Welcome to the Warriors of Grace podcast, hosted by Dave Jenkins. Warriors of Grace is about helping men from generation to generation become gospelmen in private, in the home, in the church, and in public through the Word of God. Now for today's episode, let's join our host, Dave Jenkins. Well, welcome back to the Warriors of Grace podcast. My name is Dave and I'm the host for this show. And it's exciting to be back, guys. I am honestly excited. I know that last time we ended, I said that this podcast was ending, but there was a number of things going on at that time. both personal in caring for my mom who has advanced memory issues and the stress of that, and then just ministry in general. I needed to take a break from this podcast, but ever since I've ended this podcast, I've been deeply burdened by both what is happening in our culture and both how men are under attack in our day. And so this is the first episode. We're going to be back and we're going to be keeping going. This series is going to be on what is biblical manhood, and I'm really excited about this because this really gets to the heart of what this show is all about, helping you to become a man of God in private, in the home, in the church, and in public for the glory and honor of God and for the good of those all around you. Now, in 2003, Hurricane Isabel slammed into the east coast of the United States, leaving 16 dead and cutting power to 6 million homes. The edges of the hurricane passed through Washington, D.C., prompting the President and members of Congress to find safer quarters. That was not the case at Arlington National Cemetery, where guards stood vigil at the Tomb of the Unknown at the time, just as they had done every hour of every day since July 1, 1937. And so when Hurricane Isabel hit, The soldiers remain at their post even though they were given permission to seek shelter. That's what a soldier does. He acknowledges the storm, but he doesn't give in to it. He stands firm. As a friend once told me, if these men can stand guard over the dead, how much more important is it that I stand guard over the living, my wife and children? Like these soldiers, we are called to stand and do our duty, while staring down the very storms that seek to rob us of courage, daunting and tempting us to neglect our duty and abandon our posts. The honesty of Scripture is one of the reasons why the Word of God is the only place for us to go to learn what a real man is and what a real man should do. Now, scripture has five prevailing themes about manhood. First, a man controls his emotions and passions. Single or married, a real man tames his passions. He doesn't abuse women or children. He protects them. He keeps his hands off a woman who is not his wife and treats his wife with love, with respect, with dignity. He keeps his eyes off pornographic images. He protects a single woman's virginity and innocence. He's not defined by his exploits, below the waist. He's a man with a heart, a head, and a conscience. Second, a man provides for his family. 1 Timothy 5.8 says, but if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. Now those are strong words. When a man doesn't work and provide for his family, he feels a sense of shame. His self-worth sinks. A man who doesn't work, who can't keep a job, who moves from job to job, or who refuses to assume his responsibility, creates insecurity in his wife and children. Every man needs to provide for his family, which also means taking responsibility to provide for the emotional and spiritual needs of the family. A father should train his children and prepare them to become responsible adults who know how to negotiate the swift and sometimes evil currents of our culture. Third, a man protects his family. To borrow an illustration from John Piper and Wayne Grudem on the essence of masculinity, when you are lying in bed with your wife and you hear the sound of a window being opened in the kitchen at 3am, do you shake her awake and say, the last time this occurred I was the one who took our baseball bat and investigated to see if somebody was breaking into our house. Now it's your turn sweetheart, here's the bat, no. No, you don't say that, but being a protector also calls for more than ensuring physical safety. Proverbs 4 10-15 describes a father who protects his son by passing on wisdom, helping him build godly character, and teaching him to reject the lies and the temptations of the world. The father protects not only his son, but the generations to follow as the wisdom he shares gets passed on. For a man serves and leads his family. Serve and lead may seem like a contradiction, but they are inseparably linked according to the word of God. While the apostle Paul tells us in Ephesians 5.23 that the husband is the head of the wife, he quickly puts to rest any notion that this leadership allows for selfish male dominance. He completes this sentence with the words, as Christ also is the head of the church. Now the passage goes on to say that husbands should love their wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her in Ephesians 5.25. This paints a picture contrary to how the world views it. A man is called to be a servant leader to take responsibility for his wife and children and to put their needs ahead of his own. He is called to demonstrate selfless sacrificial love the type of love we see in God towards his children. Fifth, a man follows God's design for true masculinity. Micah 6.8 says, He has told you, O man, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, to love kindness, to walk humbly with your God. So the core of a man's life should be his relationship with God. The man who walks humbly with God is motivated and empowered to step up and even assume the difficult responsibilities that come his way. You see, a courageous man is never off duty. Jesus' life embodied true masculinity. How could it not? No doubt we could produce a very long list of characteristics that Jesus embodied that made him a real man, but two noteworthy traits are his selflessness and sacrifice. Jesus' life embodied true masculinity. In fact, Jesus' teachings in the Gospels are soaked in these ideas. And when asked, Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law? Jesus responds, and Matthew 22, 36-40, saying, You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, and with all of your might. This is the great and the first commandment, and the second like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets. Furthermore, Jesus taught us to not only love our neighbor, but also to love and pray for our enemies in Matthew 5, verse 44. Now, it's easier to sacrifice and act selflessly towards those we feel are worthy of our affection, love, and resources. But you see, true manhood is displayed when we freely and selflessly sacrifice for the unworthy. Now, alongside his teaching, Jesus adds an unsurpassed testament to his selfless and sacrificial nature, the increasing loneliness of his life, even to death. Now, throughout his ministry, he selflessly gave up his time, his energy, his resources for the sake of others. Paul writes that Christ made himself nothing and took on the very nature of a servant. In fact, Paul teaches us to embrace this mentality in Philippians 2, 5-8 when he says, have this mind among yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus. So, Christ's lifestyle is a model not only for the married but also for our unmarried men and women should live. Jesus best displayed his selflessness and sacrifice when he freely went to the cross for the good of his bride. From obedience to his Father and for the joy set before him, our perfect Savior died for a bride that had unassailably proven herself unworthy of such a sacrifice, which presents a beautiful picture, by the way, of how a sinful husband should love and cherish their wives. For many, there is a huge disconnect between what we say and what we do. But as we can see, Jesus' life embodied his teaching completely and even perfectly. Unlike us, Jesus understood the implications of his teaching better than anybody and never cut corners for the sake of personal comfort and convenience. We learn from Jesus that true manhood isn't simply about keeping our noses clean and our ducks in a row. True manhood means getting beyond ourselves to love our neighbors and our neighbor as anybody we meet that is in need. Real men freely give their time, their resources, their talent, their attention, their energy, their emotional support to those that need it without regard to what they can get in return. Masculine leadership, biblical leadership at that, isn't an opportunity to be served, it's a calling to serve sacrificially. For the unmarried Christian man, this means freely giving your time and resources by being hospital, volunteering at church, providing for the needy, visiting the sick, helping the elderly. It has implications for how you steward your money. Could you give more to the cause of Christ since your present expenses are fewer? How can you honor your parents in this season? You might check in more regularly to see if they have any needs that you could meet. For the married man, your closest neighbors are your wife and children. Manhood means leaning into your marriage and your family. It means providing for them physically, financially, emotionally, and spiritually. It means humbly loving your wife, even in the moments when you feel she's especially unworthy of that love, and loving your children when they seem least deserving. And real men honor their father and mother and are eager to make some return to their parents, for this is pleasing in the sight of God, according to 1 Timothy 5, 4. Real manhood is hard, it's uncomfortable, whether you're single or married. The role of leadership God has given men isn't an opportunity to be served, but a calling to serve sacrificially in a world that offers immediate gratification, financial, emotional, and sexual, the Christian manhood may seem unattractive and even pointless. Why live selfishly and sacrificially when I can do the opposite and enjoy instant pleasure? In fact, when society tells us that leadership amounts to privilege, why hold fast to the biblical vision of leadership as sacrifice, If you're not serving others like Jesus, you're not fully walking in biblical manhood. Real men deny themselves carnal pleasure for true joy in Jesus. So whether you're married or single, if you're not serving your neighbor selflessly and sacrificially, you're not fully walking in biblical manhood. Boys say, I'm responsible for myself. Men say, I'm responsible for my neighbors. Boys are forced to give, but men give freely because they've been freely given too. Boys expect their wife or mom to do the dishes, but men are quick to grab the sponge and the soap. Ultimately, manhood means serving others as much and more than you serve yourself. And while the temporal rewards are not always immediate, the eternal rewards will be well worth the wait. God the Father demonstrates that He will indeed reward the obedient and the faithful just as He did with the selfish and sacrificial son. Philippians 2, 9-11 says this, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Biblical manhood is an idea that is extremely neglected in our society today. Popular culture emphasizes to men that they are to be like their favorite sports hero, super strong or superhuman. able to conquer all and take no prisoners. The problem with this are many, from the fact that it promotes pride which God hates, to it not being the picture we see of the man in the word of God. One way that we can get a proper idea of the biblical man is to learn from the apostle Paul. Remember what Paul was like before he got converted? He persecuted the church, he threw Christians into jail, and he ran around everywhere all in an effort to stop biblical Christianity. And yet Paul was stopped dead in his tracks on the road to Damascus. In fact, God got a hold of Saul and turned him into Paul there on the road to Damascus. Paul was told he would suffer greatly for the name of Jesus, and suffer he did. Before his conversion, Paul relied on his own abilities to make things happen. However, after he got saved, he relied on the power of God in the gospel to energize him and his ministry. This is the key to biblical manhood, namely that we become weak rather than strong. In our weakness, God is made strong. That idea is so counter-cultural to the present day that it can no longer be assumed that we understand what it means. The average man today is inundated every day with temptation from the secretary whose skirts are just a bit too tight or too short to that quote-unquote girl walking down the street wearing that skirt that is way too tight, both wanting to grab your attention. How is the biblical man to avoid temptation and not succumb to the spirit of the age today, you might ask? Well, every man has points where they're tempted. Most men are particularly vulnerable to the lust of the eyes, an issue the apostle John talks about in 1 John 2. Satan knows men are visually oriented, which is why, in order to fight the lust of the flesh, we need to find our satisfaction in Jesus Christ alone. and for those who are married in the arms of their wives, our wives are to be our standard of beauty. First, we are going to consider now what it means to be satisfied in and by Jesus, and then we're going to conclude by addressing our relationship with our wives. You see, Jesus is Lord in and over all things. The word of God teaches us that he is firstborn over all creation, the rightful ruler of creation, high priest over his people, the chief shepherd, and much more. Jesus bled, died, and rose for his people. through Jesus' death, Christians can put to death their sin, live for Him, and testify of Him. And now, when I talk of being satisfied in the Lord Jesus, the focus there is that of finding Him to be all that we need. I'm talking about the supremacy of Christ in and over all things, as well as that precious truth, the treasure of the ages, Jesus Christ himself. Jesus is our treasure, and in him our soul ought to rejoice at all times for his great grace that has saved his people, is sanctifying them, and will one day glorify them. Jesus is not just the personification of biblical manhood, he is the source of biblical manhood. In Jesus we see how the God-man ministered to the broken and thundered against the religious. In Jesus, we see that the biblical man is compassionate towards the hurting, who walks alongside the struggling, who forgives quickly, who brings a message of reconciliation and healing for broken people, who sets the captives free. While ultimately Jesus does all these things, as Christian men, we have a message to share, and that of the reality is that it's in Jesus alone. The power of God is revealed, as well as the fact that God uses godly men to do all that I'm talking about today through the work of the Holy Spirit in their lives. The man interested in biblical manhood knows the danger and the allure of sin. Just look at King David. Rather than going out to battle, he was enticed by Bathsheba, and we know how that story went. Uriah was sent out to the front of battle to be killed. A real man knows he needs something worth living for and dying for. Real men know that they have met their match in Jesus and bowed before the brilliance of the cross of Christ. And so crucial to understanding what it means to being satisfied in Jesus is a point that I'm making, namely that when we're weak, He is strong. It is not in our own strength, might, or intellect that we're going to be biblical men. When we follow after our own way, we will stumble and fall every single time. At every turn and in every situation as men, we need to admit that we're weak. It is precisely at this point that the gospel is good news. God takes our feeble efforts and weaknesses and uses them for his glory. That is the best news in the world. It means I don't have to be a superhero or Mr. Muscle Man. I do, though, need to be like Paul who recognized that the Christian life from the beginning to end is all about grace, as he says in 1 Corinthians 15 10. Men, our wives, need us to be biblical men. A man who believes in biblical manhood looks the other way when that girl in that tight skirt, that tight shirt, that provocative clothing walks by attracting attention. They turn off the screen, when they see it on Instagram or they flip to the next reel or image or whatever or hand the phone or put the phone down. A man demonstrating what biblical manhood is all about will look the other way because they're satisfied in and by Jesus. A biblical man finds in Jesus his satisfaction which provides the ground for loving his wife and putting off the flesh with all its desires and putting it to death. All of this is because of Jesus. In other words, because of being satisfied in the sufficiency of Christ, find your wife to be your standard of beauty and be satisfied in her love for you. While the message today of biblical manhood is revolutionary in a culture that teaches men they have to either be wimps or superheroes, the Bible paints a vastly different and a better picture. The biblical man is a man whose life and thought is centered on the Word of God that is saturated in the gospel and whose life glows with the love of God. through Jesus, the biblical man loves others because he knows it isn't about him, but rather it's all about Christ alone. In other words, the biblical man is putting his sin to death because of Jesus and putting on Jesus Christ. Just as that message was revolutionary in the first century, so it is today. It's a message that turns lives upside down and inside out by calling men to abandon their strength for God's strength and for His character in Jesus Christ alone. Jesus is more than the ultimate superhero, though. He is the Son of God and the Son of Man, and through Him all men have met their match and one day will bow before the brilliance and the splendor of King Jesus. That is why biblical manhood begins and ends with Jesus. At all times, the biblical man is met by Jesus in his life, death, burial, and resurrection, is empowered through the Holy Spirit to make much of him in and through their lives in a world that is confused about what biblical manhood is all about. Men, by the grace of God, rise up and testify of what biblical manhood is all about. Our wives need biblical men, not whiners. Our world needs biblical men, men of conviction, to rise up to lead in every sphere of life. Well, men, this is really, really important, because in this series you're going to be challenged to become this man, to become a biblical man, to become a man focused on the Word of God and focused on Jesus revealed in the Word, and to become active and be a participant and serve others, not only in your family, in your local church, but also in your community and in your world. Well, I want to thank you men for listening or watching to this episode of the Warriors of Grace podcast. It's great to be back with you. And until next time, may God bless you and keep you. Thank you for listening to the Warriors of Grace podcast. If you enjoyed the show today, please subscribe, leave a rating on the app, and share our episode with your friends and family. If you want to, you can follow us on Instagram at Servants of Grace, on Twitter at Servants of Grace, or search Servants of Grace on Facebook. You can also find our show on the front page of the website ServantsofGrace.org.