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The Glory of Parenthood

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INTRODUCTION

The word “glory” means heavy, and so it is, but then when you receive the glory of God, you find that you can- not imagine it any other way. The yoke of Christ is light and only gets lighter, but the burden of the world, the flesh, and the devil is crushing. The gift of children and parenthood is heavy, but it is heavy like a table full of food, like a basket full of fresh fruit.

THE TEXTS

“…and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him: and lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Mt. 3:16-17).
“…though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered…” (Heb. 5:7-9).

SUMMARY OF THE TEXTS

God the Father is the perfect Father and Jesus is the perfect Son, and yet we see here at least two principles that we can apply in our families. The first is the glory of parenthood and the parent/child relationship. While the Trinity is certainly a mystery, and the Father and the Son are one God in a way that parents and children are not, our covenantal union with our children is a true analogous union. And if God the Father was right to proclaim His love for His Son, and His pleasure in His Son, how much more so is it important for us to do so in a fallen world? And the fact that the Spirit descends at the same moment, highlights the glory of that love and pleasure. Second, in Hebrews, we see that even the perfect Son learned obedience through the things He suffered. Adam was cut open before he met Eve and there was a dragon in the Garden, before any sin entered the world. If Jesus endured discipline to learn obedience, how much more must our children, if we want them to come into His glory?

OBJECTIVITY OF THE COVENANT

The world loves to talk about “unconditional love,” but there is no coherent foundation for that notion in an evolutionary worldview. If you are in charge of making your own world, your own meaning, your own happi- ness, your own identity, then nothing is fixed, nothing is given (including family). This is the goal of the Leftist revolution of the last 60 years: seeking to redefine human life, marriage, gender, and therefore, parenthood, but this means that if the Federal Government is now the final arbiter of what any of these things mean, it is functionally also claiming to be the judge of what a family is, what parents are, and whether a child actually belongs to certain parents or not. Always remember that a rejection of God’s authority is the first move in vy- ing for His job. It is not whether there will be a god; but which god will it be.

The true and living God has created the world with fixed realities, and one of those is the covenantal nature of all things. All things are objectively in a covenantal relationship with God. You do not get created by God and then exist in a neutral space, with the universe waiting breathlessly to see whether you “consent” to reality. Even if most Christians reject that radical version of existentialism, there has still been a strain of it in modern evangelicalism, where we put all the emphasis on “deciding” for Christ. But Christ is risen from the dead, and our children are “holy” to God (1 Cor. 7:14). Paul does not say that the Ephesian parents should wait and see whether their children want to be Christians before bringing them up in the nurture and admonition of the

Lord (Eph. 6:4). We are not waiting to see if they “consent” to Christ, any more than we wait around to see if they consent to food or air or love. It is absolutely true that they must embrace all of these good gifts, including a personal, vibrant faith in Jesus, but they are objectively members of the covenant by baptism. You do not wait to see if they choose to be your children or members of your family, and neither does God. So the question is: can you look down at your son or daughter right now and say the same words the Father said of His Son? And do those words echo in Heaven? You must, and they do, by faith alone in the Father, Son, and Spirit.

SOME BASICS OF DISCIPLINE

Hebrews says that the Lord chastens and scourges every son that He receives, and therefore, if you are not chastened, then you are bastards and not sons (Heb. 12:5-8). Discipline is how parents prove that their children belong to them, and when they discipline their children in the Lord, they are also proving that they belong to Jesus. The Bible clearly teaches that the opposite is also true: failure to discipline is a form of hatred and therefore a false gospel (Prov. 13:24). Hebrews also says that this discipline must be painful, and it must yield the peaceable fruit of righteousness (Heb. 12:11). The particular requirement of the Bible is the use of a rod of discipline: “Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him” (Prov. 22:15). “Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you strike him with a rod, he will not die. If you strike him with the rod, you will save his soul from Sheol” (Prov. 23:13-14). The rod is not the only tool in a parent’s tool- box, but it is an important one. All discipline must be done calmly, cheerfully, and with biblical justice. Another basic principle of parenting is that it is easier to teach and train the younger they are: “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” (Prov. 22:6).

Parenting should consist of lots of joyful teaching and training and practice. Think of yourselves as coaches: lots of praise, lots of drills, show them how to do it, run it again. The rod is particularly for acts of defiance, refusal to obey when you are sure they know exactly what you are requiring and know how to do it. Many children will give you at least one good battle (sometimes multiple battles), and parents are required by God to win because God commands our children to obey their parents so that they may be blessed (Eph. 6:1-3).

CONCLUSION

Zephaniah 3:17 says: “The Lord your God is in your midst; the Mighty One will save. He will rejoice over you with great joy; He will quiet you with His love. He will rejoice over you with singing.” The prophet says that when God comes, He comes singing. But He doesn’t just come singing, He comes singing a song of rejoicing, a song of celebration. But this is the mind-blowing thing: it’s a song of rejoicing over sinful people. And this is exactly what happened in Jesus.

The song is boisterous, flamboyant, abundant, and loud. It’s like a father standing on a table in a public place, announcing his love and joy over his family. It’s so loud and joyful and embarrassing and wonderful. And this is how God determined to save the world. He determined to save the world through singing a sea shanty, a rollicking bar tune, with fiddles and drums and dancing over His Son in the water, on the cross, and now at His right hand. He is still singing, and the words go like this: free grace, free grace, free grace. And that’s our glory.

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The Glory of Marriage (King’s Cross Church)

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INTRODUCTION

As we have noted previously, sinful humanity hates God, and therefore since it cannot actually strike God, it strikes His image wherever it can be found. This is why there is such vehemence against men and women, and this is why the covenant of marriage has been a central target. The Christian response to all of these attacks should be to double down, recognizing the potency of being joyful men and women and honoring marriage in particular.

THE TEXT

“This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband” (Eph. 5:32-33).

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

This is the summary of what Paul has just said in more detail: a husband is to love his wife like Christ loved the church, and a wife is to respect and submit to her own husband as the church submits to Christ in all things (Eph. 5:22-24). The particular picture given is that of a head and body (Eph. 5:23), and that image is applied in the command to husbands to love their wives as their own bodies (Eph. 5:28-29). This is because “we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones” (Eph. 5:30). And all of this is based on the biblical teaching that when a man and woman marry, they become one flesh (Eph. 5:31).

HEAD & BODY

One of the key concepts that couples have to continually lean into is covenant. We say this word a lot, but what we mean is the notion of responsibility. Individualists can only think of personal guilt, but it turns out that individualism is already a form of abdication (“am I my brother’s keeper?” Gen. 4:9). We are not mere BBs rolling around in this world; we are individuals united in various covenants (family, church, nation) and covenant-like relationships (schools, businesses, and other associations). In each of these covenants, there are leaders and members. And the thing to note here is that leaders are responsible for what takes place in the organization.

Authority flows to those who take responsibility, but it flees those who abdicate and blame. This is what it means to be the “head.” Responsibility doesn’t mean personal guilt in every instance, but responsibility does mean gladly owning the challenges and problems personally. If you’re the ship captain, not every action on board the ship is done by you, but you’re responsible for it all. Jesus took responsibility for His bride, and this is the model for all leaders, especially husbands. Jesus wasn’t personally guilty of any of our sin, but He gladly took covenantal responsibility for it.

UNIFIED FRONT

One of the central signs of this covenantal thinking and living is driven by the pronoun “we.” As that great Christian calendar verse says, “As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord” (Josh. 24:15). There is all kinds of room for discussion, different perspectives, and dialogue, but when the husband makes the final decision, the husband and wife must own the decision together, saying, “we decided…,” “our decision…,” “our position…” regardless of whose idea it was. This is the case even when a husband fails to make a decision. Abdication is a decision. This unity is particularly important when there were different preferences and when the decision doesn’t go well. If the husband takes his wife’s counsel and it goes badly, the husband must insist that it was his decision, and not waffle or let it fall on his wife at all. And if the wife submits to her husband’s poor decision, she must not go along with it with a bad attitude or half-heartedly, and if it does go badly, she must not say, “see, I told you so,” or worse, tell her friends, “yeah, that wasn’t mydecision.”

In Prince Caspian, Trumpkin the dwarf volunteers to go on a dangerous mission that he argued against, and Caspian asks, “But I thought you didn’t believe in the Horn, Trumpkin.” And he replies, “No more I do, your Majesty. But what’s that got to do with it? … You are my King. I know the difference between giving advice and taking orders. You’ve had my advice, and now it’s the time for orders.” This is covenant loyalty. Nothing corrodes loyalty and friendship like blaming one another for decisions or talking about your disagreements with others. A husband and wife must be on the same team and present a united front to their kids and the world because they have been made one flesh and because Christ is faithful to His Church. This doesn’t eliminate the need for occasional outside counsel or input, but that should be done as a team, unless it is a true crisis or emergency.

CONFESSION OF SIN & FORGIVENESS

The joy of the Lord is the oil of gladness, and that oil is what keeps all the moving parts in a marriage running smoothly. If there is regular friction, hurt feelings, passive-aggressive criticism, and arguments, you can bet that there is a backlog of sin, bitterness, and resentment. And that means you are not walking in the joy of the Lord. You’re not walking in the light, and you keep tripping over past sins, guilt, and failure. The only way back into the light and joy is through confession of sin, first before God and then to those you have wronged (1 Jn. 1:4-10).

It’s very important that you get right with God first and foremost because if you only confess to your spouse, you will functionally be trying to get from your spouse what only God can give. Fundamentally, when we confess and forgive one another on the horizontal plane, we are only echoing or “amen-ing” what God has already accomplished on the vertical plane. But if you’re not right with God, your apologies can be pure manipulation. We confess because we have confessed to God, and we forgive because God has forgiven. This is how you can have Christian joy regardless of how anyone around you is doing or responding. Both husband and wife must do this individually, but it is the particular responsibility of the husband to take responsibility for his marriage on his knees.

CONCLUSION

We love because He loved us first. We forgive because He forgave us first. We take responsibility because Christ took responsibility for us. He was perfectly innocent, and He became sin for us. He was a spotless lamb, and God laid on Him the iniquity of us all. All of this means that every marriage is a picture of the gospel, a revelation, a mystery of Christ and His Church. The only question is whether it is an accurate picture, a faithful picture, a good picture or not.

Every human marriage falls short of the glory of God, but it is the glory of God to heal and restore. Where sin has abounded, grace abounds still more. This is not only the grace of confession and forgiveness; it is also the grace of repentance, the grace of change, the grace of loyalty, the grace of humility and taking responsibility.

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Self-Deception in Marriage

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INTRODUCTION

Self-deception is truly an interesting psychological phenomenon. I mean, whenever it occurs in your life, that means that you are the one lied to, and you are the liar, and you buy it. “Seems reasonable,” you mutter to yourself.

Now at one level, Scripture teaches that every form of sin, disobedience or unbelief is a form of self-deception. You are living in the world that God made, with all of His self-disclosure operating, and yet you are steadfastly telling yourself that the world isn’t really like that.

“The way of a fool is right in his own eyes: But he that hearkeneth unto counsel is wise” (Proverbs 12:15). “There is a generation that are pure in their own eyes, and yet is not washed from their filthiness” (Proverbs 30:12). Sin is the refusal to see your relationship to God and His world for what it actually is, and so it is a form of self-deception.

THE TEXT

“He feedeth on ashes: A deceived heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand?” (Isaiah 44:20).

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

Isaiah is speaking the plain stupidity that cuts down a tree (v. 14), and which uses a portion of the wood to keep himself warm, and to cook his food, on the one hand (v. 15), and from the rest of the wood he carves an object of adoration (vv. 15, 17, 19).

A deceived heart is turned aside, meaning that a deceived heart is both deceived and deceiving. The end result is that the idol he has fashioned to deliver him will be unable to deliver him. He should have known this already because he carved his savior out of a piece of wood that he cut down himself.

FOUR KINDS OF SELF-DECEPTION

We have already seen that all sins are self-deception at some level, but there are certain forms of it that might be called “high-profile” instances of self-deception.

Forgetful neglect of application: “But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was . . . If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man’s religion is vain” (James 1:22-24, 26). The deception occurs in between the sermon and the moment this afternoon when application is called for.

Assumption of innocence: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8). Everyone here is encased in a first-person-singular narrative. And everyone here has a strong impulse to trust the narrator, which is a bad idea.

Neglect of holiness: “Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness. And again, The Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain” (1 Corinthians 3:18–20). We are very prone to self-deception when it comes to the moral demands of the free grace gospel. “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Corinthians 6:9–10).

Self-serving flattery: “For if a man think himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself” (Gal. 6:3). Every man wants to be the hero in his own story, and casting yourself in that role is the very worst way of accomplishing this.

A BAD MARRIAGE OR A BAD ATTITUDE

Not all Christian marriages are successful. Some really thrive, most are pretty okay, some struggle along, and a handful are what we would call “bad marriages.” If you would put yourself in that category, I want to suggest one more division that I hope you might find helpful.

One kind of bad marriage is the result of a real mismatch of persons. The conflicts and difficulties arise out of the clashes between very different perspectives. The communicate poorly and problems result. They assume too much in opposite directions and problems result. This does happen, and a lot of good pastoral help is available—in Scripture, with counselors, with good literature.

But the intractable problems are, in my experience, not strictly speaking bad marriages at all. The marriage is just the location where the badness is manifesting itself. What would you think of someone who gave a restaurant a savage one-star review on Yelp, and if you asked him why he did that, the response was that while he was there he got the worst toothache of his life? You should say, yeah, that wasn’t a bad restaurant experience. It was a bad experience in a restaurant.

Intractable marriages problems are often intractable problems in a marriage, not the result of the marriage.

PRIDE, THE GREAT ENEMY

When a self-deceived person marries, they are moving into a room filled with excuses. Opportunities for misdirection and blame-shifting abound. Remember that the heart is deceitful above all things (Jer. 17:9). The thing that deceives such a person is the pride of his heart (Oba. 3), and remember that pride goes before destruction (Prov. 16:18). The self-deceived husband compares himself to himself, and the wife measures herself with herself (2 Cor. 10:12). These are not wise.

I am talking about (and to) the husband who is sullen, grouchy, and angry all the time. He tells himself is not angry all the time because he is not yelling all the time, which tells us how much he knows about it. I am talking about (and to) the wife who is a lazy and undisciplined, and if any real work threatens to intrude, she is sure to develop a serious malady with ambiguous symptoms. These two examples are stand-ins for countless others. The problem, the central problem, is self-deception.

THE MIRROR OF CHRIST

The only remedy for such self-deception is to see yourself accurately, and this can only be done by looking into the perfect law of liberty (Jas. 1:5). But this should not be understood as a detached list of rules. Christ is the end (telos) of the law (Rom. 10:4). Your identity is in Christ. If you look at yourself there, in the mirror of Christ, you do not just see Christ. You also see yourself, perhaps for the very first time.

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The Glory of Womanhood (King’s Cross Church)

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INTRODUCTION

The glory of a woman is her beauty, and but real Biblical beauty is not mere externals but something far deeper and richer and incorruptible that cultivates and glorifies life. Man is the glory of God and woman is the glory of man, and this means that she is the glory of the glory. She makes the human race shine. The center of this glory is the wisdom of motherhood, through building and making homes where life is conceived, blessed, enriched, and loved.

THE TEXT

“And Adam said, ‘This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man’” (Gen. 2:23).

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

The poetry that Adam is using here is a Hebrew superlative: “bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh.” This is like Holy of Holies which is the Most Holy Place or the Song of Songs: The Greatest Song. Adam is saying that this person is like him only better, only more beautiful, more glorious. This is why Paul says that the woman is the “glory of man” (1 Cor. 11). The woman is man glorified, humanity 2.0.

All the way through the creation narrative, the word for “man” is the word “adam.” He was named this because he was taken out of the ground, the “adamah” (Gen. 2:7, 3:19). We might call that name: “earth man.” Our English translations go back and forth between translating the word as “man” and “Adam.” And it really does mean both things. But in Gen. 2:23, at the very moment where Adam names his bride “Woman,” he gives himself a new name.

The word for “woman” is “eeshah,” and it seems to be related in some way to the word for “fire” (“eysh”). Right at the moment when the woman is presented to Adam, he says she is his glory, man-glorified (“bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh”), he names her “glory” (or “fire”), and he says that it is because she was taken from – and here, he gives himself a new name: “eesh.” He names his wife “eeshah” because she was taken out of “eesh” (“glory-man”).

The point is that Adam is saying that in the gift of the woman, in the gift of his wife, he has been changed. He is a new man now. She has made him new. In the very act of naming and blessing his wife, he says the blessing has come upon him. He has become a new man because of her glory. She shines, and she shines so brightly, that it lights him up: his face shines with her glory.

WISDOM BUILDS A HOUSE

In Proverbs, wisdom is a woman, and wisdom always builds. The question is what kind of house are you building? “Every wise woman buildeth her house: but the foolish plucketh it down with her hands” (Prov. 14:1). Quite literally, a woman is someone who has a “home” inside of her. The first home everyone ever lived in was the home of their mother’s womb. A woman simply is a homemaker. But this is also sign to her and the world about what she is for. A woman’s calling is to make people by making home for them (Tit. 2:5). And here, we need to expand what we mean by motherhood. This certainly includes conception and childbearing, but the calling of motherhood and “making people” hardly stops at birth. And so it is that motherhood and homemaking are the calling of all women. Deborah was a mother of Israel (Judg. 5:7), the mother of Rufus was a mother to Paul (Rom. 16:13), and the Christian Church is the mother of us all (Gal. 4:26). People are being made all day long through rest, food, care, friendship, clothing, food, games, discipline, reading, and food. And we really must not underestimate the potency of all of this. People are made in the image of God, and people will live forever.

C.S. Lewis: “It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit – immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.” (The Weight of Glory, 18-19)

TEMPTATIONS OF WOMEN

In 1 Peter 3, the apostle addresses the relative weakness of women and three common temptations that arise with that: words, beauty, and fear. Women are often tempted to use their words to manipulate, get attention, correct, nag, but they need to remember that their words are not their power. Their words can be life or death (Prov. 18:21, 27:15). Women are also tempted to use their beauty to manipulate, get attention, to influence, but you need to remember that your physical beauty is not your power either. And while your fleshly fear and anxiety can sometimes get people to do things, it isn’t your power either. Your true feminine power is your beautiful submission to God, your meek and quiet spirit, obedience to your own husband, and not being afraid of anything that is terrifying (1 Pet. 3:4-6, Prov. 31:30). This is the fear of the Lord in the heart of a woman who knows she belongs to her Savior. He died for all her sins, and therefore she isn’t afraid of anything or anyone and it drives a godly woman’s conduct (1 Pet. 3:2).

CONCLUSION

You can tell what our world respects by where it assumes submission and obedience, and you can tell what our world does not respect by where it immediately runs to all the exceptions. Generally, our world assumes submission and obedience to civil magistrates, the state, and big business, but it constantly warns about church and family governments being oppressive. And these assumptions are driven by where we believe the most important things are happening. But the magistrate is not the glory of man, woman is the glory of man, as she cultivates the beauty of motherhood and homemaking. This glory shines everywhere and impacts everything, but it flows from a gentle and quiet spirit. It flows from a heart that rests secure in Christ.

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The Glory of Manhood (King’s Cross Church)

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INTRODUCTION

Sinful humanity is at war with God but they cannot actually reach Him, so they hate His image in human beings and seek to destroy it. This is what abortion and transgenderism are all about, but that impulse begins much earlier, in refusing to give thanks to God our Creator, which includes His infinite wisdom in making us male and female (Rom. 1:21). Today we look particularly at the glory of men, and the Bible teaches that the glory of men is their strength. That strength is for sacrificial love and leadership in homes, churches, and the broader world.

THE TEXT

“Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong” (1 Cor. 16:13).

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

It’s striking that Paul gives this charge to the entire church at Corinth, made up of men and women. There are four imperatives, but arguably, two of them are subsumed under one of them. Being watchful and standing firm in the faith is how the Corinthians must “act like men.” And the final command, explains what that requires: “be strong.” It takes strength to remain watchful through the night, over the course of many days or many years. It takes strength to standfast in the faith, trusting and obeying God and not wavering even when it hurts, when it is hard. This is the duty of all Christians, but it is the particular glory of men to lead in this.

THE GLORY OF MEN

“The glory of young men is their strength” (Prov. 20:29). “I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one” (1 Jn. 2:14, cf. Ps. 19:4-5). Glory is what makes someone shine. This can certainly include appearance, but in men it primarily points to action. The Bible does not mind pointing out when men are “handsome” (Gen. 39:6, 1 Sam. 9:2, 16:12), but the glory of men is not their appearance. It is their strength. It is what they do with the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual strength that God has given them. And this requires courage. C.S. Lewis says that courage is not merely one of the virtues, but it is every virtue at its testing point. So biblical masculine strength is the commitment to virtue to the pain, to the suffering, to the death. Biblical manhood is constantly watchful and steadfast in the faith, and courage holds the line, standing fast, when everything seems to be falling apart, when it doesn’t look like it’s working. This masculine courage fundamentally trusts in Christ, who is the Resurrection and the Life. He will raise us from this moment or else He will raise us from the dead.

THE SHAME OF SOFT MEN

Effeminacy is softness in men, particularly at the very places where we are called to be hard and strong and courageous. This is sometimes as simple as cowardice and fear (Dt. 20:8, Jdg. 7:3), but that trembling, especially in the face of battle, the Bible describes as acting like a woman (Is. 19:16, Jer. 48:41, 49:22, 51:30). This softness can also be a confusion of glory, seeking the glory of a woman through inordinate care and concern for appearances and luxury (Dt. 22:5, Mt. 11:8, Lk. 7:25). The woman is the glory of man, and this glory is in her beauty and beautiful way of cultivating life (Gen. 2:23, 1 Cor. 11:7). This is why it is right and proper for a woman to have longer hair, and it is shameful for men to do so (1 Cor. 11:14-15). And this softness in men is not at all unrelated to homosexuality (1 Cor. 6:9). And so we must practice strength and courage as men and teach it to our boys.

While we certainly do have a plague of sexual rebellion and confusion in the world, driven by many soft men in the Church, we should not miss the fact that men can often hide their softness in veneers of sacrificial strength. But God calls men to use their strength obediently, and this means taking responsibility and choosing the obedient sacrifice. God created Adam first, so that he could be cut open first. Man was made first so that he might bleed first. Men love courage and heroism, and so they do not usually embrace pure cowardice openly or immediately. Instead, a man will choose a disobedient sacrifice and decorate it with suffering (which sometimes includes tattoos and piercings), but this is just cowardice masquerading as courage. So a man may go hunting or work on the car instead of pursuing his wife, disciplining his children, or starting a new business, school, or church. And by the same token, sometimes a man needs to go hunting or learn to work on his car and get out of the office. The point is responsible obedience.

DO NOT GIVE YOUR STRENGTH TO WOMEN

“Give not thy strength to women, nor thy ways to that which destroyeth kings” (Prov. 31:3). Lemuel’s mother is particularly warning the king against sexual immorality. Think of the story of Samson and Delilah. Samson literally gave his strength to a woman in exchange for sex. But this is what all sexual sin is: an offer of fake respect in exchange for empty pleasure. Real respect is shown in commitment, loyalty, obedience, encouragement, praise, and service. A wife swears to honor and obey you in the Lord, which makes you a stronger man. But “by means of a whorish woman a man is brought to a piece of bread” (Prov. 6:26). “For she hath cast down many wounded: yea, many strong men have been slain by her” (Prov. 7:26).

In 1 Kings, there are a number of chapters dedicated to the building of the Temple, many details describing the massive building project, where the materials came from, how it was constructed and so on. And then in 1 Kings 11 it describes how Solomon took hundreds of wives and concubines, how they turned Solomon’s heart away from the Lord, and how Solomon built high places and shrines for all of their gods (1 Kings 11:4-8). It’s mentioned almost in passing, but you really need to think about the contrast between building the Temple to the true and living God and then building hundreds of worthless, pagan shrines. Think about all that wasted energy, thought, money, materials, plus all the harm it caused Israel. What are you building? And do not despair if you have been building the wrong things. Christ died to take away the sins of men.

CONCLUSION: DO HARD THINGS

The glory of men is their strength. Men were made to do hard things. Men were made to bear heavy loads. When men work out physically, they get stronger. When men push themselves to do more, they generally get better at it. It’s trendy in our world, even our Christian world to warn one another about burnout and over-doing it, but where in the Bible are we warned about that? The Bible certainly instructs us to take a weekly Sabbath, a day of rest, but beyond that, it says we are to be known for hard, diligent work, and it warns us against sloth, laziness, and cowardice over and over. David fell into sexual sin in the springtime when kings were supposed to go out to battle. So where is the battle that God is calling you to? Is it dealing with a sin in your life? Is it leading your wife or family more intentionally? Is it starting some new venture, a new project? Does it look hard? Will it require suffering? Might you mess up along the way? You were made for this. This is your glory in Christ.

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