As on the way over today, Cindy and I were talking, this is our last Sunday with you. We will be next Sunday in Indianapolis with my son and daughter-in-law and grandchildren. And the following weekend, we drive down to Charlotte to be with our daughter, Sally, and her husband, Madeline, and their kids. And then we drive back to load up our moving van and go to Texas. So it was my last opportunity to say thank you, one and all. You've meant so much to us. You are in our hearts. You're under our skin, so to speak. And we can't thank you enough. If words mean anything, thank you. Let's pray. Our Father and our God, as much as we delight in seeing our brothers and sisters who have come to mean so much to us, and different brothers and sisters to different degrees, we have different levels of relationship. But the most important thing about this day is that we've come to meet with you. If you come down by your Holy Spirit and make your presence known, and make the Word come alive and work in our hearts, it will be a day not to be forgotten. Because you came down, you dwelt among your people. Would you take glory for Christ now and dwell among your people by your spirit? Would you make the word of God compelling despite my stammering lips? Would you make Christ great? Would you make being a Christian a great privilege? We thank you now in Jesus' name. Amen. I have a single verse as a text. You can look it up or you can trust me that I can recite it accurately. It's 1 Chronicles 12, 32. Referring to David's army, there was a group of them from one of the tribes, the tribe of Issachar. It says, they were men who understood the times and knew what Israel should do. Men who understood the times and they knew what Israel should do. Israel being the people of God in the Old Testament. In the New Testament, the people of God are Israel and the Gentiles both, which make up the church. Men who understood the times and knew what the church should do. Now some might say it's not fitting to give a Sunday to addressing fathers and men, but I'm going to do that today. After all, you might say, it's not a special day in the Bible. There's not Father's Day in the Bible. Wasn't it invented by the greeting card people to sell greeting cards or sell some kind of commercial things? Isn't it simply a worldly custom? It may be, but it's not nothing in the Bible. In the Bible, there's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of references to men. And God became a man. God didn't become a specter or a ghost or a hologram. He became a man. Because the Bible talks so much to men, about men, what men are to be, what they're not to be, it's a day to remind men of the tremendous responsibilities that God's entrusted to you, as well as special privileges. While God has given equal dignity to men and women, you're both created in the image of God, He has given a special and sobering calling to men as men. So normally I have three points in my sermons, and I say what they're going to be, and then I try to preach them, and I say, okay, this is what I just said. This morning I have six points, so each of them will be half as long as my normal three points, hopefully, and we'll get through this together. men who understand the times and know what God's people should be doing. First of all, Christian men are called to be men. Christian men. That may seem kind of obvious. Well, duh. But like I like to say, when Time Magazine 15 years ago can have a cover showing a man looking at a woman and says, men and women, are they different? Well, I'm not real smart, but I think I figured that out about age two, you know, that my mom was not my dad, right? But we live in a culture where you can't expect that people really know what that means. My second point will be Christian men are called to a vocation, a calling from God. The word vocation means calling. God's called you to do something with your life. He's not just called for you to kill time. He's called you to do something with your life. Third, Christian men are called to be married, most of you. Not all of you will be married. Some of you will have the gift of celibacy. I was given the gift of celibacy, but I took it back to the Christian bookstore and got another gift. But anyway, some of you may not have the gift of celibacy and wish you were married and you're not married yet. Number four, Christian men are called to be fathers. Most of the married men will be fathers. We'll talk about that. Number five, Christian men are called to be faithful churchmen. A churchman's not a word, a phrase that's used much anymore, but it used to be, that man's a faithful churchman. And finally, number six, Christian men are called to be faithful members of their nation, of the nation they live in. So let's whiz through these six points together and see if God has a word for you. Now, ladies, you're kind of going, does that mean I can sleep or I can read something? balance my checkbook?" No, because first of all, you need to know how to pray for your husband, you need to know how to pray for your sons. Single gals, you need to know how to pray for Mr. Right coming down the road. You don't want to marry just anybody. You know, there's an old saying, you can marry in haste and repent at leisure. You have the rest of your life to regret that decision. So I would think you should be wise to pray for your future Mr. Right. Let's look at the six things men who understand the times and know what God's people, what God's men should be doing. First of all, Christian men are called to be men. God's men. We just read Genesis 1 and 2. Genesis 1 and 2, you should come close to memorizing it because it's reality. If you add chapter 3, that encompasses reality. Everything you see in those three chapters is the world you live in. The world as originally created. The world, what it was like after sin entered the world and God cursed sin. That's the world that you live in. Regardless of what the culture says, regardless of what the wise men of the world say, Genesis chapter 1, 2, and 3 is reality. You did not evolve from a primordial slime pit that was struck by lightning and your Uncle Harry, who was a lizard, crawled out of that. You were created in the image of God. God created you to be a man or to be a woman. Male and female, he created them. There's no ambiguity. There's no lack of clarity. God's not kind of, well, they're kind of man-ish or they're kind of woman-ish. He created men and women, period. Men and women each represent the image of God. There's a glory in your high calling. You're an image-bearer of God, like a mirror. There's a great children's book. If you've never used it with your small children, you should. It's called Full Moon Rising. Not Full Moon Rising, but Full Moon Rising. It was a picture of a moon on the cover. And the story of the book is, the moon thinks that the light it has is its own light. And it's pretty cocky that it has all this light it can show. Until it comes to the realization, no, you only have reflected light. You didn't create this light, it's a reflection of the sun. It's reflected glory. And that's about us as human beings. We think the light that comes from us is our greatness, but actually whatever light is reflected from us is reflected glory. There's glory in being created in the image of God. But God has created men to be men. He's not created you to be women or something else. We shouldn't be ashamed, we shouldn't be apologetic, and we shouldn't be questionable. You know, the culture beats on men. There's universities now where they have timeouts from masculinity and they have all kinds of stupid things going on in the universities around the country where this is a testosterone-free zone, as I guess all the men will have to express their feminine side when they go on that part of the campus. But the culture has mitigated against men being men for about 40 years now, and you really get beat down. Only a Christian man can reflect the glory of being a man created in the image of God. If I try to be a woman, I'm not reflecting the glory of who God created me to be. The Bible speaks of the concept of being a man and a father some 1,897 times. Or to put it another way, that's almost 30 references for every book of the Bible. Being a man is a big deal. You can be a good man or a bad man. You can be a righteous man or an unrighteous man. You can be a repenting man or an unrepentant man. You can be a man on his way to heaven or a man on his way to hell. Now, Christian men are to cultivate and grow in their masculinity, in being a man. just simply being a man. That's not going out and chopping wood while spitting chewing tobacco and drinking whiskey and firing a gun in the air or some kind of combination of all those things. I'm not against drinking whiskey, firing a gun in the air, using a chainsaw, but I'm saying that there are sometimes odd views in people's minds of what makes a man a man. We all start off as boys and hopefully we grow into men. Men take on their God-given responsibilities to subdue the Earth and manage it. We read in Genesis chapter 1 and 2, God gave the planet to human beings, to man, Adam as his vice-regent, as the king's steward, manage planet Earth. I'll give you this much of it, see how you start off with this, and if you do well, we'll expand it. Well, if you crumble in the Garden of Eden, we're not gonna give you the whole planet. Men are not women. and they shouldn't let the aggressive women's movement, which inundates our culture, to intimidate them from being men. Boys, you know, the culture would have you say, stay a boy, always need a mother, always need a woman to tell you what to do. In fact, one of the sad things about our culture is that, and I know that some of you grew up in divorced homes, they almost always give the children to the mother. And so I've known young men who I've worked with in the ministry who grew up in a home where no matter how much you were a leader or had a temperament to be a leader, you always had to ask a woman's permission to do something. That's not what you're supposed to be when you get to be 18 and go out into the world. You're to make your own decisions, and yes, you should check with your wife, but she doesn't have the final veto power. But if you grew up in a home where you're raised by your mother only, then women have final veto power on whatever you want to do. A subtle thing, but I've seen too many men who would stand there with a gun, so to speak, and couldn't pull the trigger because they needed a woman to tell them what to do. Some of your ladies are going, what's wrong with that? Talk to your husband. Men should not be ashamed of their manhood any more than a woman should be ashamed of her femininity. If this was a Mother's Day message, I would laud the gift of being a woman and the unique gifts that you have, and I honor you and I respect you as being women. But growing in masculinity also means growing into Christ-like masculinity, Christ-like humanity. Jesus wasn't some macho dude, and macho is the shortened form of machismo, which is a Latin American concept of a guy over the top who treats women badly, who thinks only of himself, and struts around like a peacock or a rooster. Christ was fully masculine, fully man, but he wasn't macho. It says in Luke 2.52 that our Lord, as a child, grew in wisdom and stature in favor with God and man. What does it mean to grow in wisdom? Well, you grow up, you grow in biblical wisdom. You see how to apply the Word of God to life. He grew in wisdom. He grew in stature. That means physically Christ grew up. There was a time when He was a little two-year-old. Then He was a ten-year-old. Then He was sixteen. And then He retained or gained the rest of his growth. He grew up physically. Well, you're to grow up physically and to take good care of your body, and you're not all called to be athletes, but you're all called to take stewardship of your body seriously. To grow in favor with God means to grow in your relationship with the Lord. The most important thing that people should say about you is, well, this man knows God. This man knows God. And your children can say later in life, well, whatever you say about my dad, he knows God. To grow in favor with God means to grow in your relationship with Christ and your spiritual maturity. I said this last week when I preached in Macon, but what if I went boom like this and we were all dressed according to our spiritual maturity? Whoa, some people are still in their Baby suits. Some people are in diapers. Some people are dressed like four-year-olds. I mean, just because we have attained a certain age doesn't mean I've grown in maturity. We need to grow up into maturity as men. And finally, to grow in favor with men means to grow socially, learning how to relate to people. We need to, if that's a weakness in our life, we need to work on it. If physical fitness is part of our life, we need to work on that. If growing, whatever the need is, we need to grow at it. So over the course of our lives, we should become more and more like Christ, who grew in wisdom and stature and favor with God and favor with men. Jesus knew how to relate to people. Jesus certainly related to his father. Jesus grew physically. Jesus grew in wisdom. You know, you have no greater calling in your life than to display the glory of God in your life. You are to be like a mirror reflecting the glory of God. And the more polished the mirror, the better it reflects. As you grow into Christian manhood, you will more and more reflect the glory of God. The second major point, Christian men are called to a vocation. You have a specific calling from God. It wasn't until the Reformation that Martin Luther and others rediscovered the biblical teaching on vocation. It's just not ministers who are called, the word calling is voca, Latin, and a vocation is a calling. And that to be a mother, to be a railroad engineer, to be a plumber, To be a nuclear physicist are callings from God. He made you the way you are. He gave you your gifts and abilities. He gave you your mind. Why are some people love to be accountants, but if you made me an accountant, I'd go crazy and I'd start a prison ministry? Well, because I'm not wired to be an accountant. But if you are wired to be an accountant, that's a great thing. In other words, God's made you the way you are. Yes, you have some defects because of sin, but you have gifts and abilities, and he uses that to call you to do something with your life. We are called in the passage we read here in Genesis 1 and 2 to manage planet Earth as God's steward, as Christ's regent, so to speak. Now, Adam, what was he doing when he first met Eve? Well, he was just actually pursuing God's calling on his life. He was out managing the planet, and God said, I'd like you to name the animals, and in doing so, you show your lordship over the animals, and the name that you give them, that's what they shall be, and shows Adam's higher rank than the animals. Now, though we have a higher rank than the animals and the plants, we're to righteously manage and take care of planet Earth. I'm not an eco-freak. I don't hug trees. I'm not a member of PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. I did see a PETA magazine not too long ago. It showed a cow and a calf looking at you, and it said, food or family? I go, no, really, come on. Unless it depends who your family is, but it wasn't my family. that we're to manage the planet. We're not owners. Christian theologians have called this passage the creation mandate. We are to manage planet Earth with the glory of God. Now in some ways we've really botched it. In other ways, better. But the way we treat the planet is a way we show whether or not we understand the creation mandate and whether we think we own it or whether we think God owns it. We're to do what we do unto the Lord. And so he's given you a calling, something to do. In Colossians chapter two, verses 22 and 23, Paul tells the church in Colossae, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye services, God as people pleasers, but sincerely of heart, fearing the Lord. Whatever you do in the end, work hardly as for the Lord and not for men. At the end of the day, you do your job, not for Delta, You do your job, not for your particular employer. I don't do my job for the church, I do my job as unto the Lord. And yes, the Lord, so to speak, doesn't pay my salary, my company may, but I'm to do my work as unto the Lord. And there's times when you can please the Lord and you can't please men. But hopefully, people will see that you do your job differently than others. There was a time when people would actually try to hire Calvinists because they knew they worked hard. You hired him to work eight hours, he worked eight. He didn't work six, didn't work six and a half, he worked all eight hours. He didn't leave early, didn't come late, didn't take extended lunch periods because these men were working unto the Lord and the Lord saw the quality of their work. My boss isn't here, I can goof off. That's not the job of a biblical Christian. It's not the mindset of a biblical Christian. A biblical Christian says, this is what I'm contracted to do. I will do it to the best of my ability in the time frame that I was called to do it. Because God gave Adam his calling before he gave him his wife, because God gave Adam his calling before he gave him his wife, certain truths flow out of that. you are to be vocation focused. It was later in my life, I was probably pushing 50, for I got this, that Adam was created by God, he was doing what God called him to do, managing the planet, he was, in this particular days, he was out naming animals, and it was while he was doing God's will, doing God's calling, that he noticed, you know, I don't match up. Every other creature has a mate, so to speak, but there's nothing comparable to me. And God wasn't like, oh no, I didn't see this coming. What are we going to do? Adam was never lonely until he was fulfilling God's calling and he realized, hey, there's no one like me. There's no one comparable to me. And that set in motion his desire for a helpmate. And God said, funny you should mention that. Go to sleep and we'll see what you can come up with. And God brought the woman to him. They kind of go, don't take this too far. Don't expect Miss Wright to walk into my life. Well, I don't expect Miss Wright to walk into your life, but I do expect you to focus on your calling, first of all. I know, as a young man, I really wanted to get married. I didn't think I had the gift of celibacy. And like I said, if you had given it to me, I would have taken it back to the Christian bookstore. But, it dawned on me that I needed to be active about my calling, what I knew God wanted me to do. Because how can you righteously look a girl in the eye and say, come follow me as I goofing off and try to figure out what in the world I'm supposed to do with my life? Is there any girl who's halfway decent who would want to follow that? You cannot righteously call a young woman to follow you if you're not following Christ, and you don't have some vacation that you're giving your life to. You can't righteously call a woman to follow you. God called you to work and work hard, And ladies, as a result of that, because his orientation is first and foremost to his calling, his orientation isn't to you in the same way. You're oriented to your husband, he's oriented to his calling. That doesn't mean he says, see you later, I'm busy, I have no time for you in the next two years. But it is saying that his orientation is slightly different. A husband may give eight to 10 hours a day to his job, thinking about his job, having his head in his job. And the wife says, I'd like to sit on the sofa and look at each other for eight to 10 hours a day and have you whisper sweet nothings in my ear. And you could be unemployed together. And homeless people have a lot of free time. We should be... absorbed in our work, but not wholly absorbed in our work. Like I said, we're working unto the Lord. But He's given me this woman as my helpmate to nurture her, to appreciate her, to bear our children, to help me raise these children. And I'm to give her, of course, my attention. I'm the engineer on this train, so to speak. And if it turns into a train wreck, I'm still the engineer of the train wreck. I want to invest in this woman, but she's not my primary calling in the same sense that God gave me a calling. I hope some of you don't misunderstand this. A month from now I'll get a letter, you told us that my husband could ignore me and he's not even looked at me in the last month, he's been at work all the time. That's not what I said. But men, young men, Find out what God wants you to do. Finish your schooling. Finish your training. Finish your job training. Finish college. Do something so that you can righteously tell a woman, this is where I want to go with my life and following Christ. Will you come with me? Well, she has something sensible to say yes or no to, as opposed to, I don't know what I want to do. I just love Jesus. You want to come fly with me and see where the Spirit leads us? No. But I've known girls who marry guys like that. And if you want a project, if you're a woman who thinks, I need a baby to baby, and I need an adult baby, like some women like to rescue men who aren't doing well. And so I'm going to marry this project. You will have a project the rest of your life. And neither of you will be happy. Proverbs 24, 27 says, prepare your work outside. Get everything ready for yourself in the fields. And after you've done all that, build your house. You've got to be building your house. calling, so to speak, before you can righteously call a woman to follow you. Get a job, establish a life calling, and then find Miss Right. Or if you already know Miss Right, wait until you're farther along before you ask her to be your wife. Number three, Christian men are called to be married, most of you. It's the norm, the standard according to God's word, that most men are to be married. And the New Testament does speak of the spiritual gift of celibacy that God gives to some men. There have been some famous men in Christian history who were celibate, but that's not true of the majority of men. In fact, natural disasters like war, famine, and plague sometimes keep men from finding the right person. In fact, more male babies are born than female, but more men are killed in wars than women, and so it kind of evens out. Most men are called to be married and most men will marry. Now God's reasoning for marriage is this. It takes two people to reflect the glory of God. A man is reflecting the masculine part of the glory of God, but the woman is to reflect the feminine part of the glory of God. It takes two people to fully reflect the glory of God, to be image-bearers. It says in Genesis, He called them to be image-bearers. A man is not more of an image-bearer than a woman. A woman's not more of an image-bearer than a man. God created, God commanded our first parents to subdue the earth and fill it with their descendants. It takes a man and a woman to have babies and to fill the earth with children. Now, this is not the point of this message, but it's an obvious point. Homosexuality in any form cannot fulfill God's command to humanity. From the point of view of mere strategy, homosexuality is a total failure because it cannot fulfill God's interest for humanity or God's intent for humanity to reproduce and have children and fill the earth. It's a testimony of the watching world that as Christ is the Lord of the church, so the husband is the loving, leading, and protecting Lord with a small l, of his wife and family. You know, I would like you young girls to grab a sack. I want to marry someone like my dad. He knows God and He treats us tremendously. I want to marry somebody like my dad. And I want you young men to grow up saying, you know, my mom's a godly woman. She honors and respects my dad. She is key in his life. She doesn't run this home, but she's key in his life. And she's a great mother and wife. And I want to marry someone who knows God like she does. I hope that you're thinking if you're a young man or a young woman. I had a man come to me one time, and he'd been married 18 years. And I preached a sermon similar to this, and he came up to me and goes, I never knew that I was to be the head of my home. I felt like saying, you've been a professing Christian for 18 years, professed to have read and studied your Bible, professed to be in church for 18 years, and you never knew that you were to be the head of your home, the leader of your home? And his home showed it. Number four, Christian men are called to be fathers. Most of the married men are called to be fathers. Building on my last point, Christian men should aim at having children in their marriage. If you say, well, I want to get married, but I don't want to have kids, that's disobedience. God commands us to have children. Be fruitful and multiply. It's pretty straightforward. But in having children, we're obeying God and fulfilling the creation mandate, which is to fill the earth. In Psalm 127, though, it says, children are a gift from the Lord. They're not automatic. They're not an obligation that God has. Well, I have to give you kids because you're married. And some of us have struggled with infertility or not being able to have children, whether it was the husband or the wife or both. And infertility, I know, can be a problem, and I'm not trying to rip off that scab. But God can choose to withhold giving children according to His loving and sovereign purposes. I wouldn't know why in your case He has not chosen to give you children at this time, but for whatever reason, His purposes are best. Husbands, you are to nurture your wife and wash her with the word, and as you face problems of infertility, miscarriages, adoption, all kinds of issues relating to the children, it's your job as the husband to wash her in the word so that you're thinking biblically about the situation. It's not the childless wife's heartache to bear all by herself. Christian men are called to be fathers to teach a new generation about the goodness of God. What is God like? Well, you need to pay attention in Sunday school, dear. What is God like? You need to pay better attention in church. Well, you should pay good attention in Sunday school, and you should pay good attendance in church, but you ought to be able to see the goodness of God reflected in your parents, beginning with your father. Fathers are to lead their wives in raising the children in the fear and admonition of the Lord. The deal is, well, dad drops them off at church and church raises them. No. Fathers model living with their wives in an understanding way. Fathers model loving their wives as Christ loved the church. Fathers model providing for their wives and family through their hard work, sacrificial work. You know, we're a different generation than our parents, but if I would have asked my dad on a Friday, dad, how was your job this week? Okay. Did you feel fulfilled? Did you feel like you actualized your potential at work this week? Because, son, are you smoking something? What are you talking about? I guess so. I've never thought about it. Our parents didn't. They were thankful they had jobs. They were thankful they could put food on the table. If you talk to people about what old-fashioned Southern soul food is, it's survival food. People weren't eating T-bones and filet mignon in the South in the 30s. If you had greens and cornbread, you were eating high off the hog and without a hog in there, except maybe some cracklings in the cornbread. The point is, is that having a job and providing for your family is a big deal. And you don't always have to be fulfilled in doing it, but you have to do it. I knew men who were unemployed for long periods of time because they didn't find the job that quite suited their perspective. Well, it beats unemployment. Fathers are to model praying for their family, praying out loud with their family, and reading their Bibles with their family, leading in family devotions. They're to lead in expressing love and affection. Now, I know that's a womanly thing. I'm not into love and affection. I just put food on the table. Well, that's good. I'm glad you put food on the table. But if you can't express love and affection to your children, then you're a defective father at that point. You're to reflect the character of God, not your own personality or preferences. And I didn't grow up telling, I mean, I knew my dad loved me, my mom loved me, but we weren't gushy. And after I became a Christian, I saw verses in the Bible that said we ought to express our attitude toward people. Better is open rebuke than love that is concealed. Better to go around rebuking people all the time than withholding your love or being passive aggressive with people. So I began by telling my parents and telling my best friend. Tell another guy you love him, really? Yeah, I told him I loved him and he looked down at the ground and said, back at you. He didn't know what to do with it. It was like giving him a mildewed fig. Oh, thanks. We're not used to expressing. Now, I didn't tell everybody in the world I love them because I didn't know them to love them. But if I can't tell the people I love that I love them, then I'm broken at that point and need to be healed and work on that. We're to lead our family in disciplining our children. who children need to know, whatever you do, don't cross dad. But who's the biggest lover and cheerleader in this house? Dad. But you don't want to cross dad. Because dad has thunder and lightning. in his right hand or whatever he's using at the time. And you can have whole books, I know, on how to discipline children. But they ought to take the lead in disciplining children. It's not, well, it's not the little woman's job. Or, I grew up in kind of an abusive home and I don't feel comfortable giving discipline. Well, work at it and become better at it. Fathers need to model trusting Christ. Here's something that's happened. What do we do? I don't know. Daddy's laying on the floor in a fetal position. We'll wait until he gets up to see what we're going to do. Dads need to model repenting when they have sinned. Asking forgiveness for wrongs they commit. Watch my lips. My wife and I, we say, I was wrong. It's become a joke in our family. It was my fault. There are some of us, you know, you might change your behavior, but you'll never admit that you're wrong. And if you don't do that with men, do you really do it with God? Do you ever confess your sins to the Lord? Rejoicing in answers to prayer. God answered our prayer. Remember last week in devotions, we prayed for this. Look, God answered our prayer. Rejoicing in the multitude of God's mercies, hasn't God been good to you? The children's song, count your many blessings, name them one by one. Get out a legal pad sometime, get out several legal pads, start naming all the blessings of God to you. Are you alive? Can you think? Can you enjoy the taste of a nice meal? Can you enjoy a beautiful day? These are all blessings from God. Does your autonomic nervous system work when you're sleeping? I mean, when you're sleeping, you don't tell your heart to beat. You're not telling your heart to beat now. You don't tell your lungs to function. You don't tell the valves to click open and shut. All the things God's doing for you 24-7, 365, we hardly ever think about it. It's just our do, we think. Number five, Christian men are called to be faithful churchmen. John Wesley had a great quote. He said, the New Testament knows nothing, nothing of solitary Christianity. If you're a loose electron in your own universe, you're wrong. We're called to be electrons rotating around the proton and neutron, which is God himself. We spent too many years in our BC days living for ourselves and unto ourselves before we were finally converted, and the new birth is supposed to bring a new orientation of life. If you're stubbornly independent and don't like to be bowled into other people and look into them, well, deal with it. That's still sin. You know, one of the things that was hard for me to deal with, but I had to deal with it, there is a God and it wasn't me. And there is a God, and He's not you. And you're to change to be in conformity with Him. He's not to give you a pass or to change in conformity with you. And some of us, I think, cling to, what's the way I've always been? Yeah, we know. We've been praying for you for many years. Well, that's just the way I am. Well, you need to repent and ask God to work in your life. We grew up in a culture of individualism. And I, frankly, when I became a Christian, it was me and Jesus and my Bible, and the rest of the world, that's fine, but me and Jesus and my Bible, I could pray and I could read my Bible, and that's Christianity. No, it's just a knucklehead with a Bible and prayer. But God calls us to be a part of the local church. God calls us to be an involved churchman. If you're not intimately connected with your church and actively involved, You're in sin. The Bible knows nothing of individual Christianity. The only person I could think of in the whole New Testament who wasn't a churchman was the thief on the cross who didn't get a chance to climb down, didn't get baptized, didn't get interviewed, didn't join a church. He died on the cross, but he died as a believer to show you that no time is too late. At the 11th hour, you can be saved. But Jesus did bypass the other thief to remind us that don't take him for granted because he could bypass you too. Christian men leave their homes by joining a church and becoming an integral part of the church. Not only do they join the church, but they pray for the church, they pray for the officers and services. They join, they pray, they participate in the Lord's Day services, they go to prayer meeting, they tithe. Dad, why do you give money to the church? Well, son, you cannot give God. If you give him a buck, he'll give you two back. I've had guys tell me that. I said, so it's really just a matter of financial investment. It's not really because you love Jesus Christ and He commands you to do this as an expression of your trust in Him. You know, farmers in the Old Testament were to let their fields lie fallow every seventh year. You can't do that because you won't have any food to eat. God promised to give a double blessing on the sixth year. The question is, would you trust Him to do that? Will he come through? You know, he's one of these people, he makes promises but he never follows through. Or is he a God who honors his promises? If you let the fields lie fallow the seventh year, then he promises to give a double blessing on the sixth year to carry you through the seventh year. And that's like us today. Will we give to God in order that he might be pleased and we show him that we're trusting him? I'm going to get by on 90% of my income or 85% of my income, whatever you choose to give, while the world scratches by with 100% of their income. Christian men view their homes as a subset of the church and view family devotions and spiritual life in the home as a subset of what happens on the Lord's Day. You know, if you never have family devotions during the week, it's a shock to your kid's system to sit on Sunday and pay attention, because you never do it during the week. Families that don't have Bible reading and prayer during the week find it awkward. The Christian home should be a microcosm of what happens on the Lord's Day. Wives and children who hear dad read the Bible, give a brief explanation of what they just read, a warm-hearted application to their home, and to pray and apply it to each person's life, is ready for the Lord's Day. The Lord's Day is just kind of the capstone on a good week. It's just what Christian dads do. With younger children, family devotions should be shorter and age-appropriate. I heard one guy teach his small children. Now, a justification by faith in the Protestant view versus the Catholic view, and he was like, I'm probably the only, myself and my wife and him and his wife are the only two people in this room who get this. And the four kids are looking there like a Catholic looking at a new gate. They had no clue what he was talking about. But he was showing me he had family devotions. We can have family devotions that actually scratch where people itch. But it's from the ranks of men who are faithful doing what they're supposed to do as Christian men in their homes that the local church finds its office bearers, its elders and deacons, its future pastors and future missionaries. Second Timothy 2.2, and the things that you, Timothy, have heard from me, Paul, in the presence of many witnesses. Where were the many witnesses that Timothy heard Paul teach? Well, church, the things that you, Timothy, have heard from me, Paul, in the presence of many witnesses, you shall entrust to faithful men who shall be able to instruct others also. If you're not doing it with four, why should we give you 40? You're not going to make a man into a pastor or an elder or a deacon if he's not being faithful with the smaller group that God's entrusted to him. Number six, Christian men are called to be faithful members of their nation. We are to know the times in which we live. This is not 1956. I can remember when we turned over from December to January 1957, you got to put it to the top of your paper, you know, the three-line paper and the pencil so big you rest it on your shoulder. And it was 1957. And, you know, the big offenses in public schools, running in the halls, not having your shirt tail tucked in, leaving trash, throwing trash on the floor and chewing gum. I mean, yes, your average teacher today, I've died and gone to heaven if I was at a school like that. That would be so wonderful if those were the big problems of our public school. The public school reinforced basic Protestantism. I mean, I could, I've talked to teachers back then. They would teach the Ten Commandments. They'd make the kids memorize chapters of the Bible. We'd sing songs in Glee Club or chorus that were classic hymns. It's just what you did. But this isn't 1956 or 1957. The culture's gone in the tank. It's swirling the bowl as we speak. What will happen? What kind of world will our children grow up in? What kind of world will our grandchildren grow up in? I never expected the stuff to come out of the cracks and crevices as it has and to be balled in the streets and what Peter says is they glory in their shame. That's the culture we live in. We must be faithful citizens, informing ourselves of the issues of the day the best way we can. If voting becomes an option, we need to vote faithfully to our convictions. We need to understand how our form of government works and be faithful citizens. We need to understand something about basic economics. I'm not going to get a job. I'm just going to play the lottery all the time until I win. You go, dude, I'm not real smart, but that's not a successful pattern for life. You're not going to make a living playing the lottery. Well, there are people who kind of functionally do think that's the way to life. What's basic economics? You can't spend more than you make. I had a fellow come work for me once when I was on staff with a student organization. He was a college graduate. He came into one of our staff meetings one day, and he was ashen. We go, what's the matter, Toby? I'm shocked. I have three checks left in my checkbook and the bank says I'm out of money. How can that be? We're like, how can you be? I mean, hello, your dad, who was a very successful businessman, never taught you that the amount of checks in your checkbook have nothing to do with how much money you have. But whatever else his dad taught him, he didn't teach him basic economics. A Laurie Burkett kind of thing. None of us knows with certainty what's going to happen in the government, what's going to happen in the economy, so we have to live our life by biblical principles and just let the economy and the government ultimately be in God's hands. But listen to some passages of scripture given to Christian men. Paul tells his young assistant Timothy, 1 Timothy 2, 1-3. First of all then, I urge supplications, that means requests, prayers, intercessions and thanksgiving be made for all people. even for kings that all are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good and is pleasing in the sight of God. You ought to pray for your president. You ought to pray for the cabinet. You ought to pray for the leaders of the political parties. You ought to pray for your governor and mayor and senators and congressmen. And you may feel like you're Whistling in the dark, but you need to do it. Who was the emperor in Rome, the king, when Paul said this? Nero. Y'all need to pray for Nero, he needs help. Nero, no, that's beyond, he's beyond praying for. Paul says pray for kings and those in authority. Peter had to teach his converts not to respond sinfully to the civil government. 1 Peter 2, 13 through 17. Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it is the emperor, that's Nero, as supreme, or to governors, like Pontius Pilate, as sent by him to punish those who do evil and praise those who do good. For this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people, That is, people who attack Christians as being subversive. Live as people who are free, but not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God. Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor. Why is there still a memory in the South of saying, yes sir, no sir, yes ma'am, no ma'am? It's a way of honoring this person because they're an authority, and if they're an adult, That's not simply a Southern custom, it's a biblical custom that just held on longer in the South, and it's even vanishing in the South. If I was a political leader and had enough sense to read the Bible, I would want Christians as my subjects because they should be the best subjects of anybody's kingdom. And if should a king or an emperor or a president act outside the laws of the land, the Christians know their Bibles and can call them to an account. There's a law higher than the law of the land, sir, and you're breaking it. Fathers, children should learn about their government, about economics, about wealth and poverty, gain and loss, the role of the king, the role of the subjects of the kingdom from you. Not the civics class at school, not someone who may want to teach socialism is best or communism is best or whatever, but they should learn about the basics from you. I know these are a lot of things for you to think about. An illustration came to me years ago that I think puts in perspective what we need to do. You know, whether you're 25 or 50 or, in my case, 69, you hear some of these things that put you under a certain pile, I suppose, or I've got a lot to work on. And at 69, I have adult children to pray for. I don't discipline them. I would be foolish if I tried. You have to choose what's a hill to die on and having certain discussions with them. But I'm still a parent to my children, and I still pray for them. I still have to relate to them as a fellow Christian. But what if I just choose to do nothing? When I moved from one state to Indiana in high school, beginning of my junior year, I grew up playing football and baseball in the appropriate season, and I was very happy with that. But in Indiana, it's, you don't play basketball? No, not much. Well, you need to play basketball unless you're, you know, to use the culturally relevant phrase, a dork. Anyway, so I decided to learn to play basketball. And I played, I learned somewhat to play basketball. And they said, well, you only use your right hand. I go, that's because I'm right-handed. No, to be a good basketball player, you have to use both hands. Well, the left hand is for my baseball mitt, but I don't do anything else with my left hand. They said, you need to learn to use your left hand. So you know what it's like to learn to dribble basketball with your left hand when you're right-handed? You kind of go down the court like this, and you feel really weird. And the ball gets taken away from you. So you just work at it and work at it. I just worked with my left hand. I worked in taking the ball up the court and just worked at it until finally, It just became second nature. I didn't think about it. I didn't watch the ball anymore. I could just learn to use my left hand. In fact, when I first gave this illustration at a retreat, we played basketball during the afternoon break, and they go, hey, you do use your left hand. I said, well, I didn't make that up. I really, that was true my life. Now what's the alternative? I can sit on the bench and never play because I just didn't want to grow and change. Or I can try to do something I've not done before and change. I don't want you to sit on the bench because you wouldn't try and change. So let me conclude with three encouragements, brief encouragements. First of all, there's three places in the New Testament that give great encouragements to husbands and fathers as Christian men. Ephesians 5.18, Paul's writing to the church at Ephesus. He says, do not be drunk with wine or any other kind of intoxicant, but be filled with the Holy Spirit. He says, if you're filled with the Holy Spirit, you'll be speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making a melody in your heart to the Lord. In other words, you're going to have a different attitude. You're going to have a Spirit-filled attitude. And then he says, This is how you're to treat your wife and wives. If you're spirit-filled, this is how you treat your husband. This is how you treat your kids, and this is how Christian kids should treat their parents. And this is what you should be like at work with your employer, if you're an employee. And if you're an employer, this is how you should treat your employees. Being filled with the Holy Spirit empowers you to fulfill your God-ordained role as a Christian man. Hold on to that one. So every day say, Lord Holy Spirit, would you help me to fulfill my calling today? Would you help me fulfill to be a Christian man today? This particular thing I have to face is not natural to me. I'm not good at that. I once had a job for a whole summer. We'd like you to confront people all day. I go, I don't confront people. Well, actually, in this job, you will, because these people were being tested for coming on this Christian organization. And all these people have had their records flagged as something's wrong, and you need to confront them and find out what it is. Why did I ever get into this? You know, that was my whole summer. Did it for a couple summers. And at the end of the summer, I knew how to talk to people about problems. I didn't feel comfortable doing it. It was a long summer, eight hours a day of dealing with people's problems, but I learned to do it. Now, it was just compressed into a summer for me. We can take longer, but whatever it is that we're good at, we need to pray for the Holy Spirit's grace to do it. Then the other passage is in Colossians 3.16. Colossians 3.16, Paul wrote to the smallest church in the smallest city. Colossi was so small it didn't appear on most Roman maps. So, let the word of Christ richly dwell within you. Speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, and in all things giving thanks for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus. Husbands, wives, parents, children, employers, employees, the very same things flow out of letting the word of Christ dwell within you. So if being filled with the Spirit means this, and letting the Word of Christ richly in you is this, these two things equal the same thing. Being filled with the Spirit and letting the Word of Christ richly dwell within you are two sides of the same coin. You can't grow and you can't be useful as a Christian man or woman if you're not in the Word. and if you're not filled with the Holy Spirit. Christian life is supernatural. It's beyond what I could do on my own. And I need the empowerment of God to be different. I can always be the old Steve Martin, but I would prefer to honor Christ and be the biblical, the Christian Steve Martin. Now, the third thing, and it took me 30 some years to figure this out, both of these commands are given in the context, and Paul was from the South. but we don't know it because our English Bibles are no longer like the King James which reflects the these and the thous, the singulars and the plurals. All the word, use of the word you in these passages are plural. It's not y'all, it's all y'all. He's saying that to the whole church. Everybody should be seeking to be filled with the Spirit. That makes for a dynamic marriage. It makes for dynamic relationships in the home with the parenting. It makes for dynamic relationships at work and for the church. And the same thing with letting the Word of Christ dwell within y'all. All of you need to be in the Word so that you can all be doing this together. You can't grow into maturity without the church. And the church needs to realize that all of us need to be being filled with the Spirit and letting the Word of Christ richly dwell within me. I need to be thinking biblically. That's letting the Word of Christ richly dwell within me. And I need to be letting the Holy Spirit empower me to be what I'm not naturally me. And that's what would make you a different man, a Christian man, a man useful to the Master, capable of any good work. men who understood the times and knew what Israel should do. Let's pray. Our Father and our God, thank you for how well the people have listened. I pray that you would work into each of the men's hearts and the young men's hearts what you've laid before them. What a tremendous privilege. They will be the leaders of the church, they will be the leaders of the nation, they'll be leaders of their companies, they'll be leaders of their homes. Would you not have them have a sense of being under the pile for the ways they don't measure up? But may you give them a sense of challenge as men to roll up their sleeves, to make sure that they work daily at being filled with the Spirit, they work daily at letting the Word of Christ richly dwell within them, they work daily at being a biblical churchman and live their Christian life in the context of this local assembly. Lord, make them different. Make them into men of God. May it be said of this church, regardless of if others think the beliefs are weird or severe or whatever, that men in that church know God. Men in that church live and act like Christian men. They lead their wives and children. They lead and are faithful at work. They lead in the culture. Lord, make it be so for Christ's sake. Amen.