The following message is from a men's conference hosted by Capitol Community Church and Finding Purpose Ministries, featuring Dr. Owen Strand. It's based on his recent book, The War on Men, and explores the crucial God-given role men play in society and how to stand firm against the current assault on the biblical teaching of masculinity. Good morning. Great to see you back. Thank you for being here on a Saturday morning. Actually, I'm getting you out of honey-do lists and lawn mowing, so it's kind of a reciprocal relationship, isn't it, here this morning on Saturday? This morning we're gonna talk about the five types of men from scripture. Five types of men. Here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna see four negative types, we're gonna study four men as we go from the scripture, and then we're gonna see one positive type at the end, and that last positive type is gonna lead us into our last session coming up later this morning. and that will lead to Jesus Christ. So we will close on the Bible's peak, Jesus Christ, just so you know, if you're wondering, are we gonna get to Christ at some point? Yes, we're taking this all up to the mountaintop at the end. But first, I wanna study five types of men. I recall as we get started here, how some years ago, I was in a Barnes and Noble somewhere, I don't remember where, And I found all sorts of sections. You know, you go into Barnes & Noble, you can find comic books, you can find music section, you can find a lot of self-help, you can find womanhood. But it struck me as I searched the cavernous environs of Barnes & Noble that I could not find a section entitled, Manhood. And so I inquired of the Clark True Story and said, is there a manhood section, please? Keep in mind, there are these massive shelves full of womanhood section. So you would think there's sort of a 50-50 split in the human race, not to get too technical here. But there might be a corresponding section for men, seeing as we're about 50% of the 9 billion people on the planet. And she researched on her keyboard and came back and looked at me and said, no, we don't seem to have a manhood section. And I thought, how telling. How telling. There's literally no grouping. No one took it upon themselves to do womanhood on the one side. Hang with me here. and manhood on the other. Nope. No such section existed. And it strikes me now as I think about this from scripture, we don't often talk about manhood a lot as Christians. We tend to talk about what men shouldn't be and how men are failing. You know, the stereotype of the Mother's Day sermon and the Father's Day sermon is the mothers get, you know, patted on the back and and praised, and the men get told all the ways they're failing on those two days. That tends to be a bit of the stereotype in church circles. Well, here's what I want to do. With apologies to Barnes & Noble globally, I want to think together with you about manhood, and I want to think about types of men. The Bible actually has a lot about men. And here's one of the ways the Bible instructs us about manhood. It doesn't necessarily sit us down and say, all right, get ready for an Encyclopedia Britannica download. You ready? The Bible doesn't do that on a lot of topics, does it? You sort of are like, all right, help me, okay, help me scripture figure out theodicy. Help me figure out problem of evil. You ready? Can you give me like 10 chapters on this? Could you do that for me? Could you give me like, I don't know, 30 chapters on the fall of Satan and really walk me through that and how that all worked out? Can you do that for me, please? And that's not exactly what the Bible does. God's perfect, all-sufficient word gives a lot of detail to us but does so in ways we don't necessarily expect. It reminds you a little bit of the ministry of Christ, doesn't it? When Christ came, he did say a lot of clear things, but he also said a lot of things that were riddles and puzzles to his audience. So scripture, summary statement here, scripture makes you work, doesn't it? It makes you work. You don't just come and sit at the feet of scripture and it just downloads everything you expect of it. So you got to go looking, is my point, for material on men. if you want to study manhood from the Bible. So that's what I want to do with you. First, type of five this morning. Type one, the lost man. The lost man. Here we're thinking of Adam, a real historical figure, by the way, not a mytho-poetic being in a sort of Narnian fairy tale. I mean a real Adam. I mean the first man created in a real historical garden, mountain garden paradise, Eden. So we're dealing with a real human being, not a hominid or some weird fictional character. In Genesis 3, 1 through 7, we read this. Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, did God actually say, you shall not eat of any tree in the garden? And the woman said to the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it lest you die. But the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die. For God knows that when 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 it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. And she also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened and they knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. Let's pray. Father, this morning as we dive into your word from different angles, moving into different texts from the Old Testament, I pray that you will strengthen us in your word. I pray that you will reveal sin in us as we study sinful men just like us. And I pray that you will point us to the grace and hope that is found in Christ and Christ alone. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. We discover, as I say, the world's first, what I call, lost man in this sad scene. Again, a real historical fall and a real historical garden. Satan really did assume the form of a snake, a serpent, and talk with God. Yes, that's unusual, but If you're down on unusual things, don't try biblical Christianity. It's a miracle-driven faith. There's all sorts of wild things that happen in the Christian faith. That doesn't mean the Christian faith is untrue. That means the Christian faith is true, because you're dealing with the things of God and the supernatural realm. Don't expect a naturalistic book when you come to the scripture, because you ain't going to find it. Adam was present as Eve talked with Satan. Adam was created just a chapter earlier, of course, in Genesis 2. Adam was made first. In Genesis 2.15, the Lord says to Adam that he is to work and protect or work and guard Eden. Yes, that's a key part of his commission. Adam is made for work. and Adam is made for protection later on in the chapter. Adam is the one who is called, Genesis 2.24, to leave his family and hold fast to one wife, love one wife. Note that it is Adam who sets the tone of the marriage, not the woman, over again so much of what you learn in modern marriage books. So Adam had a charge. Adam had what is going to be called in Ephesians 5, headship over his wife. It doesn't mean domineering slavish authority over her. It means that he has the responsibility to lead his wife to know the Lord and to worship God and to flourish. Adam is the one who is charged then in a human sense with the flourishing of his wife. He can't make her love God or something like that. He's not responsible for that, but he is responsible for leading her and leading his whole home to know the Lord by the power of God's working. So Adam is called to be a leader from the start. He is made first. The Apostle Paul is going to tell us in 1 Timothy 2 that creation order, as we call it, matters tremendously. The man isn't incidentally made first. He's made first, and that signals that he has leadership, or as I say, headship, and that matters for church leadership, not just home leadership. Men are called to be elders in the local church, which doesn't just mean they are called to hold a position. It's not just about titles. It's about shepherding. Men are called from the start to be leaders and shepherds. Not every man is the same type. Not every man is the same personality. Not every man is the same word count that he speaks on a given basis. We differ in many ways as men, size, biology, speech. inclination, patterns, gifting, and yet this is fundamentally the call of men. This is why when Grant and I have done a lot of work on biblical manhood, we really do try to do biblical manhood. There are a lot of trappings of manhood we can talk about. There's hunting and camping and fishing. I'm from coastal Maine. I am all in on the outdoors life. We talked about that a little bit last night, and I think there are important skills you have to introduce your your son too. I think you've got to do things like play catch with your son or develop what skills your son has. Hey, your son may be good at the piano. Your son may be good at art. That's not necessarily unmasculine because the core of manhood is Bible. That's the core of it. There are trappings around manhood that are not bad, that can be good. But what we're trying to convey to our sons is not that you have to kill a deer or a moose to, if I was in a main context, excuse me, I'm speaking from my background. Son, you gotta kill a moose and prove your manhood. We don't wanna identify that first and foremost as being masculine, although that's pretty masculine, let's just be honest. The core is honoring God's design, God's plan. That's the core. So a guy who honestly never has much time to get out into the wilderness, let's say, and do a trek, you know, up in Montana or something like this, and mount something on his wall in his office, if he never has time to do that, but he seeks to live out the biblical design, please just hear me. That's God's call on men. That's biblical manhood by the power of God's grace. Well, that was all Adam's call. Did Adam pass his immediate test? As Satan talked with Eve, a lot we could say about this scene that I'm just going to have to move on from. Adam did not speak. Adam did not act in any virtuous way. Adam did nothing in Genesis 3, 1-7 except follow his wife's lead. Eve is the one who engaged the serpent as Adam stood passively to the side. And then in verse 6, Adam followed his wife's leading as she gave some of the tree's fruit to her husband and he ate. That's just about all that he does in this scene. That's very important because, again, in Genesis 2.15, the Lord God had said that Adam's charge, even in an unfallen world, was to, again, work the garden, right? So men are made to cultivate, men are made to bring beauty into the world in their masculine sense, but Adam was also to guard the garden, which indicates that no, no, no, no, no, Eden wasn't perfect, was it? It was unfallen, but it wasn't perfect. It was a place where evil could enter, and evil did enter. Satan came in the form of a serpent, and Adam did not guard the garden. And this speaks to us of common failings of many men. Many men, even many Christian men, sadly, haven't had much training. in being a protector. Men today are told not to be a protector when men step up in public and public settings, as some of you have seen in the news in the last year, and try to protect others. And there could be weird circumstances, of course. there frequently are when there is a threat on the scene, right? It doesn't often go like, okay, now I'll put my arm around your neck here. Are you good with that? All right. Then you can put your knife here and that it's usually a chaotic scene, right? Where terrible things frankly can happen. Nonetheless, when men do step up, men are often put in the penalty box for doing so. What is that? What is that resulted in? It's resulted in men not protecting. And of course, feminism has, told men to stand down and not step up, and feminism has urged women to lean in, and women to be basically the functional head of the home, and men to step back and be quiet. Mom is the omni-capable one. Mom is the one who has all the words. Mom is the one who leads the kids spiritually, and dad just kind of honestly, in many cases, sits there. Adam is the world's first lost man. He disappears. You understand the point? He disappears. He's present physically, but he's not there. He's not offering any challenge to the serpent. He's not protecting his wife. He's not going, hold up, pushes his wife like this with love, with tenderness, and yet firmness. Hold up, what are you saying? What are you saying to my wife? We just talked to the Lord God. I talked to the Lord God Almighty, and he told us what to do. Excuse my wife, she just misunderstood a little bit. She added some stuff in terms of what she just told you. I'm the head here, and I am the one who will be engaging you. And by the way, if you wouldn't mind putting your head on the ground, I will be crushing it in about six seconds. That's what Adam should have done, yes? But that's not what Adam did. And you want to know something a little bit painful? This isn't what you and I do either. It's tempting to think. If we were in the garden, we'd be the hero, right? We'd be the action movie star and we'd man up where Adam fell. But I think the Bible has a little bit more of a humbling point to make to us, honestly. Here and through a lot of the men we're going to talk about in this conference, I think we're supposed to actually do something a little harder and more painful. I think we're supposed to see our failings in Adam's failings. This is what I call a reflective hermeneutic. A reflective hermeneutic. Hermeneutic just means way of interpretation, way of interpreting the Bible, approaching the Bible, studying the Bible. I don't think you and I are primarily supposed to pop popcorn and read the Bible and sit up in the cheap seats and laugh at the idiot followers of God who got it wrong, and then scorch them. You see Adam? You see what he did? What an idiot. Let's be men who stand up and don't do that. Well, let's not be men who sin, right? It's kind of the general point of what we're going to be talking about, but I think the Bible has a more humbling point for us. than that. I don't think we're critiquing Adam or Old Testament followers of God or the disciples and apostles, and I don't think the primary thing the Holy Spirit would have us do in reading and studying scripture is go, what an idiot! I'm so much better! I don't mess up those ways. I think the scripture is actually teaching us how we are tempted and how we often fall. Much more humbling. Adam had heard from God himself that he should step up and defend Eden and protect his wife. But in the great hour of testing, Adam did not rise up in courage. Adam did not meet the threat as it came to his territory. He shrank back. And not just that, he effectively thrust his wife forward to fight for him. This is what happens in so many homes today where men disappear. They don't just abandon their family out of that constellation of problems we talked about last night. That's why last night was so important. We worked really hard to understand where men are. We didn't excuse the failings of men, not one bit, but we did try to do justice to the complexity of 2024 and all the forces that are arrayed against men with our own sin problem originating in this passage being the chief factor. Yes? But we need to understand that abandonment is not merely abandonment. It is that if you walk away, if men walk away from wife and children, loved ones, and more than that, they don't just leave, right? It's not just that you're not there. It's that you're leaving your loved ones to face the bared fangs of the devil himself. Right? That's even the greater problem. It's not just that Adam didn't protect actively. It's that he left his wife unprotected and unguarded, even though he's standing right there. That's what abandonment does. Abandonment doesn't just abandon. Abandon says wife, woman, girlfriend, whatever the situation may be in America, you fight this. I'm out of here. Disappearing solves nothing, does it? We think at some level in our mind, our masculine mind, if I just walk away from this, that's the solution. That's not even close to the solution, is it? It's just going to make things spiraling worse for everyone, including us. The lost man may think that he's simply walking away from his problems, but in truth, he's only amplifying his problems and the problems of his family. Well, the Lord visited Eden and made a beeline for the man. Genesis 3 verse 9, you see that there in the text with me. He calls out to Adam, where are you? Adam, as he engages God, responds by shifting blame. He first blames Eve, the woman you gave to be with me. She gave me fruit and I ate, in so many words. So Adam first blames Eve, then blames God, and only at the end slips himself in. And that teaches us something, I think, about our masculine instincts. And I am not pointing the finger. I am indicting all of us. It is so easy for us to blame everybody but us when things go wrong. You know, I would just say this quickly. I think men often struggle with pride and admitting there is a problem, just in general terms. It's not always this way, but I think it's often this way. And I think women often struggle with anxiety. Common struggles. Pride and anxiety. So opposite sides of the coin. The man is going, everything's fine. And the woman's going, everything's wrong. Just kind of opposite perspectives. Everything's fine when things really aren't that fine. They may be okay, but there's work that needs to be done. And oftentimes the woman sees that more than the man. But the woman often says everything's wrong or feels like everything is wrong. And so she has that dynamic and that struggle and that sin pattern at least often, often the case. Well, we see that masculine sinful instinct in saying, the woman you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit. We see that we blame first the wife, then God himself, and only later us. And that's a key part of being lost. That's a key part of disappearing. Really what you're running from is responsibility and accountability, right? We all do this. This isn't something Adam did alone. This isn't something that only men who leave their families do. We all have this instinct in us. It may not manifest in all the same ways. Don't misunderstand me. There's varying levels and degrees of sin. There definitely are. There's more severe sin and there's less severe sin. It's all, of course, a dread offense of God. Even the smallest sin separates us infinitely from God, so don't misunderstand me. Nonetheless, there are sins that have the severest consequences and on down the range. Even if we don't walk out on our family, it's so easy for us men to be like Adam and shift blame. And the way you want to know the way to heal, you want to know the way to heal a marriage. You want to know the way to restore things or at least begin to with children that are estranged from you. This is a huge problem in the church. I'm really learning. There's just estranged families all over the place who outwardly look great, cleaned up on Sunday morning. Everything's fine. Everybody's smiling. Get out of the van, you know, and everything looks great. But inwardly, everything's not great. And we're all battling sin, right? And we're all imperfect men, and we all have imperfect wives, and we all have imperfect children. But the way back is to do the opposite of what Adam does, isn't it? The way back is not to shift blame, the way back is to take blame. I don't mean it's all men's fault, that's a common failing as well. But what blame is ours? Brothers, we have to take it. We have to step up. People think headship means we get the good stuff and women get stuck with the bad stuff. Like that's the way secular folks at state or Duke or UNC, that's the way they would in many cases nowadays read men. And that's not what headship means. Headship does mean leadership, but honestly headship means that we're the lead repentor. Talk about strong manhood. Are we strong to repent? Everybody wants to watch the World War II movie and watch the taking of the hill over against ferocious machine gun fire and the raising of the flag on the hill after courageous action. Watch that. Be inspired by it. Be stirred by it. Absolutely. We're going to talk about David in just a few minutes. We're going to be profoundly encouraged, I pray, from David's example. So it's not an either-or. But what about lead repenter? That's a harder one, isn't it? Oh man, there's a moment in your family when you fail like Adam. I mean, I don't mean necessarily the colossal failure, that can be included, but I'm talking about all the way on down. There's a moment when Satan makes it so hard to repent, doesn't he? When your family's looking at you, and you have said something unkind, and everybody heard it, and now they're sitting in awkward silence, and all eyes are on you as dad, and you have a choice, don't you? Are you gonna shift this? Are you gonna own this? And men, as I get a little bit older, I tend to think a little bit wiser. I tend to think those moments of humility where we demonstrate repentance may actually be a way louder sermon, a way more impactful message than all the family worship and family discipleship put together. I wouldn't oppose them. I wouldn't make that mistake. But I think your kids, when they see you own your sin, they saw you sin. You're not fooling anybody, bro. You can explain it away. You can be quiet. You can pretend it's not a big deal. You can wave a hand at it. You can say whatever you want to say. They saw it. You see, your theology, our theology from scripture is that we're all sinners. And they learn this in Sunday school, and they learn this on the flannel graph, and we say it in the home. We should. We've got to, right? We teach them the gospel. We talk about repentance. We talk a big game about overcoming sin. But then, Do we ourselves own our sin? Do we lead in repentance? I think that can preach ten times louder than a lot of the catechizing work or Sunday school classes, all the good things that you engage them in. If they see in you as a man a soft heart to the Lord, and a humility, brothers, that will be powerful. Because they see that dad doesn't just talk it, right? Dad walks it. Dad doesn't think he's perfect. They already, by the way, they already know that you're not perfect. They're not confused about this, right? That's what your own theology has told them. but now you and I gotta own this, and we gotta be not like Adam, not shift blame, but be the lead repenter. Put that on a t-shirt and sell it. I'm the lead repenter in my family. It doesn't mean, by the way, every 60 seconds you're calling the family back to the guy, hey family, no, come on back in, I know we were just, hey family, dad had a thought, he was on his Merrill Lynch account again and he saw the balance and it's too low and, you know, okay, I'll see you in 60 seconds. It doesn't mean. You have to become this endless broken wheel of always saying, you're sorry. We're not talking about that. We mean make it meaningful and consequential. But before our wives, before our children, we've got to strive the power of God's grace to not be like Adam. and not shift the blame. Thankfully, God is in the redemption business, isn't he? Genesis 3 makes this clear. After this terrible fall, after Adam fails to exercise protection of his wife, what happens? The Lord shows up on the scene, and then the Lord issues sentence. Look with me at Genesis 3, please. Turn there, if you would. We gotta just see this. We gotta see what the Lord God does very quickly. There's not a whiteboard session. It's not that the man now contributes ideas and the woman contributes ideas and the serpent contributes ideas. What happens? In verse 14, we read this. just after Adam's blame-shifting words. The Lord God said to the serpent, because you've done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field. On your belly you shall go and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring. Singular. He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. That is a costly promise, but it is a promise of victory, is it not? It is a promise of head crushing of the serpent. The Lord God issues judgment on the serpent. So God is the God. We're learning here, we don't have an extended encyclopedia entry, but we're learning here that God is the God who overcomes his people's enemies. Brothers, God is the one who fights for us. God is the one who overcomes the devil. God is the one, through the work of Jesus Christ, who is going to do everything needed to redeem us back from this kind of condition. But note how costly the sacrifice is, isn't it? It's so costly. Our sin is going to cost the Son of God his life. which tells us that our evil really is evil, and we've got to square with it. We've got to own it. We've got to face it. Isn't that the hardest thing in any major challenge, any major struggle, battle with lust, battle with pornography, battle with a fiery temper? More on that in just a minute. Isn't the hardest thing? Just to face it, just to be honest about it. Isn't that when healing begins in a marriage, for example, when two people who have been at odds and are embittered to each other and have bad patterns in all sorts of ways. And I push this button and you push this button. Isn't, isn't the way to heal just to come together and go, okay, let's lay our swords down and let's be honest. Talk to me about a couple ways that I am hurting you. Let me talk to you about a couple ways you're hurting me and we're honest and we stop pretending men in every year of marriage from month one up to year 74 needs some kind of rhythm. like that. Single men absolutely need a rhythm like that with brothers they're accountable to, with roommates, with friends, with church members, whoever it may be. We all do. All men need this. Brothers, we're all battling sin. There aren't some men who are super Christians and some men who are kind of defeated Christians, and these ones really sin. We're all level. We're all battling sin. Don't be ensnared by your pride to pretend you don't have problems. You do have problems. Adam gifted you a sin nature. You would have done what Adam did in the garden, by the way. And now you and I have the same battle. Be honest about your sin. Have moments of honesty. If things aren't where they need to be, honestly, that's understandable. That's more the norm than not. And so free yourself in the power of the gospel to be honest about failing. Stop pretending. Stop doing Christianese. Stop just putting a smile on for public events at the church. And then at home, man, it's a war zone. Get some help. Talk to an elder at this church. Talk to one of the pastors. Find a biblical counselor if you need one. We men live in shame. We live in the shame of needing help when we need help. We hate almost nothing less than needing help, many of us anyway. And can I just say something very quick? We all need help. Not some of us. There's not the super Christians who don't need help and then the defeated Christians who need it. We all need help. We all need divine help to be saved. We just talked about that, right? It's not Adam who said to the serpent, hey, I'm gonna get back at you. No, it's the Lord God who judged the serpent and said, I'm going to crush you. What does that indicate? That indicates that Adam can't face down the serpent. Adam is no match for Satan. We are no match for Satan. We cannot overcome the devil in our own strength. We need a redeemer. We need God. We need divine help. in all phases of our life. Guys, we need help to the fullest possible degree. Every one of us needs infinite help, but not just divine help. Then in this world, we really do need help. That's not shameful for you and me to need help. It's not shameful for you to need someone who can speak into your marriage. It's not shameful for you to get help as a single young man wanting to be pure in this world. It's not shameful for you to need counsel. That's the norm. Can we reset the norm? The norm is not we're all okay and don't need help. The norm is we're sinners battling the flesh and we need help. Just reset it in your, in your mind. Just click a button and reset the paradigm. And the next time you need help and you go, no, I don't know. No, no, I don't want help. Go. Yes, I do. I need help. It doesn't mean you don't go to work. It doesn't mean you don't do hard things. It doesn't mean you don't pursue manhood. It doesn't mean you don't live out 1 Corinthians 16, 13 and act like men and be strong and courageous. It doesn't mean that. These two things are not opposed. But all the men God uses need help. All the men God uses are empowered by God. That's God helping them. All the men God uses, with one exception, are fallen and have a sin nature and need daily assistance. No exceptions except one, Jesus. Second type of man, the angry man. We meet the angry man in scripture in Genesis 4, one chapter over. Adam's own son. Genesis 4.1, now Abel was a keeper of sheep and Cain a worker of the ground. In the course of time, Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground and Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel in his offering, but for Cain in his offering, he had no regard. So Cain was very angry and his face fell. The Lord said to Cain, why are you angry? And why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it. Okay, Abel's offering pleased the Lord while Cain's did not. It appears that this is because Abel brought the best of what he had. the firstborn of his flock, we read, which reveals a heart given over to God, a heart that wants to give God the best he has. That speaks to a faith-filled heart by God's grace. Cain made no such offering, and when Abel's offering pleased the Lord, Cain showed the fruit of an evil heart. As I read, he was very angry, verse five, with both God and Abel. and our earthly anger targets really obscure the bigger anger target. God, when you see somebody who has an anger problem that manifests in our world, right, that comes out amidst people, human beings, but are you actually angry with human beings? No, you have a much bigger problem. At some level, you're angry against God. A lot of the angry men who make up our world, so many of them, who really do hurt people, I mean, and can do terrible things, they are not primarily angry at people. People are just in the way. They are ultimately angry at the Lord. And that's absolutely the case with Cain, isn't it? The Lord is pleased by Abel and the Lord is displeased by Cain. And Cain does not respond to that reality with humility, does he? He does not say, okay, what can I learn from this situation? God, how can you help me and I grow here? No, that's not at all how Cain responds. Cain doesn't battle his anger. He doesn't rule his anger, as we read in verse 7. That's what he's called to do. Instead, Cain lets anger rule him. So you and I really have two choices, don't we, from the scripture. We're like Cain. We're not in his exact shoes, don't misunderstand. But men, on average, have about 2,000 to 2,500 percent more testosterone than women. You're never going to hear this in any secular setting today. If you try to find the stat I just said, Google will make it hard for you. You ever try to find something that you know is right there and Google makes it really hard? Like, I tried to find a bill. that the Republicans passed in Ohio about transgenderism a few months ago, I could not find a news story about the bill that was anything but a leftist slant on the bill. It's like no conservative media exists. You can't find it. I found it on like the eighth page of results. Well, in the same way, we will hide what we do not want found. We really have a choice. We can either rule our temper or our temper will rule us. Those are the two choices. Men, on average, have 2,500% more testosterone than women, which indicates a lot of things, but one of the fruits of having a ton more testosterone is that we ramp up much quicker. It's not that women don't battle anger. Women do. Women can have a ferocious temper, can't they? But on average, God has made us constitutionally different. Our bodies are different. We have, on average, 50 to 60% more upper body strength than women. We have way more dynamic energy coursing through us, driving us out, making us want to knock heads. We knock heads for fun, right? Women go out to Starbucks and we go to fields and hit each other, right? For fun, I mean, with your buddies, right? That's different. Can we just admit that's different? Come home from work and daughters come in for a nice squeeze. Squeeze daddy. Oh, daddy. My son, when he's a little four-year-old bull, see me coming down the hall. and raced down and tackled me and hit me hard and loved it. Both of those things. Boys and girls are wired differently. Part of why boys struggle so much in modern environments where they have to sit in a classroom for eight and a half hours. How do you do sitting in a seat for eight and a half hours by the way? I go crazy. Do you not? Yet our boys are asked this of them in the modern classroom all over the place. I digress. We have a strong capacity as men for destruction. It's not that women are emotional and we are unemotional. The Bible's teaching us something. This is Cain. The fall has just happened, and what are you seeing? You are seeing an emotional man, yes? He's not necessarily emotional in the same way, in all the same cases as a woman. When a woman feels emotional, she might eat a pint of Haagen-Dazs and cry in the bathtub. When a man gets angry and feels emotional, he might burn his shed down in the backyard. But don't think that men are not emotional. Men are very emotional. I'm serious. It comes out in different ways. Uh, on average it does. I mean, some of you have a punching bag in your basement, right? Or your man cave or whatever. And you got to go punch. You got to go punch it a few times. I mean, that's, that's emotion guys, right? Cain does not rule his emotions by the power of God. Cain's emotions rule him. Welcome to one of the great battles of our lives. Are your emotions going to rule you, or are you going to rule your emotions? By God's strength. The warning God gives Cain here is a warning he gives to us. If you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over It is so easy to be the angry man. No one gets training in getting angry. It comes naturally. It comes out in different ways. There's quiet, passive-aggressive anger that simmers as a slow boil. There's explosive anger, the aforementioned burning down the shed. But the Bible's teaching us that all human beings have a capacity for anger. And I think as men, we're supposed to glean a little extra as well and understand that it is very easy for us to be like Cain. And our world is filled with Cains. And when dads leave the home, the Cain instinct gets ramped way up, gets way harder to control. Do you understand? It's not, anger is not like a, a ruly emotion, right? By definition, a little ironic, but it's not by definition, something that's really easy to manage your anger. By definition, that capacity, that testosterone, that strength, it all mixes together in a wicked alchemy. And it's really easy to do what Cain does in verse eight. Look with me at Genesis four, verse eight, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him. Abel did nothing to Cain. Nothing. Except follow the Lord. And for following the Lord, Cain kills him. What kind of picture, by the way, are we getting in terms of following God? Following God gonna make your life super easy? You get all your prosperity dreams? Is that the case in the Bible? Already in Genesis 4, we're on like page three of the Bible. Following God gets you killed. Abel does nothing to his brother. The Lord comes again, verse nine. Abel, or excuse me, Cain denies being his brother's keeper. The Lord's response shows otherwise. The Lord says in verse 10 that Abel's blood shouts from the ground. So the Lord sentences Cain, showing that he is a God of justice. Nothing escapes God's attention, nothing. Cain is made a fugitive and a nomad on the earth. But God still, in his grace, protects Cain so that he would not be killed. Cain settles east of Eden, verse 16, where many, many, many terrible things will come from. The story of Cain and Abel needs to get our attention. It needs to remind us how easy, as I have said, it is to let evil and anger rule us. The type of the angry man is real and deadly. We see this type all around us today as men without fathers, in many cases, unleash terrible violence on the innocent. About 96 to 97% of public shooters are young men, most of them from divorced, broken, fatherless homes. So again, we already have the capacity for sinful, destructive anger, and there are ways to turn the sliders way up. And one of them is to target men, and thus break down the family, and thus create many more angry men around us. The solution our culture poses, by the way, to the problem of things like public shooters, like toxic men, they would call them, is to want men to be more like women. But that is not the right solution. The solution is not for boys to be like girls. The solution is for boys to have fathers and mothers and boys to be loved and trained by those fathers and mothers. That's the solution. But it's not for boys to become like girls. It's not actually for boys to lose all their testosterone. It's not for boys to lose all their aggressive instincts. It's not for boys to not be trained to be risk takers. Boys need to take risks, appropriate risks. You have to step forward in faith as a godly man in a lot of places in your life. You have to lead when no one else wants to lead. You have to go where no one else wants to go. That's part of godly manhood. But fundamentally, the cure is not to make men who have those instincts women. The solution is to shepherd boys and young men. The solution is to train boys and young men. The solution is to put an arm around boys and young men, and dare I say, love them. This isn't always the way men talk, even at men's conferences at Christian churches, I don't mean this one, but we will talk a lot about like, train them to do it, and that sort of thing, and that's good, but that's not actually the foremost need of a boy. The foremost need of a boy is an arm around his shoulder. Love. Love is not for women alone, mothers and daughters. Love is for fathers and sons. I'm no perfect father. I'm not here to set myself up as the perfect example, but I try with my boy and my daughters. I pull my son close and I just look at him and I say, Gavin, I love you so much. I love you, buddy. And I want to communicate that to him regularly. I'm not being a woman when I do that. You're not being a woman when you do that. That's not weird to do. That's the most normal thing on planet earth. That's one way we fight back against the specter of anger. We fight it ultimately with love, don't we? Love born of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Third type of man, the soft man. The soft man. And praise God, by the way, as you're writing that down, that God loves us through our failures as fathers and as husbands, as single men. God really does do that. Because I know, I can tell you men, I'm in year 18 of marriage and I don't get everything right. I don't get everything right as a father. I can already look back. My oldest is 15, almost 16. I can already look back and see things I didn't get right. I'm that old, right? I've got that much perspective. And the stuff I'm talking about, the forgiveness, the love, the mercy of God is not theoretical to me. It's real. We all need it. No man in here is gonna bat a thousand in his life. Gideon certainly didn't. Our third type, the soft man. Gideon was a wavering man who came from a compromised Israelite family. He's found in the book of Judges, Judges 6. His father openly worshipped Baal and led the men in Gideon's town to do the same. So Gideon harvested wheat at night so as not to draw the attention of the surrounding Midianites, enemies who menaced Israel continuously. John MacArthur describes how hard it would have been to harvest wheat at night. The process of beating out grain and separating it from the chaff normally took place out in the open on a hilltop where the breeze would blow the chaff away. Gideon, however, MacArthur writes, was fearful that enemy marauders might spot him and so took cover in the quarried shelter of a wine press. That made his job way more difficult than it would normally have been, but he feared being detected by the Midianites. So Gideon is a hider. Gideon is afraid and lives in fear of the Midianites. But here's the deal, even as Gideon hides from his enemies, he could not hide from God. The Lord called Gideon into service. In Judges 6, 12, the angel addressed him as a mighty man of valor, one of the Bible's most interesting comments, because Gideon wasn't really manifesting a whole lot of valor and might. Here is great encouragement though for struggling men, even when we are weak, even when we make ourselves soft instead of strong, God calls us out of our sin and into his divine strength to do what we ourselves would never think possible. If you hear the men's conference stuff this weekend and think maybe some guys could do that but not me, You are in the wrong frame of mind, my friend, because over and over again in Scripture, the ones God chooses, the ones whose names we know, 4,000 years later, 3,000 years later, we're talking, is your name gonna be known in 70 years? 120 years? Are your great grandkids gonna know your name? Do you know your great-great-grandfather's name? Most of us don't, right? We're talking about Gideon's name 3,000 to 4,000 years later. That's a sign! That's a sign that you don't have to be the one that everybody would look to as the hero, the great choice. to intervene on the behalf of God's people. No, if you are one who would go, I'm not like these great heroes of the Bible, you are squarely in the target zone, my friend, because Gideon is no one's choice for the next great leader of Israel. Gideon is struggling. Gideon is soft. Gideon is passive and effeminate. That's fundamentally part of his failing. He's not the man he should be, honestly. He's just not. But the angel of the Lord comes to Gideon and the angel of the Lord enlists Gideon. And as we're going to see, the angel of the Lord, God himself, uses Gideon mightily such that we are talking about Gideon thousands of years later. The Lord next called Gideon to destroy his father Joash's idolatrous altars to demonic gods like Baal. How's that for a commission? Okay, I'm calling you into my service. You and I might go, okay, yeah, let's do this. Yeah, send me out, send me far away from here and let's go to pagan lands and let's do some conquering. Is that what you want? No, destroy dad's idol collection. Dad, my dad? Yeah, your father, Joash. Are you, could my buddy, could you tap Midian over here? Could you tap him? Could you tap Henry? No. You. What a charge. What a challenge to Gideon. God is calling Gideon into his service and his first order of business is to destroy his father's idols. Gideon does so and builds an offering to the true God in their place. But, Judges 6, 25 to 27, he does not do this in the day. Continuing his pattern, he does it in the night. He does it in the middle of the night to avoid conflict. He's a conflict avoider, right? In the most serious way. He's avoiding conflict. Do you understand this instinct? Do many of us struggle to have the conflicts you have to have? I'm not talking about the bad ones of your flesh, right? But when you got to face something down, when you got a hard deal to square with, how easy is it for you and me to try to avoid it? We all do this. This is, this is all of us. Joash, for his part, finds this out and could have led the entire town to riot against his son, but instead, verses 28 to 32, he stands up for his son, showing that courageous actions often yield positive results. Cowardice begets cowardice and courage begets courage. Gideon has acted courageously and his father turns around and is courageous himself. Courage begets courage. All it takes is one weak, wavering man to stand up against Baal, a false god. And then people start turning too. This is the amazing thing about courage. It's amazing how simple it is, isn't it? The Bible wants us to understand that theme over and over again. It wants us to understand that it's very easy to spark a fire. It takes one match. One tiny little match burns an entire forest down. My father, growing up in Maine, was a forester. He walked the woods of Maine for a living. Very cool job, by the way. would come up on bears and deer and that sort of thing, moose in the woods, no one else within 10 miles of him, no one to call for, walk the woods of Maine for a living. You know if you love trees, as he does and I do, how easy it is to burn down just miles and miles of forest. It takes one tiny match, right? That's kind of a negative picture, but in the same way, turn it around positively. It takes one match to start a positive fire in the darkness. It takes one match. It doesn't take much, does it? Courage produces courage. One person says, no, I'm not living by lies any longer. I'm not pretending that girls can become boys and boys can become girls. I'm not pretending that gay marriage is the same as true marriage. I'm not doing this. I can't live by lies. I can't pretend. I'm not saying you all have the same call, working in secular workplaces with compromised DEI programs and all the same. I mean, we're in Babylon, really, increasingly, in America. But I am trying to say, though, with that said, I am trying to say just one act of courage produces so much more courage. It's amazing. This is what happens with Gideon. Some of you are following in the swimming world who knew we'd be talking about swimming. Some of you are seeing Riley Gaines, the woman swimmer from university of Kentucky. She's the only one initially who would speak up against this man, William Thomas coming into her locker room, names himself Leah Thomas, right? But he's William Thomas. He's a man. He's not a woman. He's not a woman. Don't you believe for a second that he's a woman? And there's no such thing as a transgender individual. There's a man or a woman. There can be men thinking they're a woman or pretending to be a woman, but they're a man. And Riley Gaines says, it is wrong that this dude is changing naked next to us as we change. This is wrong. And it sparked so much. One person's courage, tiny act of courage, produces an avalanche of the same. Be so encouraged by that. Be so encouraged by how easy it is for a fire to start in a good way. From this, that's what happens. The Lord then puts Gideon to work in a much greater way. He calls him to gather the people of God against the Midianites and Amalekites who marched on Israel to destroy it. But Gideon is clothed in the power of the spirit, and he arms up against these evil pagan tribes. Verses 33 to 35 of Judges 6, and they respond. They go straight into battle. The Lord has brought Gideon through a serious test already, but Gideon moving forward in faith, then stumbles, doesn't he? He gets weak again, right? Famous scene of the fleeces. He wants the Lord to show Gideon that he is with him, so he asks the Lord to manifest this through a fleece, make the fleece dry and the ground around it wet. In verses 36 to 40 of Judges 6, the Lord does this. The Lord is very patient with Gideon. God is a patient God. When you read chapters like Judges 6, you can read it later. I'm having to rip through it in the interest of time. But you should think about the patience of God. God is so unlike us. If I was working with Gideon, I would be like, all right, angels, go get him. Just go get him. We are done with this. Come on, man. Bro, man up. Let's do this. And instead, Gideon experiences God's kindness. God works with Gideon. He continues to show up for Gideon. Even as Gideon struggles in faith, God helps him and reminds him that he's with him. God is a very patient God. He's a very loving father. He's very tender and kind. That's not all he is. get on the wrong side of God. But he is that. Gideon amasses an army of 32,000 men. All right, now we're talking. 32,000 men. Show of numbers, right? Here we go. No. God says, actually, sorry, Gideon, let's cut that to 10,000. Chapter 7, verses 1 and 3. Gideon's like, okay, 10,000. I can Not 32, but I can feel comfortable with that 10,000. Look at these guys, wow. Israelite warriors, let's go. And the Lord says, oh, sorry, Gideon. Actually, I need to cut that down again. He has Gideon do a test. Chapter seven, verse six. Gideon can only keep the warriors who go to the nearby river and lap water, putting their hands to their mouths to drink. a mysterious comment. Until you think of this, what these warriors are doing is this. They're not lapping like this, getting water, thirsty warriors, as one would be, and just drinking, looking down. They're lapping water and looking up. They're scanning the horizon. So these are serious dudes. These are men who are taking care of their needs, but they're watchmen. They're watching all around them. This is that warrior type that is all through the Bible. Even as we confess our weakness and our needs and our sins, we do not miss that the word of God over and over honors warriors. And it does so here. These are men who protect others, and there are just 300 of them remaining, from 32,000. Guys, do you feel outmatched today as a Christian in America? Do you feel like the forces of evil are about to overrun the castle? Do you just feel like we are just so beleaguered and we're losing on every front and they've taken over the media and the culture and the public schools and the business world and entertainment and you can't watch a sports game without wokeness intruding in all sorts of ways? Do you feel this way? Welcome to the walk of faith. God often sets things up for his people so that the odds are totally against us. And then God does so much of his best work, doesn't he? He does so much of his best work, men, in the darkness. He turns the lights off so he can show his best work. 300 men instead of 32,000. That's the army. That's the God-appointed, God-selected army. God is making a point. This is not a natural enterprise. You are not to find your strength in your numbers, 30,000 men behind you. You are to find your strength where? In Him. You find your strength in me, God is saying. I am your strength, not your numbers, not your votes, not your political parties, honestly, not anything earthly. The strength of the Christian is in God. And one man with God is in the majority. Talk to me at noon about the right side of history. So the army goes into battle. Gideon and his men rush on the enemy force, and the Lord throws the Midianites into confusion at the sound of the Israelite trumpets. Verse 22, the Lord set every man's sword against his comrade and against all the army, and the Lord on that day destroys the enemy, destroys the pagan tribes. The story of Gideon should encourage us today in 2024 tremendously. We see two key things. We see the heart of God for struggling men in this story. We see that God patiently works with Gideon. He is not an angry, desperate father. Get it together. He is a kind, patient, tender father who puts his arm around Gideon, so to speak, and brings him along. You can do this. It's like a father who helps a wayward, beleaguered son. You can do this, son. I know you're feeling weak. There's a time for dads to say, all right, buddy, man up. There's a time for sharp words. There is, father to son. But we see a father here who works with that boy, works with his son, so to speak, in a very kind way. And we see, secondly, that no one can stop God's hand. God is the one who is the strength of his people. You can try to Christianize the nation. You can try to make America Christian again. You can try to win every political battle. You can invest all your money in political battles. I am one who wants Christians to be very engaged in the public square. I want us to be salt and light. I want us to make political alliances, not in an ultimate sense, but to win elections and hold the line and protect children in schools and all of that. That's a whole separate conference we could do on being salt and light. I am all for that. I myself try to engage the public square, but I am here to tell you, none of my confidence is in me, none of my confidence is in a party, none of my confidence should be in any person. It's not in a person, it's in God. It's in God. And throughout the Bible, God not only works in hard circumstances, God makes the circumstances hard and then pulls off an incredible victory. Have you heard about the Passover? Have you seen what God does over and over again for his people? Have you seen Jericho and what God does there? Have you seen the cross of Jesus Christ where one man crucified by the Romans makes atonement for all of our sin? Does God need natural odds in our favor? Does God need lots of people on his side? He's so sad. History seems to be against us. No. God is teaching us something through stories like this. Man looks at the outward form, but God looks at the heart. God is not restrained by any natural force. Capture everything in America. The Marxists have it all. We fight them for the sake of what is good and right, not hating flesh and blood. But they win. They win, let's say, 10 years. They've got the whole country. We're still in the majority. We've still got God on our side. If we confess the sovereignty of God, brothers, we've got to believe it. And the sovereignty of God doesn't just mean God is on the right side when the numbers are in our favor. The sovereignty of God means God is in the right and God is the victor even when we totally have no odds in our favor. Remember that. Fourth type, we gotta hasten on. We gotta go fast. The exaggerated man, the exaggerated man, Samson. We read about Samson in Judges 13 to 16. I'm gonna just survey it quickly. Samson was raised under the Nazarite vow. He was called to grow his hair, unusually for the people of God, without cutting it. Men are to be distinct from women in that respect, according to 1 Corinthians 11, to display the glory of womanhood. Samson was called to steer clear of dead bodies, rut row, and Samson was called to drink no wine, as a Nazirite. Samson is one of the Bible's most compelling characters. If you did not know what the Bible was, you would think he was a fictional character from Greco-Roman mythology, something like that. But he is not. He was a real man. Everything about Samson was outsized. He was rash, impulsive, and he lived according to what he saw and wanted. He was handsome, he was extremely strong, and he was outwardly impressive. He was basically the alpha male. He was the man men dream of being. He was. He's the alpha male. That's who he is. So take note of his story, because this is the guy then and now men want to be. He was called to be a judge of Israel, but he really chose to live by his own code. He did what he wanted, and he got what he desired. And so he represents that ideal again of the alpha male, right? It's not just to like walk tall and strong and have women like you and that sort of thing and catch the winning touchdown in the SEC championship or whatever it may be. No, it's to live a fleshly existence and have no consequences for it. That's what men want in our flesh. We very much connect with Samson. He's the exaggerated man. He's the alpha male. Spurgeon said this about Samson. Perhaps the extraordinary strength of his physical frame placed him under stronger temptation than is common to man. At any rate, he seemed more like a wanton boy, a weak boy, than a judge in Israel. And from the start, Samson lived on the edge. He went down to enemy territory, saw a lovely Philistine girl, and he said this, Judges 14.2, get her for me as my wife, he told his father. He had a desire. He wanted it. Get it. He lives by his desires. He lives by his eyes. More on that to come in just a minute. Samson was all impulse, no self-control. Despite his poor character, the Lord actually used him having this Philistine girl for himself because the Philistines fight Samson over it and he destroys them. Samson is threatened by a roaring lion. Judges 14.6 tells us, the spirit of the Lord rushed upon him and although he had nothing in his hand, he tore the lion in pieces as one tears a young goat. God gave Samson this supernatural strength. Later, Samson went to get his wife and walked by the carcass of the lion. Bees had built a hive in it and produced honey, and Samson, without blinking, took of the honey and ate it. What's that violating? Nazirite bow, right? Touching corpses. He's not supposed to touch corpses, but that's how Samson lives. He's an alpha. He wants it, he sees it, he gets it. The Philistines try to trap Samson, but Samson slices through his enemies, Judges 14 and 15, with the jawbone of a donkey. He doesn't even have a formal weapon of war, but he strikes down a thousand men on the spot. This is the strongest man who has ever lived. It's not the dudes on ESPN at like 2 in the morning who like hoist a car. The Finnish-Swedish guys who just, you know, they lift a car above their head. Samson. Samson's the strongest guy who ever lived. His eyes drove him. Judges 16-1. He saw a prostitute. And he went into her. Alpha. Alpha's gonna alpha, right? He had no regard for God's law, holiness, or his call as a judge. But then he met his match. Delilah. Delilah tried to wear Samson down. Tell me the secret of your strength, she said to him over and over again. Three times Samson lied to Delilah. Samson and Delilah, by the way, show us a poisonous relationship. There's no true love. There's just these poisonous, awful dynamics, man to woman. Eventually, Delilah wears Samson down. He tells her the truth, she cuts his hair, and the Philistines capture him. Judges 16, 19. The Lord had already left Samson. Samson was on his own. The spirit had already departed. This is a picture not simply of a man, this is a picture of Israel. This is a picture of the people of God. Samson represents the nation of Israel. God made Israel strong by his spirit, but Israel left God. and Israel gave up so very much, just as God has left Samson. The man who lives by his eyes, get it for me, is that not all of our hearts with lust, for example, or covetousness, the man who lives by his eyes has them gouged out by his foes. Verse 21, no anesthetic was used there, you can safely assume. Samson has slaughtered too many Philistines to count, and they tear out his eyeballs as a repercussion. This is a visceral life, is it not? but there's just a little bit more to the story. There's just one more character to name, God. God did not rescue Samson or return his eyes, but he did restore his strength. Judges 16, 28. Oh Lord God, Samson's first prayer in his entire story, his first prayer. O Lord God, please remember me and please strengthen me only this once, O God, that I may be avenged on the Philistines for my two eyes. The Lord grants his request. Samson is standing and chained between two pillars, holding up the hall where the Philistines are worshiping their demonic god, Dagon. And Samson summons all his strength, bows, and pulls down the pillars, and the house, the entire hall, massive hall, falls. And the dead whom he killed in his death were more than he killed in his life. The deliverer of God's people. He was called to be a judge. He was called to be a rescuer. He was called to be a protector of Israel, of the people of God. And instead he squandered it. And yet, even with Samson, even with this misguided alpha who lives by his lusts and his eyes, and not by the spirit of God, God uses him tremendously. God redeems his life in his death as he stretches out his hands. No man is too far gone. No man is too far gone. No man is ruined beyond the work of God. Men feel this way all over the case. I'm gonna close with Samson. I'll leave David for the next session. We'll leave that fifth type for the next session. Don't believe the lies. As sad as Samson's case is, no man is too far gone. This is why I resist the language of the toxic man. For example, it's not that men don't sin. Men sin all over the place. We're talking about sinful men at a men's conference. We're not having a pep rally for perfect manhood here, right? For us. But you've got to recognize that even as men are sinners, God is a redeemer. And God redeems even this man's life. God uses even this man's life. Even as he squandered it guys, even as he looks back at his past as his eyes are bleeding and not existent and he is chained to a pillar, he finally praise. He finally looks up and praise and calls on God and God works a miraculous victory. So brothers, as we close this session, take our break. I just remind you, I'm stubbornly reminding you, God will renew you. Where you need to grow, God will grow you. Where things have broken in your life, God will heal. Where you need strength, God will give it. where you and I, all of us, need redemption, the grace and mercy of God that is in Christ and in Christ alone, as we will talk about in our final session. God is very pleased to give it to sinners like us. Let's pray. Father, thank you. Father, please help us. Please help these men. Please help us find our strength, not in ourselves. We are the weak men. Samson seemed so strong, but he was so weak, and we see our own weakness, sin. iniquity, transgression in him. Help us to be strong. I pray that you would fire these men up to realize that there's no such thing as a man too far gone. There's only such a man who needs the grace of God. Thank you that you give men like us all the grace and all the mercy we need, even as you did these men we've talked about. In Jesus' name, amen. Thank you for listening to this message from the War on Men Conference held at Capitol Community Church in April, 2024. To learn more about Capitol Community Church, please visit capitolcommunitychurch.com. For information about Finding Purpose Ministries, please visit findingpurpose.net. Owen Strand's book, The War on Men, was published in 2023 by Salem Books.