TPW 99 Sex Pride Anger Selfishness and Throwing Them All Aside

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Welcome to the Protestant Witness. This is Pastor Patrick Hines here at Birdwall Heights Presbyterian Church in Kingsport, Tennessee.
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And today I'd like to post the evening sermon from this past Sunday, pressing on in the
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Westminster Confession on marriage and divorce. But I am doing an excursus here on biblical manhood, and I'm going to do a bunch of sermons on biblical womanhood.
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I've been doing a lot of studying on that. And this particular sermon is about the major vices that men tend to struggle with.
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Sex, pride, anger, selfishness. That unholy quadranity, shall we say.
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And what scripture says about these things, and how we have to be on guard against them.
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It really is amazing how quickly, how easily our minds can fall into a gutter of sin and vice and iniquity, and how easily we can be so selfish.
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And if we're going to be men of God, we cannot be those things, and we need to be vigilant in protecting ourselves from sexual sin, from pride and anger, from selfishness, especially if we're married.
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Selfishness does not work well in marriage, when you have kids as well. So I hope that you will find this to be edifying and encouraging, convicting, and the passage that we're looking at is
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Hebrews 12, 1 -3. It's really amazing. Once again, it never ceases to amaze me. How much our
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Lord God of heaven and earth can put into three Bible verses, and how special they are, and how important they are for us to understand and to lay up their truths in our hearts and practice them in our lives.
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So I hope that you will find this to be encouraging, convicting, and challenging. Hebrews 12, 1 -3.
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Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
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For consider him who has endured such hostility by sinners against himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.
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We all only live one time, and all of us have only a short window of time allotted to us by God to glorify the
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Lord Jesus in this dark and sinful world in which we live. The time we spend in the world that is still under the curse of sin is quite unique against the backdrop of eternity.
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When the believer is resurrected and glorified and brought into the glorious new heavens and the new earth, he will never experience the desire for, or even the presence of, sin again.
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Ever. Isn't that a wonderful thought? Doesn't your heart long for that? It will be a universe in which righteousness dwells, it says at the end of 2
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Peter, in which righteousness dwells. It will be like being inside joy and happiness all the time.
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But before that great day of rejoicing inaugurates our eternity of blessedness and the full enjoying of God, we would do well in this hard and difficult world to listen to what
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Jesus said and to listen to what scripture tells us. In Matthew 7, 13, the Lord, in closing out the
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Sermon on the Mount, said to his hearers, enter by the narrow gate, for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction.
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And there are many who go in by it, because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life.
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And there are few who find it. Who would voluntarily pick a harder life than an easier one?
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And yet as Christ followers, that's exactly what we're exhorted to do. Take the harder road. Take the path that's uphill.
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Take the one that has more obstacles on it. The fools of this world walk in the easy and the broad way that leads to destruction.
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They have a lot of company, for there are many who care nothing about eternal things and who flatter themselves with vain thoughts of going to heaven.
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But the true disciple of Christ gladly obeys his master, and he enters by the narrow gate and walks the difficult path, the often lonely path, the painful path.
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The unending fight with sin is a tough battle. The battle with ourselves to be more like Christ is exhausting.
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Trying to understand and apply the scripture to your theology and to your actions, it's a monumental task.
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But with the help of God's grace and with Jesus as our focus, we really can be godly people.
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We can be different from the world. It is possible to be a godly man, and with the help of Christ, we will be.
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But as our text before us in Hebrews 12, 1 through 3 says, if you've still got it, listen to it again, therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, talking there about Hebrews 11 and by faith this person did this and by faith, by faith, by faith, all those great people of God.
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It says, let us lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto
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Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
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For consider him who endured such hostility from sinners against himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls.
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A lot packed into those three verses, aren't there? What does the word of God mean by every weight and the sin which so easily ensnares us?
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These sad biblical phrases given to us by the Holy Spirit apply to every Christian, whoever has lived and ever will live, both genders, male and female, both.
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But for men in particular, there are specific battles which all of them will fight. There are specific weights which will attempt to attach themselves to you, which you are being told here by God, throw them aside, cast off the weights so you can run faster, so you can run farther.
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The weights and the sins which hold us back and easily ensnare so many, the things that prevent us from being great men of God.
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And if we can learn to defeat them, we can be men of great influence in this world for the cause of truth and the cause of righteousness and the cause of God.
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We can be men whose lives are worth imitating. We can exert an influence for godliness.
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We can actually be men who don't have some kind of secret that we hide from everyone else, which if it came to light would destroy us.
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We can actually be someone who doesn't have anything like that in their life. We can win souls to Jesus. We can have this one opportunity to live this one life
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God has given us and to run it well. We can be wise or we can be fools. We can be humble, teachable, and self -critical, or we can be stubborn and prideful, foolish and unteachable.
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And I trust that the men in this room who do know the Lord are serious in their desire to follow him.
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If we see weight attached to us and have sins we are easily ensnared by, we want to cut those weights off and cast aside those sins which easily ensnare us.
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If the things covered in this sermon leave you discouraged and down, I just want to encourage you, you will overcome them in Christ.
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You will overcome these things in Christ. With men, change is hardly possible, but with God all things are possible.
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With God all things are possible. There are many sins that men struggle with, which function like weights attached to us, snares attached to us to prevent them from moving forward and being what
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God designed them to be. But I'm going to focus on three, which I think are the worst ones. Number one, sexual immorality.
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Number two, pride. And along with pride would come anger. And then three, good old -fashioned selfishness.
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These are the three. These are the weights that need to be thrown off. These are the refrigerators on your back that you need to dump so you can run faster.
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And please understand, brethren, that these all work slowly and incrementally. That's the way sin works, slowly and incrementally, almost imperceptibly at times.
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Thomas Brooks described the slow, incremental way in which sin will begin to dominate a person's life.
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Brooks said this, quote, Sin is of an encroaching nature. It creeps on the soul by degrees, step by step, until it has the soul to the very height of sin.
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David gives way to his wandering eye. And this led him to those foul sins that caused
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God to break his bones and to turn his day into night and to leave his soul in great darkness. Jacob and Peter and other saints have found this true by woeful experience.
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That the yielding to sin... My manuscript is out of order.
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That the yielding to a lesser sin has been the ushering in of a greater sin. Please remember that.
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That is one of the most important concepts you need to understand. Giving in to a lesser sin will almost always give way to a greater one.
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Almost every time. Satan will draw you first to sit with the drunkard, then to sip with the drunkard, and then at last to be drunk with the drunkard.
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He will first draw you to be unclean in your thoughts, then unclean in your looks, and then to be unclean in your words, and at last to be unclean in your practices.
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He will first draw you to look upon the piece of gold, then to desire the piece of gold, and then to handle the piece of gold, and at last by wicked ways to steal the piece of gold.
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Though you run the hazard of losing God and your soul forever. As you see in Gehazi, Achan, Judas, and many in our days.
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By all this we see that the yielding to lesser sins draws the soul to the committing of greater ones.
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Ah, how many in these days have fallen, first to have low thoughts of Scripture, then to slight
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Scripture, and then to make a nose of wax out of Scripture, and then to cast off Scripture and ordinances, and then at last to advance and lift up themselves and their
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Christ dishonoring and soul damning opinions above Scripture. Now I was listening to the briefing by Al Mohler, and he was talking about tweets coming out of Union Theological Seminary about how we need to repent to plants, and confess our sins to plants.
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Robert Dabney taught at Union Seminary long ago. I'm glad he's not alive to see such utter nonsense, but that's what happens in those seminaries.
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What Brooks just said, to have low thoughts about Scripture, then slight Scripture, then make a wax nose of Scripture, and then to cast off Scripture altogether, and embrace every form of lunacy that's out there.
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First, let's talk about sexual immorality. Human sexuality is a precious gift, special gift from God.
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Sexuality, like human beings, is sacred. We often rightly speak of the sanctity of human life.
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Why do we do that? Why do we speak of the sanctity of human life? We don't speak of the sanctity of our dogs or the sanctity of our cats, at least normal people don't speak of the sanctity of their dogs or cats or plants, because a human being is not in the same category as a puppy, a plant, or a flea.
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Human beings are special, elevated, and important to God because they are
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His images and His likeness in their very persons. To harm that image of God is to strike out at God Himself.
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It is the same with the sexual component of who we are as God's image bearers. Sexuality is a good gift from God, one that is to be enjoyed and celebrated by a man and a woman together in a marriage covenant.
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And in that context, sexuality is sacred. Outside of that context, outside of the context of marriage between one man and one woman, please, if you're taking notes, write this down, outside of that, sexuality is cursed.
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Outside of that, it doesn't work. Outside of that, it's a source of grief and heartache, pain and suffering, guilt.
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The Word of God teaches us a very simple, very important truth in this matter. 1
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Thessalonians 4, 3 -6, key text. For this is the will of God, your sanctification, that you should abstain from sexual immorality.
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That term apeko, that Greek verb means abstain, none. You should abstain from sexual immorality.
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That each of you should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, not in passion of lust like the
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Gentiles who do not know God, that no one should take advantage of and defraud his brother in this matter, because the
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Lord is the avenger of all such, as we also forewarned and testified. Jesus taught the familiar passage, every man here knows it from memory.
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You have heard that it was said to those of old, you shall not commit adultery, but I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
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It's one of the most important concepts Jesus taught us about, the heart of human beings. The heart is the center in the biblical view of man and his relationship to God.
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Every time we see another news story about another well -known Christian leader who has fallen into gross sin of some kind with no warning whatsoever, nobody had any idea, we must remind ourselves of a simple truth.
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Please remember this. What we saw in the news story was the tail end of a long series of compromises in the hearts, in the mind, in the theater of our imagination.
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That biblical term there for heart is the word kardia, and it means heart, man, inner life.
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What we saw was the final manifestation of deeply embedded sin in that individual's heart, in his inner life, in his thought life.
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And the simple fact is it has probably been there for a very, very long time, ever so carefully hidden and concealed.
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The word of God speaks directly to that phenomenon of what goes on in our inner life, in our thoughts, our minds, our imaginations.
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Psalm 19, verse 14, let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart, let the meditation of my inner man be acceptable in your sight,
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O Lord, my strength and my Redeemer. Let the things that I think about, the things that play out in my mind, the scenarios that go on, let that be acceptable in your sight.
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The thing that only God and I can see, and no other eyes can see or know about.
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Let that be acceptable and pure in your sight. I hope and pray that's part of our prayers all the time.
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Psalm 90, verse 8, you have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your countenance.
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You hear what that's saying? Before the face of God is everything in your inner life.
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If you know that and you don't think you need a Savior, you are, as Jonathan Edwards would say, miserably deluded.
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If God actually knows everything that you think about, I remember coming to that realization more and more when
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I was about 18 and thinking, you're going to the blackest corner of hell and that's all there is to it. Romans 2, 16,
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In the day when God will judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ, that phrase used to strike terror into my heart.
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God will judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ. Everything that no one else knows about, he knows. Yep, it's in the light of his countenance.
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It's right in his holy face. One great mark of conversion, true conversion, is that you will be troubled, genuinely troubled, and disgusted by the things in your heart that are known only to you and God.
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You will be troubled and grieved by that which no other living human being has ever seen but in your heart you know that God has seen it.
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Hebrews 4, 13 There is no creature hidden from his sight but all things are naked and open to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.
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While all men know this is true in the deepest part of who they are, many find a vain comfort in the fact that they know no other man or woman can see their hearts.
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They will lie to others and lie to themselves regarding such things. But Jesus is pointing out here that the law of God and the
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Sermon on the Mount requires not just outward but inward conformity. I dare say that there are men here and there were men listening to Jesus preach who had never physically committed adultery but they have committed adultery in their hearts, in their minds, in their inner man.
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Jesus goes on to say If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish than for your whole body to be cast into hell.
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And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish than for your whole body to be cast into hell.
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Our Lord's advice there is rather startling, isn't it? If you know what the things are that cause you to sin in your life
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Jesus' orders are very clear eradicate it. He's using those as hyperbolic examples
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He's obviously not saying actually pluck your eyes out or cut your hands off. What his point is, get rid of it. If you know what it is that causes you to sin, be rid of it.
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Get rid of it. Cut it off. Throw it away. Jesus is speaking of getting rid of things.
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For example, internet access, cable channels, driving down certain roads which have bad stores on them, etc.
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Remember a pastor sharing a story about a young Christian man had a real problem with going into bad stores and this young man told his pastor every time
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I walk down the street I'm lured right into that place and the pastor said, have you ever thought about going home a different way? When someone comes to you and wants you to cure them of alcohol addiction people want me to cure them of alcohol addiction
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I say, okay, first stop drinking it. You hear what the
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Lord's saying there? What is the thing that's causing sin in your life? Pluck it off and cast it away from you. Cut it off and cast it away.
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People so often complain when they're given good pastoral advice to get rid of your laptop.
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Cancel your internet subscription. Call the cable company and get rid of that TV service. Be rid of the beer or the drugs or whatever else and people will talk about how inconvenient that is.
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I pay all my bills through internet banking. I have to have the internet. I watch a lot of educational stuff on the History Channel.
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I have to have cable. I'm just using my Christian liberty to have a few beers. Don't give me this legalism stuff. But do you hear what
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Jesus' illustrations here are saying? It's better to be inconvenienced and be holy in these ways than to die and go to hell.
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It's more profitable for you that one of your members perish. It's more profitable for you that your laptop perish.
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That your internet service perish. That your convenience perish. And for your whole body to be cast into hell.
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Yes, not having one eye would be a little inconvenient, wouldn't it? But it's worth that inconvenience to stay holy in that area.
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Yeah, not having one of your hands would be very inconvenient. But it's worth that inconvenience to stay holy in that area.
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What's Jesus' point? Men must be serious and radical about avoiding that sin.
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There's no sin that paralyzes and destroys men and keeps them from being affected more than sexual sin. There's just no other sin in a man's life that does that worse than that.
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Brothers, if you're playing with this kind of sin, I'd like to remind you of what you already know if you're a Christian. Proverbs 6, 27.
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Memorize it. Can a man take fire to his bosom and his clothes not be burned? Can one walk on hot coals and his feet not be seared?
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You know, I have a fire pit in my backyard. That does not feel good to step on hot coals. I've done it a couple times.
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It hurts. Sadly for some men, they've been playing with fire for so long they can't feel the burning anymore.
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They don't feel shame anymore. Our culture feels no shame anymore. Read Jeremiah.
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What was one of the ways that God rebuked the people of Israel through Jeremiah? He said, you all have forgotten how to blush.
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You don't even have shame at all anymore. People sleep on beds of hot coals and can't even feel it burning them.
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So deep are those calluses against sin. Brothers, every time you give in to sin, it's like one more layer of callus over your heart.
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When that which used to startle us and frighten us no longer does so, it's because we're callous and indifferent.
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May the living Christ shake us out of our folly, if such is the case. Remember what
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Paul said to Timothy? There will be a time when men's consciences will be so ruined, it'll be as if they're seared with a hot iron.
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Can't feel anything at all anymore. So I want to encourage you, on this point of sexual purity it's time to be radical.
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It's time to not inconvenience yourself if it's a problem. It's time to learn to live missing one eye and one hand.
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Jesus taught us it's worth it. So brothers if those are things you tolerate in your life get rid of them.
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And remember that the blood of Christ is sufficient to cleanse us from all unrighteousness and to empower us to boldly do battle against such things and in the power of his might to defeat them.
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How can we live in and communicate the love of God and the joy of Christ if our minds are constantly in the sewer?
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Men, we have a choice. Always remember that. You have a choice. The second big problem that most men will deal with in life is pride and anger.
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Pride and anger. Proverbs 8, 13 The fear of the Lord is to hate evil. Pride and arrogance and the evil way and the perverse mouth
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I hate. James 4 verse 6. He gives more grace, therefore he says God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.
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C .S. Lewis wrote this wonderful paragraph about pride. Listen closer to this. There is one vice of which no man in the world is free which everyone loathes when he sees it in someone else and of which hardly any people except Christians ever imagine that they're guilty of themselves.
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I've heard people admit that they're bad -tempered and that they cannot keep their head about girls or drink or even that they're cowards.
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I do not think I've ever heard anyone who was not a Christian accuse himself of this vice and at the same time
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I have very seldom met anyone who was not a Christian who showed the slightest mercy to it in others.
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There is no fault that makes a man more unpopular and no fault which we are more unconscious of in ourselves and the more we have it ourselves, the more we dislike it in others.
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The vice I am talking about is pride or self -conceit and the virtue opposite to it in Christian morals is called humility.
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According to Christian teachers the essential vice, the utmost evil is pride.
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Unchastity, anger, greed drunkenness and all that are mere flea bites in comparison.
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It was through pride that the devil became the devil. Pride leads to every other vice.
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It is the complete anti -God state of mind. In Proverbs 6 .16
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the scripture says that the first sin which the Lord hates which is an abomination to him is a proud look.
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Proud looking eyes. God detests pride in men. If you want to assure yourself and all the world around you that you are an enemy to your creator, be a proud and arrogant man.
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Be proud and haughty about who and what you are. Advertise and parade about for all to see your accomplishments your great learning, your beauty.
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All who do such can know for sure that God is their sworn enemy. Why? Because they insist on competing with his rights to have all worship, praise, honor and adoration given to him alone.
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Remember the great 5th Reformation soli deo gloria to God alone be glory.
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Pride is without question one of the most irrational and foolish parts of being a sinner. We have nothing that was not sovereignly given to us by God.
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Right? We have nothing that was not given to us by God. We are nothing that was not sovereignly planned by God.
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And yet we boast in glory as if we can take credit for these things. The proud man is the father of fools.
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Pride is an abomination to God and yet men have a mighty struggle with it. And as C .S.
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Lewis said, it is loathsome when you see it. And Lewis said, and the more we have it ourselves, the more we dislike it in others.
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A person who really is pitiless towards others who are arrogant very often is pretty arrogant themselves.
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C .S. Lewis also said, pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next guy.
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Pride gets no pleasure out of having anything, only of having more of it than the next person. It is the comparison that makes you proud.
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The pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition is gone, pride is gone.
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End quote. Compare yourself to God and pride won't be a problem. Just make it
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God that you compare yourself to. Pride will not be a problem then. And thus what is the only source of pride in the heart of man?
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The desire to be and to appear to be better than other people. Such ought to be vile to us as Christians.
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And if we really do understand grace and understand unconditional election, how can pride ever have any place to take root?
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Calvinists often have a reputation of being kind of arrogant, and yet isn't that a direct denial of everything we believe about why we're
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Christians? Certainly it is. Yet that filthy pride persists in us.
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No less than three separate times in the Bible, Proverbs 3 .34, James 4 .6, and 1
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Peter 5 .5, God declares his opposition to proud men. He opposes the proud. He opposes the proud.
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He opposes the proud. The great remedy to pride is, of course, to turn your proud eyes to the
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Lord Jesus. Remember his infinite step from glory to humility for us and for our salvation.
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Philippians 2 .5, listen to the word of God. Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus who being in the form of God did not consider it robbery to be equal with God but made himself of no reputation taking the form of a bondservant and coming in the likeness of men and being found in appearance as a man he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death even the death of the cross.
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Meditate on passages like that and others like Psalm 103, 14 -16 for he knows our frame he remembers that we are dust as for man, his days are like grass as a flower of the field so he flourishes for the wind passes over and it is gone and his place remembers it no more.
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When your heart begins to swell with pride about anything and every man in here who was good at anything knows exactly what
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I'm talking about. Remind yourself how foolish that it really is. Remind yourself what you are.
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What did that Psalm say? You're dust. You and I are dust. Made out of dust we will return to dust.
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Remind yourself of what you'll be in a hundred years dead in the ground. Man exists for the glory of Christ not his own glory.
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How hard is it for us to get that into our minds and hearts though? 1 Corinthians 4 -7, another great passage for who makes you differ from one another or what do you have that you did not receive now if you did indeed receive it why do you boast as if you had not received it?
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Those are all rhetorical questions and we all know the answers to them. Thirdly, finally, selfishness.
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Selfishness massive bias. James 3 -14 -16 great text, but if you have bitter envy and self -seeking in your hearts do not boast and lie against the truth.
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This wisdom does not descend from above but is earthly sensual demonic for where envy and self -seeking exist confusion and every evil thing are there.
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Where you have selfishness there will be confusion and every evil thing will be there. If you have men in the church that want attention, that constantly want to promote themselves, that always want to be the center there you will find confusion and every evil thing will follow it.
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Philippians 2 -3, let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself.
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Luke 9 -23, then he said to all of them, if anyone desires to come after me let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me for whoever desires to save his life will lose it but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.
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The consistent call of the word of God to the converted man who is a disciple of Christ is this, you must not be selfish any longer.
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You must not be self -seeking any longer. You must not have selfish ambition to further glorify your own name and you must die to yourself and to your selfish desires.
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The call of Christ to a man of God is to repent believe in Christ and follow him. The mark of a man who really does this is that he's not characterized by selfishness and his desires, actions or priorities.
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He puts the needs and desires of others before his own and if he's single he does this with his parents, with his siblings his friends and his church family.
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Their needs come first because that's the example he wants to set for others. Their happiness the happiness of others, the comfort of others is above their own.
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If he's married, he's devoted to studying his wife in order to find out how to make her happy.
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He lays aside spending excessive time on his hobbies and other interests and focuses his attention on her.
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But perhaps more than any other sin in married life selfishness is at the heart of all marital conflict.
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Why do women feel neglected and unloved? Because their husbands are selfish. They don't care as much about making their wife happy as they care about doing all the other things they want to do.
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And this is why the Word of God calls selfishness listen to me, it calls selfishness demonic, earthly sensual.
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It's demonic satanic to be selfish. James 3 .14
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says if we have self -seeking in our hearts we are lying against the truth.
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Let us learn from the Word of God on this. When Paul was making his final exhortations to the elders of a church at Ephesus, his words are the epitome of selflessness.
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Paul's words to them are quite long in scripture. Acts 20 verses 18 to 35. But here's the last sentence as he says to them.
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I have shown you in every way by laboring like this that you must support the weak and remember the words of the
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Lord Jesus. It is more blessed to give than to receive. And when he has said these things he knelt down and prayed with them all.
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Isn't that amazing? The very last thing he wanted them to remember. Elders of the church of Ephesus. It's more blessed to give than to receive.
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And then Paul just falls to his knees and prays with all of them. Men we have to have a heart for other people.
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Forget about yourself. We have to have genuine care, love and concern for others first before ourselves.
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And when you think about getting home from work, when you think about getting home from school, from practice don't be thinking about what you want to do to unwind or decompress or relax.
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Think immediately, however on the contrary, how can I love my wife better today? Could you really benefit from some time to decompress relax and do your own thing?
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Yeah sure. But you're not important. You don't matter. They matter. You live your life for other people now.
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What can I do to love her better? How can I encourage my children better? Do my children know the Lord? What do they need from me?
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How have I failed them? How do I need to change? Lord Jesus, help me. Help me redeem the time for the days are evil.
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Help me be a walking example of the gospel to my wife and children. Help me be a walking example of the gospel to my parents, to my older and younger siblings, to my teachers, my coaches, my friends.
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For heads of household, we need to read the word of God together and pray together every day tonight when you get home.
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Brothers, men, life is not about you. It's not about me either.
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It's about the people around you and the people God has asked you to love. That's what you live for. You live for other people because that's what
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Jesus did. It's about loving Christ and putting them before yourself. It's about letting go of bitterness and anger about the people who have wronged you.
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It's not important. It's about focusing on and loving others as Christ has loved you. It's about modeling the very kind of selflessness that Christ did.
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If you're a Christian, that kind of selfless behavior should beat in your heart. Remember, there's no such thing as a
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Christian who doesn't have a heart for people. There's no such thing as a Christian who doesn't have agape for the people around him.
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1 John 4, 7. Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God and everyone who loves is born of God and knows
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God. He who doesn't love doesn't know God, for God is love. How do you know someone really has become a
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Christian now? Because they have a self giving stance and attitude about their life that wasn't there before.
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Why am I here? For them. For the people around me. For my church.
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For my wife. For my children. I am for them. There's an incredible display of humility made by the holy, righteous, sovereign king of the universe, which we all ought to bear in mind if we would be
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Christian people. Christian men, listen closely to the word of God. This is the precise opposite of selfishness.
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We have no claim to people's admiration or praise. None. We have no right to be selfish. None. The one and only king who had the right to demand, to require all praise, honor, adoration, worship, and love, did this.
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Now before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come, that he should depart from this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them.
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He agapated them to the end. And supper being ended, the devil having already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray him,
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Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands and that he had come from God and was going to God, rose from supper and laid aside his garments, took a towel and girded himself.
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And what does he do? He washes their stinking, dirty, disgusting feet.
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If you look at a harmony of the Gospels in parallel to one another at the chronology, Jesus is doing that probably if you put everything in order in the
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Synoptics in parallel to John's Gospel, he got down and washed their feet probably right after they had got done arguing about who was going to be the greatest.
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I promise you that's stuck in their minds. That washing of their feet.
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It goes on after he washes their feet. He says, if I then your
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Lord and teacher have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example that you should do as I have done to you.
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Most assured that I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is he who sent greater than he who sent him.
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If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them. Listen to that again. Most assured that I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master.
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We're the servants of Christ, right? When we have pride and selfishness and think the whole world revolves around us, we are acting greater than our master.
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And that's sinful and wrong, completely inappropriate. Weigh that last verse carefully in your mind.
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If you know these things, Jesus said, and do you know them? You all do. We all do. I do. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.
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You see, brothers, it's not enough to hear this and think, well, it's another convicting, challenging message.
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The job of ministers is not just to tell you things that make you go, huh, interesting, challenging, convicting.
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Listen to the words of God again. James 1 .22 But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.
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For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror. For he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was.
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But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.
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So, men, as you serve Christ, don't you want to be blessed in what you do? You want to be blessed in what you do?
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So take these things to heart and do them. If these messages from Scripture on manhood do not bring about lasting change, then you and I have heard the word of God in vain.
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And in ourselves, yes, we fail. But in Christ, all things are possible. The righteous will fall seven times, but rise again.
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But the wicked will fall by calamity. Yes, you're going to fall on your face over and over again, but you keep getting up and you keep pressing on to that goal.
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I want to live a selfless life for the people around me, to really forget about myself.
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Remember what Hebrews 12 says. Lay aside every weight, and the sin which easily ensnares us, run with endurance the race that is set before you.
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Listen. Looking unto Jesus. What is the fuel behind all of it? You keep your eyes fixed on Christ and the gospel,
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His imputed righteousness, His cross work. Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
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For consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners against Himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls.
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We're commanded by the word of God to lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us.
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How do we do that? Looking unto Jesus, the one who endured the cross and is sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
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We're called by Scripture, by our God, and God breathes Scripture. Consider Him, that means think about Him, meditate upon Him, who endured such hostility from sinners against Himself, so that you don't become weary and discouraged.
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Brothers, if there was ever a man who had the right to be weary and discouraged, it was Jesus. But He pressed forward.
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Why? For the joy that was set before Him, He endured the cross, despised the shame. This is what will keep you from depression, from weariness, sadness, difficulties.
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That's what will keep you from becoming discouraged in your souls. I want to ask you, have you ever had discouragement in your soul?
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In your soul? Fighting against sin, looking at the church, or maybe in your own life, or in a relationship or something?
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What's it mean to look unto Jesus? What does it mean to look unto Jesus? Well, it sort of means the opposite of looking at yourself.
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It's the opposite of being selfish. Instead of being self -centered, being Christ -centered. We look to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.
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What does that mean to look to Jesus? Here's what that means. It means we rely upon, we trust in, we honor, we revere, worship, love, admire, believe in Him as the author and finisher of our faith.
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He is the one who begins and finishes our faith in Him. He is the one who is the source and the conclusion of our faith.
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We are His redemptive project, and He will not fail to make us more like Himself. Indeed, God has predestined us to be conformed to the image of His Son, and therefore we keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, upon His cross, upon His example, upon His holiness, upon His endurance of shame, opposition,
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His defeating of every temptation, His holiness, and the perfection of His saving work in our lives, by which we are justified legally and forever in the sight of God.
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Like Peter, when Jesus called him to step out of the boat onto the raging sea and to walk to Him on the water, as long as Peter's eyes were fixed on Christ, he was fine.
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But when he looked away, he began to sink. And so, how do we run the race that is set before us?
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Stop looking at yourself. Don't keep your eyes fixed upon yourself. There's not much to encourage you there.
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But take your eyes never off of Christ. His grace will sustain us. His example will guide us.
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His cross work and His gospel, His imputed righteousness alone, can save us and stir that gratitude that alone can fuel a burning desire to live a selfless life.
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Consider Christ. Consider Him, it says, who endured such hostility from sinners, lest you become discouraged in your souls.
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Remember Him. Meditate upon Him. Lest you become weary and discouraged in your soul. So what have we learned about manhood?
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A lot of stuff. And before I quickly summarize it, just remember, Jesus died for Christian failure.
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It's such a blessing to know He died for the sins of Christians too. Every one of our failures and every one of these things was nailed to the cross and we bear it no more.
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We're called by 1 Corinthians 16, 13 to watch, to guard, stand fast in the faith, act like a man and be strong.
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We're called to be men of knowledge, to be churchmen, to be men of integrity, men that don't lie, to be
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Christ -prizers. And we are called to fight, to do battle against sexual immorality, pride and anger and selfishness.
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Never take your eyes off of the author and finisher of your faith as you strive to set aside the weights and the sin that so easily entangles you.
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Keep your eyes on Jesus Christ, your prophet, priest, and king and the one whose work alone is able to save you perfectly and to give you that blessed hope and assurance of forgiveness, justification, adoption and the final and eternal life in heaven.
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And I would just close with one of the greatest verses, one of those great life -themed verses that Paul wrote in Galatians 2, verse 20.
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Paul said about himself, I have been crucified with Christ.
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It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.
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And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.
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Let that be the fuel behind your throwing off the weights and the sin that so easily entangles and what drives you to be a man of God.
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This is Pastor Patrick Hines of Bridwell Heights Presbyterian Church located at 108 Bridwell Heights Road in Kingsport, Tennessee and you've been listening to the
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Protestant Witness Podcast. Please feel free to join us for worship any Sunday morning at 11 a .m. sharp where we open the
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Word of God together, sing his praises, and rejoice in the gospel of our risen Lord. You can find us on the web at www .bridwellheightspca
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.org and may the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you.