Well, that's an introduction. I don't know how you follow that. I guess the only wrestling match I ever had that was worse than that anaconda was I thought that it would, you know, I've dogged steers in my life. I was raised on a cattle ranch. It's not that big a deal. You just grab them by the nose and throw your left hand over the top of their head, grab a horn and throw all your weight to one side. I tried to do that to a whitetail one time. I'm one of those guys who always, before I go to the hospital, I say something like, hey, y'all, watch this. Even today, even now that I'm 48 years old and I come home every once in a while from a great exploit in the wilderness, with both eyes blackened or blood somewhere on my body, my wife always looks at me and says, well, you're going to be stupid. You better be tough. Oh, my. Well, today we're going to talk about the biblical man and self, and hopefully, hopefully this afternoon we'll get to the part about our marriage. which is, to me, one of the most important, if not the most important thing in a man's life outside of his personal walk with Christ. And I want to start out by saying, do you ever just look around you, look in the mirror, look around you at everything that's Christian, and it just makes you sick to your stomach? There's thousands of things we can point out that's maybe wrong about evangelicalism, but I'm concerned more with just myself. All the words. All the noise. All the stuff. Sooner or later you just want to say, stop the wheel. I want to get off. What do you mean you want to get off? I just don't care about this stuff anymore. I want to live. every day as Christ would live. And no one can accuse me of downplaying the role of preaching. But even that sometimes just makes me sick. There's so many messages. There's so much truth. There's just so much, again, noise. And I just want to just leave me alone. want to learn to walk day by day with Christ. And I have become convinced that the most powerful tool in the hand of God is a simple man. A simple man who desires simply to walk every day, every hour with Christ. And seeing that manifest in this way. Not in the people who don't know you, but manifested in the people who are closest to you. I had a pulpit committee come up to me one time after I preached a sermon in a certain place. And they said, we want you to consider being our pastor. And I looked at them with a twinkle in my eye and I said, are you crazy? And they said, what do you mean? I said, you don't know if I love my wife. You heard one eloquent message and you think I qualify to be your pastor? You know nothing about me. And young men, let me share something with you. Sometimes the greatest voices have the worst lives. One time, Someone asked Conrad Murrell. He's a man who's had influence on my life and Don's life and so many other people. They asked him, they said, we're going to have a prayer conference. Can you recommend anybody to come and teach in it? He said, no. He said, why? He says, I know men who pray who don't talk about it and men who talk about it who don't pray. So no, I don't have anyone I can recommend for your conference. What it really comes down to is the people who are around you. Your wife. Your children. Your closest friends. What do they testify about you? Not all the hype. The reality. That's what we're looking at today. As I shared with you, the biblical man is a man who is passionate. about the person of God and the advancement of His kingdom. The cry of His heart is, Hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done. But that can be just a bunch of empty rhetoric unless it advances in what I call concentric circles of concern. That His name be hallowed in me. His kingdom come in me. His will be done in me. and then in the relationships closest to me. So first, we're going to talk about us. And we're going to talk about self-dominion. Taking dominion of ourselves. I hear so many men talking, and some of it is true, how we ought to, we were designed to take dominion, to spread God's Kingdom, to advance His will throughout the world. That's true. But let's concern ourselves with if we're going to take dominion, let's take dominion of us. Now, I have to be very, very careful with that language. Why? Because it smacks of inward strength. It smacks of self-will. I'm going to take dominion. That's not what I'm talking about. There are two extremes. One is, I'm going to do it. Just do it. No, you're not. You don't have the strength to. But the other is, I'm just going to wait around and let God do it. That's not biblical either. Salvation is monergistic. It's the work of one God. We move into the realm of progressive sanctification, we can see both parties at work. We can see in Scripture that God has given us means by which we may grow. It is in the power of the Holy Spirit. It is still all of grace, and yet we are commanded to do certain things. To dedicate ourselves. To be disciplined to the things that God has given us. Now, I want to talk about first of all the goal. The goal is conformity to Christ. Just listen to this. For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son. Romans 8.29 That's the sunum bonum. of the Christian life. That's the greatest good of the Christian life. That is the purpose for absolutely everything God is doing in your life, and that is to conform you to the character of His Son. And if you truly belong to Him, He will spare no expense to get you there. There's a passage in Ezekiel that goes along with the New Covenant and the idea of regeneration and the great work that God's going to do in Ezekiel 36 And he says, I will cleanse them from all their filthiness and from all their idols. You ought to be able to stand up today and testify, if you've been a Christian for several years, you ought to be able to testify that one of the chief characteristics of God's work in your life is that He has spent these years cleansing you from filthiness and destroying idols in your life. And sometimes He's done it like a wrecking ball. He will take no prisoners. He will do whatever is necessary to purify His people. So the goal is conformity. But I want you to realize something. Although it is God who is at work in us, we are also called to be deliberate and to be disciplined. I want you to look just for a moment at 1 Timothy 4, 7-8. I have probably Well, I've known about this verse and read this verse for years. And then one day it just kind of came like a flood. What he's talking about. Just look at it. 1 Timothy 4, 7 and 8. But have nothing to do with worldly fables fit only for old women. On the other hand, discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness. For bodily discipline is only of little profit, but godliness is profitable for all things, since it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come." Now, let's go back. He says, on the other hand, he's making a direct contrast. Discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness. Now, if I stopped right now and handed out a sheet of paper to every one of you and a pencil and said to you, write out for me your training, the design of your training. It doesn't matter what kind of serious athlete you're dealing with, whether it is a sprinter, or a powerlifter, or what else? A wrestler? It doesn't matter. You go to that man. If he is a serious competitor, he will have an intricate training program. What's yours? Now, there's enough right now for us to say, okay, cancel. Go home. What is yours? What is your training program? You say, well, it's just kind of up in the air. I don't know of an athlete who has a training program that's up in the air. I don't know a serious competitor who doesn't have it written down on paper what he eats, what time he eats, what he doesn't eat, how much he will sleep, How much he will train. How much he will train certain body parts. How he will make changes in those trainings even every week, refining them. How he will go to certain coaches and see that he needs to grow in one area or another, train more here and less here. He's intricately involved in his training program. Alright, we're training not for a gold medal or a little reef made out of a vine, that will wilt. We are training for an imperishable prize. What's your training program? Well, don't cry to me when you say you just don't grow. There's a reason why people don't grow very much. I was raised on a farm. I mean, you come out and show me your beans and say, my beans just aren't growing. I say, well, show me your fertilizer. The weeds are horrible. What do you think? You're just supposed to scatter seed and leave it at that? What is your training program? And I know that many of you just love theology, and that's wonderful. I do too. But that's not the full training program. What's your training program? Boy, that's a good question. Disciplining yourself to be godly. So that means the end of your Bible study or the purpose of your Bible study is to be godly. The purpose of Scripture memory is to be godly. The purpose of reading the two volume work of Edwards is to be godly, not to know more than everyone else. It is to be godly. Now, sometimes I have people ask me, Brother Paul, who do you think is the greatest preacher alive today? You know that no one ever comes up to me and asks me, Brother Paul, who's the godliest man you know? Look where our emphasis is. Who's the godliest man you know? America has influenced so much of our Christianity. In America, it's all about how big you are, how much influence you have, how well known you are. The same thing is happening in Reformed, sovereign grace circles. Celebrities. He has a big church. He has a large ministry. He's written a lot of books. God's eye is focused on different things. Godliness. I think it was Tozer, I'm not sure, but I believe it was Tozer who said, all these young men running around wanting to be used, wanting to be used, whining about wanting to be used. He said, I have discovered that if a man will make himself usable, God will wear him out. Training yourself for godliness. Which training indicates what? A separation from some things. Denial of many things. And giving yourself to other things. I love to tell the story about a violinist, a master violinist who was playing his last concert. And when he finished, a young violinist walked up to him, a student, and said, Sir, I would give my life to play like you. And the old violinist looked at him and said, I have given my life to play like me." Separation from that which does not produce godliness and give yourself to that which does produce godliness. Now, it's also demanding. Look at 1 Corinthians 9.24. He says, Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win. Everyone who competes in the games exercises self-control in all things. They then do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. Therefore, I run in such a way as not without aim. I box in such a way as not beating the air, but I discipline my body and I make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified. An amazing film that you can watch is kind of old now, but the Chariots of Fire, about the Olympic races and the godliness of Eric Little. One of the young men, Abram, who was competing, training all his life to win this race, after he won the race, you see him after that just basically go get drunk. Why? He lived his entire life to win that race. His whole life was consumed by only one thing, winning the race. What was he going to do afterwards? I look at sprinters. I just marvel at them. But they train all their lives, some of them since they were five and six years old, and run when they're, let's say, 21, 22, 24, all those years of training for a less than ten second race, and then to receive gold that's not gold. How much more should we train? Listen, especially you young men, listen to me. You want to be used. But you must be trained. You wouldn't walk into a wrestling competition with no training whatsoever. As they say, the guy would tie you up like a snake in a weed eater. There would be nothing left of you when he got done with you. You have no training. You don't even know what to do. So many people, they get saved and they just want to run out there and do all sorts of stuff. And I'm not necessarily recommending some formal education or seminary or Bible college, but I am recommending training. What has changed about your life since you've become a Christian with regard to preparation and training and goals? Look at these athletes who run for something that does not matter. and then hang your head in shame. Sometimes that's good to hang your head in shame for the way they train for nothing and the way you do not train for everything. Now, I want to talk about some of the basics today. You're not going to learn anything new, but maybe you will remember some of the things you have forgotten In our transformation, in our metamorphosis, the first thing that we must do is avoid things. It doesn't matter how much an athlete trains to be a marathon runner. If he weighs 350 pounds, even though he's 5'2", because he eats all the time. It doesn't matter how much you work out if you're filling your body with poison instead of nutrients. I can hand you an almost pristine glass of water and before you drink it, that one word there, almost pristine, is going to catch your attention. And you're going to say, what do you mean it's almost pristine? It's just got one tiny drop of sewer water in it. Well, then I don't want it. One little drop makes all the goodness gone. It is no longer to any avail. Now, the first thing that we must do is avoid evil influences. Now, men, this is not possible completely because of the world that we live in. But, most men take no measures whatsoever to avoid evil influences like multimedia, godless conversation, godless relationships, multimedia, multimedia, the media, television, radio, Internet, Television. Not only, men, are you pumping filth into your own minds, you're pumping it into the lives of your children. In 2 Timothy 2.22 we're told this, Now flee from youthful lust and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart. Now look, before they call upon the Lord from a pure heart, they flee from youthful lust. The first thing that I want to tell you is this. Even in your 80s, this verse still applies to you. Until you are dead, this verse applies to you. First of all, you need to understand, I need to be afraid of everything outside of me that is telling me things not according to the will of God. But I need to be afraid of everything inside of me also. A motto that may help you, a line of wisdom that may stick in your head as it has stuck in mine. I need to take the Word and preach the Word to me. I don't need to let me preach to me. There are all kinds of thoughts. desires, all sorts of things running around in this head of mine, in this heart of mine that I do not need to listen to. I need to preach to me constantly. I need to never trust me. I need to never be confident in me. That's why when I wake up in the morning before I move a quarter of an inch to the left or a quarter of an inch to the right, I need to pray, lead me not into temptation, but deliver me from evil. I am terrified to get out of this bed unless you get out of this bed with me. Apart from the grace of God, I will betray you. Oh, if we had such confidence in God and no confidence, as Paul says, in the flesh. None whatsoever. Sometimes I've even said this in my younger years and realized how foolish it is. You hear someone say, well, you know, brother, I struggle with things myself, but the thing that you're talking about, I've pretty much got victory over. The moment you say that. You have no complete victory over anything until glorification. My wife served for a time as a missionary. I saw her risk her life. I saw her be in bombings and going down through jungles. And then she came to the realization she didn't know the Lord. She had just been led. She'd gone to a Christian school. Led in a prayer and told, you know, that was it. She never experienced the reality of Christ. But the day when she was saved, she just started learning so much. And she would come to me all the time with things that God was showing her. And she said, do you know why people have trouble with sin? After they get victory over sin? I said, ok, here we go. Another sermon. I said, why? She said, well, sit down. I'm going to tell you. Okay. All right. She goes, let me ask you a question. You think I'm a rough preacher. You ought to live with my wife. She said, let me ask you a question. She said, have you ever noticed that there was some sin in your life that just kept coming up and up and up and up? And I said, yes. And she goes, what did you do? I'll tell you what you did. Okay. She goes, you started reading verses and you started praying and you maybe even fasting and you're crying out to God, depending on Him. And what happened? Well, dear, I'll tell you what happened. She said, you got victory over it. And she said, and then you thought you got victory over it. And then after a while, the whole thing just kept coming back. She said, let me tell you why. If you eat today, it doesn't matter how much you eat today, you'll be hungry tomorrow. You see, a human being can't just say, well, you know, I've got a lot to do this month, so on March 1st, I'm just going to eat for 24 hours and get that out of the way so that I can just work the rest. It doesn't work that way, does it? It doesn't at all. Because even though you eat that much, you'll still be hungry the next day. Because you must eat constantly. She said, God is trying to teach us something. He doesn't want us to get victory over something to the point where we forget about it and forget about Him. She wants us constantly coming to Christ. Constantly feeding. Constantly needing Him. Constantly getting grace. You're never done with it. That's just so true. Oh, if we could only see our danger. If we could only see our own weaknesses. If we would only not trust ourselves and throw ourselves upon Him and then stand confident in Him. Now, let's talk about something that is a venue for much evil. Our eyes. The psalmist said in Psalms 103, I will set no worthless thing before my eyes. Throw your television set away. We have a television in our house. It's not hooked up to any network or cable or anything. Sometimes when something comes out, DVD of preaching or even a good Christian film or something that is noble, that's not going to take you away from the Lord. We'll watch certain things. We're very cautious, but we will. But I don't see how anyone can put a TV set in their house, hook it up to cable, and expect to be godly. Now, you can disagree with me because maybe you're more spiritual than I am, and that's probably true. But I just don't see how I could ever do that. Because not only do you watch evil things, even if you watch a football game, they're going to get you, aren't they? And you say, well, I can't throw away football just because of that. Why not? Nothing is more important than your godliness. and doing whatever you have to do to keep those images from coming into your head. No, you do live in the world. You can't go live in a commune in the mountain. But there are certain things you can do and those that you can do, you need to do. And it's not only pornographic or bad media. Even good media. Like I heard one fellow say, he goes, I realized my life was going nowhere when I would sit and watch for hours fishing videos. And he said, look at me. I'm watching another human being fish. I don't even fish anymore. I just watch them do it. Think about that, men. You watch other people live out fantasies. And you're probably living out some fantasies through them. You have a life! You're not supposed to watch other people live out a lie. You're to live out the life God gave you. You say, well, I'm going to keep my TV, but can you give me some rules to guide me? Well, yes, I can. If it's off-colored and not pure, don't watch it. If it isn't something that on the Day of Judgment God would hold up in honor and reward, don't watch it. Don't watch television more than you converse with your wife about godly things. Don't watch television more than you disciple your children. Don't watch television more than you play with your children. Now get that thing out of your house, because you know you're not doing any of the things I'm talking about. We've been given a life, man, to live. Men do not do great things by watching other men do nothing. Children, they're going to be gone. They're going to be gone. And you're watching television. Sometimes what I like to do is I just think. Now, there is a sense. I know you see these pictures of Catholic priests and monks holding up a skull. It seems so grotesque, and in a way it is. But I want you to realize something that they're doing. The whole idea was to contemplate mortality, to contemplate death, the certainty of it. And how should I now live my life in light of the fact that I'm going to die? Sometimes I imagine my wife in my arms and she's an 85 year old woman, frail, weak, gray. And she's breathing her last breath. How then shall I live now? Based on that. The day my children leave my home, how then shall I live? Based on that. The day that I stand before Christ and have to give an account. Listen, grace. All of grace. But it still says all of those who are under grace will give an account. You did what with your life? You spent how many hours a day? He also says, I have made a covenant with mine eyes, Job 31.1. How then can I gaze at a virgin? Listen. Do you know one of the reasons why adultery is so bad? I mean, adultery with the eyes, why it is so bad. This may shock you because God loves people. That's why it's so bad. When you look at a woman with lust in your heart, not only have you committed adultery, you've committed murder. You have reduced the highest order of creature on this planet that God made in His own image. You have reduced that person down to a thing for your own use. You have killed their humanity and made them your slave. And as Brother Dawn said, which is so true, the slightest glance, unchecked, turns into a downward spiral. Men do not fall into sin. Men do not fall into fornication or adultery. They slide there. You know the computer lingo, garbage in, garbage out. It's the same thing with the mind. Do you truly want a life? Do you truly want the presence of Christ? Do you truly want the fullness of the Holy Spirit? Then you must shut yourself off from those things that grieve Him. Also, avoid evil men. Avoid them. Like the plague. In Psalms 101, 3 and 4, I hate the work of those who fall away. It shall not fasten its grip on me. A perverse heart shall depart from me. I will know no evil." Look at that. It will not fasten its grip on me. Sin is a very dangerous thing. At first, you touch it. And that's all. And then eventually, you touch it, it touches you back. And eventually, you touch it, and it caresses. And then eventually you touch it and it holds. And then eventually you want to get away and it won't let go. It is dangerous. Fear God. Fear sin. 1 Corinthians 15.33, Do not be deceived. Bad company corrupts good morals. You know, several years ago, Warren Wiersbe wrote a few different books, Walking with the Giants, I think it was, where he just had short biographies of men of God. And you know, they were so helpful to me. And this is what I would do as a young minister. When I would get to the point where I just didn't want to pray today, I would go and pick out one of those biographies of a man who was a man of prayer. And I would read that and I would want to pray. Or I would be in my study and I had sermons to prepare and I didn't want to prepare because I was just tired. And I would go and I'd get one of those biographies and I'd read Charles Spurgeon or Alexander McLaren who was known to spend 60 hours on a sermon. And I would read and it would excite me to good deeds. Though they're dead, they still speak. If you're around a hot-tempered man, you will become like him. You round a patient man, you will become like him. You round a man who frolics in lust, you will become like him. It says in Proverbs, he who walks with wise men will be wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm. Now, let me just stop here for a moment. This is one of the greatest problems with young men today, children. And I'm going to talk about this again, but my last sermon is going to be 25 hours long, just so you know. There's no such thing as a generation gap. It's an evil lie. It doesn't come out of Scripture. There's no such thing as a generation gap. And there's no such thing as adolescence either. Oh, we need to put all those youngsters together with youngsters. Really? So we combine foolishness and it leads to wisdom. We need to have a youth group and in order to gather young people, we need to get a guy who's just a little bit older with a lot of mousse in his hair and really cool to bring. Why? Well, young people need to be with young people. That's a direct contradiction to Scripture. Young boys are to be with men. Why? So that they learn to act like men. If only there were enough men to be examples for them. My wife says if a man eating lion got out in the United States of America, he'd starve to death because there's so few men to eat. It's true. Most men stay in the adolescent mode until they're in their mid-thirties. Then their lives are so messed up, they can never come back around and embrace true manhood. It's true. Not only should we avoid evil influences, but here's something that is a forgotten doctrine. We should be innocent. There is nothing manly about being an expert in unrighteousness. There is nothing manly about being an expert in unrighteousness. Listen, the psalmist said, I will know no evil. Wasn't that the problem from the very beginning? You will know. You will experience the difference between good and evil. Well, why would I want to do that? It says, I will know no evil. Philippians 2.15, so that you will prove yourselves to be blameless and innocent children of God above reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation among whom you appear as lights in the world. Blameless and innocent. Innocent. That means you're actually ignorant. of evil. You don't understand it. You don't know what they're talking about. Oh, I wish I was more that way. One of the things that I have noticed, I'm not endorsing or anything, I used to, when I had more time, I'd make furniture for my wife and I liked to make wooden longbows and things. And so I would go up to an Amish community and I'd buy wood. And I'd sit around, I'd try to witness, talk to. The thing that I noticed about the men were they would just sit around and it was almost they were men. But when you hear them talk, there was a simplicity almost like a child. an innocence of not even knowing really all the stuff going on outside their world. Now, we should not be ignorant in education or politics or any such thing, but we should do everything in our power to be innocent, to not want to hear. A man begin to say something and there's a grotesque nature about it before the words even come out of his mouth. Sir, please, no. That a believer should get to the point where when a vulgar word is spoken, it almost just embitters them inside. They don't even know what to do. They become shaken. Because we're innocent. Romans 16, 19, For the report of your obedience has reached to all. Therefore, I am rejoicing over you, but I want you to be wise in what is good and innocent in what is evil. 1 Corinthians 14, 20, Brethren, do not be children in your thinking. Be mature in your thinking. Yet in evil, be infants. Be infants. One of the greatest tasks of a father is to protect the innocence of his child that love not be awakened before its time. Well, these children have got to know, who said that? It's one of the reasons why I would really admonish you to second-guess yourself in public school. I mean, all the filth I learned as a kid, I didn't learn it from my mom or my dad. And if it was like that back in the 60s, what's it like now? Well, the newspapers tell us every day, don't they? Turn your child over to Caesar to be raised, and a son of Caesar you shall have. It's from my dear friend, Vody Bokom. But it's true. Just look at this for a moment. I have to preach a series of sermons in Spain, and so I'm writing out everything in Spanish and all this different stuff, and it's kind of difficult for me. I went through some, I think, pretty accurate statistics, and this is what I came up with. You're a child. Or a child in America. Even in a Christian home. They will go through, if they graduate from college, when they've graduated from a secular college, they will go through at least twelve years of formal training in secular humanism. Twelve years of every ideology that contradicts the Scriptures and will hear Scriptures torn to pieces as an archaic book for social dinosaurs and bigots. Then, they will go through, I estimate, somewhere around, if the statistics are true, somewhere around 15,000 hours of training in secular humanism and vulgarities and pornography for media. Okay? Now, the experts tell us that to be an expert in anything, whether it be a doctor or a calf roper or anything, it requires 10,000 hours of training. So your child has gotten now 12 years of formal education in the secular mindset, 15,000 hours of training through multimedia. And if the child studies the Bible, is converted when he's 12, and studies the Bible until he graduates from college a half hour a day, which isn't happening in almost any homes, he gets somewhere around 1,800 hours of biblical training. Unstructured, informal, and with no teacher. And you wonder why there's so much difficulty in living the Christian life. Come on now. And they're trained in innocence there? Is that what they're training them? I was over preaching in England a couple of months ago and someone asked me, well, if your children are at home and you're training them, how are they socialized with other children? I said, let me ask you a question. Just what does that mean? Because I've walked around the streets of London the last couple of nights And I have heard children saying vulgarities and doing things that I couldn't even imagine. So that's how my child should be socialized by them, should be trained by them. Are you really a father? Are you really? Or are you just someone who has offspring? Listen to this. Jeremiah 4.22, For my people are foolish. They know me not. They are stupid children and have no understanding. They are shrewd to do evil, but to do good they do not know. And why should they? They're not being trained in it. Now, not only should we avoid certain things, but we should do something. And it begins with our mind. We should renew our minds. You see, prior to coming to Christ, you lived your entire life behind enemy lines. You were trained by the enemy. Every influence in your life was an influence of the enemy. You become a Christian. The marvelous work of regeneration. But there is a necessity to continue renewing the mind and gradually the work of sanctification, doing away with those ingrained habits of sin through the Word of God. Now, let me share with you a few things about Bible study that I think is very important. First of all, an overall knowledge of the Word of God is required. How could I illustrate this? You take a guy who walks into a gym. and he wants to become a weightlifter. And so he sits down and he gets on a bench and he picks up a little weight and he turns his wrist this way, inside, like this, in order to get this muscle to really stick out and then he starts using little bitty weights and he's trying to refine and define all his muscle. In the end, all he's going to have is a lot of small, really defined muscle and very little strength. So what do you do when you bring a guy into the gym? First thing, after you check him all out, he's okay, what do you start? You get him on the bench press? You get him deadlifting? You get him doing squats? T-rolls with big, heavy weights? Massive movements. Singular movements. Nothing defined about it. When he does those squats, you know that all his legs, his glutes, his lower back, even his shoulders, it's all in the work. Even his lungs are getting stronger. When you get him on the T-bar, you know that his entire back is being worked. And what does it do? It creates this mountain of muscle that later on you can trim down if you want to. That's the difference between the Puritans and us. Young guys get real excited about theology. They spend the next 20 years of their life in the book of Romans. They know nothing about Zephaniah. And we have word search programs. We can find a word, a concept so quickly. I want to recommend to you that this is what you should do. Systematically read through the Scriptures as a life practice. Not jumping around, but from Genesis to Revelation. Systematically reading through the Scriptures at least once a year. So that you grow in this full knowledge of the counsel of God. So that when you have an illustration, you can pull it out of the Old Testament. Read the Puritans and you'll see that to you, they may be speaking about the Holy Spirit or writing about the Holy Spirit, and all of a sudden, instead of going to John 16, they pull some obscure text out of a minor prophet that you've never even read before. Why? Because they have a full knowledge of the Word of God. We're specialists today. Now, that shouldn't be your only study, but it is a necessity. Reading through, reading through, reading through. Another thing, I want you to listen to something. Deuteronomy 17, 18-20, Now it shall come about when he, the king, sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself a copy of this law on a scroll in the presence of the Levitical priests. It shall be with him, and he shall read it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God by carefully observing all the words of this law and these statutes, that his heart may not be lifted up above his countrymen, and that he may not turn aside from the commandment to the right or the left, so that he and his sons may continue long in his kingdom in the midst of Israel." If you are a husband, if you are a father, if you are a pastor, you are in a position of authority. And to keep yourself from going wild in that position, from doing things that will heap judgment on you, you need to read the Word. Read the Word. Read the Word. Be saturated in the Word. be saturated in the Word. And Don was talking about this, and this is so true. So many of us think, well, you know, I'm not given to that. I'm just not a reader. Okay? I throw you in the ocean and you either swim or drown, but you say, you know, I'm not really a swimmer. You don't care at that point. Do you see? It's not a matter of what you are. Listen to me, gentlemen. Is it not true? A lot of my family worked in tool and die factories and things like that. A guy comes home, a cousin of mine, he's not a big reader, didn't really like to study that in high school very much, but he's a really good tool and die man. His boss gives him a manual about that big and says, you've got to get this under your belt and you've got a month to do it. Well, people are getting laid off. He knows he's got to do it. He does it. Why? His job depends on it. Your life depends on it. He never comes home and says, I'm not a reader. He doesn't say, I don't feel like it. He knows his life depends on it. So he takes this massive book and it's all right here in a month. Necessity drives a man. Your greatest need is to walk with God. You live between two days. The day that Jesus Christ hung before all men and the day that all men will fall before Jesus Christ. You live between those two days. Now, a careful study of the Scriptures. Not just reading, but a careful study of the Scriptures. Ezra. I love him. For Ezra had set his heart to study the law of the Lord and to practice it and to teach His statutes and ordinances in Israel. If we were only men that headed up our homes in that way. Let's say your name is Bob. For Bob had set his heart to study the law of the Lord and to practice it. Not just to study it. To practice it and to teach his statutes and ordinances to his children, to his wife. You'd eliminate the need for Sunday school, children's church, youth ministry. All of which is just a substitution for men doing what they're supposed to be doing, which is discipling and training their own children. 2 Timothy 2.15, be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed. I think there's an indication here that sooner or later in your Christian life, If you're not diligent in study, you're going to be ashamed about it, whether it'll be in the church or with some other believers or before the throne of God. You're being warned here that a lack of diligent study will lead to your shame. Also, the memorization and meditation in the Scriptures. Isn't it amazing that it seems to me that when anything of bringing the Word of God into our lives, as mentioned in Scripture. The preponderance of verses deal with not intricate study, but memorization. Memorization and meditation. But we are such a loud and clamorous and busy people that we know very little about sitting quietly in meditating upon a text. I would even have ministers who would tell me, stop that foolishness and get to work. But to meditate upon the text, to memorize. Let me give you just a little helpful hint at Desiring God, Dr. Piper's ministry. For children, there is a fighter packet of verses And even there's a beginner packet before that that's just on a rink. Very, very helpful to start memorizing Scripture. Whatever you have to do to start memorizing Scripture. Now, the application of Scripture to your life. I want you to think about this. I want you to go for a moment. Just go with me to 2 Timothy. I want to show you something. Chapter 3. Verse 16, all Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness. Now, I see four things here. If you will take these four things seriously, it will help you in your Bible study and it will help you in your preaching. But mostly, it will help you in your life. And these are the four things I use with correction on my children. First, teach yourself from the Scriptures. Teach yourself. You know, I've talked about systematic reading. There ought to be a sense of systematic study. But there's another thing that people just forget about. Someone says, well, I don't know what I ought to study. What are you struggling with? Well, I'm struggling with doubt. Study that. Study what you need. What do you need at that moment? Well, I'm having trouble being patient with my wife. Okay, there you go. There's where you should do a full-blown study of Scripture. There's where you should be memorizing Scripture. See, actually use the Word of God. See, here's the problem. When you sit there and go, okay, let's see. I get up in the morning. I brush my teeth. I did this. I've got to go to work. Okay. Kiss my wife. Okay. I kiss her. Check that off. You're missing the point. You're not kissing her to check it off. You're kissing her because you want to kiss her. It's the same way. Did my Bible study? Did you teach yourself anything? Did anything of that study? Was it applied to your life? You know if you were to sit down right now with a piece of paper, you could write out so many things, couldn't you, that you're struggling with. We'll start at the top. Prioritize those. This is the biggie I'm struggling with. Okay, start attacking it with the Scriptures. Go to the Scriptures. Study what the Bible says about your impatience, about a hot-tempered man. Memorize text. Go for it. I guarantee you'll start seeing some progress. I think this is what he may mean when he says, discipline yourself for godliness. I think this is where newthetic counseling has its strength. It's not just sit around and mystically study Scripture and mystically hope something happens to you, but get the Scripture and memorize it and pray over it. The very Scriptures that are dealing with your problem. And then your life being conformed to what the Word of God says by the Spirit of God. You see, teach yourself the Scriptures. Also, reprove yourself from the Scriptures. This word here has the idea of a prosecuting attorney. that amasses all the evidence necessary to convict the criminal. That's something we should do to ourselves. It's something we should do with our children, with our brothers and sisters in Christ, with the congregation when we're preaching. My mother was a very strong-willed woman. I love her. She loved the Lord. She's gone home to be with the Lord. But she was just a strong woman. She raised all of us without a father. My father died when I was young. He put us all through college. Never took care of herself. Just others. And I can remember when the doctor said, your mother has cancer and it's bad and she's going to do several different things. I said, my mother's pretty strong willed. I don't know if she's going to go for all this. So when he walked in there, he had a mass of evidence under his arm. And he just kept laying out x-ray after test, after proof, after study and everything. Mr. Washer, all the evidence points to this and you must do this. So when someone looks at you or you begin to have a hint that there's some element in your life that needs to be changed, go to the Scriptures. Allow the Scriptures to reprove you. all the Scriptures that deal with that certain thing. And then, Lord, show me, is this really true about me? When you deal with your children, stop doing that. Why? Because I said so. Stop doing that. Why? Scriptures say this. Well, Dad, I don't think I was doing that. Okay. Amass all the evidence until conviction of the criminal occurs. But then it's not just reproving, but also, he says, correct with the Scriptures. The Scriptures are not just a prosecuting attorney who works for your condemnation. It's also a surgeon to correct the problem. Stop doing that bad thing. That's only half the battle. Start doing the right thing. The Greek word actually refers to someone who's been knocked over and he's set back up on his feet, or a vase that's been knocked over and you set it back up the way it ought to be. The Scriptures not only simply point out what's wrong with us, it points us to the way we should be. It corrects us. And then there's training. Training. Are you training yourself in the Scriptures? What does that mean? You say, well, I've recognized now that I have a problem with my temper. I've studied what the Scriptures say about the wrongness of it, the judgment against it. I've studied the Scriptures about the correction, the correct attitude I ought to have. Now, the training. What is that? I'm going to memorize these Scriptures. I'm going to meditate on these Scriptures. Whenever I blow it and I am angry, I'm going to confess my sin. I'm going to go back to the Scriptures. I may ask someone else to hold me accountable, to help me, and go through this training process. But we just do nothing with the Scriptures. We just lay them there when there's this fourfold ministry of the Scriptures toward us. So very important. Now, another is prayer. It is prayer. And this is so extremely important. It's so important, as a matter of fact, we could preach the whole conference on just prayer. But let me say a few things about prayer in the life of a man. First of all, prayer is not primarily intercession. Most of you don't like to pray. The flesh hates praying. But there's a reason why a lot of even men who love God don't like to pray. Because they've limited their praying only to intercession. And I want to tell you something, intercession is not fun. Intercession is hard work. It's praying with your boots on. It is battling. The problem is that prayer is not primarily intercession. It is primarily communion with God. And prayer must start there. Communion with God. Praying to know Him. Praying to talk with Him. That's why it is very important for a man of God never to divide his life in the secular and sacred. Everything is sacred. So whether I am leaning upon His power right before I am to preach in a certain place or whether I'm sitting in a tree stand, I will commune. It's another thing to help you with regard to sin. If you're doing anything or in any place where you cannot commune with God, you should not be there. You should not be doing it. It's not that God has a certain place in our life. God is to be our life. It's not that we're to think about Him on the Lord's Day or think about Him in our devotional time and then ask Him to go back into the closet. The purpose of the devotional time, as I said last night, is simply to prepare our hearts for a full day of communion with God. Now some people, I've talked about this thing, and they say, well, you know, you're so heavenly minded, you're no earthly good. Well, I say you're so earthly minded, you're no heavenly good. As a matter of fact, the men who have done the most for this planet have been the men who thought most about God. I'll give you a great example. Frank Lombok from the Philippines. He went to the Philippines. His primary desire was to teach all the Philippines to read so that they could read the Bible. Now, you go over to the Philippines today, they still know about him. They teach about him in school. There are schools with his name on it. He set out to teach the Philippines how to read, and he did it. Do you know what his greatest goal was in his life? His life goal in his diary? It is this. His greatest goal, the thing he strove for every day. He wanted to live one solid day. of uninterrupted thoughts about Christ. So while he's teaching people to read and everything else, his mind is set on Christ, set on things above. So prayer. He says in Psalms 27.4, one thing I have asked from the Lord that I shall seek, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life to behold the beauty of the Lord and to meditate in His temple. We see no intercession there. We see no great works being done. We just see a heart that wants to commune with God. I love it when I'm going out to do something out in the field, you know, and I don't really need any help. I'm just going out there and I put my boots on as I'm putting my boots on. One or both of my boys look at me. What are you going to do, Dad? Well, I'm going to go down here and shovel. There's a place down here in the creek where it's backing up and everything. It's going to flood that one part. Do you need our help? Oh, I can get it done this time without you boys. Well, can we go? That's what relationships are for. I knew I wanted to marry my wife when I was happy just to be with her even if we weren't doing anything. What do you think this is all about? God needs you? Think for a minute. Like my wife says, think, Pooh, think. Why did He do all this stuff? Would we not say that I may dwell in the house of the Lord? Behold His beauty? That I might know Him? So what is all this frantic stuff running around, doing everything but the important thing? For one day in your courts is better than a thousand outside. I would rather stand at the threshold of the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness. Better is one day in your courts. Also about prayer, you need to understand that some things are only given through prayer. I know God is sovereign. I know He is. But you will not take away the Bible from me in the name of sovereignty. I know God is sovereign. I get in a lot of trouble because of my belief in the sovereignty of God. But you will not take away Scripture from me in the name of sovereignty. Such verses as you do not have because you do not ask. I don't understand that and I'm not called to understand it. It's there in Scripture. I do not know how to reconcile many things in Scripture. I believe that God is all sovereign, has decreed everything, and I believe that there are some things I do not have because I do not ask. You let go of the one or let go of the other and you're in trouble. Hold on to both. Some battles are only won by prayer. When he came into the house, his disciples began questioning him privately in Mark 9.28. Why could we not drive it out? And he said to them, this kind cannot come out by anything but prayer. I love a note that one commentary writer wrote. He said the disciples had presumed upon the position and power given to them or had begun to think that the power was inherent in them. The lack of prayer indicated they had forgotten that their power was from Jesus. Prayer. There is nothing that cannot and will not be overcome by prayer. Nothing. And you know what the greatest temptation is in prayer? I'll tell you. You're down there praying, and the devil and all other pragmatists are telling you, go do something. Don't hide in this room. Go do something. And God in His discipline will let you go do something and do it for 40 years. He's a very patient God. Where if you had tarried, if you had tarried, it might have been so different. I believe it was R.C. Sproul who said this Only R.C. Sproul could get in this much trouble. But he was in Las Vegas, I think at the airport or something. There were slot machines everywhere. And he saw this lady, just money after money in this slot machine, smoking cigarettes and pouring in the money and money and never winning anything. I mean, she sat there for I don't know how long. Finally, so frustrated, she just got up and walked away. And he thought to himself, You know, I wonder..." And he walked over there and put a coin in and pulled that thing and the worst thing that could ever happen to a preacher happened. The bells went off and everything else. Money started. And he said to himself, if she'd only pulled that handle one more time. Now there's a man, R.C. Sproul, who definitely believes in the sovereignty of God. But he himself said she'd have pulled that handle one more time. If you'd have tarried, tarried, tarried. God delights in vindicating even the smallest confidence of His children. God delights in vindicating the confidence of His children. And that confidence is manifested in, sometimes, standing very still and waiting upon the Lord. Now, I want to go to another thing, and actually, I think I have two more things and then we'll close. A lot more, but we'll close anyways. The empowerment of the Holy Spirit. I fear for many right-thinking men. I fear for many sovereign grace reformed men. This is what I fear. First of all, I fear their respectability, wanting everything to be respectable. I fear their desire to have everything proper and in place. I fear their fear of any sort of disruption or anomaly. My dear friend, if you want a civilized, respectable place with no error and no mess, there's only one place I know you can go for that, and that's a cemetery. Just because A great portion of everything said about the Holy Spirit in America today is heretical. Just because a great portion of all these TV evangelists, a great portion of them, not all of them, but a great portion of them are heretical in their views, practices, and almost blasphemous in the way they deal and treat with the Holy Spirit. Just because of that gives us no right to react against the Scriptures and become afraid of the Holy Spirit. I'll tell you that some of the very men who so honor George Whitefield, if he was alive today, they would not let him preach in their churches because he's too dangerous and he wouldn't be respectable enough. I believe that a man is regenerated and indwelt with the Holy Spirit at his conversion I believe that he is our inheritance. And yet, at the same time, I believe that we should constantly be crying out for greater and greater manifestations of his life and power in our life and ministry. It should be the cry of our lives. Let me just read something to you. And when they had prayed, the place where they had gathered together was shaken and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, began to speak the word of God with boldness. Do you speak the word of God with boldness? It says in Luke that you would be clothed, endued with power. Let me ask you a question. Are you clothed, endued with power? Is that the way you would describe your life and ministry? No? Does that mean you need another Pentecost? I think there was many things about Pentecost totally unique to Pentecost. Does it mean that you should be crying out for greater and greater manifestations, biblical manifestations of the Holy Spirit in your life? You most certainly should. Remember, I can't quote him perfectly, piece that I have from Spurgeon that is so like Spurgeon. He said, many brethren have come to us of late telling us we should not cry out for greater and greater measures of the Spirit in our life. He says, then I suppose that those of us and the reason, he said, is because, of course, we already have the Holy Spirit. Therefore, there is no reason to pray for greater manifestations. He said, but my brother, you have faith. Do you not pray for greater faith? You have repentance, but do you not cry out for a deeper experience in repentance? In the same way, just because much of what's said about the Holy Spirit is heretical, do not take the reactionary position and try to carry out life and ministry apart from the supernatural nature of the Holy Spirit. Do not. One of my favorite, I guess, favorite all-time books on the Holy Spirit is from Ian Murray, Pentecost Today. Two books, Revival in Revivalism and Pentecost Today, question mark. What he is simply saying is that you and I, recognizing our need, recognizing our need, constantly crying out to God Lord, give me wisdom. Yes, but Lord, empower me. You need more than wisdom. You need power. And that comes from the Holy Spirit. Now. What I'm going to talk about this this coming meeting at the end is I'm going to talk about marriage. My dear brothers, I just want to tell you this to give you a taste of what I'm talking about. If I were your, if I was your employer and you were my employee. And I entrusted you with a certain position and you failed. Hopefully, I would be patient with you. Hopefully, I would be kind to you. I may give you a second chance. But I want you to think about the difference between that relationship and if I entrusted you with my daughter and you failed. The two things cannot even be compared. Yes, God has entrusted me with a ministry. And that is extremely important. That is a fearful thing. He loves his daughter. My wife, Charo, he loves her. He didn't die for my ministry. He died for this daughter.