19. Lead Like Men

Submission to Christ as the Starting Point of Male Leadership

Welcome to the podcast, the show where we prod the sheep and beat the wolf. This is episode 19, Lead Like a Man. When we began this biblical masculinity series a couple of months ago, I was convinced that the recovery of biblical manhood was one of, if not the most important issue that we face today.

There's, frankly, an all-out war being waged against men in this nation, and the culture around us is suffering because of it. In the same way that a house cannot stand if you knock down all of its load-bearing walls, a culture cannot stand when you knock down its men.

They're the ones who are designed by God to bear the load of the nation, and they're the ones who are made to protect our most valuable and precious citizen, which is our women and children. If the men are not doing their job, then our women cannot protect our children, and you see the cascading effect of this.

So when you cut down men, pervert them, and cripple them, you leave everyone exposed, which kind of seems like the point. Now today, we draw this masculinity series to a close by talking about what it means for men to bear the load of leadership.

In this episode, we're going to talk about where true leadership begins, and we're going to give a biblical case for what male leadership looks like in both this generation and beyond. So let's first begin with where leadership begins, and I'm going to argue this at submission.

In order to lead like a man, you need to first know the limits of your leadership. You are not sovereign, Christ is. You are not unlimited, He is. And we know this for many passages in Scripture, but perhaps the most clear passage is in Matthew 28, 18, where Jesus says, all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth.

Jesus' perfect, unbroken submission to His Father, along with His lifelong, unblemished, active submission to the law of God, as well as His lifelong, unflinching, passive obedience to the covenantal plan of redemption that would culminate in Him being crucified on a Roman cross and dying like a criminal buried in a borrowed tomb.

That is what earned Him supreme, unlimited, and unrivaled authority. When He rose from the dead, He did not claim a sort of amorphous or undefined victory. He triumphed over all the powers, authority, and dominion.

He earned maximal authority on earth and in heaven, over life and over death, through His obedience. Knowing this, we may rightly conclude that there is no actual and not even a perceived authority structure outside of Jesus Christ.

Every king, dictator, and potentate, and every single person on earth exercises authority on borrowed credit from the Lord of glory. We will either bow the knee to Him in this life as humble slaves who have done our master's bidding, Matthew 25, 23, or we will bow in terror in the life to come when He showcases His magnified and exalted position to all creation, Philippians 2, 9 through 11.

As men who are called to lead, we must remember that every facet of our lives, every millisecond of our leadership must be done in submission to the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the king. He is the sovereign.

We are simply stewards over His treasures, and we will be held accountable for how we care for His things. At the heart of it, that's the essence of all male leadership. It's not pomposity or abdication.

It's not influence or machismo. True godly masculine leadership is found in submission to Jesus Christ. If you want to be a leader, submit yourself to Jesus. If you want to be an effective leader, submit yourself to Jesus.

If you want to be a kind leader, a good leader, a healthy leader, an effective leader, an efficient leader, a leader worth following, submit yourself to Jesus. It comes in orienting our lives around Him, loving, serving, obeying, worshiping Him.

That is what leadership is, and that is where the rest of these remarks in this episode are going to be aimed at and going to be rooted in. True biblical leadership is rooted in submission to Jesus Christ, which brings us to the topic of how do you lead like a man?

Leadership Through Work and Provision

Not all men are called to be CEOs, and not all men are called to be presidents and kings, but all men are called to lead. So when we come to the topic of masculine leadership, there's several different facets of leadership that we need to talk about in the Bible that we're going to be called to lead in, like work or in the home or provide leadership in the church.

But what I want us to do is I want us to begin with work. Work is one of the most tangible ways that we get to lead. When we think about it, it's one of the most obvious things that we see a family being about is that the man goes out and he works to provide for the family.

After submitting to Christ and all things, this is one of the ways that a man can provide godly and life-giving leadership to his home. How? Well, man was made even before the fall to work an honest job that would cultivate the earth from his labors, Genesis 2 .15.

After sin entered the world, he was expected to work hard enough and long enough to break out in a good smelly sweat, Genesis 3 .19. He was expected to extract enough food and material and resources from the soil to be able to provide for his family, Ephesians 4 .28, and all for the glory of God, Colossians 3 .23 and 1 Corinthians 10 .31.

His natural leadership would take him consistently out of the home in order to provide for the home. That is natural for man. What is unnatural for man is laziness, slothfulness, and refusal to care for the ones that he loves.

Paul even tells Timothy that that kind of man is worse than an unbeliever, 1 Timothy 5 .8. Now today, I'm not going to be getting into the fact of whether women should work or if only men are allowed to work.

I'm not getting into all of that because I know there's a lot of people who disagree on that. I think the Bible is sufficiently clear that men are called to work in their families and that women, according to Titus 2 .4, are called by God to work in the home, to stay home with their children, to love their children, to care for their children, to raise their children up in the fear and admonition of the Lord under the authority of the husband who is going out to work but coming in to care for his wife and care for his family.

I think that's the biblical family structure. I think it can be supported from Genesis to Revelation, but all I'm saying right now is that men are called to work. Men if they don't work are called worse than an unbeliever.

Lazy, slothful men are not honored in the Bible, so a hard-working man who provides for his family is a way that he can show leadership to the ones that he loves. That's what I'm saying. The second aspect, we know that leadership, we know that work is an incredible way to showcase our leadership, but it's not the only way, and it's certainly not even the best way.

Leadership in the Home, Marriage, and Discipleship

The best way that we will demonstrate leadership is in the home, to the family that God has given us. This of course is rooted in our being submitted to Jesus. We can't lead our wives and we can't lead our children until we're first submitted to Christ ourselves.

But the opposite is also true, that if all our family witnesses is a high-powered CEO type with all the latest leadership jargon, a high-powered family, sending kids off to Ivy League schools, succeeding at every level, if that's all they see and they never see Jesus on us, then we've entirely failed.

Our families must see men submitted to Christ, pointing them to Jesus, teaching them about the gospel. For instance, when we look at what a husband is supposed to be in Ephesians 5, 22 -28, this is exactly what we see.

I'm going to read 22 -28 here. Wives, be subject to your own husband as to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, he himself being the savior of the body.

But as the church is subject to Christ, so also wives ought to be to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives just as Jesus loved the church and gave himself up for her so that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that he might present to himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she would be holy and blameless.

So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies. And Paul concludes Ephesians 5 by saying this, each individual among you also is to love his own wife even as himself, and the wife must see to it that she respects her husband.

So in this passage, we get this wonderful picture of what masculine leadership is and feminine submission, but our topic is masculine leadership. When we exert leadership in our home, we imitate the way that Christ loves his bride, the church.

This means leading your wife will be loving and sacrificial. It will not be self-serving, domineering, and it won't be focused on meeting your needs, but it'll be focused on meeting her needs and helping her grow to be more like Jesus.

Like Jesus does for us, the church, we will point our wives to the truth and help her grow up in maturity. And like Jesus, we are to care for her enough to wash her in the water of the word, lead her in Bible studies, teach her the scripture so that she will grow in sanctification and make herself ready to meet her King.

Now, if you're going to help someone else learn how to read the Bible, then you need to know how to read the Bible. If you're going to help someone else learn how to understand the truths of Scripture and doctrine and the covenants and the Old Testament and the New Testament, if you're going to help someone understand these things, then you need to understand these things.

So really, the first call for masculine leadership is for you to be in your Bible and to know your Bible and to know what the word of God says and to read books on theology, because brothers, you are pastors of your own homes.

Your little home is a little church and you're the pastor. And if you're going to teach your wife how to be a doctrinally faithful Christian, if you're going to teach your wife how to pray, if you're going to teach your wife how to study the word, if you're going to teach your wife so that she can teach her children so that you can have a legacy of faithfulness in your home, then you've got to know what it is that you believe.

It doesn't matter if you're an electrical engineer, if you work in a phone company, or if you think you want to go into ministry. I don't care what your job is. Know your faith. Know what you believe so that you can teach the ones that you love.

Men, that is what you are called to. A Christian husband is to love his wife and love his family like a royal gem cutter loves the stone. In love and under the great commission of his king, he goes out looking for her.

He finds her, adores her. He brings his wife into his home and he clearly sees her impurities and her imperfections. He sees the areas of her life where she's falling short. He's falling short as well, but he refuses to toss her away because he can see all of her beauty and potential.

So he gets to work. Yes, he works on himself. He submits himself to Jesus Christ, but he knows that his work in her life also is important. So he works cutting, polishing, sharpening so that when she is ready, he can present her as a beautiful jewel to her sovereign king.

Men, you've got to lead yourself before you can lead a woman. You've got to lead yourself in the scriptures. You've got to lead yourself in devotion and worship and doctrine. And when you're ready, marry a woman and lead her.

Help her with her imperfections. Help her with her impurities. Point her to the gospel. Showcase to her the love of Jesus. Help her grow into a sparkling jewel for her sovereign Lord so that on the day of Christ, you hand her over to her king.

That's your work, friends. That's your work, men. Your work is not selfish. Your wife does not exist for you. Your wife exists for Jesus. And your job in her life is to make her ready for him. But it doesn't stop there.

Like a skilled farmer also makes a field, produce all kinds of crops, so the man has been called to cultivate an entire family and help them bear fruit. He will absolutely need the Lord's help in this, but that is his labor.

That is what he's called to do. There was a parable one time of a rich man who had his sons working in the fields. He was a farmer, but he was a very wealthy farmer, and they grew corn. And his children came up to him and said, Dad, you have all this money.

Why are you having us work in the fields? He said, Because I'm not raising corn. I'm raising men. The goal of our life as men is to raise men and women for the kingdom of God. Our little homes are like boot camp for the kingdom.

Our little homes are places where they're going to inculcate the doctrines that they hold on to. Our homes are little areas of worship where they're going to learn what it means to worship. They're going to learn what it means to know the Bible.

They're going to know what it means to be a citizen of the kingdom of heaven. We can't accomplish all of that on a Sunday morning at church. Your home is the place where your children are going to learn what it means to be a Christian.

That's our labor. To love a woman and cherish her like Christ loves and cherishes the church and to see children as a blessing from God, Psalm 127 .35. To help our wives bear lots of fruit, children, Genesis 128.

And when the children come, we are called to raise them up in the fear and the admonition of the Lord, Ephesians 6 and also Deuteronomy 6 so that you can send them out to do the same thing in another family for another generation as we see more and more generations growing up in faithfulness, teaching new generations to 1 ,000 generations the commands of God, Deuteronomy 6, 4 through 9, helping them grow up eager and ready to live for Jesus.

Final Exhortation to Lead, Worship, and Raise Disciples

As we close, as we bring this series to a close, as we reflect on the last six episodes of what it meant to be a man, I want to encourage all of you men who are listening to this broadcast, in Christ you have everything that you need to be able to do this, to be able to do what God has called you to do.

You don't have to be afraid. You don't have to be passive. You don't have to live in your insecurities or run away from the calling that God has given you. You have what it takes to lead a woman in Christ.

You have what it takes to lead children. Please do not shirk your responsibility. Please do not let intimidation and fear and passivity and all of the things that plagued our father, Adam, do not let those things keep you from loving your wife, pointing her to Christ, and doing the same thing for your children.

My point in all of this is that you are a leader. You're either going to be a good leader or you're going to be a bad leader, but you are a leader. God has designated you for that. The Bible consistently calls men leaders.

So the question is whether you're going to be a good leader or a bad leader, but the question is not whether you will be a leader because you are a leader. You are. You've been given authority. You've been given leadership.

You've been given spiritual obligations that you will be held accountable for. The question is not whether you will be a leader. The question is whether you will be a good or a bad leader, and I pray that you would grow in your leadership, and the only way you're going to do that is by growing in submission to Jesus Christ, which brings us full circle.

Do not allow the world, your enemy, or your own flesh to sideline you from God's purposes. Stand up and act like a man. Worship like a man. Love like a man. Mate with your wife and have biblical children like a man.

And like we've learned all throughout this course of this, submit yourself to Jesus Christ. Pursue Jesus with all of your heart. Love God with every fiber of your being. Submit to the leading of the Holy Spirit.

Share the love and maturity that's been cultivating in you and in your walk with God with your wife and kids. Raise them up to be disciples of Jesus. Get them involved in a healthy local church and watch what the Lord will do.

Watch the legacy that God will create through you by the end of your life. You'll be astonished. The world will be better for it. That's it for today's episode. If you liked what you've heard, I appreciate that, and I'd love for you to share it with as many people as you can.

One of the ways that we get the message out there is by sharing it, liking it, hearting it, whatever you want to do. Even angry faces work. If you hated it, angry face it. Maybe it will help. Until next time, God bless you.