Roping off of a mare I shouldn't have
been roping off of and I was 11
years old and I threw the rope and
the calf went one way, rope went the
other way, the mare went the other way,
and I went straight away.
Broke it again and then about four years
later I broke it in a cattle shoot.
Two steers decided they would try to stomp
me to death, which they didn't succeed.
Left with quite a bit of brain damage,
but they didn't kill me.
And well, I found out that it's been
broken for a long time and the bone's
starting to die and everything, so this is
the second operation on it to try to
put me back together.
I've had one knee worked on.
I've had both hips replaced.
I've had this operated on twice and have
several pins everywhere, so there won't be a
whole lot of me to resurrect once I
get done.
But working in the jungles, the advantage was
I wasn't worth killing and eating.
There was so much metal in me.
We're going to start in 2 Corinthians.
Just look at a text for a moment,
2 Corinthians chapter 10, and then we're going
to move on to Romans.
We're going to be talking primarily in the
context of marriage tonight, because that's what men
do, they get married.
And that's how men live out their masculinity
and their Christianity, primarily in the context of
their marriage.
And we're going to talk about being men
in a world where so few men actually
live.
Now before we get to this text, let's
go to the Lord in prayer.
Father, I come before You in the name
of Your Son.
And Lord, I would be terrified for
someone to think that I have come to
live in perfect submission even to the things
that I preach.
I fully recognize, Lord, that I preach a
truth that is much larger than myself and
a goal somewhere beyond me.
Lord, I also recognize that though it is
a high goal, my failure has no excuse
and that must lead to repentance, faith, and
a turning back to You.
Father, I pray that You would use this
message.
Lord, I know that apart from Your grace,
I'll be nothing more than a seething demonstration
of flesh and arrogance.
I know that much about myself, Lord.
So I would pray that You would help,
that You would give grace upon grace and
mercy upon mercy.
In Jesus' name, Amen.
2 Corinthians chapter 10, verse 5.
Paul says, We are destroying speculations and every
lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of
God.
We are taking every thought captive to the
obedience of Christ.
This is a verse coming from the mouth
of one who demonstrates biblical maturity, biblical manhood,
biblical discipleship, the idea of what it really
means to be not only a man of
God, but a man before God, and a
man who walks in the fear of God.
We are a generation after the passing of
the World War II group of men.
We begin to see a terrible decline in
our country with regard to manhood.
There are very few men.
As a matter of fact, most men reach
the age of 30, yeah, even 40, and
they're nothing more than decaying adolescents.
There is nothing in any society or in
the Scripture that talks about someone being a
boy and then growing to the age of
adolescence, and then becoming a man.
There's a period supposedly in modern day psychology
in which someone after being a boy at
about 11 or 12 years old, they move
into adolescence.
It is a time of rebellion, a time
of selfishness, a time of trying to find
their identity and everything else, a time when
you should let them roam free, that they
should play, and all these other things, and
then hopefully, eventually, they become a man.
That is not found in any culture outside
of our modern Western culture, and it's most
certainly not found in Scripture.
The Scripture teaches that someone is a boy,
and then they become a man.
And this modern idea of adolescence is built
upon a false evolutionary model, and it has
caused great destruction and harm, even in the
lives of the people that are in this
room.
That so many men, they grow old, but
they never come into manhood.
I tell all the young men sometimes in
my church where I attend, boys, that maybe
they have problems, maybe their dad is derelict,
or they just have a mom and they
don't have a dad, and maybe they'll come
and spend some time with me.
One of the first things I do is
I look them in the eye and I
say, how old are you?
If they say 11, 12, I say, listen
to me.
I am not going to treat you like
a boy.
I'm going to treat you like a man,
and I'm going to expect you to act
like one.
And you know what?
They do.
You say, well, why did you start your
sermon in this way?
Well, because you have to realize something.
When we approach the Scripture, you and I
are so influenced by our culture.
I mean, a fish doesn't realize it's wet,
because everyone else around it is wet.
We live in a culture of people who
drink down iniquity like it was water.
There are so many things that we do
in our lives, even this preacher, that are
unbiblical, and yet I have still not grown
to understand it, or see the errors of
my own way.
We are called to be a biblical people,
and we are called to be biblical men,
which brings with it greater responsibility than being
a biblical woman.
Because one day when nations and individuals and
families and clans and tribes and everything else
are called before the throne of God, when
your family is called before the throne of
God, you will be the one called on
the carpet as the representative.
We are to learn what it means to
be a man.
Now, there are so many wrong ideas out
there, everything from the homosexual and lesbian and
feminist psychologists of the late sixties and seventies
who told us to get in touch with
our feminine side, of which I have never
found.
If you do find them, if you do
find a feminine side in you, crucify it.
But then there's the other side out there
that thinks manhood is being bully and arrogant
and angry, like some soldier out of the
Roman Empire, and that's not biblical manhood either.
Biblical manhood is to be like Jesus Christ.
And the hardest place to work that out
is in the context of your family.
I preached in Austin, Texas a few weeks
ago and they don't have a pastor.
And soon as I came down from the
pulpit, a group of people gathered around me
and a man came up to me and
he said, would you be our pastor?
I said, sir, you don't even know who
I am.
You don't know what I am.
You heard one small sermon and you think
somehow you've discerned that I'm qualified to be
a pastor?
You know nothing about the way I treat
my wife.
You know nothing about my relationship with my
children.
You know nothing about my character, my integrity.
The only thing you know is I can
put a lot of words in order quickly.
Being a disciple of Jesus Christ, being salt,
is about bearing the characteristics of Jesus Christ.
And doing that in the context of our
family and then in the context of our
local church.
Sir, I want to submit to you that
at least 95% of all the problems
in your family are going to come right
back to you.
You're to blame.
Not your wife.
Not your children.
You.
And, gentlemen, I will submit to you that
95% of the problems in your local
church come from men in that local church
who do not act biblically in the context
of that local church, but are carried away
by emotion as though they were a bunch
of old women instead of standing on truth.
Now let's look at this text.
I don't know if we're going to get...
Maybe we'll just get through the introduction tonight.
He says in verse 5, we are destroying
speculations.
Everything outside of the Word of God, everything
that comes from the heart of a man,
the wisdom of a man, is nothing more
than speculation before God.
It's speculation.
Your behavior with your wife.
Upon what is it based?
Can you go down right now with me
through Scripture and show me the commandments in
the Bible about being a godly husband?
Or are you living your life as a
husband based upon worldly speculations?
Upon what you think is right in your
own mind?
And then in the context of this local
church, are you doing things and expecting things
and looking for things according to what the
Bible says or according to your speculations and
the speculations of other people?
I've seen it.
Families fall apart.
Why?
Marriages fall apart.
Why?
Because they're built upon the speculations, thoughts, and
wisdom of the flesh, which is earthly, demonic,
and leads to death.
There's not been a local church in the
United States of America that I know of
in the last 200 years that has been
destroyed from the outside.
Tell me one group of believers that have
been killed, machine gunned down in the United
States.
Show me one church that's been bulldozed down
in the United States by unbelievers.
No.
How is it destroyed?
The ungodly speculation of immature believers and ungodly
people within the context of the local church.
That's why Paul says we destroy speculation.
If I'm with my wife, she can say
something to me.
Let's say, for example, I'm headed out the
door.
I've got tons of problems, tons of ministries
and missionaries that I have to take care
of, and I'm headed out the door in
the morning at 7 in the morning.
I've got books.
I've got Bibles.
I'm running out the door.
I've got several meetings that day.
It's raining and I get right towards the
door and as soon as I'm going out
she says, Oh honey, can you take out
the trash?
Immediately, my flesh is going to react and
say, can't you see what's going on here?
Can't you see how much work I have
to do?
Can't you see I'm loaded down?
And you're asking me to take out the
trash?
That is the flesh being controlled by speculation,
by emotion, by what I feel, instead of
stopping and bringing my thoughts and my behavior
in submission to the Lordship of Jesus Christ
and putting all that stuff down and going
over and hugging her and picking up the
trash and walking out the door with it.
You see, we live our lives empowered by
the flesh many times and led by speculations.
You get into the church and you hear
people say, Well, I don't think this is
right.
Well, I don't think that's right.
Well, I think he's wrong here.
Well, I think they've got this problem and
that problem and everything else.
And where are the men who will stand
up, open a Bible and say, Okay, let's
talk.
Let's talk.
Here's a Bible.
Get yours.
Show me.
Because if it's in here, I'll submit to
it.
No, it's speculation.
Do you suppose?
Do you think?
What you suppose and I suppose and I
think and you think really doesn't matter a
whole lot.
The only thing that matters is what does
God's Word say.
That's what it all comes down to.
Paul says, We destroy speculation.
I want every thought in my mind, every
ounce of human wisdom to be destroyed on
the anvil of God's Word.
God's Word is an anvil upon which you
lay that speculation and God's Word is a
hammer with which you destroy it.
He says, We are destroying speculation and every
lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of
God.
This right here demonstrates our pride.
Everything that is not according to the knowledge
and wisdom of God is an arrogant thing
raised up in His presence.
Just like Satan standing up in the presence
of God and accusing Job or accusing God.
Things lifted up in the Old Testament are
what?
Idols.
Have you ever noticed if you ever have
a problem and you ask someone's opinion in
the church, well, you know, I'm having this
problem.
I just don't know what to do.
And they'll probably come to you and say,
well, brother, I think you ought to do
this.
Or, well, brother, I experienced that and let
me share with you from my experiences.
How many people say, well, brother, the Bible
says in 1 Corinthians 3, you see, how
little of our conversation, how little of our
behavior, how little of everything we do is
based upon God's Word?
It's speculation and high thoughts.
We are supposing that we have wisdom.
So many people, most people think that they
are adequate counselors.
Most people think they can pretty much, yeah,
I've got some wisdom.
Many people think wisdom was born with them
and will die with them.
But the Bible says that no man is
wise.
And the wisest of this world is nothing
more than foolishness.
That's what the Bible says.
We're to destroy speculation.
If it's not according to the Bible in
my life, those thoughts have got to go.
If it's not according to the Bible in
my marriage, in my family, it's got to
go.
If it's not according to the Bible in
the congregation of the believers, it's got to
go.
And why does He use the word destroy?
Destroying speculation?
For the same reason God said when you
get over there in the Promised Land, you
better destroy those Canaanites.
Because those Canaanites you don't destroy, they're going
to come back and get you.
I want to tell you something.
Every speculation, every bit of human wisdom, every
bit of antidotal credence, all the smart and
quick sayings of men, all those speculations that
you do not destroy will end up destroying
you.
They'll take over.
They really will.
And we have got to come to the
point where we are destroying speculations.
We violently move against them.
Anything in my behavior towards my wife, there's
no room for justification.
There's only two things to be done.
One, compare it to God's Word.
Two, if it's not according to His Word,
destroy it.
Crucify that thing.
Raised up against the knowledge of God.
Now, here's something very, very important.
The genuine believer, the one who has been
regenerated by the Holy Spirit of God has
been granted a gift.
And that gift is often called the knowledge
of God.
The unregenerate heart cannot understand truth.
Cannot.
And the reason why it cannot is because
it will not.
And the reason why it will not is
because it has a wicked heart that hates
God.
But if you have been regenerated, you have
been enlightened and illumined to the counsel of
God, you and I do not have to
live like the ignorant pagan.
We can get into this Word, we can
understand what it means, and we can come
to obey it.
And we can live a higher life.
We ought to have better lives than the
unbeliever.
We ought to have better marriages.
And our fellowship and our communion as a
congregation should so far supersede anything the world
knows.
But if we play by the world's rules,
we can't expect to demonstrate any greater grace
than the wicked fallen world itself.
Now, we are destroying speculations and every lofty
thing raised up against the knowledge of God.
Let me take just a little bit of
a detour here for a second.
Speculations, not according to the knowledge of God,
are against the knowledge of God and fight
against His purposes.
When someone lives their life believing and communicating
speculations, it's not just that they're doing damage
to themselves, but they have raised up a
standard of war against God and they are
fighting God's purposes.
Any kind of speculation, any kind of, as
it says in 1 John, darkness, esoteric hidden
things, secret whisperings, anything such as that, it
just destroys and thwarts the purposes of God.
Now, why do I say that?
Because as men, you and I are to
have a spirit of discernment to be able
to recognize speculations and stand up against them.
We are not to be like old women
communicating wives' tales, gossips and whisperers, silly little
women who have nothing to do.
We hear something, we validate it.
Period.
I have seen so many things destroyed because
men did not act like men when it
came to speculation.
Let me just give you a little hint,
and then I'm going to go on towards
marriage, but let me just give you a
little hint.
Someone comes to me with a problem they
have about someone else.
Immediately, for a biblical, godly man who does
not fear men, a red flag goes up.
There's already a violation.
What is it?
Matthew 18.
But we're cowards, aren't we?
We won't go talk to someone face to
face, but we'll sure talk to others about
them.
Someone comes to me.
Let's say this brother right here.
Someone comes to me and they say, I've
got a problem with this brother over here.
I look at them and I go, I
don't know anything about this brother right here,
but I know I'm not listening to you.
I don't know about this brother right here,
but you have just disobeyed God in my
presence and I know you have no integrity.
So whether what you say about him is
right or wrong, that doesn't matter to me
right now.
I know I'm not listening to you because
you did not do what God commands.
You see?
Cleared it up that quick, didn't I?
No problem.
Well, what if it is true?
That isn't the point.
The point is a false messenger brought it
to you and you know not to trust
him.
If I'm climbing up a cliff, my dear
friend, if I'm climbing up a cliff and
I'm about to fall and I see two
men standing up there and both of them
hold down their hand like this, say, Paul,
grab my hand, and one of them is
a man I don't know at all.
Another one is a man I know hates
me more than any other human being on
the face of the earth.
Whose hand am I going to grab?
I'm going to grab the man I don't
know at all.
I might not know him.
I might not know what he'll do, but
I definitely know what this one has already
done.
That's the way you end speculation right there.
In my church in Peru, you'll be disciplined
as a gossip.
In my church in Peru, you'll be disciplined
if you listen to gossip.
Speculation destroys everything.
Creates confusion.
Destroys.
And it's not what real men do.
Real men don't bow their head.
Real men don't just say, well, I'm just
going to stay out of this problem.
Real men don't listen to speculation.
They go right to the source and find
out if things are true, period.
And also real men recognize that if there's
someone running around with a lot of speculation,
whether they're right or not, it's not the
point.
Everything they're doing is unbiblical.
Now, this is what he says, we are
taking every thought captive to obedience of Christ.
This is the key.
It is not just external legalistic rules.
It is not just following some external order.
It's not just cosmetic.
It's not just trying to make us look
godly on the outside.
No, my dear friend, what this is all
about is the inward man, the deepest thought
being brought into subjection to the law of
Christ, to obey as Christ obeyed.
To obey as Christ obeyed.
And this is in what context?
In the context of every aspect of your
life.
Your thought life is to be brought into
subjection to the law of Christ.
Gentlemen, many of you will never be able
to walk in godliness because you watch so
much ungodly television.
Because your eyes have not been brought into
subjection to the law of Christ.
Everything.
You see, I am not my own.
I have been bought with a price.
You are not your own.
You have been bought with a price.
These are His eyes.
These are His lips.
These are His ears.
His heart.
His hands.
His feet.
And all of it being His, all of
it is to be under His lordship.
All of it.
How different would our lives be if everything
we did was in accordance to Scripture?
How different would our lives be when we
did not understand a solution, we did not
move until we discerned the will of God
from the written Word?
How would our marriages be if we spent
time daily studying the Word of God about
marriage?
How different would our children be?
Just to give you an example.
In a church that I am helping reconstruct
after a great problem it has had, a
youth minister came to me.
I said, I want to know about the
youth.
Now let's just sit down and talk this
through.
He goes, Brother Paul, they have sent me
to the biggest churches in America.
They have sent me everywhere to all the
biggest Southern Baptist churches, everything else.
Every model I have ever seen about youth
ministry is nothing more than trivial, stupid, juvenile
Christian entertainment for kids who are unregenerated.
And I said, well, thank you young man.
I think I can work with you.
But he said, there is no model.
I said, you don't need one.
Open up the Bible.
Look up the word youth.
Look up the word child.
Look up the word simple, naive.
Look up all the words.
Look up the word son, daughter.
Everything in the Bible.
You know what happened when we did that?
This is what we found out about youth
ministry.
How do you do youth ministry?
You bring kids together.
You have God-centered worship whether they like
it or not.
And you preach like a scalded dog.
And you get them memorizing Scripture because almost
every time it talks about youth it tells
them to meditate upon Scripture and memorize it.
And you stop all these trivial, stupid games
designed to keep unconverted children coming so that
your church looks good.
Speculation.
Everything based on speculation instead of the Word
of God.
The Word of God.
If this church took seriously the Word of
God, how many would take this church seriously?
If I took seriously the Word of God,
how long would I last as a free
man in this country?
The Word of God.
Now, I did not intend to stay that
long in that supposed three-minute introduction, but
I want us to go over to Romans
for a minute.
And I want to concentrate on something about
marriage that I think that will help you
as a man.
Romans 8 is one of the most important
passages in the entire Bible with regard to
marriage.
Romans 8, verse 28.
And we know that God causes all things
to work together for good, to those who
love God, to those who are called according
to His purpose, for those whom He foreknew,
He also predestined to become conformed to the
image of His Son so that He would
be the firstborn among many brethren.
You know, when we talk about the sovereignty
of God, one of the things that makes
me most angry is it seems that that
term only comes up with regard to salvation.
The sovereignty of God is an essential doctrine
for every aspect of our lives.
If I do not believe in the sovereignty
of God, I cannot have a strong marriage.
Now, I want us to look at some
things.
What is the purpose, sir, of your marriage?
And if you can learn this, it will
help you, it will give you contentment like
you've never had it before.
Because I want to tell you, much of
what we call Christian teaching on marriage is
wrong.
It tells you that the goal of marriage
is heaven on earth.
The goal of marriage is this marital bliss,
this joy, this little piece of heaven.
I'm here to tell you that is not
true at all.
Some of you are very discouraged in your
marriage and the reason why is you've been
told what the goal of marriage is and
they told you wrong, and when you didn't
reach that goal, you think something's wrong with
your marriage.
Well, I'm supposed to have this marital bliss.
My home's supposed to be like a little
piece of heaven.
It's not.
Did I marry the wrong woman?
Should I get out of this?
What should I do?
They've told you the wrong purpose of marriage.
Here's what the Bible says is the purpose
of marriage.
Verse 29, For those whom He foreknew, He
also predestined to be conformed to the image
of His Son.
The number one purpose of marriage is that
through marriage, you might become conformed to the
image of God's Son with regard to His
character.
Put it this way, that you might learn
to love like Jesus loved.
And how did Jesus love?
Jesus loved the loveless.
So the purpose of your marriage, the sovereign
purpose of God, is to use that woman
to do one thing, conform you to the
image of God.
That's it.
Now how does that work itself out?
Well, first of all, let's look at the
basis of most people's idea of marriage.
They don't see it as a calling, but
as a fulfillment of a desire.
A young man comes to me and he
comes in the office.
Brother Paul, I want to marry this girl.
And I say, why?
And they say, well, she's beautiful and we
can just talk and I love her personality
and we can really get along together and
just everything.
I just feel so great when I'm with
her.
And I stop him and I say, let
me just see if I understand what you're
trying to tell me.
You want to marry this woman because she
fulfills all your selfish, self-centered desires?
Is that what you're trying to tell me?
He says, no, that's not what I mean.
I say, that's exactly what you said, young
man.
You want to marry her because she's beautiful.
What happens when she's not beautiful anymore?
And what happens when someone more beautiful comes
along and she will?
You want to be with her because you
can talk.
What happens when you can't talk to her?
And what happens when you can talk to
your secretary a lot better than you can
with your wife?
You want to be with her because she
meets all your needs.
What happens when your whole life is controlled
by the fact that she has needs?
How quick you going to get out, boy?
You see why marriages go wrong?
You get into them for all the wrong
reasons.
I'm married to a girl that I love,
that I feel things in my heart for
her.
I love her.
It's like Homer Crane sitting down here.
He told me before I married her, you
have in your presence tonight one of the
greatest missionaries I've ever known.
So, if you want to know an old
missionary, there he is.
But he told me when I was about
ready to get married, Homer Crane said, Boy,
he said, you need someone who can play
the piano in your church?
I said, yes.
He goes, you can pay somebody to do
that.
He goes, you need someone to work in
the women's ministry?
I said, yes, sir, I do.
He said, you can find somebody to do
that.
If you're going to marry this girl, you
marry her because you love her.
And I do love her, but that's not
the basis of my marriage.
The basis of my marriage is the same
basis as my call to ministry.
It is a sovereign, irrevocable calling of God.
And it is this.
God has called Paul Washer to lay down
his life, dreams, hopes, desires, and everything he
ever wanted.
God has called Paul Washer to lay down
his life for a girl by the name
of Charo Nunez.
That's my wife.
That's what my whole marriage is about.
That's it.
So it has absolutely nothing to do with
me.
It has nothing to do with my needs,
nothing to do with my desires, nothing to
do with how happy I am.
It has nothing to do with any of
that.
It has to do with this.
God has given me a divine decree.
He has spoken forth a command.
I am to lay down my life, die,
for the benefit of that daughter.
That's it.
What about me?
That's that little adolescent boy talking.
A guy came to me one time and
he goes, I have to work 12 hours
a day to put food on the table.
I have to come home.
I have to help my wife.
I have to do all this stuff.
I'm just so tired.
I said, well, there is one other option.
Believe in Incarnation and come back as a
woman.
I said, this is what men do.
We labor in the sweat of our brow.
This is not our heaven and this is
not our rest.
This is about following Jesus Christ to the
cross and dying to self for the benefit
of our wives, period.
If she's beautiful, wonderful.
If she's not, doesn't matter.
If she's easy to get along with, wonderful.
If she's not, doesn't matter.
I'm not going anywhere.
Why?
Because I'm under orders from the God whom
I fear.
Now, how does God use marriage to conform
us to the image of His Son?
Now listen to me.
We have to be very careful with our
words here.
It's nonetheless true.
God says He will not allow me to
be tempted beyond what I can bear.
That's what the Bible says.
God has given me a wife who is
strong in all the areas where she must
be strong in order for me not to
be tempted beyond what I can bear.
God has orchestrated those strengths in her.
Now, God has orchestrated the weaknesses in my
wife.
He has sovereignly worked and given me a
woman that is weak in all the areas
where I most do not want her to
be weak.
Why?
To drive me absolutely out of my cotton
-picking mind.
No.
Why has He done that?
Because He wants to conform me to the
image of Christ.
And what does that mean?
The very things you sing most about and
appreciate most about Jesus Christ are the very
things you don't want in your life.
What is the main thing?
Unconditional love.
See, you're in a marriage and you see
these weaknesses in your wife, and because of
those weaknesses, you think that you're locked into
a dead-end marriage.
It has no purpose.
There's no reason.
You just lost out.
You made the wrong choice.
All these other things.
But now, if you'll believe God, those weaknesses
can cause your life to be filled with
more purpose than you ever imagined.
She's weak in an area.
She's a certain way in an area that
you wish she was totally different, and it
actually not only bothers you, it hurts you.
But now you know something.
God has orchestrated that, given you such a
woman so that you will learn to love
even though she doesn't meet even the most
important conditions that you have.
That's what God desires.
That's what He desires.
And you will find joy and rest in
laying down, destroying those silly humanistic speculations and
following the Word of God, the sovereignty of
God.
There's not a maverick molecule in the universe.
You say, well, but men can do things,
you know.
They really mess up their lives.
Yes, they absolutely can.
Can you explain that?
Go talk to a philosopher.
I'm a theologian.
I don't have to explain it.
I just hold those truths to be true.
But I can tell you this, my dear
friend.
God's greatest purpose...
Look at me.
I mean, why?
Why is my knee tore up?
Why have both my hips been replaced?
Why is this bone dying?
Why do I have to be operated next
month on this arm?
I'm an outdoorsman.
To lock me inside is to kill me.
Why?
Because that's the very thing that an absolutely
sovereign God who loves me more than it
can be defined knows that I need to
make me like His Son so that I
might bear an extra weight of glory.
Why do you have so many?
Some of you are like me.
You're in your 40s, 50s, late 30s.
You've just come to realize that there's a
whole lot of hopes and dreams out there,
desires and everything you had for your life
that aren't going to be fulfilled.
It's driving you mad.
You'll probably end up doing something really stupid
like committing adultery or getting in debt.
And you don't understand that all those things
are created by God, not by the devil,
so that you'll stop wanting all those things
and turn to Him and want Him and
be full.
And be full.
The sovereignty of God.
If I didn't believe in it, I certainly
wouldn't have a leg to stand on, would
I?
I'm married to a woman.
I have a church in Austin, Texas right
now and they want to call me to
be their pastor.
I spoke with the elders.
I right now have no real intention, no
clear call from God to become their pastor.
But I did talk with their elders because
I want to be open.
And they said, you know, you've helped us
through this time of crisis.
You know, the church is back on its
feet.
Man, we would just love to have you
as our pastor.
I looked at them.
I put my head down and I said,
gentlemen, I'm not sure I qualify.
And they said, what do you mean?
I said, well, when I look in 1
Timothy 3, I'm just not sure I qualify.
It says there's got to be a man
who manages his household well.
I said, my wife and I have a
strong marriage.
We teach our children the Bible.
We're consistent in discipline.
And they said, well, what's the problem?
I said, it's more than that.
When you see me with my wife, you
ought to see the fragrance of the love
of Christ coming forth out of me onto
my wife.
You ought to see a man who literally,
you know, cherishes and nourishes his wife.
You ought to see a man who just,
you know, would protect her, guard her, care
for her, carry her, do whatever necessary, build
her up, promote her.
Yea, even make her feel beautiful in a
world that tells her she's not.
I don't know if I qualify enough to
be a pastor.
Gentlemen, if I was the president of a
corporation and all of you worked for me,
let's say that I hired one of you,
one of these young boys over here, fresh
out of college, didn't know a whole lot,
kind of lazy, didn't have a work ethic
much, didn't know how to put in 14,
15, 16 hours.
I'd look at them the first year and
see their productivity was pretty low and I'd
probably say, well, they're young, they don't know
any better.
Keep them on.
Give them some chance, you know, keep working
with them.
But let's say that my best man in
the company, the one responsible for 65%
of the revenue, I mean the company built
around him.
Let's say he's married to my daughter and
I find out he is treating her disgracefully.
I don't care if he's the best guy
I got on the job.
He's going to have some serious problems because
the job means nothing to me.
This is my daughter.
I look at my life and the lives
of the men around me and it terrifies
me sometimes.
This is not about ministry, not about preaching.
So what?
I'm not that ineffective employee.
Getting called on the carpet with regard to
his daughter, that's a whole other thing.
A guy asked me one time, he stood
up and he goes, what is the Christian
response to using physical force?
And I said, well, what do you mean?
He goes, for example, what if someone knocked
on the door and you opened the door
and a guy's standing there and he said,
I'm going to come in your house and
I'm going to kill your wife and children.
What's the Christian response?
I said, oh, that's easy.
I'd kill him.
Now I don't know if that's a Christian
response, but maybe Southern Christian response.
You have the daughter of God.
Be afraid.
Be a man.
Assume the responsibility.
We don't train boys to become men anymore.
Those of you who are fathers, listen to
me well.
We don't train boys to be men.
We send them off to school.
Someone else teaches them eight hours a day.
Got that covered.
We send them to Sunday school.
Someone else teaches them.
Got that covered.
What do we do?
Well, I'm just working in order to give
my child all the things I never had
when I was a child.
And where can you find that in the
Bible?
And sir, that's not what you're doing.
You're working to buy yourself all the toys
you never got as a child.
We're to be men and we're to live
for eternity.
And that means loving our wives, caring for
our children, and being men in the context
of the local church.
Now, since I only got this one time
with you, I want to just hit the
young guys for just a minute.
Young guys, listen to me.
There is no such thing as biblical dating.
If you are dating, I don't care who
you're dating, you're out of God's will.
Is that clear?
If you're a young man and you're dating,
you're out of God's will.
Period.
You can come talk to me about it
later.
You can be mad if you want.
But that's just the truth.
There's no such thing as recreational dating.
There's biblical courtship.
There is no recreational dating, number one.
Number two, guys ask me, you know, when
can I start thinking about someone of the
opposite sex?
Well, you can start thinking whenever the thought
comes to you.
The question is, when can you start acting?
You see, when a young man becomes...
Sometimes I spend weeks teaching on all this
stuff.
When a young man becomes around, well now,
too young, because fathers do not stand as
warriors at the door of their house and
protect their children.
So young children are violated.
But in normal godly circumstances, a young kid,
if left to himself, won't even...
Guys at the university came up to me
and they said, well, you know, when then
can we start even courtship?
When can we start, you know, even moving?
I said, first of all, the only time
you ever think about being with a girl
is because you feel like the Lord is
leading you into marriage with that girl.
That's number one.
Recreational dating is unbiblical.
Okay?
Another thing.
This is when you can first initiate, begin
to initiate the dealings that initiate a relationship.
This is when you can begin.
When as a young man, you can biblically
lead that girl as a spiritual leader.
Until that moment, you cannot be with anyone
of the opposite sex.
Number two.
Emotionally, you can care for her.
That means you're ready to make a lifelong
commitment and not test the waters with any
other person.
Financially, you can care for her.
If dad's still paying the insurance on your
car, forget about it.
You can't date and physically protect her.
That doesn't mean you can whoop every guy
in the county, but it does mean you
will be whooped by every guy in the
county before you allow anyone to pass.
That you have enough moral fortitude and courage
to draw a line in the sand and
say, over my cold, dead, blue, deformed body,
will you do that?
I love, as most of you, some of
you probably know, I love hunting and I
love bows and arrows.
And I've got some Zwicky Eskimo broadheads at
home.
They're very, very sharp.
They're two-bladed, so they have to be
very, very sharp.
And I have a little wrench that I
use to put those broadheads onto the arrow
shaft, because you don't even want to put
your hand on the side of them, because
if you slip, they'll slice your finger off.
And I have a three-year-old boy,
and I've built a hickory bow for him.
He's got a little arrow that he shoots,
and it has a blunt wooden tip on
the end of it.
It won't penetrate much, except his little brother's
eye.
But sometimes I'll be taking those broadheads off
and on, and my little boy Ian will
come up there and he'll want to touch
the arrows.
And I say, No, son, you can't.
These arrows that your dad can handle, they'll
kill you.
Now one day, son, you'll be man enough
to handle these arrows, and you can hunt
like a big boy.
You can hunt like a man.
But you've got a lot of growing before
you can do that.
One of the greatest problems, young men, that
we have today is a lot of young
men are wanting to play with big boy
toys, and yet they're still little boys.
You see, we don't want to pay the
price of becoming a man in order to
do men things.
The Bible says, Become a man, and then
God will lead you into the ways of
a man.
Now there's about five lectures on that, but
I just wanted to touch on it tonight.
Now we scattered around a whole bunch, and
well, I'm not sorry for it, but I
hope that some of what's been said has
helped you.
I know it's helped me.
It's been a reminder of how I need
to get home and love my wife.
Let's pray.
Father, I come before You, and I pray,
Lord, that You would use Your Word to
make us.