder for him to grow up.

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The second aspect of this passage is to stand firm in the faith. Paul does not relegate the spiritual fidelity of your home brother to the church.

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God did not give you the church to get you off the hook from being pastor of your home.

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You are the pastor, the shepherd, the elder, the caretaker for the souls of your family.

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You are accountable to God for your relationship with God, for any decision that you make in light of who

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God is and for the way that you lead your family to understand who God is. You will stand before God in the way that you lead your family, brother and this is important.

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You are called to have a life and a relationship with the triune God that is worth imitating by every single member of your family, both the secret parts and the visible parts.

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You are called to love God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, with all of your mind and with all of your might.

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And while you're learning to do that and you'll never master that, but while you're learning to do that, you're also called to strive to love and care and sacrifice for your closest neighbor on earth, your bride in the same way that Christ sacrificed for his.

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With the same and even better love that you give to yourself, you give to her. You're called to invest in her, to lead her, to show her

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Christ in your life, to open the scriptures with her regularly, to grab her hand when she's stressed and tell her we need to pray, to listen to her when she's concerned, to love her when she's broken or frustrated, to point her to the only one who loves her and is capable of loving her more than you and that is

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Christ. To invest in her, to teach her how to think about things from a gospel -centered worldview because while you are gone providing for your family, she's gonna be the one who is taking what you've taught her and what you've invested in her and she's gonna be sharing that to your children.

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She is going to be loving them out of the overflow of what you gave to her and that is a weighty task, brother.

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It doesn't absolve you of standing firm in the faith with and for your kids as well. It just means that your wife's gonna be able to do it more consistently than you since she's gonna be at home with the kids while you're working.

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She's gonna be involved in leading them and worshiping them with them and opening word with them in a different way but you need to be doing those things too because they need to see you as a father modeling spiritual leadership for them, teaching them and discipling them how they're supposed to do this for your grandchildren.

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Your grandchildren's spiritual life depends on how you disciple your kids. Please do not overlook the gravity of this responsibility.

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Remember, a selfish man is not a man. A man is someone who is selfless and who leads those around him to be faithful, peaceful and to love

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Christ. The state of our wife and the state of our children is a direct indication or maybe even an indictment on your leadership.

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Healthy homes are going to testify to good godly fathers and unhealthy, chaotic, unloving homes are gonna testify to an ungodly man who doesn't know how to lead.

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Your home says something about you, brother. Third aspect

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Paul's getting at in this passage is to act like men. This of course is a summary statement of what

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Paul's been saying from 1 Corinthians 13 all the way until now. And he's sort of reminding us that this biblical expectation for men is consistent biblical manhood.

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We don't get off days to act like babies. We don't get off days to throw temper tantrums and to get our way.

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We don't get off days to fail to love our bride as Christ loved the church. We put those childish, inconsistent ways away and we act like men consistently.

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Consistently, brothers, we act like men. The fourth aspect of essential biblical manhood is to be strong.

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The expectation for a man is that he is the strong one, not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually.

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When tragedy hits the home, he is the life raft that his family is going to cling to for security and strength in their time of need.

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He may weep over many things, but he's a man. Erase that.

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He may weep over many things, but he is a man who is a rock for his family. His goal in life is not to be emotionally carried by his wife and his children.

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His goal is to carry them, to be strong for them, to be an anchor for them, and to help them navigate the troubled waters of this life with love and provision at the lead.

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Finally, Paul reminds us men about the thing that we most often need to be reminded of.

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He says the fifth, and in some ways, the most important aspect of biblical manhood is not strength, but love.

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He says in the passage, let all that you do be done in love. And just for clarity's sake, this is not how society deems or defines love.

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A man's not responsible to be loving in the ways that a pagan culture propagates and perverts the concept.

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No, a man is responsible to be loving in the ways that God commands it. And there's a scarcity of that kind of love in the world, but I can scarcely find a better definition of what that looks like than in 1

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Corinthians 13, four through seven. This is what it says. Love is patient, love is kind, and it's not jealous.

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Love does not brag and is not arrogant. It does not act unbecomingly. It does not seek its own glory.

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It is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong that has suffered. It does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but it rejoices with the truth and it bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.

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And again, this brings us full circle, fellas. Love is selfless.

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Love is sacrificial. Love is prioritizing the needs of others as being more important than your own.

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Love is not a sensate hyper -emotionalism where you're in touch with your feminine side.

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Love is seeing others' needs and meeting others' needs, and you can do that while still being a masculine, godly man.

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Look at Christ, look at Paul, look at the scriptures. Again, this of course reminds us not only what it means for us to be men, but it also reminds us of the perfect man,

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Jesus Christ, who loved us while we were his enemies, who sacrificed for us, who put our needs above his own, dying on a cross that bore our name, brother.

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He loved us with an immutable kind of love and called us to pick up our crosses and to imitate him.

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Dear brother, your goal in life is not you. Your goal in life is to love and serve

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Jesus by also loving the people around you like Jesus. That is what it means to be a man, and that is the kind of consistent biblical manhood that we need now more than ever.

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Will you take that challenge? Will you grow up and step up into biblical manhood?

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We need you, brother. If you appreciated the podcast today, I hope you'd like it, share it, spread it around to anyone who you think might be interested or need to hear it.

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And men, I want you to remember this. When you see 80 to 90 % of women sharing this post, enjoying this post, and thinking about this post,

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I want you to remember that her heart was made for godly, masculine leadership. And when you live that way, you will captivate her and her toes will curl because that's what

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God made her to do. Until next time, thanks for joining us on the podcast. God bless you.