tells us in one place basically what that means. It's in Marker 6-8. If we start in verse 1 in chapter 6, it says, Hear now what the Lord says. Arise, plead your case before the mountains. Let the hills hear your voice. Hear, O you mountains, the Lord's complaint, and you strong foundations of the earth. For the Lord has a complaint against His people, and He will contend with Israel. O my people, what have I done to you? And how have I wearied you? Testify against me. For I brought you up from the land of Egypt. I redeemed you from the house of bondage. And I sent before you Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. O my people, remember now what Balak, king of Moab, counseled, and what Balaam, the son of Beor, answered him. from Acacia Grove to Gilgal, that you may know the righteousness of the Lord. With what shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before the high God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old, Or will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, 10,000 rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He has shown you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God? When I started getting ready to preach this, there was so much Scripture in the Bible. It would take weeks to preach all of it. So what I've gone through and done is just recorded some Scripture, and we're going to look at it and get a clear picture of what God had planned for sons, for fathers, We're grandfathers. Wody Bauckham says our culture has redefined manhood, how men are measured. He says we measure them by their performance on the ball field, their performance in the bedroom, and the thickness of their billfold. That's the world's measure of a man. And he said that in churches all over America, there are women who are training their girls to look for that kind of man. That's scary. for them to grow up thinking that's what they're looking for and not recognizing Godliness in a man, not recognizing biblical traits of a man. Let's turn to Genesis chapter 1. And we begin in verse 26. This is during the creation. Then God said, let us make man in our image, according to our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created them, male and female, he created them. Then God blessed them and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth. And then in chapter 2, starting in verse 15, it says, Then the Lord took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat. For in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die. And the Lord God said, it is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helper comparable to him. Out of the ground, the Lord formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name. So Adam gave names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field. But for Adam, there was not found a helper comparable to him. And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept. And he took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh in its place. Then the rib which the Lord God had taken from man, he made into a woman, and he brought her to the man. And Adam said, this is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and they shall become one flesh and they were both naked the man and his wife and were not ashamed now in chapter three It says, now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, as God indeed said, you shall not eat of every tree of the garden. And the woman said to the serpent, we may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden, but the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, you shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die. When then the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die for God knows that in the day you eat of it, your eyes will be open and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that was pleasant to the eyes and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings. And when they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden, Then the Lord God called Abraham and said to him, where are you? So he said, I heard your voice in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. And he said, who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat? Then the man said, the woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree and I ate. And the Lord God said to the woman, What is this you have done? The woman said, The serpent deceived me, and I ate. So the Lord God said to the serpent, Because you have done this, you are cursed more than all cattle and more than every beast of the field. On your belly you shall go, and you shall eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. To the woman, he said, I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception, and pain you shall bring for children. Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you. Then to Adam he said, because you have heeded the voice of your wife. and have eaten from the tree which I commanded you, saying, you shall not eat of it. Cursed is the ground for your sake. In toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground. For out of it you were taken, for dust you are, and to dust you shall return. And Adam called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living. Also, for Adam and his wife, the Lord God made tunics of skin and clothed them." So there are several things that we see in these passages that God designed for Adam to do. And from that, it's passed down for all of us as men today to do. First of all, He gave him work to do. Work is a godly thing. The Bible tells us to work as unto the Lord. To do all that we do for the glory of God. There are men today who don't believe in work. There are men who live and let their wives or girlfriends or whoever it is support them. And they don't have a problem with it. That's part of our culture. Our culture wants to turn us from God. The men have been degraded and feminized to the point that they aren't godly or biblical men anymore. The women have been elevated to the point of positions of men And it's upside down. And it doesn't work very well. In our culture, they take boys, and the main purpose of a man is to disciple his boys. To teach them the ways of God. Our schools take a bunch of boys and put them together in a group. And there's not a man present, generally. Not a godly man, certainly. And what we have is kids raising kids. You have a jumbled mess of values and no guidance going on. There's a lot of caprice about that, but generally what we do is we tell them, you go to school and learn ungodly stuff, and then you go play with your friends, then you go to organize sports, and then you come home, and if you have a 15 minute quiet time at night, you can overcome the world. No, I don't think so. The trans movement, they have said we're gonna change what God did. We're not gonna honor what his intentions are or his will is, we're gonna do what we want to do in defiance of God. It's a mess. Our culture is a mess. In America, collectively, we are a mess. There is very little godliness. Very little biblical studies going on. But God told Adam to work. He also told Adam to have dominion over everything. He brought all the animals to him and he named them. And you know in the last part what we read was Adam named Eve. That fits right in with him naming everything else. It doesn't really say that he has dominion over her, but it leaves that question at best, at worst. But he said to him, after they had sinned, he said, Did you do what you did? And he said, the woman that you gave to be with me. And then God said, because you have listened to her voice, the cursed is the ground that you walk on. And it wasn't just because he listened to her voice. He listened to her voice in defiance of God. She was leading him away from what God had spoken clearly to him. And he heeded her voice. And so, it was a major sin on his part. In Genesis 16, 19, No, no. What wrote that down wrong? Yeah, 1819. God's talking about Abraham. He said, For I have known him, in order that he may command his children and his household after him, so that they may keep the way of the Lord, to do righteousness and justice, that the Lord may bring to Abraham what he has spoken of him. shows the responsibility of Abraham to teach his household to follow God, to obey God. And in Deuteronomy 6, starting in verse 1, It says, now this is the commandment and these are the statutes and judgments which the Lord your God has commanded to teach you, that you may observe them in the land which you are crossing over to possess, that you may fear the Lord your God and keep all his statutes and his commandments which I command you. you and your son and your grandson, all the days of your life, that your days might be prolonged. Therefore hear, O Israel, and be careful to observe it, that it may be well with you and that you may multiply greatly as the Lord God of your fathers has promised you, a land flowing with milk and honey. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and with all your strength. And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way, when you lie down And when you rise up, you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorpost of your house and on your gates. So it shall be when the Lord your God brings you into the land of which he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give you large and beautiful cities which you did not build, Houses full of all good things which you did not fill. Who not wells which you did not dig. Vineyards and olive trees which you did not plant. When you have eaten and are full, then beware lest you forget. the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt from the house of bondage. You shall fear the Lord your God and serve him and shall take oaths in his name. You shall shall not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who are all around you, for the Lord your God is a jealous God among you. Lest the anger of the Lord your God be aroused against you and destroy you from the face of the earth. That's responsibility. We don't write things on the doorposts of our house, but here's basically what it's saying. Live your life so that you show the qualities that come from Scripture. Live your life in a way that people know that you believe and you serve God and you worship Him and Him alone. In Judges 17.6, there's a scripture that tells about a time when it wasn't that way. Starting in verse 1, it says, Now there was a man from the mountains of Ephraim, whose name was Micah. And he said to his mother, The eleven hundred shekels of silver that were taken from you, and on which you put a curse, even saying it in my ears, here is the silver with me. I took it. And his mother said, May you be blessed by the Lord, my son. So when he had returned the 1,100 shekels of silver to his mother, his mother said, I had wholly dedicated the silver from my hand to the Lord for my son to make a carved image and a molded image. Now, therefore, I will return it to you. Thus he returned the silver to his mother. Then his mother took 200 shekels of silver and gave them to the silversmith and he made it into a carved image and a molded image and they were in the house of Micah. The man Micah had a shrine and made an epod and household idols and he consecrated one of his sons who became his priest. In those days, there was no king in Israel. Every one did what was right in his own eyes. There was no authority in Israel. You know, a king isn't just a guy that wears a fancy looking suit and a crown. A king has a responsibility to lead his people. A lot of the kings in the Bible led Israel back to worship of God, to read His law again, to remind them of the past and the things that God had done in their lives. But there was no king at that time, and every man did what was right in his own eyes. It's kind of like our culture today, isn't it? No, they don't have a common teacher, a common law, or they have one, they just don't open it. In Proverbs 13.20, It says, he who walks with wise men will be wise, but the companion of fools will be destroyed. Proverbs is a book of wisdom. It's a book of writings. And it's a man, Solomon, talking to his son. You know, Solomon was the wisest man in the world. And so she's sharing the wisdom with his son. He says, he who walks with wise men will be wise, but the companion of fools will be destroyed. You remember what I was talking about a while ago about kids raising kids? That's what that is. companions of fools because kids don't have the biblical knowledge because they're not taught that. But a wise man who follows another wise man, meaning his father, will be wise. And then look over in Proverbs 29, 18. Where there is no revelation, the people cast off restraint, but happy is he who keeps the law. Some of your burdens may say, where there is no vision. It's talking about the vision of the law. It's not just talking about having a vision. There are many different forms of vision. But when you have a vision of God's law, that's the first part of becoming a biblical man, is understanding what God has said. That goes right along with Proverbs. It says, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. When you know what God says, and you live it, and you teach it to your son, and you model it before him so that he knows the way of righteousness, then you are training him and discipling him the way that he should go. But when you work sometimes out of town for days at a time and you don't see your family and you come home and you go out with your friends and spend a bunch of time with them, you're never at home. How is your son going to learn godly wisdom? How is he going to learn biblical wisdom? I mean, there are some guys that will step in and help out, but God says that the Father is the one that the job is given to. The Father is the one that is the main teacher, example, The father is the one that the son looks to. I've known a lot of rebellious young men, and some of them literally hated their father because he didn't have time for them. I didn't know what they were talking about because my father, who died June the 4th, was a godly man. When I think about my upbringing, he made me work all the time. He tore my bottom up when I didn't mind him. One time I said, I believe he'd have whooped me with a barbed wire if he'd had it. He was a man who, when I, In the process of his dying, all kinds of things were going through my mind. For about three weeks time, this Micah 6-8 was going through my head constantly. Because my dad did justly, and he loved mercy, and he walked humbly with God. I thanked him to his face as he lay there on that bed dying. I said, Daddy, I want to thank you for being the kind of dad you were. I really appreciated that. Look at 1 Corinthians 16. It says, watch, stand fast in the faith, be brave, be strong, let all that you do be done with love. In other versions it says, act like men. Today, a lot of people will be offended by that passage. A lot of people are offended by a lot of things that you read in the Bible. Because they're offended by God. Because God doesn't do things the way they believe He ought to. Ephesians chapter 5. Beginning in verse 25 Husbands Love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for her, that he might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that he might present her to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish. So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church. For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless, let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband. Children, obey your parents and the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and your mother, which is the first commandment with promise, that it may be well with you and may live long on the earth. And you fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord. So there's another area that we have responsibilities. Not only are we to be discipling our sons, but we're to be teaching our wives. It says that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the Word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having any spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish. I've worked with a lot of people through the years, and they talked about their wives. You have to wonder, why in the world did he marry that person? They ran them down constantly. And this is a picture of a wife that the husband is teaching her from the Word, and she is without spot or wrinkle. He sees her just as God sees the church. Not having spot or wrinkle or anything, but that she should be holy and without blemish. That's a sacred part of our lives, is our relationship with our wives. We should never, ever be running them down or criticizing them or finding fault with them. Because it's our job to teach them so that they can live their life freely. I've known a lot of men in the past, back when I was a young guy in church, that some of the deacons, some of the most spiritual men of the church, believed that they were the head of the church and they ruled with an iron fist. One guy, suddenly, he was in all kinds of trouble. I didn't know what was going on. He'd come to find out that he had beat his wife and beat his kids, so they all turned against him, and I think the guy died alone. lonely because of how he had run his household. He believed that God made him the head of the house. Being the head of the house is not about authority. It's about responsibility. So, we see these three things. Do justice. What does it mean to do justice? It means a whole broad spectrum of life. It means, first of all, to work honestly. To work as unto the Lord, to be dependable in work, and to actually work. You might be a street sweeper or a garbage collector, but you can have the cleanest section of town under you. Equal scales. Karen and I sell peaches during the summer, and we have a set of scales, and we get them certified so that we know that they're right. And there are so many people that come to our stand that want to take peaches out of the bag because they've all bought peaches and get home and the bottom of the bag is full of rotten peaches. Because a lot of people are that way. They will hide stuff and sell you faulty goods. But what we like to do is we like to hide big peaches down in the bottom. Good big peaches. So that when they get home and they're digging through their bags, they go, you know, look at this one. And for that very reason, a lot of people come back to our stand. We get told day after day how good our peaches are, and we have the best peaches in the world, and they've never bought a bad peach at our stand. But that's not always the way people are. If you work by the hour, you work the hours. To do justice. To love mercy. What does it mean to love mercy? Here's what I think part of it means. Be a soft-hearted guy. That's what we're told in the Scriptures, to be tender-hearted. Be kind one to another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another. That's in Ephesians. Walk humbly with your God. I saw a picture in my mind of a little boy walking across the parking lot with his dad, holding his hand. That's what I think it would look like to walk humbly with your God, holding fast to him. He is your provider. He is your protector. Isn't that what Adam was to Eve? Anything that we see in the Scripture that shows us the character of God, that's what we're supposed to be like. While I was in seminary class, In this one particular class I had, we studied a lot about the Bible. And several times in that class, I heard these words, the Scripture's main purpose is to lead us to Christ. So if we're going to be biblical men, first of all, we're going to have to believe in Christ. We're going to have to believe that the Bible is the Word of God. that it is the final authority in everything. So a biblical man would believe in God, in Christ, and in the Holy Spirit. And he believes in the scriptures. And he believes in the value of truth. That's what's missing in our culture today. We're told that truth doesn't matter anymore. That there is no truth. That truth is what it is to you. We're told a lot of things. But we're told these things in the Bible. That one of these days, Jesus is going to come back. And He's going to judge every individual on the earth. And how we live and how we taught our children and how we live before them is going to matter. Because not only are we going to pay consequences of not doing that, but we're going to watch our children and our grandchildren suffer those same consequences if we don't do it. God intended godly men to raise godly children, to raise godly grandchildren, so that it would be passed on from generation to generation. Let's pray. Father, we thank You for Your guidance and Your Word. We thank You for all the examples, all the pictures, all the instruction. But we thank you most of all for Jesus Christ, who took this wretched sinner, despicable, perverted and you saved me by your grace. It was a gift. I didn't earn it. You just did it because it was your good pleasure according to the counsel of your will. And I thank You for that. I thank You from the bottom of my heart. I pray that You would help me to listen more to Your Word about what it means to be a biblical, godly man. I can think of all kinds of ways that I've failed in the past, The best thing I can do is from this point on, follow You with all my heart. Bring You glory with all my heart. Worship You with all my heart. I pray that anyone here that's struggling with the idea of being a biblical man, or struggling with our cultural ideas that, Lord, you would make it clear in their eyes what they should do. Bring honor to yourself. We ask it in Jesus' name, amen.