Genesis chapter one, follow along as I read verses 27 through 29. And God created man in his own image. In the image of God he created him, male and female he created them. And God blessed them and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and rule. over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth. Then God said, behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed, it shall be food for you. Let's pray together. Our Heavenly Father, we do thank you for the blessing of being in your house. We thank you that by the Lord Jesus, we have an invitation to enter boldly, and we pray that we would see your face. So we ask that we would have heart dealings with you, that Christ would truly be present, that we would sense his robe brushing up against us. Come Holy Spirit, we pray, in Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Well, I want you to permit me to escort you into the home of a friend of mine. Just in your minds, I think we're descending now a stairway into his basement where we open a door and we enter into a handsomely furnished billiard room. And I want to direct your attention to two items. The first is the solid purple four ball. It's just a billiard ball by trade. Its chief characteristic is passivity. because its vocation is to be acted upon and to be pushed around, to be pushed around by cue sticks, by fellow balls, by bumper cushions. The second item I want to direct your attention to is my friend Nick. Nick is a skillful billiard player, and his chief characteristic is not passivity, no, it's domination. Because Nick premeditatedly designs in his head schemes for directing balls to destinations that he has determined desirable. And so he aggressively imposes his plans with the forceful thrusts of his cue stick. Now on the table of life, many men function more like passive purple four balls than like skillful billiard players. And instead of aggressively dominating and pushing around, many men passively permit themselves to be dominated and to be pushed around. It's a disease that we have as men. In fact, I have it deeply ingrained in my DNA. It's passive purple four-ballism. And that's why I penned a sermon like this, even a series like this, because I'm bringing medicine not just for you primarily, I'm bringing medicine for me. This is my problem. You see, passive purple four-ballism is observed in family life where men are couch potatoes, failing to husband, and failing to father, and failing to rule. And in vocational life where men are sluggards, failing to plan ahead, and labor hard, and drive toward excellence. It's a disease seen in the church where men are absent without leave, failing to lead and direct and labor. And it's also seen in personal life where men are weaklings, failing to gird up loins and exercise control and manage priorities. It's a spreading epidemic. It's all over. And so I just bring a therapeutic sermon It's on this passage here, Genesis 1, 27 through 29, where we're called to exercise manly dominion. It just gets right back to the basics. It reminds us of our God-given identity and our assignment. So just consider with me, we'll have four main headings. We'll look first at textual exposition, then sinful misconception, then biblical illustration, then multifaceted application. So come on, four main headings, you can't get lost, hopefully. The first is textual exposition. The first words of our maker to man made in his image, because that's what we are, it says in verse 27, God is basically saying there, that he created man in his own image. Notice how, ladies, don't tune out here because when I speak of manly dominion, you are man as well. Male and female. This is a sermon for you. We'll be more specific for you tonight, but don't tune out here. This is bullseye, dead center regarding your assignment as well as our assignments. God is saying, as we are identified as being in his image, God is saying, be like me. And if God displays himself as anything, he displays himself as one who has governing mastery. over the earth. Just consider that word subdue there. Man is called to subdue and to rule. Subdue. It's the word kibosh, which means to bring into bondage, make it serve you by force. Again, God says be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue. The Hebrew kibosh also has the noun kibesh, which means footstool. You put something under your feet. It says in Psalm 110, sit at my right hand that I might make your enemies a footstool for your feet. When you get something under your feet, it means you've dominated that thing. In Joshua 10, verse 24, it speaks of this five-king confederacy that came against Israel. Israel triumphed. And when Israel triumphed, Joshua caused he and his chiefs to walk on the necks of those kings. Why? Because they had dominated them. They ruled over them. Subjecting something is subduing that thing. Man is said to subdue the earth. Put it under your feet. All its functions are to be taken into hand, brought into subjection to do your bidding. How? Through forceful and aggressive labor. You're going to subdue. The wild plot of the earth, that man, when he opened his eyes, having been created by the fingertips of God, he looked out and he saw the garden, much like God saw the earth in the beginning. Remember how it says, and the earth was formless and void, and in the span of six days, God had a plan in his mind, didn't he? And each of the six days he was going to work the earth so that it was whipped into the condition he wanted it to be. And those six days of creation are like the miniature of every one of our weeks. Because when we wake up on the first day of the week, we are to exercise a mastery and be like God. So maybe it's for you. You wake up tomorrow and Monday, and what you gonna do? You have a plan in your mind. And you're gonna look at the field of labor God has given to you, whether it be in your home as a mom, or in the workplace as a man, as a worker, or vice versa. And the whole theme of staking out, cutting down, plowing up, planting, harvesting, and after working six days, you can rest and look back and say, good. It's very good. And the sleep of the working man is sweet. We're to be like God by subduing the earth and all of its functions. The second word there is rule. It says you are to subdue the earth, and rule over the fish of the sea, and the birds of the sky, and over everything that creeps on it." That word rule is the Hebrew word radah, which means govern, or ring, or hold sway over, or just plain dominate. You'd have lordship over the various realms of the earth, every inhabitant of the earth. In the sky, it flutters. In the sea, it swims. On the ground, it creeps. It says in Psalm 8 and verse 4, What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man? You have crowned him with glory and honor and majesty. You've put all things under his feet, including the sheep of the field. Let me ask you, Who is it, biblically speaking now? Who is it that is the king of the beasts? You're thinking the lion. You're wrong. It's man. Man and woman. We are the king of the beasts. And so we are to assert ourselves as the ruler over this whole terrestrial ball. Now realize if there is an animal rights activists here, you are in horror right now. But the scriptures teach us otherwise. You think of the, maybe there was a wild stallion. We were in Plymouth on the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower just a few days ago. They came onto the shore and they went out into the prairie. And maybe there were days earlier in the prairie of North America when A native had an idea and they saw a horse with mane blowing in the wind in front of the pack and thought, you know, if I could capture that thing, if I could lasso it and then corral it and then bit and bridle it and tame it and ride it, I could use that as my servant. Do you realize that that glorifies God? Because man is ruling over a beast of the earth. Or someone maybe saw in a valley, maybe the Cumberland Valley, a peregrine falcon. I'm thinking if I could net that and train that and send that out to do the hunting for me so that I could eat with my family more easily, that is glorifying God as man and rule over the birds of the air. Or even maybe someone saw a dolphin out in the Atlantic Ocean and had the idea, if I could catch that, And if I could, in some way, put that in water and take it off to Chicago where there's Shedd Aquarium, we could train that, and children could look at that leaping up out of the water, and God would be glorified by that, that as well as man ruling over even the fish of the sea. This is who we are. We are not trespassers on this terrestrial ball. We are the caretakers of it. We are to rule over it, and we are to exercise a vigorous and assertive, goodly dominion. And even in verse 29, it says, see, I have given you, look, ownership over seed-bearing plants, fruit trees, for our consumption, for our sustenance. I suggest to you that all of the burning in California could have been greatly abbreviated if proper forest management on the part of men who are to subdue and rule, that may have caused less disaster than we see now. We are not, again, trespassers. We are the lords of the land. So in conclusion regarding this exposition, think of this. We see here regarding who we are made in the image of God, man is to aggressively dominate his environment instead of allowing his environment to dominate him. I'm not, on the table of life, a passive purple four-ball. I have been appointed and assigned to be a cue-stick-wielding player in my life. I'm to subdue and rule. I am not to permit myself to be subdued and ruled. We've been commissioned by God to aggressively assert ourselves as masters of the various spheres of our lives. So here's how it affects me. I am not assigned to passively stare out my bedroom window, or for me, my office window, feeling intimidated by all of the difficult things out there, and all of my insecurities in here. But instead, instead of daydreaming about what I might do if only, And instead, I am to get out there, and I am to plan it, and I am to do it with all of my might. That is textual exposition, who we are and what we're supposed to do. And that's so important, so fundamental, so crucial, textual exposition. Come on, secondly now, second main heading, and that is sinful misconception. Sin and the curse always has a perverting influence. Whenever God speaks, what does Satan say? Yea, hath God said? Always turning things upside down. Instead of our, Dominating our world, we see that the enemy would have the world put us under its feet, conforming us to the pattern of the world, giving us a twisted worldview. Because whenever God speaks, there are other voices that speak as well. There's the therapist. There's the journalist. There's the animal rights activist. There's the sociologist. There is the psychologist, there is the feminist. You hear all those voices out there, don't you? Telling things contrary than what God has told us. So. Men who are fallen are inclined to disobey God and listen to the voices of the world, not having a confident dominion mindset, but instead disobeying God with a passive victimization mindset, saying, I'm helpless. Let me ask you, have you heard anywhere in the media recently a passive victimization mindset? You're just a victim. You can't. Because this world is oppressing you. So you might as well not even try. You ever heard that at all? Like I've heard that. I've heard that for decades in my life. Since I was a little boy. But now it comes in a little more fancy terminology. In fact, when I was younger, I was looking at a army battalion who had their own flag. Different battalions choose their own flags. And this flag said on it, as they were walking, these dozens of men walking along, the flag said, I can and I will. I like that flag. But my default setting is carrying a flag that says, I probably can't, so I won't even try. And that's penned by the serpent. He's a liar, because he's telling me I'm somebody that I'm not. Because there are these sinful misconceptions that the world gives us. The first would be, you're a victim. You're a genetic victim. And it makes us feel like this. I wish I could obey God. I wish I could take control of my life, but I'm handcuffed by my grandparents, by my genes, by my DNA. It could come in the form of you've got this bad temper. It's that German blood that you have. You can't control yourself. That's why you get angry with everybody else. Or you are an alcoholic. It's just that you're drawn to that by your body chemistry, and you're just a victim. Maybe it's your sex drive. You're a hard-driving type A personality, and it's called sexual disorder disease. It's like diabetes. It's just not your fault at all. Or maybe you've been told you're just a homosexual. That's the way you were born. That's the way that you gotta be. You were born that way, Lady Gaga said. You can't do anything about it. You're just a genetic victim, or you're obesity, or you can't discipline yourself to get up on time, you're just a evening person, not a morning person, it's just not your fault, you're a victim, and that excuses you from exercising dominion over your life. That's why you allow your environment to dominate you in so many other areas. Do you hear the same voice that I hear? All the excuses that I hear, these sinful misconceptions, or maybe not you're a genetic victim, but how about you're an emotional victim. Your problem, or I could say my problem, it's not my genetic makeup, it's instead my upbringing. It's just the way my parents and my significant others treated me. Wet cement. When I was a little boy, you could put your hand in there, and it would dry, come back two or three days later, and that's gonna be there for the duration. Like, that's gonna be there for 50 years. And so maybe your dad said something to you that was hurtful. It made a dent in you emotion. Like, I still remember my dad, and I told him when I was older, I said, Dad, you used to say to me, what's the matter with you, Mark? Because I was a knucklehead. In many ways, my wife will say he still is. But I would say, Dad, you said, what's the matter with me? And for years, I wondered, what is the matter with me? What is the problem with me? Well, we all have these experiences, don't we? My dad told me, one might say, I'll never amount to anything. Another man's dad left when he was 11. A friend of mine, his dad went off to Vietnam and he became an M.I.A. when he was 12 years old and he waited and waited and waited for years for his dad to come home and his dad never came home. And this young man became an alcoholic, a drunkard. It wasn't until he realized it was his responsibility to repent that he turned away from drunkenness. He's been what now? 38 years? He's been dry because by the grace of God he stopped listening to the lie and took dominion over his life by the help of God with the Spirit of God. But so many say, that's why I can't go find a job. That's why I can't succeed in school. That's why I can't stay off drugs. That's why I can't get up on time, because I've been scarred emotionally by somebody else in my life. It's a lie, though. We're to subdue. We're made in the image of God. We are to rule in the various spheres of our lives. Or another misconception is I'm just a circumstantial victim. To add to all my woes, you may say, it's my present environment. It's just filled with all these antagonists that makes life so impossible for me. And that's why I don't exercise dominion. It's my boss. He aggravates me. It's impossible to work with him. Or it's my wife, the woman that gave us me. She's so contentious. Or it's my husband. He's so insensitive. It's my kids. They're so obnoxious. It's my company that makes such impossible demands on me. Again, I even hear some organizations just speaking about how it's the culture. It's the society. There are those oppressors who are over you. You are the oppressed. You're a victim. That's why you can't. Get up, study hard, go to school, get a degree, succeed in America. You can't, right? You've never heard that? Is it just me in Michigan? Or you've got these hands that can be a carpenter, that can craft beautiful things, but you're told that you can't and you have to be sustained by the welfare of the government because you can't, because you're oppressed. It's a lie! There are reasons why people, by the way, swim through shark-infested waters to get to our shores, because there's such opportunity. I'm not saying America is ideal and sinless. It's infested with sin, like thorns and thistles. We can work through the thorns and the thistles by the sweat of our brow and bring home bread. as a result of it in God's common grace. So these are sinful misconceptions regarding made in the image of God, subduing and ruling with manly dominion. So we've seen textual exposition, we've seen sinful misconception. Now just consider with me some biblical illustration, biblical illustration. I just wanna show and lay before you some godly saints in the Bible. were given really daunting and intimidating tasks. But they took their dominion mandate seriously. And by the way, all of them had plenty of available excuses. They could have said, I just, I can't. But instead, each and one of them said, you know, so help me God, I can do this. I can do this. How about Noah? We'll start out early because we're in Genesis 1, just a few chapters ahead. In Genesis 6, Noah was given this really intimidating errand. He was told to build a boat, not a row one, a bigger one. The arc was to be 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, 45 feet high, and he was told to build it. By the way, this was pre-Home Depot. And he had ungodly parents and brothers who probably emotionally bruised and scarred him. And he had a laughing world that constantly mocked him. And he had a 400, a 500-year-old body that probably creaked within him. But the text says in 632, and thus Noah did. He found a way to go out and he did it. He wasn't a passive purple four ball. He took up the hammer and the pitch and he built. Or think of Abraham. Abraham, Genesis 14. Think of how he was an alien. Abraham in the land of Canaan. When you're an alien, you just don't feel confident, right? He wasn't one of the Canaanites. He'd come from way off in the east. And then he had this nephew named Lot. And there was this four-king confederacy that captured Sodom. And Lot, who was in Sodom, and they headed northward. And what's a guy to do dwelling in the shade of the oaks of Mamre? He could have just sat there and kept reading. But instead, he took up the cue stick that he had, which was a a group of 318 trained men, and he headed northward, and he did what he could with what he had. He was a man of dominion. And he rescued his nephew Lot. Now that was a subduing and a ruling of things around him. Or think of Joseph. Now there is a man of dominion. In Genesis 37, he got a really raw deal. Have you ever had a bad hand played to you? Have you ever been abused? Genesis 37, we see Joseph is thrown into a pit by his abusive brothers. Then they sold him off to some Ishmaelites and he ended up in Egypt as Potiphar's slave. Imagine that first night, sleeping in the barn with the straw. bad deal. If I were him, emotionally, I would have curled up into a passive purple four ball and had a pity party because I had such a bad hand dealt to me. But that's not what Joseph did. Joseph took up the broom and he began to sweep and work in Potiphar's house. He rose like cream to the top, didn't he? Because he subdued and he ruled. Then Mrs. Potiphar, she took him down. She framed him with her negligee and her perfume. And he fled from her but ended up in prison again there at the bottom of the barrel. And twice now, twice now, And what does he do? Does he curl up into the passive purple four ball? No, he takes up the broom again and he works the prison cell and he ends up being top cream in the prison. You know the rest of the story, how he stands before Pharaoh and he ends up subduing all of Egypt under his feet as the prime minister. He didn't passively have a pity party like I'm inclined to do when circumstances are bad and difficult, but he subdued and he ruled. Or how about a lady? Ruth the Moabitess. Think of her. She's a Gentile woman. She comes back to Bethlehem. She was from Moab. She was a social leopard. Did she crawl into a passive purple four-ball? No. She went out and she aggressively gleaned. She did what she could. Found out to be in the field of Boaz. We're always, as children of God, in a trade wind. God is always directing our paths. And Naomi said to her, look, I'm concerned about you. Go wash yourself, anoint yourself, put on beautiful clothing, go to the threshing floor. And instead of Ruth saying, I can't do that, I could never do that, she went out and did that. And she ended up being the great-great-grandmother of David. As we see, Boaz united with Ruth, and there was Obed, and eventually David. She became the great-grandmother of the king of Israel. Because she did, she subdued. Or think of Gideon and Judges 6. There he is cowering in the winepress, shucking wheat, and an angel comes to him and says, valiant warrior, how is it with you? And he looks around, me a valiant warrior? I'm hiding, I'm afraid of the Midianites all around me. And with 300 lapping men at the waterside, he ended up subduing this vast army under his feet. not allowing his inferiority to make his decisions for him. I think of that idea of making decisions for us, our fears making our decisions for us. Think of how many young men never got that degree because they feared they would fail, never got that job because they feared they would be rejected. never had a relationship with that woman because they feared she'd say, sorry, not interested. You know, Michael Jordan, he was cut by his junior varsity basketball team. Imagine if his sense of inferiority had determined the rest of his life. There'd be a different story. But he went and subdued, and he ruled, and he worked hard, and he found a way. There's lesson to be found out there in the pagan world. Think of David's mighty men. David's mighty men, 2 Samuel 23. You read these guys. They were men of dominion. They subdued and ruled. There's a fellow there named Eleazar. It says, when others fled, He says he stood in the field, it was the field owned by Israel, and the Philistines came against him. He says he stood, and as one man against a battalion of men, he stood and he hacked and he thrust, it says, until the sword clung to his hand. He could have blamed everybody else. Well, they ran away, so I'll run away too. No, he stood his ground. Even those three men who fetched a jug of water for David from the well at Bethlehem, because the king was thirsty. And they resolved when they got to that well, they had to fight their way through Philistines. This is God's water. This is God's well. It's for God's king. And they fetched it and took it back to David. Are we willing to fetch water for King Jesus the way that they did? If you think of the Apostle Paul, New Testament, He was rejected by the church in Jerusalem when he was first converted, and thank God for Barnabas who encouraged him. But then when he went off on mission, he was persecuted and then stoned in Lystra, and he was taken out of the city for dead. Wouldn't you quit, Ventura? Wouldn't you say, I didn't sign up for this? As he got up, he dusted himself off, had to wipe himself off with all the blood that was pouring down, and it says he went on to the next city, on to Philippi, on to Thessalonica, even to the point when he was in chains, but he wasn't afraid of his chains. You see, he was a subduer. He wasn't a complainer. He wasn't an excuse maker. And the ultimate man of dominion in biblical illustration, who would you say that is, the ultimate man of dominion? It's Lord Jesus. He had a bad hand dealt to him, didn't he? He was born in poverty, poor parents, they called him illegitimate, and the word wasn't that kind that they used for him. He was hated, he was ridiculed, he was entrapped, he was betrayed, he was scourged, he was crucified, As old John Flavel says about the Lord Jesus, he stood as a brass pillar until the last breath was beaten out of his nostrils, until it was finished, until he had drunk down to the very last drop, that cup of wrath. If one drop had been left for you to drop on your tongue, He would weep and wail and gnash your teeth for eternity, but he drank it all until it was finished. See, that's the way that he served us. He subdued and ruled, and that's the way as believers in him that we should serve him, to follow in his footsteps and to subdue and rule as he did. So when facing intimidating obstacles, insecurities within, and obstacles without. We're not to passively surrender to our environmental circumstances. We're not to permit ourselves to be subdued and be ruled. Rather, we are to subdue and rule that we might get from the Lord Jesus. Whatever we do, whether we eat or we drink, whatever we do, how we do it, to the glory of God, so that on the last day when we see Him, Him who loved us, Him who hanged for us until it was finished, we'll get from him well done, good and faithful servant. And that's what we live for, because he is worthy. Now we don't do this subduing and ruling thing by atheistic enterprising as if it's within ourselves to be able to do it. No, lest the Lord build the house, we labor in vain. I can do all things. only through Christ who strengthens me. But what we do, we are to do with all of our might. That's what it is to be a man or a woman of dominion. So we have seen the textual exposition, the sinful misconception, and the biblical illustration. Just come with me now before we close to some multifaceted applications. Multifaceted applications. So how do you apply this to life? That's all theoretical. Well, consider first applying it to vocational laboring. To vocational laboring. Man, woman made in the image of God. I think it starts out with, boy, some young men. I'd say you're about 17 years old. I'm close. As a 17-year-old, you should begin to think, what am I going to do when I grow up, when I get out there to subdue and to rule? What's my vocation? If you're 17, don't have a passive purple four-ball perspective. I remember there was a 17-year-old. He was a senior on my son's soccer team. And I said, hey, Aaron, what you going to do next year? And he said to me, I don't know. I never really thought much about it. No, because since you were probably six, seven, or eight years old, what do you want to do? What are your gifts? Dad, you're sitting alongside of him. Be a helper to him. Work with him. What's he good at? Is he good at calculus? Is he good with his hands? Maybe he should be a carpenter. Maybe he should be a welder, and he's going to fashion things. A builder. Who knows? Or maybe he's really good with figures, so maybe he'll be good at physics. Maybe an electrical engineer. Or maybe he's really good thinking theoretically. Maybe he could be an attorney. Maybe he could be a doctor. I don't know, but the point is, whatever you do, have a plan. Purple four balls don't have plans. They just get pushed around. But men of dominion, they have a plan. They ponder what they're going to do. Because it says in Romans 12, 6, we all have differing gifts. We are to exercise them accordingly. Matthew 25 says that God gives talent. Some are one-talent men. Two talent men? Then there are five talent men. And the biggest crime of all is to do what? In the parable. It's not that the servant embezzled from the master or committed arson and burnt down the house of the master. The crime was simply that he buried the talent that the master had given. Don't bury your talents! Just consider, I need to use it all, invest it all, leave it all on the course. So vocational laboring, just think about career choosing. Make a choice. And then the idea of the vocational laboring. So let's say that you do. Let's say you do choose. You want to pursue engineering. You could be a double E, electrical engineer. You get into school. You're all intimidated for the first semester because you've never been so tested all your life. And now all these demands and these term papers and calculus and beyond, and you want to quit, right? Come on. Subdue and rule. You can find a way to work your way through this. Or if you're starting out maybe with a contractor and you want to be a finishing carpenter, but he's just got you sweeping the floor, don't be discouraged by that. Come on, move that broom to the glory of God. Impress Him by the way that you do the little things and He'll give you bigger things. And you may end up crafting Corinthian columns like these in some beautiful building in downtown Providence. And then the job hunting part of it all. You know, it says in Proverbs 22, 13, the sluggard says, there's a lion outside, I shall be slain in the streets. Well, if you're like in Holland, there have been some people who've lost their jobs as a result of this COVID situation. It's so hard to pound the pavement and bang on doors and have someone look at you and say, nah, we don't need you. Isn't that bone-crushing to hear that? By the help of God, don't permit that to suffocate you, but take in fresh air. The Lord says, I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you, not to harm you, give you hope and a future. You got a wife and her babies back home. You ever see that movie Cinderella Man? Russell Crowe, he's a boxer, Joe Braddock, And as he's fighting, he's got this broken hand. He wants to quit fighting. He took a right cross. He feels he's about to quit. He could just fall on the canvas and get the 10 count and be done. But he thinks in his mind, I got my wife back at home, and she is cold in blankets. My children are back at home, and they're hungry. So he climbs up off the canvas, and he takes the gloves, and he says, And he ends up winning. That's you. That's me. Fight the good fight of faith, men. There are things out there that'll tear your heart out. But I think of you, that old Rocky film, where Rocky's manager, Rocky's laying around. He says, get up! Get up! Listen, the Lord Jesus Christ this morning is, I don't know what's going on here in Providence, but there may be a man who's really discouraged right now. You just came crawling in this morning. I hope you hear the voice of the Lord Jesus Christ that says, brother, get up. Get up. You can do this. You can, not by yourself, you can't. But you can do all things through I who strengthen you. Lord Jesus Christ is in this room. You can sense his robe brushing up against you, maybe, brother. Then hardworking, and then how about even financial earning? You consider this. Don't think that it's carnal. to believe that you should, in making your decision of what job you take, that how much money do I make? That's just unspiritual and carnal to think of how much money I should make. That's reasonable. That's very wise. It says in Proverbs 10.4, poor is he who works with a negligent hand, but the hand of the diligent makes rich. And 18 verses later it says, it is the blessing of the Lord that makes rich. Pastor Rob and I were talking about how in Reformed Baptist church history, I think back of various church plants that I've been involved in, and I think of how in one of these towns there was a furniture Merchant was a very wealthy man who subsidized and carried almost on his own shoulders a church early on to eventually bring a pastor in and eventually get a building. Another church, Louisville, Kentucky, Jim Sebastian, you ever hear that name? Two civil engineers at the University of Louisville who had their own business. In fact, they had actually each had an airplane. They would fly and do consulting here and there. Jim Svaster used to say, our church has a larger air force than many small countries. But the point is that these two men were used. And I think of Holland, Michigan. There were a couple of wealthy men who were used. Lethbridge, Alberta. Agricultural entrepreneur. The point is, listen, if you become a man who makes a lot of money, maybe like an Abraham, maybe like Barzillai the Gileadite, who when David fled from Jerusalem because of the Absalom rebellion, Barzillai the Gileadite came with a caravan of wealth to provide for David out in the wilderness of Mahanaim. And maybe you could be a Barzillai the Gileadite. Maybe you could be an Abraham. Maybe you could be like one of those Engineers in Louisville, Kentucky to help support a church. Because this may not sound so spiritual to you, but listen. Cash is the fuel that drives the kingdom machinery. It's Christ, but Christ uses even money. We were over, Diane and I, in the courtyard of Yale University over in Connecticut. And you know how Yale University began? It was a ministry school. It was a seminary. Elihu Yale gave an enormous amount of money to establish that school. He was a wealthy businessman who was used by God to train ministers of the gospel and the orthodox faith back then. So just ponder the importance of our laboring in vocational laboring with manly dominion. All kinds of multifaceted application. Let me just quickly go through some. How about husbanding? Our being husbands? We need to be godly as husbands, not passive purple four balls, like engaging in things like assertive talking. Because men, we can be non-talkers, huh? The Lord Jesus, he was the husband of the bride, the church. Look at the way the Lord Jesus treated the church when he walked in his sandals on the earth. He gave the Olivet Discourse. He's talking to his church. The Upper Room Discourse, he's talking to his church. The Sermon on the Mount Discourse, he's talking to his church. Men, are you talking to your wives? Are you washing her with the word? Are you just simply the silent type? You know, Adam, Adam was the silent type. You look at the drama of Genesis chapter 3, what was going on there? Why is it that Eve is the one who was leading the conversation with the serpent? Where was the man? You know where he was? He was right there! But he was quiet. He was letting her carry the ball, letting her doing the leading, letting her doing all the talking. He is the poster boy for passive purple four-ballism. And so often we imitate, by default setting in sin, Him. We need to be assertive talkers. taking up our responsibilities as a leader of the household, the leader of the family. Don't let the wife lead. I'm not saying we don't delegate to her authorities and responsibilities, but we are the leader in pastoral counseling, a husband and a wife. I focus on the man. We may focus on the wife and things going on, but I say, you are the man. Just like God came and said when there was a problem with the first couple, what did he say? Who did he call for? Eve, where are you? No, we call for the captain of the ship. Adam, where are you? You are the captain, sir. What's going on in your marriage? I know she does this and she does that and the wife that God gave you. I got all that. But we are the men. We are to lead. We are responsible. And take up that responsibility. What about even in our marital life? How about sin mortifying in our marital life, putting down our pride and our anger and our selfishness? and our self-pity. Isn't that an issue? Isn't that why sometimes we don't talk because we feel like she treated us unkindly and she wasn't sensitive to us and we have our little pity party of quietness and bitterness. Or maybe there's another guy here who just violently explodes instead of quietly pouting. We need to subdue and rule ourselves, man. We need to control ourselves. Now, 2020, we need to be men of purity. You think of how it says, blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God. Too many times I have sat in a living room with a woman and a man sitting on the couch and the woman's lower lip quivering and tears pouring down her cheeks and her telling me what she found on her husband's computer. Don't be that man. Gouge out your right eyes. Cut off your right hands. Be a man. Subdue and rule in this area of life instead of being subdued and being ruled by the enemy, by the lion who prowls about to devour you and your family. So we should subdue and rule in husbanding, How about in child-rearing? In child-rearing. He who spares the rod hates his son. He who loves him is careful to discipline him. We can't passively sit by and watch our wives and our children engaging in this dance with our just observing and not stepping in and leading and subduing and ruling. I know what the psychologist says. I know what the therapist says about our children. They say, our children are, oh, almost like, Carl Rogers who says, your children are basically good. You leave them to themselves and they will rise to like a helium balloon to a noble level of nobility. Because what? People are basically good, right? That's wrong. The Bible says that we are born in sin. In sin my mother conceived me. Psalm 51. Our children are not helium balloons who will ascend to nobility if we passively leave them be. They are like bowling balls who go downward and will split hell wide open. unless we arrest their course by getting into their lives and by the grace of God subduing and ruling with a sense of confrontation, confronting them with their sin, calling them to repentance. There was one of our sons who, when he was little, he got confronted with his sin. And there he would stand there. He would stand in the bedroom. And he's getting spanked, I don't know. He's been spanked for the same sin again. And he turned to me and said, Daddy, why do I keep sinning? He asked me this question. And what an open moment, a soft heart. Well, why do I keep sinning? Because you have a bad heart, Jared, and you need a wonderful Savior. You need a Savior who, when judgment day comes, you're going to stand there and all your sins will be marked against you, but the Lord Jesus Christ will step up, and He will be the whipping boy, and you'll see His His scars and his wounds where he was whipped, where he took all the blows for you and you stand there, why not me? Why? By the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. He was a sacrificial atonement substituting Jared for your sin. He took your pain so that you will have eternal gain. That's how we need to raise our children or even doing personal devotions. Let me ask you, when you get up in the morning, do you always feel like you want to do your devotions? A lot of things I feel like I want to do instead of that, but here's a phrase I use. Go on, Mark, in cool blood. Cool blood, Mark, in cool blood. Scriptures say, above all else, guard your heart, Proverbs 4.23, for from it flow the springs of life. It's the imagery of an ancient well. Leave an ancient well to itself, the sand will blow over it, branches will fall into it, maybe a carcass will pollute it, and dirt overall will cover it up. You've got to keep the well. Likewise, we need to keep our hearts by digging away with finger-bloodying work, pulling away temptations and apathy and diversions and reading from the Word and hydrating our souls with the truth of the Gospel and the realities of truth. So that we as men can then, having kept our hearts, we can go carry water to our wife. Because Ephesians 5 says we are to wash her with the word. And we can water the souls of our children. But if we're not doing our devotions with hard work and just doing it when we feel like it, which is how often is that? See, we need to be men of dominion and personal devotions. And even family devotions. Think of that. We have five kids. I don't know about, you have one, two, three, four. Well, at our house, if you let the five kids go after the evening meal, I would say, no one moves. And next to our dining room table, there was a little shelf. We had seven New American Standard Bibles. and I would take the Bibles. Don't even go to get your Bible in the room. I would hand out the Bibles. Then we'd read a passage from the Bible. We would speak about the things of God, because isn't it true? Doesn't Deuteronomy 6 say that I'm to teach my children as they rise up, as they walk along the way, as they lie down? And it's so easy to let the family run wild. We've got no subduing rule. Bring them to God. You're made in the image of God. You're on the way to the judgment before God. You need to be ready for this. And there were times when Diane will testify that some of the best of family times, like, because every topic conceivably, you talk about finances, you talk about romance and devotion, because it's all in the Bible, isn't it? You talk about sex, talk about vocation, talk about atonement, talk about justification, sanctification, eschatology, it's all in the Bible. Talk about entertainment. and just laughing to tears and percolating conversations back and forth. It's not always that cool. Sometimes it's really irksome. You don't sense the wind of the Spirit in your sails sometimes when you preach, and sometimes when you father as well. But listen, dads, I'm here to tell you that we have five kids that are all out of the house. You have an empty nest now. Do you know how soon the empty nest comes? Where's the little one? The little one right there, the guy in the plaid shirt right there. Do you know when he's gonna be out of the house? In a few ticks of the clock, he'll be out of the house. You have a certain period of time to fill his soul with the water of truth. You think of how a backyard swimming pool, if you would take one of those five-gallon Ace Hardware buckets and pour a bucket in, every day for the next 18 years, that pool will be full. A backyard pool. And that's why you want to fill him up. But if you only do it every other day, the pool may be waist deep. If you do it every fifth day, the pool may be about knee deep after 18 years. But I'm telling you, start now and miss as few days as you can, because before you know it, you're going to be off at Grove City College or the community college, and you're done. Because he's off to the dormitory, and your work is done. You know when that is? It's a few ticks to the clock. Get to it now, man. Subdue and rule now, man. Or even if you have churchmanship, subduing and ruling with churchmanship. Coming to church, what, when you feel like it? No, the psalm writer says, he says, in my right hand, forget it's skill. May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth, if I do not esteem Jerusalem above my chief joy. You know that when you played soccer, your dad made sure that you got to the practices and the games, right? Because that was a priority. What about becoming a part of the kingdom of God? We're told not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together. Are you habitually here when there's worship? Are you habitually here for prayer? Isn't that a priority? You wouldn't miss soccer practice, right? Oh, damn, we'll never let you miss soccer practice. But what about the issues of the kingdom of God? I'm just saying subduing and ruling. But just lastly and just in conclusion, just think with me about conversion. You gotta subdue and rule anywhere. It says in Philippians 2, it says, work out your salvation with fear and trembling. Now there's the green project, isn't it? Work out your salvation with fear and trembling. I preached two weeks ago in Holland, and we reflected on this Labor Day, it's Labor Day. For us in Michigan, Labor Day is the end of summer. Season ended. And there's that passage in Jeremiah 8.20, it says, The summer has passed, the harvest has ended, and you are not saved. Summer has ended here in Rhode Island, too. Let me ask you, are you saved? What, has another season passed and you're not saved? How can this be? But you may say, you don't know, Pastor Mark, where I've been. You don't know what I've done, that's why I'm not saved. I'm helpless, I can't, there's nothing I can do about this. I am stuck, I am damned, I am in sin. Reminds me of a Joel Beeky account that he tells of two guys were walking at the Louvre in France, that's that museum, that art gallery, and they saw on the wall a beautiful painting, it's called Checkmate, and it's a picture of A chess board, chess pieces on the board. And on one side is a young man, and he looks upset, defeated, perspiring with his face in his hands. Now, on the other side is the devil, who looks like he is triumphing, taunting, and bringing despair to the young man. Checkmate means this young man has sold his soul to the devil because of what he's done. And there's nothing he can do about it. Checkmate. And there were two guys who were looking at that painting. And one of them was really good at chess. And the other guy walked off to some of the other galleries. But the chess guy just stared at that painting for 15 minutes, half an hour, an hour. Then he shouted, wait a minute! He shouted as he looked at the configuration of the table. There's a move! There is a move! It's not checkmate! There is a move! And if you here feel like you have been checkmated by the devil, I am here to tell you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, there is a move. I don't care what you have done, I don't care where you have been, I don't care if you have been paid by the Supervisor of hell itself to do your work for the last 10, 15, 20 years. I'm here to tell you there is a move. Because the Lord Jesus says, come to me. Come on. All you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. There is a move. Don't sit back like a passive purple four ball. Get up. And run to get up. and run to Christ with all your might. Those who come to him, he will never turn away. Let's pray together. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you. We thank you that we can be in your house. We thank you that we can hear your voice. And we pray that this would be the day of salvation. And whether for the first time or the 10,000th and first time, would we all believe in the name of the Lord Jesus? Come Holy Spirit we ask in his name, amen.