Summary

The Forward section of this article on men's ministry gives brief instructions on how any layman can begin a men's ministry in his church. The Introduction provides a history of the modern men's ministry movement in America and how, through this movement, the Lord led Herb Reese to begin a men's ministry that uses teams of men to serve the widowed and single parents. Part I focuses on how churches can reach and utilize all of the men in their congregations at every level of ministry. Part II focuses on how a dedicated men's ministry can train men of God to be equipped to do all of God's good works.

Jumpstart your men’s ministry with your “battery.” Your spiritual life is your battery.

Are you walking in the Spirit? Are you radiating the joy and peace of Christ in your life? Is God’s word living in your heart? Are you meditating on it constantly? Are you praying fervently and daily?

And how are your relationships? Does your wife think she’s won the lottery because she’s married to you? Do your kids jump for joy when you get home from work? Do you pray with your family regularly?

And your neighbors, are they glad they live next door to you? Do they see the reality of Christ in your life? Maybe, for them at least, it’s just the fact that you keep your lawn mowed. Do they know you are a Christian? Are you loving them as yourself?

Fill yourself up with the power of the Holy Spirit, the knowledge of God our Father, the love of Jesus Christ and his love for the people around you. Then you will have plenty to share when it is time to minister to the men in your church.

Jumpstart your men’s ministry by “starting your car.” Start your car by taking the initiative.

Turn on your ignition. Not their ignition, your ignition. Take the initiative yourself and review the initial ideas for your church’s men’s ministry that you have gleaned from your meetups with other men. Then share them with your pastor or appropriate staff person. Sound the bugle. Lead the charge.

After you have acquired permission from your church leadership to begin, ask the Lord to show you which of the men you have been talking to about men’s ministry would make good leadership team members. Maybe all of them will. Or perhaps just a few of them will. And yes, you need a team.

Now comes the hard work. Ask these men to join with you in praying and studying the Word and researching men’s ministry. Don’t assume that just because you are men and Christians, that therefore you are experts on men’s ministry. Take this process slow, invest some time and effort, and devote several months to it (but not an eternity!).

Meet regularly and discuss what you are learning with each other. Don’t approach this task with your own preconceived ideas. Listen to your men with a goal of finding unity and direction.

Men’s ministry is basically discipleship, and that means we need to know what Jesus expects of us. Check out this post: What are Your Ten Year Goals for Your Church’s Men’s Ministry?

We also don’t need to reinvent the wheel. There are a multitude of great men’s ministry resources available. Here are five men’s ministries I recommend, and here are another five.

Now plan your “caravan” and recruit your followers. Share your awesome vision of where you believe God is taking your men’s ministry with all the men in your church.

All effective men’s ministry is a caravan: a group of Christian men heading in the same direction toward the same destination.

I have chosen the term “caravan” carefully because it expresses the concept of men moving together, of men going somewhere with each other for a purpose.

Note that the first written history of the Christian church isn’t called “The Meetings of the Apostles,” but “The Acts of the Apostles.” The Book of Acts is a history of what the Apostles did; how they, by the power of the Spirit, traveled throughout the known world, proclaimed the gospel, made disciples of Christ who did good works, and in the process, overturned their world order.

In other words, you don’t jumpstart other men’s cars so they can just sit in their cars with their engine idling and read the owner’s manual that they have pulled out of the glove compartment.

The owner’s manual is an important document, of course, and must be kept in mind while driving. But your men's cars do not exist simply so your men can read and enjoy the owner’s manual. Their cars exists so they can go somewhere. The owner’s manual just shows them how to do it.

In the same way, your men’s ministry does not exist simply so your men can study the Bible and socialize with each other. Yes, the Bible is our owners' manual, and our owner is God. It is God's manual for us.

Your men’s ministry exists so your men can obey the Bible – obey how it applies to them in their own personal lives and how it applies to others through their obedience.

Of course, they have to learn the Bible well – and learn to love the God who inspired it, along with his Son, Jesus Christ, as the Holy Spirit opens their understanding – in order to experience it. Both individual and group Bible study is essential to do this. But the goal of your men’s ministry – your caravan – is to practice, to do, the Bible, not just know it.

Your men have places to go in their “cars.” Teach your men how to boldly stand out as a Christ-follower wherever they go.

Notice that the first verb in Christ’s Great Commission to us is “Go.”

“Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you.” Matthew 28:19-20

Think for a moment of all the places your men will be going to after they have “fixed their cars” and go out from your men’s ministry: their home, the gas station, their work, their neighborhood, their local grocery store. They may travel somewhere on business or vacation. They may even move away. Wherever they go, the purpose of your men’s ministry is to make sure that they are radiating the reality and presence of the Lord Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.

If you look at your men this way, you will realize that there is no such thing as a “small” men’s ministry. Even just three men meeting together will leave that meeting and go to dozens of destinations throughout the week. Ten men would impact hundreds of destinations in the same time frame. Fifty men would impact thousands of destinations.

You are a Christian today because the first disciples went somewhere and preached the gospel and obeyed all Jesus Christ commanded them to do, and then their disciples went somewhere else and did the same.

Your men have things to do with their “cars.” Help your men do the life-changing, culture-transforming, Christ-honoring, and gospel-adorning good works God saved them to do.

Now comes the good part. And I mean quite literally the “good” part.

The Bible tells us over and over again that the reason God saves men is to do good. (Matthew 5:16; Ephesians 2:10; James 2:14-17; Titus 2:14; 3:14, etc.)

If unsaved men have a habit of leaving behind them a trail of death and destruction – toxic maleness that results in alcohol and drug abuse, pornography addiction, abuse of women, broken marriages, abandoned children, crime, gangs, incarceration, suicide, and on and on – then it stands to reason that saved men should be known for leaving behind them a trail of people overwhelmingly blessed by their good works.

Do a Bible study on good works and then show your men from the Bible what these good works look like in their families, in your church, and in your community.

Your men’s ministry should be one of the most meaningful and fulfilling spiritual experiences your men have ever had. By nurturing your own spiritual life, by making the connections with other men in your church that you need to make, by together investing time and effort into studying the Word, seeking the leading of the Spirit, and availing yourself of other men’s ministry resources, and by executing your ministry to men well, you have every reason to expect that it will be.

Okay, so we’ve learned how to jump-start a men's ministry. Now, let’s get into the nuts and bolts of men’s ministry.

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Part 1

The Men's Ministry I Didn't Know -

Fine-Tuning Your Entire Church for

Natural and "Stealthy" Men's Ministry

I want to tell you about a men’s ministry I didn’t know existed. And yet, it was the one men’s ministry that has most impacted my life. This "stealthy men’s ministry," so to speak, also explains why I’m so passionate about men’s ministry today.

To help you understand why these men had such an influence on my life, I need to describe my upbringing. In a nutshell, I grew up surrounded by what you might call “adult men at a distance.”

Take my father, for example. Ben Reese was a wonderful father in many ways and a very godly man. But he was forty-seven years old when I was born and he was extremely shy. So growing up with Dad was like being raised by an introverted grandfather: he was always around, but he was two generations removed and we rarely talked.

And then there were my three brothers. The oldest, who is no longer living, was eighteen years older than I am and severely mentally handicapped. Good luck relating to him.

The next oldest is fifteen years older than I am. My earliest memories of Paul are of him attending college. Needless to say, I wasn’t exactly a focal point of his life.

My third brother is twelve years older than I am. My earliest memories of John are of him during his late high school years. So I wasn’t a focal point of his life either.

See what I mean? Four older men in my family, all adults – or almost adults – when I was young who had little social or emotional interaction with me.

Fortunately, I grew up in an outstanding church that had dozens and dozens of godly male role models of different ages whom I could relate to.

They were amazing men: biblically literate, spiritually mature, faithful husbands and fathers, intelligent, well-educated and successful in their careers.

They were men like Warren Olsen, who led our high school Sunday School class; Art Meier, who taught us on Thursday evenings; Jim Klubnik, my youth pastor, who gave me a love for ministry; Leighton Ogg, who personally took me under his wing and discipled me; Mark Neuenschwander, who gave me a vision for Christian community; and John "Bugsie" Bogosian, who always made church camp so much fun.

These were the men who “filled in the blanks” in my young Christian discipleship experience.

As I look back on my early church years, the interesting thing was that there was no “official” men’s ministry. Nevertheless, because the men in my church were always being ministered to so effectively, and as a result, always ministering to others so effectively, my church had many mature, godly, and spiritually fruitful men in it, several of whom had a lasting and, indeed, eternal impact on my life.

In other words, I was the personal beneficiary of a church that had been "fine tuned for men's ministry."

This is not to say that there is no place for a dedicated men's ministry in a church. I believe there is and below I discuss what a fully developed dedicated men's ministry in a local church can look like and why it is needed.

But to be optimally effective, a local church's men's ministry must be surrounded by - or better, engulfed by - a church that is effectively reaching and utilizing all of the men in its congregation, not just the men involved in its dedicated men's ministry. When a church succeeds in doing this, it has indeed been fine tuned for men's ministry.

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A Men's Ministry Men Want to Know -

Like Diamonds on Black Felt: Local Church Men's Ministries and Modern Male Decline

But you are living with evil people all around you,

who have lost their sense of what is right.

Among those people you shine like lights 

in a dark world. Philippians 2:15 (ERV)

Nothing elicits The WOW! Factor like diamonds, especially when they are set on black felt under a bright light. The contrast between the non-reflective felt and the light dancing off of the diamonds magnifies their awesome beauty.

We live in a time of rapid male declension. But as male culture around us grows ever darker, local church men's ministries, like diamonds on black velvet, have an opportunity to shine brilliantly.

In other words, when the lights go down, it just means that the show is about to start. Men, this is our opportunity to shine!

But in order for local church men's ministries to shine as brightly as they can in this dark world, we first need to understand what the current dissolution of male culture is all about, why the world cannot explain it, and why it cannot correct it.

American men at the beginning of the twenty first century have reached a crisis of identity

It has always been the case that more men than women engage in anti social and self destructive behavior as exemplified by the fact that, historically, far more men have populated prisons than women. But until the last half of the twentieth century, men who exhibited pathological behavior represented a minority on the fringes of our culture. The vast majority were stable, self assured, goal oriented men who formed a functional and productive part of society as husbands and fathers as well as business, church and community leaders.

Now, however, it is becoming increasingly clear that men in general have a problem; men as a whole no longer know who they are, why they are here, nor where they are going. They are not “fitting” into society well. What exactly is an adult man supposed to be and do, anyway?

Kay Hymowitz cites a long list of book and magazine article titles that demonstrate how rudderless men have become. “Articles and books with such titles as “The End of Men,” “Are Men Necessary?,” The Decline of Males, “The Death of Macho,” “Women Will Rule the World,” and “Is There Anything Good About Men?” point toward a growing recognition that men are not thriving in today’s cultural and economic environment.”

To this growing literary genre we can add these alarming titles: “Men to Boys: The Making of Modern Immaturity”; “Save the Males”: “Why Men Matter, Why Women Should Care”; “Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man”, “The Demise of Guys, The Myth of Male Power”, “Why Men Are the Way They Are”; “Mismatch: the Growing Gulf Between Men and Women”; and Hymowitz’s own book, “Manning Up: How the Rise of Women Has Turned Men into Boys”.

Men no longer have a roadmap for life

A common theme winding through this literature is that men no longer have a road map for life and, as a result, they extend their adolescence well into their late twenties and even thirties, becoming “child-men,” “man-boys” or “preadults” instead.

“The child-man, then, is the lost son of a host of economic and cultural changes: the demographic shift I call preadulthood, the Playboy philosophy, feminism, the wild west of our new media, and a shrugging iffiness on the subject of husbands and fathers. He has no life script, no special reason to grow up,” writes Kay Hymowitz.

Gary Cross observes, “There is not a clear path towards the kind of indisputable maturity that my fathers’ generation could feel”. Cross continues, “Our age has systematically rejected the Victorian [Read “Christian.”] patriarch without finding an adequate alternative… Some men have abandoned the traditional ideals of paternal responsibility of family, community, and culture without replacing them with new models of “grown-up” behavior.” (Material in brackets added.)

Numerous demographic statistics on men with respect to education, work and family life provide concrete evidence that the directionless male has become the new norm in modern society. Since it is de rigueur for writers on the subject of contemporary men to quote these statistics, I also will oblige.

Statistics on dysfunctional men illustrate the problem

Fewer men (90 per cent) than women (92 per cent) graduate from high school. By 2017, women are projected to earn 64.2 per cent of Associate’s degrees, 59.9 per cent of Bachelor’s degrees, 62.9 per cent of Master’s degrees, and 55.5 per cent of Doctorates. Unmarried, childless women are out earning men in 147 of the 150 largest U.S. cities.

Since 1970, the median age for first marriage has increased five years for both men and women to almost 28. The divorce rate is double the rate in 1960. Prior to 1970, only about 1 per cent of all couples cohabitated. 12 per cent do now. 60 per cent of all adults ages 25-44 have cohabitated at some point. Just 53 per cent of American households have a married couple in them, compared with 70 per cent in 1970.

Up to 40 per cent of children sleep in a home without their birth father. Once a rarity, the number of children living in fatherless homes has tripled since 1960, from 8 million to 24 million.

The result of these depressing figures is that American culture, once dominated by men, is now becoming a woman’s world. “This is what I call the New Girl Order,” writes Hymowitz. “For the first time ever, and I do mean ever, young women are reaching their twenties with more achievements, more education, more property, and, arguably, more ambition than their male counterparts.”

And what about men? “The child-man is the fun house mirror image of the alpha girl. If she is ambitious, he is a slacker. If she is hyper-organized and self-directed, he tends toward passivity and vagueness. If she is preternaturally mature, he is happily not.”

This escalating failure to socialize men is having dramatic and deleterious effects on American culture. “If being unmarried is a measure of “adultescence,” writes Cross, “single American men are seven times more likely to go to prison than married men, four times more likely to be victims of violent crime and twice as likely to be in an accident than the married. Bachelors are much less likely to hold a full time job (62 vs. 75 per cent). It is also true that single American men tend to be less well off than married ones (only 21 per cent earning more than $50,000 compared with 49 per cent of their married counterparts)…. In sum, men remain longer in the gang, that is, the irresponsible life. They are allowed, almost obliged, to cling to their teenage mindsets. Some cynics (or evolutionary anthropologists) might just say that men have always been boys-oversexed, irresponsible, self-indulgent, and prone to violent competitiveness. This ignores, however, centuries of culture, especially the civilizing efforts of our Victorian [i.e. Christian] predecessors that created models of maturity for men. And while these efforts were not always successful and often were tainted with hypocrisy, they did produce many men who were not boys. Something has changed.”

So what has changed? What is the cause of this historic male role amnesia? What forces cut the mooring lines for men and set them adrift? Three social factors have been cited: the feminist movement and its attendant sexual revolution, changing economic conditions that favor females, and a mass media that exploits and denigrates young men.

Theory #1: The feminist movement, the sexual revolution and its impact on male identity

On the evening of September 20, 1973, in the Houston Astrodome, 90 million Americans watched Billie Jean King defeat Bobby Riggs in tennis 6-4, 6-3, 6-3. If there ever were a tipping point in the battle of the sexes, this was it. As a young man coming of age in Southern California in the 60’s and early 70’s, watching a woman tennis pro soundly defeat a male tennis pro cemented in my mind the impression that life as I knew it was changing.

It seemed, as the song goes, that everything men could do, women could do as well or better. Women, I would learn, have better relationships, are less violent, go to college in greater numbers, raise children better, communicate better. The list goes on and on. Now, the only thing left for men, it seems, is football and certain forward combat positions in the military.

No longer were women confined to the preordained roles of housewife and mother. An entire horizon of possibilities awaited them. Marriage and children were simply options, not requirements.

“With the emergence of feminism, there was an ever-sharper break with the past-regarding everything from dating and marriage to child rearing and male domestic roles, as well as women’s access to jobs, education, and legal rights,” writes Gary Cross. The old order was fading away and, for women, a bright future seemed to await them.

That old order included the old sexual mores of chastity and marital fidelity. With the arrival of the pill, women no longer had to fear unwanted pregnancy. With education and the marketplace opening up to them, economic independence was now within their reach. And with no fault divorce making the act of dissolving a marriage bond almost as easy as picking up milk at the local store, permanent unions seemed like an anachronistic hangover from the past.

For men, on the other hand, the future was not so clear, perhaps because their past was being reinterpreted by radical feminists. Their former male role models were patriarchs, heads of households epitomized by the sitcom, Father Knows Best. But with the rise of feminism, those role models were viewed as oppressive to women. But if this was the case, then how were men supposed to relate to their future wives and children?

Men have replaced marriage with the hook up and the absentee father

Increasingly, the answer men have given to this question has been, “We won’t relate to them at all.” More and more, young men have jettisoned marriage and fatherhood in favor of the hook up and the absentee father. “Minimized by cultural forces and stripped of the roles that have defined males for centuries, men have been delivered of the expectation that they behave honorably toward the physically more-vulnerable sex and the dependent children she bears,” writes Kathleen Parker.

The result is a view of manhood that resembles some kind of amorphous sludge. As Kay Hymowitz observes, “A girl walks into a bar. A guy gives her the once-over. Is he only interested in one thing, as the old saying used to go? Or is he soul mate material? Is he looking for a friends-with-benefits arrangement or for romance? He could have a girlfriend, a wife, an ex-wife, children, or a spreadsheet. Does he like women or is he gay? Worse, is he one of those guys so filled with bitterness that he hangs around websites like Nomarriage.com, MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way), or Eternal Bachelor (“Give Modern Women the Husband They Deserve. None.”)?”

And “None” has become pretty much the default option for many women. Having clawed their way to the top of so many social indicators, women stand up, brush themselves off, look around and ask, “Where did the men go?”

As Abigail Trafford laments in an op-ed piece in the Washington Post, “We didn’t want to push men aside. We wanted to join them in the upper deck and enjoy the synergy of merging our talents and responsibilities-in both the public and private spheres of life. After all, we love men. They are our partners, the fathers of our children. We worked hard to get rid of labels that branded women the fragile sex and men the favored sex. We never imagined that society would swap the labels.”

Theory #2: Changing economic conditions that favor females

It’s hard to believe now, but prior to 1970 the majority of households in America were comprised of a husband/breadwinner, along with a wife/homemaker and their dependent children.

I grew up in just such a home. My father graduated from high school and took a job as an errand boy for a large California title insurance firm located in downtown Los Angeles. Over the next forty-five years, Dad worked his way up to become a major executive in his company. During that time, he married my mother and had five children.

On his one salary my father provided for himself along with his wife and children, financed a retirement that spanned thirty-four years until he died at the age of 99, and left a significant inheritance for me and my siblings. Besides all this, Dad tithed ten per cent to his church his entire life. We weren’t rich. We weren’t poor. We were solidly middle class.

Boys used to have a clear understanding of what it took to be a man

Family scenarios similar to mine played out in households all over America in the first half of the twentieth century. With a high school education, a man could get a well paying job, usually in manufacturing or construction, marry in his early twenties and raise a family all on his income alone.

In short, the road to manhood was quick and clearly defined. “Men married young, as early as a median age of 22.5 years in 1956. It seemed that almost every man bought into the provider’s role-few sought to prolong their independence or the playful self-indulgence of the teenager,” writes Gary Cross.

Not so today. Now families comprised of a father as the sole breadwinner, a stay-at-home mother, and dependent children make up only twenty per cent of American households. No longer are families dependent on men alone.

Four factors changed American family structure

Four factors converged to cause this tectonic change in family structure. First, women who had been hired to replace drafted men in their jobs during WWII, continued working outside the home following the war. Then, in the next three decades, what began as a trickle turned into a full fledged flood as women entered the workforce in droves.

Second, manufacturing jobs, the traditional male source of high paying work, were “outsourced” oversees. American males were now competing with cheap foreign labor. The dream of earning a “living” wage, i.e. of being able to support a family on one salary alone, quickly faded, especially for men with only a high school education.

Third, the American economy, hammered as it was in its manufacturing sector, shifted its focus to a knowledge and service based economy, sectors that favor women.

And fourth, women are now outpacing men in higher education. “Between 1975 and 2006, the percentage of women with at least a college degree increased from 18.6 to 34.2 percent. Men barely budged: their numbers went from 26.8 percent to 27.9,” writes Kay Hymowitz.

As a result, men, once the financial backbone of the American family, have become more or less superfluous. Wives and mothers can leave a marriage at any time, and often do simply because they can afford to. “With women moving ahead in an advanced economy, provider husbands and fathers are now optional, and the character qualities men had needed to play their role-fortitude, stoicism, courage, fidelity-are obsolete and even a little embarrassing” writes Hymowitz.

Theory #3. Mass media and consumer culture

As a young boy growing up in the fifties and sixties, it wasn’t difficult to find male role models on TV worthy of my emulation. There was Jim Anderson, the affable father in Father Knows Best, Andy Taylor, the bemused sheriff and single dad in The Andy Griffith Show, Steve Douglas, another single dad in My Three Sons, Ward Cleaver, the wise father in Leave it to Beaver, and Mike Brady, the head of the bunch in The Brady Bunch.

All of these men had several things in common: they were family men, they held jobs and provided for their families, they loved their wife (when they had one) and their children, they were on top of their game, and, most of all, they were respected.

Dysfunctional male characters dominate TV

It’s been downhill for males on TV ever since. One can think, for example of Al Bundy, the loser father in Married With Children, Archie Bunker, the bigot clod in All in the Family, Arthur Spooner, the anger management dropout dad in King of Queens, and Ray Barone, the clueless and directionless husband and father in Everybody Loves Raymond. Safe to say, none of these men are worthy of our respect or admiration.

This coarsening view of males in society has been the trend throughout American culture over the last fifty years, from John Wayne to Adam Sandler, from Carey Grant (in his roles) to Hugh Grant.

Observes Kathleen Parker, “In film and music, men are variously portrayed as dolts, bullies, brutes, deadbeats, rapists, sexual predators, and wife beaters. Even otherwise easygoing family men in sitcoms are invariably cast as, at best, bumbling, dimwitted fools…. At the same time that men have been ridiculed in the public square, the importance of fatherhood has been diminished along with other traditionally male roles of father, protector, and provider, which are increasingly viewed as regressive manifestations of an outmoded patriarchy.” The result, Parker writes, is that “Young men now in their twenties have never experienced a culture in which men were respected or expected to be gentlemen.”

The mass media message is clear: men today never really mature because there isn’t any actual need for them to do so. No one depends on them. No one needs them. The only thing left for men to do is seek to maintain their youth by playing at life. And consumer culture has been happy to oblige.

A desire for perpetual youth results in perpetual immaturity

“Makers of modern consumer and media culture have gradually learned to feed on this rejection of past models of maturity and the desire to return to or retain childhood. In turn, they have figured out how to sell back to men this longed-for image of perpetual youth. Over time, this makes youth, once a life stage, into a permanent and highly desirable lifestyle,” writes renowned cultural historian, Gary Cross. The result is that our culture now openly mocks men at almost every turn.

These, then, are three causes for modern male immaturity often cited by commentators: the feminist movement and sexual revolution, changing economic conditions, and mass media.

Few provide a solution to the problem

The problem, however, is that few of those following the decline of the modern male offer solid solutions to the problem. And when they do, the solutions they propose are vague, such as appeals to tradition (Parker: “Traditional values are traditional for a reason. They have survived the passage of time because they work.”) or altruism (Cross: “We must recognize that as adults we have responsibilities to our partners, families, and communities beyond our own need for experience and pleasure.”)

One would think that an accurate and incisive analysis of the problem with contemporary men would hold within it the seeds of an answer. Could it be that these social causes of male immaturity, as important as they are, are not sufficient to explain the origin of the problem?

I believe the answer to that question is yes. To understand the real reason why men today are acting out as they are, we must look on a more fundamental level, the level of world view-what men believe about reality in general and how their belief system has changed over time.

Theory #4: My view - The accepted materialistic world view encourages men to act like “animals.”

One hundred years ago, the divorce rate in America was 5%, out of wedlock births were almost unheard of, and cohabiting couples were considered scandalous. This reflected a pattern that had existed for four hundred years in western civilization, starting with the legalization of divorce during the Protestant Reformation.

True, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the topic of sex was taboo, women had back alley abortions and a significant per cent of marriages were brutal. But there was a general consensus about what a family should look like and how men were supposed to act.

The process of becoming an adult man itself was clear and simple: Young men coming of age worked the farm or got a job in the city, married, had children and supported their families. That was it. Adolescence was a brief sojourn on the way to manhood and family life. And while a man’s life could be washboard hard and fleetingly brief, it had this to say for it: it was straightforward and productive.

Judeo-Christian beliefs provided a foundation for society

Buttressing all of this was a set of Judeo Christian beliefs and values that formed the bedrock for a coherent and predictable society. Although theism was no longer accepted dogma in intellectual circles at the beginning of the twentieth century, it still permeated and influenced much of American culture.

For the average man on the street, God was an omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent Person, holy and supreme, someone to be feared and whose moral law as revealed in Scripture was to be obeyed.

Out of this respect for God’s law came a sense of duty to fulfill one’s responsibility to one’s wife and children. In his marriage and family a man corralled his passions and reconciled himself with the laws of God. Freedom wasn’t seen primarily as the ability fulfill oneself, but rather the ability to worship and serve this God according to one’s conscience.

And conscience reigned supreme. The fear of spending eternity in hell kept most men in line. Sex outside of marriage often resulted in intense personal guilt, not to mention the approbation of the community. A man’s church, his Bible and his culture were univocal: fornication and adultery were sins worthy of damnation.

The result of a culture with a broadly intact family structure and men who played an integral role in supporting it was an upward mobility among the poor. While a married couple themselves might live in poverty in the early 1900s, their generally stable relationship and faith in God formed the template and rationale for their children to marry, sacrifice and be able to work themselves out of poverty.

My own family history is an example of this upward mobility. My father’s parents were poor immigrants from rural, sub-artic Norway. They came to America through Ellis Island, my grandfather at the age of five with his parents in 1880 and my grandmother at the age of twenty-six in 1902.

They met, married, had a family and lived near the poverty line for most of their lives. But their five children went on to build healthy families and achieve the American dream of owning their own home. These in turn had children and grandchildren who, for the most part, also established healthy families and did even better.

Among the descendants of my grandparents are teachers, professors, a land developer, a test pilot, an insurance executive, an engineer, missionaries, a pastor, physicians, artists, computer specialists, and business managers.

But now the Judeo-Christian worldview has been marginalized in our culture

Now fast forward to the present. In the last one hundred years, the Judeo-Christian world view has been acid washed almost entirely from western civilization. The Bible has been stripped of its authority and the church has been demoted to the sidelines, leaving only a faint patina of Christianity layered on the culture.

In America, the Christian religion is simply one among many now. In its place philosophical materialism and its scientific handmaid, Darwinism, reign supreme. Everything, it seems, can be explained by matter, energy, chance and natural law, resulting in cultural reductionism.

People, once regarded as immortal souls created in the image of God, are simply the end result of millions of years of chance mutations and natural selection; just one more species of animal — brilliant, creative and amazingly social — but animals none the less.

The world itself is only a pinprick in an unimaginably vast universe. And morality is no longer founded on the bedrock of a holy God, but rather on utilitarian and always malleable “values”: the social expression of whatever works, “a biological adaptation no less than are hands and feet and teeth,” as philosopher Michael Ruse described the human propensity to moralize.

If you tell a man he has no ultimate meaning, then he will act that way

Given the current intellectual milieu, if one wonders why men act the way they do today, consider this: men are nothing if not logical. And if you tell men over and over again for a long enough period of time that life has no meaning, that all there really is to our existence is immediate physical gratification and that they are just animals, well, pretty soon they will start acting as if — you got it — life has no meaning, that all there is to their existence is immediate physical gratification and that they are, in fact, just animals and should act like they are just animals.

We ought not be surprised, therefore, when they treat women like they’re just animals too. What logical reason do men have to behave otherwise? Kay Hymowitz calls young single men who accept the modern world view and have, consequently, a Darwinian ideology “dating Darwinists” and about them she writes, “Rejecting all manners that enshrined respect and care in an area of human interaction rife with opportunities for pain and humiliation, dating Darwinists unapologetically endorse ruthlessness and deception. ‘You see, Nature doesn’t care about hurting people’s feelings,’ explains dating coach Mike Pilinski…. ‘It cares ONLY about reproductive success in order to keep those precious DNA molecules traveling forward in Time.'”

Laments Kathleen Parker, “Once sex is free of all considerations except what pleasure it brings in that moment, then what? Well, we’re nothing but beasts.” She goes on to quote Theodore Dalrymple: “It is precisely the envelopment of sex (and all other natural functions) with an aura of deeper meaning that makes man human and distinguishes him from the rest of animate nature. To remove that meaning, to reduce sex to biology…is to return man to a level of primitive behavior of which we have no record in human history. All animals have sex, but only man makes love. When sex is deprived of the meaning with which only the social conventions, religious taboos, and personal restraints so despised by sexual revolutionaries…can infuse it, all that is left is the ceaseless-and ultimately boring and meaningless-search for the transcendent orgasm.”

Think this is an exaggeration? One estimate puts the percentage of men currently involved in pornography on a regular basis at 70 per cent. “Everyday, 260 new porn sites go online. In 2005, Time put U.S. porn sales at $20 billion annually,” notes Parker. “The mainstreaming of pornography is no longer a concern,” she writes, “but a reality. Once the world of lowlifes, back alleys, and organized crime, pornography has morphed into a family business where anybody can be a star."

Without any objective values, men descend into the sewer

Devoid of any transcendent values to halt the process, our culture in general, and men in particular, are rapidly descending into the sewer. Recent episodes of mainstream, prime time TV shows increasingly display frontal nudity (The Office and America’s Got Talent are two examples) and Clint Eastwood openly refers to unspeakably vulgar sexual acts in a prime time, nationally broadcast speech at the Republican Convention.

The result is increasing chaos in American family life. Want to see what American families are going to be like in twenty years? Then look at the African American community. Writes Joy Jones, “Often what happens in black America is a sign of what the rest of America can eventually expect.”

She then cites Andrew Hacker in “Mismatch: The Growing Gulf between Women and Men: “Andrew Hacker noted that the structure of white families is evolving in the direction of that of black families of the 1960s. In 1960, 67 percent of black families were headed by a husband and wife, compared to 90.9 percent for whites. By 2000, the figure for white families had dropped to 79.8 percent. Births to unwed white mothers were 22.5 percent in 2001, compared to 2.3 percent in 1960.” Today, 73 percent of black children are born outside of marriage and we have no reason to think that the white population will not eventually catch up.

It is the poor who suffer the most

Sadly, it is the poor who suffer most from the tectonic cultural change in world view that has taken place in the past 100 years. Marriage in lower class America is in shambles. Dad has gone AWOL, resulting in single moms with dependent children becoming the norm for families in poor neighborhoods.

No longer do second and third generations of poor people work themselves out of poverty. Rather, the poor have become a permanent underclass, virtual wards of the state with little hope of ever escaping poverty.

I personally lived in inner city Los Angeles — in a black community — and inner city Dallas — in a white community — as a young adult and observed this cycle of poverty and family disintegration first hand. Without a moral, theistic world view and a culture that supported it, impoverished young adults were virtually guaranteed a future of single parent families, bad schools, violence, drugs, alcohol, gangs and prison.

A second demographic dramatically affected by the ascendancy of a materialistic world view is men. On the one hand, women carry with them a natural accountability system called a womb, mitigating some of the effects of philosophical materialism. The knowledge that unplanned and unprotected sex can lead to conception, nine months of gestation, birth and dependent children — not to mention disease — tends to focus a woman’s mind. Even in a universe perceived as godless, babies still have to be fed.

The reality that men are quickly becoming less dependable and less agreeable to parenting and supporting the children they sire forces women to plan ahead for theirs and their children’s future by making sure they get the education they need. And the ticking time bomb of future infertility gives it all a sense of urgency for women.

In the new worldview, sex is just an animal function

Not so men. In the new universe, men have been inculcated with the attitude that sex is merely an animal function. “Their problem,” observes Kay Hymowitz, “is coming of age in a culture without reliable conventions to tame the raw egotism and roughness of nature’s mating dance. It’s all about sex anyway, a lot of guys conclude, so why dress it all up in silly manners?”

So men shrug off normal family relationships like sweaty socks and become completely immersed in their selves. As a result, they take American individualism to its extreme conclusion: “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for me”. Why should men sacrifice for women and children if there isn’t any real need for men anyway, if society only winks at their mutiny, and if there are no moral codes to condemn their behavior?

“Today,” laments Gary Cross, “in some circles there is a veritable rejection of maturity in all of its meanings. Living for today, disdainful of pretense and formality, ever open to new thrills and experiences, but also mocking convention in celebrations of amoral violent fantasy, crude vulgarity, and unrestrained appetite, the boy-man makes a fetish of the ‘cool.’ He turns maturity into a joke, a pitiful loss to be avoided at almost all costs."

The result: an increasingly depraved culture, with men leading the pack

The tragic result of this degrading trend is that our once noble western institutions are being transformed into little more than “animal houses” – stables for men in heat. A president gets caught literally with his pants down engaging in oral sex in the oval office. A famous general and head of the CIA resigns over an affair with his biographer. A California governor gets his house maid pregnant and raises the love child in the presence of his unsuspecting wife. The SEC misses massive bank fraud because its examiners are watching porn online for hours on end. A football coach besmirches the reputation of an entire university for looking the other way while an underling engages in pedophilia in the school showers. A major Christian denomination pays out hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements for not reporting pedophilia in its own ranks. The head of a national religious organization gets caught having sex with his male masseuse…. And on and on and on it goes.

It would be nice to think that these examples are just the dalliances of famous and powerful men; that ordinary men behave better. But drive down any suburban street in America and the same sad stories can be found — in spades. All we have to do is look at the content of the TV programs, the movies, the music, the magazines, the novels and the online websites that we demand be given us. The same animal house effluent is spewing forth from every mass media orifice. Why? Because this is the logical conclusion of what our modern culture believes to be true: we are just animals, so why not act like it?

A mass zombie invasion

For Christians, contemporary society resembles a mass zombie invasion: legions of soulless people lurching forward on sclerotic legs, jaws slacked, eyes glazed, arms stretched out searching for something — anything — to devour, controlled by some unknown evil, and oblivious to the death and decay that dwells within them and the destruction and despair that lies around them. And in the crevasses and fissures of the wasteland these ghouls are creating hide the Christians, crouched down like roly-poly  bugs, squatting on their heels, chins glued to their knees, eyes cringed shut, ears muted with trembling hands as they wait for the jeremiads they’ve lobbed into the advancing horde to explode. But still they come. And out of holes that no longer resemble mouths are heard barely audible chants at first, set to a macabre rendition of a long forgotten children’s tune. But as they continue their inexorable march, the song grows louder and clearer until it reaches unbearable decibels: “We’re all just animals after all…. WE’RE ALL JUST ANIMALS AFTER ALL!”

One might think that this garish vision is just the disgruntled screed of an exhausted evangelical who has been on the losing side of one too many culture wars. But in the very recent past my community has witnessed-all within a few minutes’ drive of my neighborhood-the mass killings at Columbine High, parishioners murdered while worshiping at church (some ushers at our church not only pass out bulletins now, they’re also secretly packing heat and scanning the congregation with furtive eyes, looking for the next mass murderer), another mass killing at a theater, an eleven year old girl abducted, killed, dismembered and then abandoned in a black trash bag by the side of a nearby road, and a student arrested for plotting to kill the President, along with as many children as possible on Halloween (he also possessed blueprints of my daughter’s high school).

Men have become nihilists

Not surprisingly, all of these individuals are men. The philosophical materialism men find so attractive has a certain inextricable logic to it that ends in nihilism. “Some people just want to watch the world burn down, and I’m one of them,” explained our neighborhood wannabe presidential assassin. One might be impressed if this were the kernel of an original thought, but he was simply paraphrasing The Dark Night: “Some men just want to watch the world burn.”

Nihilism oozes through the minds of more and more men like a slow moving sludge seeking the lowest sewer. Truth be told, the day is coming when we will look back on our time with this wistful hope: if only men did act like they were just animals it would be an improvement. Even animals treat their own better than the way these men do.

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A Men's Ministry Men Want to Know -

Our Protocol: What Local Church Men's Ministries are Supposed to Do

The importance of knowing and obeying a protocol

When it comes to the topic of police responding to a mass shooting, it is all about them following this simple and clear protocol: do not wait for permission or backup, go in immediately and take down the shooter. Police officers are trained in this protocol in spite of the fact that, on average, “one third of the police officers who made that solo entry got shot.”3

Unfortunately, the 360 first responders to the shooter in Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas became the victims of groupthink and did not follow their protocol. Instead, they put their own safety ahead of the safety of the children and adults they were supposed to protect, resulting in the deaths of 19 children and two adults, and the wounding of 17 other children.

By comparison, on Monday of this week (October 24, 2022), a shooter in St. Louis entered Central Visual and Performing Arts High School with an AR-15-style rifle and 600 rounds of ammunition. He obviously intended to kill as many people as he could, just like the shooter at Robb Elementary School, and many other shooters before him. But in contrast to the first responders in Uvalde, the first responders in St. Louis followed their protocol, immediately entering the school and taking out the shooter within just a few minutes, risking their own lives in the process. The result: only one adult and one student died, with several others wounded.

Christian men have a protocol

Christian men in local church men’s ministries stand by passive and helpless while they witness a similar tragedy: American men experiencing a decades-long spiritual, moral, and social conflagration that negatively impacts all aspects of our culture. Local church men’s ministries can be God’s primary means by which this disaster that afflicts men can not only be slowed down and stopped, but reversed, if only we would obey our God-given “protocol.”

But like the first responders in Uvalde, Texas, we are not obeying our protocol. We shrug off our responsibility to properly respond to the male moral and social dysfunction we see around us and instead we isolate ourselves from it by creating our own little social bubbles – our men’s ministries – behind the four walls of our church buildings. Our focus is primarily on our own spiritual lives and our marriages and families, but we ignore our protocol and the outside world it is intended to reach.

So what is our protocol? To answer that question, I will first begin with the protocol God gave Judah as a way to respond to the moral and social declension the nation found itself in.

The nation of Judah’s protocol: Isaiah 1:17

The Bible states Judah’s protocol simply and clearly, and many times, in the Old Testament. Here is one example:

Learn to do right [lit. “good”]; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow. “Come now, let us settle the matter,” says the Lord. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool. Isaiah 1:17, 18 (Note: For other Old Testament references to God’s concern for widows and the fatherless, see Deuteronomy 1:18; 14:29; 16:11, 14; 24:17, 20, 21; 26:12, 13; Job 6:27; 24:3, 9, 21; 31:16-22; Psalm 10:14, 18; 68:5; 82:3; 94:4-7; 146:9; Proverbs 15:25; 23:10; Isaiah 1:23; 10:1, 2; Jeremiah 5:28; 7:6; 22:23; Ezekiel 22:7; Hosea 14:3; Zechariah 7:1-14; Malachi 3:5.)

In Isaiah 1:17, God gives Judah specific instructions about what he wants the nation to do (i.e., a protocol) as a response to their current perilous situation. Then, in verse 18, God explains what he will do if the nation follows their protocol. I want to develop these ideas by first starting with verse 18 and then working backwards to verse 17.

Isaiah 1:18 is not talking about personal salvation, but national transformation

“Come now, let us settle the matter,” says the LORD. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool.” Isaiah 1:18

I memorized this wonderful and amazing verse as a child. At the time, I was taught that it referred to my personal salvation; that when I placed my faith in Jesus Christ, God wiped all of my sin away and sees me as righteous in Christ Jesus. I am now “white as snow” in God’s sight.

Unfortunately, Isaiah 1:18 is not talking about my personal salvation – or anyone’s for that matter.

Of course, the Bible teaches in other places that at the moment of our salvation, God forgives us of all our sin. “To the one who does not work but trusts God who justifies the ungodly, their faith is credited as righteousness,” Paul writes in Romans 4:5. But personal salvation and forgiveness are not what Isaiah 1:18 is talking about.

What Isaiah 1:18 is talking about is national transformation. The reason we know this is from the context. “Woe to the sinful nation!” God says to Judah in verse 4. In verse 7, God again addresses his litany to the entire nation: “Your country is desolate, your cities burned with fire.” Then He turns his anger on Judah’s political leadership: “Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom,” (verse 10). God’s disgust with Judah even includes its religious leaders: “The multitude of your sacrifices, what are they to me?” says the Lord. “I have more than enough of burnt offerings, of rams and the fat of fattened animals” (verse 11).

In the first sixteen verses of Isaiah 1 God is making a case for judging the nation of Judah as a whole. The reason is because Judah has violated its covenant with God, the Mosaic covenant, which stipulated that if they kept his commandments, then God would allow them to dwell in the land that he promised them. But if they did not keep his commandments, then God would expel them from the land.

Unfortunately, because the nation did not keep their part of the covenant, God, as “prosecutor,” is about to haul the nation into “court” for judgement. But in verse 18, He is saying it is not too late, they can settle “out of court” and not go to trial: “Come now, let us settle the matter.”

What, then, does God want Israel to do in order to settle out of court and not be brought to judgment? We find the answer in the previous verse, Isaiah 1:17.

The concept of good works in the New Testament is based on Isaiah 1:17

In an important statement that all believers need to pay close attention to, God gives Judah His condition. “Learn to do good; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.”

The reason why this verse is so important is because it is the foundational verse for every reference to good works in the New Testament. Every time we read about good works in the New Testament, those statements are referencing Isaiah 1:17: “Learn to do good.” For example, Paul’s exhortation in Titus 3:14, “Let our people learn to do good, to meet pressing needs, that they may not be unfruitful,” is a direct application of Isaiah 1:17.

Therefore, to fully comprehend what the New Testament writers are talking about, we must first have a clear understanding of Isaiah 1:17. To do that, we need to look at the three main parts of the verse.

• “Learn to do good.” – That is, doing good doesn’t come naturally. It is learned behavior, not innate behavior. We must learn from God himself what the good is that he wants us to do and then do it. The following is what God means by “doing good.”
• “Seek justice. Defend the oppressed.” – These are two general statements in the abstract that describe what doing good is and what it is to accomplish: make sure people are being treated fairly and equally (justice), and focus especially on people who are not being treated fairly and equally (the oppressed).
• “Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.” – Here we have specific examples that concretely illustrate the previous two general statements. Some examples of the intended beneficiaries of “doing good” who are often oppressed are the fatherless (or orphans, the Hebrew word can be translated both ways) and widows.

To summarize: The nation of Judah is in deep trouble. Their nation is completely debased, their political leaders are corrupt, and their religious practice is vacuous (Isaiah 1:1-16). Consequently, God is about to judge them for breaking their covenant with him by removing them from the land he promised them and brought them to. But He offers Judah a way out (1:17). He promises them that if they “learn to do good,” – i.e., take up the cause of  the oppressed, such as the fatherless and the widow – then he will completely transform their putrid culture into one that is “white as snow” and pure as “wool” (1:18).

Wow! That is quite a promise! God says all Judah had to do to escape judgment was make it a general practice of finding widows and fatherless children and then taking responsibility for their wellbeing. If they did that, he would completely transform their culture.

We can summarize Judah’s protocol this way: respond to the corruption in your nation by pleading the cause of your widows and fatherless children. That was it. All they had to do for God to transform their culture was to find fatherless children and widows, then defend them and plead their cause. That was their protocol. It may sound simplistic in the extreme, but that is what the passage is saying.

Has Isaiah 1:18 ever actually happened?

So here’s my question: Has Isaiah 1:18 ever actually happen? Do we have specific historic examples of anyone following the protocol and pleading the cause of someone in distress, like a fatherless child or widow, and then God in turn totally and completely transforming their culture?

The answer is both no and yes. No, it did not happen for Judah after Isaiah recorded this protocol. Judah did not follow its protocol – they did not “settle out of court” – and consequently God evicted the nation from the land.

But we do have examples of individuals obeying this protocol prior to this time and then seeing God transform their culture after they obeyed their protocol. In reality, in Isaiah 1:18 God is simply summarizing what had previously already happened.

Here are three examples of how God had already transformed Jewish culture prior to Isaiah 1:18 because someone had pleaded the cause of someone else in distress, like a widow or fatherless child.

Example #1 of God transforming Jewish culture because of obedience to the protocol – Judah pleading the cause of Benjamin (Genesis 44:14-34)

“So now, if the boy [Benjamin] is not with us when I [Judah] go back to your servant my father [Jacob], and if my father, whose life is closely bound up with the boy’s life, sees that the boy isn’t there, he will die. Your servants will bring the gray head of our father down to the grave in sorrow. Your servant guaranteed the boy’s safety to my father. I said, ‘If I do not bring him back to you, I will bear the blame before you, my father, all my life!’ Now then, please let your servant remain here as my lord’s slave in place of the boy, and let the boy return with his brothers. How can I go back to my father if the boy is not with me? No! Do not let me see the misery that would come on my father.” Genesis 44:30-34

This story of Judah offering himself in place of his brother Benjamin,(who is about to be taken captive as a virtual “orphan” in Egypt the way his brother Joseph was), and thereby fulfilling his vow to his father Jacob to protect Benjamin, is the moral climax to the Book of Genesis.

It is also God’s answer to Cain’s question after Cain murdered his brother Abel in chapter four: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” God’s answer is, “Yes you are. Judah is your example of how to do that.” Judah offering to sacrifice himself for his brother Benjamin marks a moral turning point for the sons of Jacob and becomes a starting point for the rapid propagation of the nation of Israel in Egypt over the next four hundred years.

Judah obeyed the protocol and God, in turn, transformed Jacob’s sons from jealous, fratricidal liars to men who confessed their sin to their brother Joseph and to their father Jacob. As a result, the family became “white as snow.”

Example #2 of God transforming Jewish culture because of obedience to the protocol – Ruth pleading the cause of Naomi (Ruth 1:1-22)

“Look,” said Naomi, “your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods. Go back with her. But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.” When Naomi realized that Ruth was determined to go with her, she stopped urging her.

The Book of Ruth records events that happened during the time of the Judges – a period of spiraling spiritual, moral, social and political decline for the nation of Israel. The Book of Ruth references this period in its first verse, “In the days when the judges ruled…”. But then, in the last verse of the book of Ruth, we see a hint at the coming reign of King David – “Obed fathered Jesse, and Jesse fathered David.” The life of David, and especially his ascension to the throne, represents a period where the nation excelled, for the most part, spiritually, morally, socially and politically.

Therefore, the Book of Ruth is answering an important question: How did this happen? How did the nation make this amazing transition from the moral and social chaos of the judges to the reign of David and the Davidic Covenant?

The answer the book of Ruth gives to this question is Ruth’s pledge in chapter 1 to care for her mother-in-law, Naomi, a widow. That one pledge, and how Ruth fulfilled it and obeyed the protocol, began what would become a complete transformation of the entire nation.

Example #3 of God transforming Jewish culture because of obedience to the protocol – Jonathan pleading the cause of David

Saul’s anger flared up at Jonathan and he said to him, “You son of a perverse and rebellious woman! Don’t I know that you have sided with the son of Jesse to your own shame and to the shame of the mother who bore you? As long as the son of Jesse lives on this earth, neither you nor your kingdom will be established. Now send someone to bring him to me, for he must die!” “Why should he be put to death? What has he done?” Jonathan asked his father. But Saul hurled his spear at him to kill him. Then Jonathan knew that his father intended to kill David. Jonathan got up from the table in fierce anger; on that second day of the feast he did not eat, because he was grieved at his father’s shameful treatment of David. 1 Samuel 20:30-34

It was clear to everyone in Israel except Saul that God was blessing David and not Saul. The implication being that David would eventually ascend to the throne of Israel. But that meant Jonathan, Saul’s son, would not be the next king. Nevertheless, Jonathan set aside his own personal ambitions, made a covenant with David to protect him, and then “plead the cause of David” before his father, risking his life in the process. Jonathan’s support of David eventually cost him his life.

Jonathan obeyed the protocol and God, in turn, established the Davidic dynasty that would eventually usher in the messiah, Jesus Christ.

All three of these examples of OT believers obeying their protocol have important elements in common

• They all involve making and keeping a covenant: Judah made and kept his covenant with his father, Jacob. Ruth made and kept her covenant with Naomi. Jonathan made and kept his covenant with David.
• They all involve someone intervening on behalf of someone in deep distress. Benjamin was about to be taken captive in Egypt. Naomi faced an uncertain future of poverty and starvation in Israel as a widow. David faced assassination by Saul.
• They are all examples of the Old Testament concept of hesed love as the motivating factor for their actions. Hesed love, or “covenant-keeping love,” is when someone voluntarily obligates themself with a sworn covenant to protect and bless someone else. (For a more thorough treatment of the concept of hesed, see my post Hesed: The Misunderstood Love.)
• They all involve the one who made their covenant to benefit another risking their life and property to keep it. In Jonathan’s case, it resulted in him dying.
• All three examples include a foil. Benjamin’s foil is Joseph, who exemplifies how we should not treat someone in distress. Ruth’s foil is Orpah, who exemplifies a kind of love that falls short of Ruth’s love for Naomi. And Jonathan’s foil is Saul, who exemplifies the spirit of Cain when he attempts to kill David.
• And finally, as has already been noted, all three played critical roles in the restoration of righteousness in the life and history of the Jews as a race and as a nation, thus illustrating the power of the protocol in Isaiah 1:18. Just one person obeying the protocol is the equivalent of a spiritual atomic bomb being detonated in the world.

So Isaiah 1:18 is both a promise of what God would do in the future if Judah obeyed the protocol, as well as a summary of what God had done in the past because certain individuals had already obeyed the protocol.

But is Judah’s protocol also our protocol? After all, Judah was under a different covenant (the Mosaic Covenant) than believers are today (the New Covenant). The answer is, yes, it is also our protocol. The reason is because Israel’s protocol perfectly fulfills, not only the Mosaic Covenant, but also our New Commandment that accompanies our New Covenant. The New Commandment simply, but radically, tells believers to love each other the same way our savior has loved us (John 13:34-35). And since believing widows, single mothers, and fatherless children are often the neediest in our congregations, our New Commandment has special application to them.

Examples #4, #5, and #6: How God will transform any culture when believers obey their protocol – John taking Jesus’ mother Mary, a widow and single mother, into his care, the early church pleading the cause of its widows, and Paul applying the protocol to Gentile believers

Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to her, “Woman, here is your son,” and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” From that time on, this disciple took her into his home. John 19:25-27

To be clear, the atoning death of Christ, and people coming to faith in Him, is what transforms cultures. But the reason this is so is because that faith has a practical outcome, or at least should have a practical outcome (Ephesians 2:8-10). Even at the cross, we see an emphasis on this practicality. The last act that Jesus did before he died was to plead the cause of a widow and single mother – His mother, Mary (John 19:25-27). By entrusting His mother to John, Jesus guaranteed her well being and provided an example for how his disciples were to follow the protocol.

And follow they did. From its very beginning, the church took up the cause of the widowed (and others) in their midst. We see this obedience to their protocol among Jewish believers in Acts 2:44-45, 4:32-35, 6:1-4, and among Gentile believers in Acts 20:32-35 Galatians 2:10; 1 Timothy 5; Titus 3:14; et al. The result? God, through the church, completely transformed its culture. More on this in a minute.

Example #7 – Jacqueline and Raleigh Roush followed their protocol and took up the cause of their dying neighbor

My seventh example is a modern one, and it is still ongoing. In my first church in Hitchcock, Texas, a dear couple by the name of Jacqueline and Raleigh Roush took on the care of an elderly neighbor on their block. His children, who lived nearby, were ignoring him in his time of greatest need. So every day, Jacqueline cooked their neighbor a meal and she and Raleigh took it to him and checked in on him. They did this consistently until the day he died.

Jacqueline and Raleigh’s example made a profound impact on me as a young pastor. Their love and care for their neighbor was one reason why I began this ministry to the widowed and single parents, a ministry that now reaches around the world.

So there you have it. Scripture gives us a clear protocol, and we have specific, concrete examples of how it works. If we want to see God transform our culture from the cesspool that it is, follow the protocol: find a widow, a fatherless child, an orphan, or anyone else who has a pressing need, and plead their cause the way Judah pleaded the cause of Benjamin, Ruth the cause of Naomi, John the cause of Mary, the early church the cause of its widows, and Jacqueline and Raleigh Roush the cause of their neighbor.

Now I want to go back to the topic of how the early church obeyed its protocol and look at it more thoroughly. By doing so we will learn some important lessons about the process by which God will use our obedience to our protocol to transform our culture.

Our protocol: why the early church obsessed about its widows

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. James 1:27

When reading about the history of the early church in the book of Acts, or when perusing the letters the Apostles wrote to their churches scattered around the Northeastern Mediterranean, it doesn’t take long to notice the importance the church placed on meeting the needs of widows and others in their midst.

As early as Acts 2, where we have a glowing account of the first days of the early church, we see a strong hint at the presence of a significant widows ministry when we read, “They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need” (2:45).

Later, in Acts 4, that hint is repeated. “There were no needy persons among them,” we are told (4:34). This lack of need had to include widows, for in those days they were most often the neediest persons of all.

But what is hinted at in Acts 2 and 4 becomes explicit in Acts 6, when the Hellenistic Jews complained that “their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food.” The result? The institution of the office of Deacon.

This emphasis on meeting the needs of widows continues throughout the New Testament (i.e., Acts 20:32-35; Galatians 2:10; James 1:27; 1 Timothy 5; Titus 3:14; 1 John 3:16-18).

But the question is why? Why did the early church have such a huge emphasis on meeting the needs of its widows and other destitute people? There are at least two reasons:

First, as we have seen above, the early church saw their ministry to their widows and others with pressing needs as proof of their obedience to God’s protocol as reflected in Isaiah 1:17 and in the other massive number of commands to serve and protect widows in the Old Testament.

Second, they saw their ministry to their widows as critical to having a positive testimony in their communities, which in turn provided a foundation for effective evangelism. In other words, their widow’s ministry was their WOW! Factor. We see this process unfold in the summary statements that follow the accounts of the widows ministry in Acts 2, 5, and 6: “…enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord was adding to their number daily those who were being saved” (Acts 2:47); “…they were highly regarded by the people. …More and more men and women believed in the Lord and were added to their number” (5:13, 14); “So the word of God spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly, and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith” (6:7). Paul summarized the relationship between meeting the needs of widows and evangelism in Titus 3:14: “Let our people learn to engage in good deeds, to meet pressing needs; that they may not be unfruitful” (Titus 3:14).

We can summarize the progress the early church made in obeying its protocol and the results that it experienced this way: The early church obeyed God’s clear and explicit commands in the Old Testament to meet the needs of its widows. This obedience resulted in the church having favor among the larger external community. This favor in turn resulted in people coming to the Lord. As more and more people came to the Lord, they reduced poverty in their midst even more, thereby proving the efficacy of the love of Christ, resulting in the transformation of their entire culture.

Pretty simple stuff: Obediently serving widows (the protocol) = Favor in the general population (The WOW! Factor) = Lots of people getting saved (Evangelism) = Transformation of the culture (Saltiness).

So for the church, our protocol is also, like God’s protocol for Judah, a summary of what God has done in and through the church in the past as well as a promise of what God will do in and through the church now.

The problem is, obedience to our protocol and its resulting progression is generally absent in America’s churches today. The reason why is because we have substituted something else for our protocol: the good family man agenda.

Why the current emphasis in men’s ministry on marriage and family is not sufficient obedience to our divinely ordained protocol

When one reads current men’s ministry books and other publications, it doesn’t take long to notice that there is precious little emphasis on good works and no emphasis at all on ministry to widows and other believers with long term pressing needs. This in spite of the fact that these two topics occupy much space in the New Testament. Modern men’s ministry is ignoring its protocol, the protocol given to both Judah and the church.

In its place, the modern men’s ministry movement has an entirely different agenda, one that stresses the importance of building strong Christian marriages and families. By keeping our “focus on the family,” the thinking goes, men’s ministry will strengthen churches and rejuvenate our culture. This family centric agenda has formed the core of men’s ministry for the last fifty years.

Now I want to make it clear that I support marriage and family and ministries in the church that are devoted to them. As a pastor, I placed a strong emphasis on marriage and family. The books I had on these topics occupied four feet of shelf space in my library. And I spent many hours over a period of twenty years counseling couples whose marriages were in trouble.

I am also happily married to the woman of my dreams and we have a wonderful family. All of our children have made professions of faith and when they and their families get together with us for birthdays and holidays – all four generations of us – we have a blast.

I am just saying that upholding marriage and family as the ultimate expressions of our faith is putting them on too high of a pedestal. Having healthy marriages and families as our main agenda does not fulfill Christ’s command for us to love one another. As a result, this agenda has not changed our culture. Instead, things have gotten worse. Much worse.

One reason why the current men’s ministry focus on the family agenda has failed is because being a good family man is not unique to Christian men. I have known, and I am sure everyone else reading this has also known, many non-Christian men who are wonderful husbands and wonderful fathers. Their numbers may be decreasing, but there are still many of these men out there. Millions of them in fact. These men love their wives. They love their children. They work hard, obey the law, and pay their taxes. But they are not Christians.

Because being a good family man is not unique to Christianity, the men’s ministry movement has no WOW! Factor. There may be a Hmm-That’s-Nice Factor, but no WOW! Factor. (For additional thoughts on the good family man agenda in men’s ministry, see my post: “Jesus’ View of Marriage and Family“)

But the ultimate reason having a focus on the family agenda has not changed our culture is because it represents only partial obedience to the New Commandment: “A new commandment I give you, love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:34-35).

Clearly, the New Commandment has something more in mind that just loving our wives and children. The term “one another” repeats three times in this command. Therefore it is referring to men loving more people than simply their wives and children. Rather, they are to love each other, that is, fellow believers.

Prior to John 13:34-35, the term “one another” (allelos) occurs only once in the New Testament. But after John 13:34-35, it occurs dozens of times. In fact, many pastors often do a sermon series on the biblical “one anothers.” Here they are:

POSITIVE COMMANDS

• Love one another (John 13:34 – This command occurs at least 16 times)
• Be devoted to one another (Romans 12:10)
• Honor one another above yourselves (Romans 12:10)
• Live in harmony with one another (Romans 12:16)
• Build up one another (Romans 14:19; 1 Thessalonians 5:11)
• Be likeminded towards one another (Romans 15:5)
• Accept one another (Romans 15:7)
• Admonish one another (Romans 15:14; Colossians 3:16)
• Greet one another (Romans 16:16)
• Care for one another (1 Corinthians 12:25)
• Serve one another (Galatians 5:13)
• Bear one another’s burdens (Galatians 6:2)
• Forgive one another (Ephesians 4:2, 32; Colossians 3:13)
• Be patient with one another (Ephesians 4:2; Colossians 3:13)
• Speak the truth in love to one another (Ephesians 4:15, 25)
• Be kind and compassionate to one another (Ephesians 4:32)
• Speak to one another with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs (Ephesians 5:19)
• Submit to one another (Ephesians 5:21, 1 Peter 5:5)
• Consider one another better than yourselves (Philippians 2:3)
• Look to the interests of one another (Philippians 2:4)
• Bear with one another (Colossians 3:13)
• Teach one another (Colossians 3:16)
• Comfort one another (1 Thessalonians 4:18)
• Encourage one another (1 Thessalonians 5:11)
• Exhort one another (Hebrews 3:13)
• Stir up [provoke, stimulate] one another to love and good works (Hebrews 10:24)
• Show hospitality to one another (1 Peter 4:9)
• Employ the gifts that God has given us for the benefit of one another (1 Peter 4:10)
• Clothe yourselves with humility towards one another (1 Peter 5:5)
• Pray for one another (James 5:16)
• Confess your faults to one another (James 5:16)

NEGATIVE COMMANDS (how not to treat one another)

• Do not lie to one another (Colossians 3:9)
• Stop passing judgment on one another (Romans 14:13)
• If you keep on biting and devouring each other…you will destroy one another (Galatians 5:15)
• Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying one another (Galatians 5:26)
• Do not slander one another (James 4:11)
• Don’t grumble against one another (James 5:9)4

You will notice that there is nothing in this very long list about marriage and family. This is because the focus of the New Testament is on us loving one another, not on marriage and family. Of course, all of these commands include our wives and children. But the New Commandment is extra-familial in the sense that it is about much more than our wives and children. This is because the church, and our relationships in it, are eternal, but our marriages and families are temporal.

We can see this transition from an emphasis on marriage and family to an emphasis on relationships in the church as a family in Jesus’ ministry:

While Jesus was still talking to the crowd, his mother and brothers stood outside, wanting to speak to him. Someone told him, “Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you. He replied to him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” Pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother. (Matthew 12:46-50)

Then this transition progresses to actual implementation on the cross:

Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to her, “Woman, here is your son,”  and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” From that time on, this disciple took her into his home. (John 19:25-27)

And finally it reaches its ultimate expression in the widow’s list in 1 Timothy 5:1-16:

Do not rebuke an older man harshly, but exhort him as if he were your father. Treat younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity. Give proper recognition to those widows who are really in need...

Our protocol to plead the cause of the widow is the logical conclusion of the transition from an emphasis on earthly families to an emphasis on the church as our eternal family.  Pleading the cause of widows in the church is the highest expression of the church as our eternal family. When we instead have a focus on the family agenda it is no wonder that we ignore our widows and others with long term needs in the process.

These widows and others in the church whom we are to love as Christ loves us are people we are not related to by birth, but by faith. And that non-familial love is what marks us out as followers of Jesus Christ. Jesus says that this kind of love we are to have for each other is so unique that unbelievers automatically recognize us as his followers.

It is true that being a good family man is not unique to Christian men. But caring for a widow one is not related to except by faith is unique to Christian men. I do not know of any non-Christian man who has taken care of a widow he is not related to, unless he does so as a professional and gets paid to do it. But caring for a believing widow, or anyone else with a long term pressing need, and expecting nothing in return, now that is unique to Christians. That is our WOW! Factor.

What happens when we don’t follow our protocol and ignore our widows

I have a mind experiment for you. Imagine you are a member of the First Church of Jerusalem. It has been a few years now since the death, Resurrection, and Ascension of Jesus Christ and some of the excitement has died down.

It’s Sunday morning and you are in the weekly worship service. As you listen to the message Pastor James is giving about pure religion, you notice that the Apostle John and his family are not sitting with Jesus’ mother, Mary. Instead, Mary is sitting alone on the other side of the church.

After the service, you corner John and ask him why Mary isn’t sitting with him and his family.

“Oh, she comes on her own now,” John says nonchalantly. “I’ve decided to devote more time to my wife and kids.”

“But didn’t Jesus want you to care for Mary as if she were your own mother, your own family?” you ask with a bit of irritation in your voice.

“Well…yes.” John replies, shifting his weight to another leg. “I did let her know that if she needs anything, to just ask.... By the way, have you met our new minister of Christian education?”

Full stop.

Is that what Jesus meant when he said to John, “Behold your mother”? Making yourself available to help once in a while, but otherwise ignoring her until you see her in church? Had John treated Mary that way, he would have compromised the entire mission of the church. History would be completely different.

Now let’s make it more personal. Isn’t it true that we Christian men are ignoring the widows in our church and instead focusing solely on our families? The Bible says, “Treat older women as mothers…. Give proper recognition to those widows who are really in need" (1 Timothy 5:1ff). In reality, Jesus is telling all of us regarding the widows sitting near us at our churches, “Behold, your mother.”

When we ignore this, our protocol, we compromise our mission as a church and lose our distinctiveness. Then we wonder why the world is going to hell in a handbasket.

If obedience to our protocol results in this progression: serving widows = favor in the general population = people getting saved, then disobedience to our protocol results in this progression: ignoring/dishonoring widows = disfavor in the general population = fruitlessness (Titus 3:14).

Shame, alienation, marginalization and fruitlessness, that is what is happening because local church men’s ministries are ignoring their protocol.

So there it is in black and white, our protocol: plead the cause of the widow.

We have seen that first responders to mass shootings have a protocol: do not wait for permission or backup, go in immediately and take down the shooter.

When they follow their protocol, they save lives, even as they risk their own life. When they don’t follow their protocol, they lose lives, and live the rest of their own lives in shame.

In the same way, when we men follow our protocol, we save lives and we transform our culture. When we don’t follow our protocol, we lose lives and our culture tanks.

Local church men’s ministries don’t need better husbands and better fathers, as important as they are, sitting around tables eating pancakes on Saturday morning behind the four walls of a church building.

What local church men’s ministries need is one million Judahs, one million Ruths, one million Jonathans who are willing to risk their lives to save one Benjamin, one Naomi, one David,…one widow,…one nation.

So which is it going to be?

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A Men's Ministry Men Want to Know -

A Biblical Passage

for Learning to Do God's Good Works:

2 Timothy 3:12-17

We have seen how Isaiah 1:17-18 describes what our local church men’s ministry protocol should be, the protocol we are to follow in a dying and desperate culture: “plead the cause of the widow.”

We have also seen that many churches are not following the protocol because of groupthink. They have allowed themselves to drift away from their primary task of caring for people in their congregations with long term needs, such as widows, single moms, and fatherless children. This in turn has affected our witness to the world.

Consequently, we need to shake ourselves awake and, as Isaiah 1:17-18 says, "plead the cause of the widow."

But note that Isaiah 1:17-18 also tells us that our protocol does not come naturally. Instead, it must be learned: “Learn to do good.” But how do we learn to do this good? How do we learn it so well that it becomes natural and spontaneous for us? In short, when it comes to “pleading the cause of widows” and others with long term pressing needs, how do we men get there?

2 Timothy 3:12-17 – A passage for learning to do God's good works

I believe 2 Timothy 3:12-17 is an excellent foundational passage for all local church men’s ministries. The reason is because it succinctly describes the process by which God takes a sinful man who is helplessly immersed in a decadent culture, and transforms him into a man of God who is capable of doing immense good for everyone around him.

Here is the passage in its entirety:

“Indeed, all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. But evil men and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.” 2 Timothy 3:12-17 (NASB)

I will discuss this passage in detail below, but first I want to answer some questions about how 2 Timothy 3:12-17 relates to the protocol in Isaiah 1:17, 18 and to the role of good works in the Christian life.

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A Men's Ministry Men Want to Know -

To Do God's Good Works,

a Man Must First be Saved

through Faith in Jesus Christ

"... you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus." 2 Timothy 3:15

In Isaiah 1:17, 18 we have seen that we have to "learn to do good." But how do we do that? Fortunately, 2 Timothy 3:12-17 tells us how. And it involves several steps. The first and most important step to being able to do God's good works is recognizing that we have to be saved from God's wrath through faith in Christ Jesus in order to do the good works God wants us to do. That is, we have to come to grips with the fact that we are natural rebels against God and need to be reconciled to Him.

But this prerequisite that we must be saved in order to do God's good works raises the question...

Why Jesus?

Why is it necessary for a person to believe in Jesus Christ as his savior from sin in order to be reconciled to God? Doesn't becoming a Christian simply result in attending a lot of meetings for the rest of your life?

Several years ago I was sharing my faith with a social worker in my community when he responded by saying, “I don’t want to be a Christian because I don’t want to spend the rest of my life, not to mention eternity, in meetings.”

He had a point. In his mind, all Christians do is attend meetings that have no purpose or practical outcome.

Of course, Christians attend meetings because we are followers of Jesus. We worship God and his Son, Jesus Christ, in meetings. We make close friends and fellowship together in our meetings. We also learn about how to follow Jesus better by meeting together.

No man wants to spend eternity attending a meeting

My social worker friend didn’t understand the purpose of our meetings because he didn’t understand the importance of Jesus. No one had answered his underlying question: Why Jesus?

That simple question — Why Jesus? — is one of the most important questions every men’s ministry must answer clearly, passionately, persuasively, and persistently.

Why? Because men have plenty of things to do other than just attend meetings.

But if they know their lives depend on meeting together, and if they know there are going to be concrete and positive outcomes as a result of it, not only in their own lives, but also in the lives of the people they know and love all around them, then they will not only be there, they will drag their loved ones and friends to the meeting along with them.

So why Jesus? Why, two thousand years after he walked the face of this earth, do we still meet together to worship him and learn how to follow him?

Why Jesus? Because Jesus accurately diagnoses men’s problems

Consider this: the further away American culture has gotten from Jesus, the more aimless, destructive, and depraved American men have become. For the first time in two thousand years Christianity is facing, not just a post-Jesus Western civilization, but an anti-Jesus, pagan civilization.

But ironically, the best apologetic for Jesus is the increasing absence of Jesus from our culture. Why? Because, without Jesus permeating Western culture as he has to varying degrees over the past two millennia, we are witnessing the greatest social experiment in the history of the world: what happens to men in a Jesus-less culture.

In Jesus-less America, men are losing their ability to control their sexual lust. They are losing their desire to marry. They are losing any commitment to raise their own children. They are losing any transcendent purpose in life. They are losing their passion for education. They are losing their work ethic. They are losing their ability to keep the law and stay out of prison. They are losing their resistance to drugs and alcohol. And finally, in a Jesus-less culture, men are losing their self respect, because they no longer know who they are, why they are here, or where they are going.

One cannot have a positive outcome to a problem until one knows the reason for the problem. Here is Jesus’ diagnosis for men’s problems.

Every man has an evil nature he cannot tame…without Jesus.1 He lives in an evil world he cannot overcome…without Jesus.2 He has an evil enemy he cannot defeat…without Jesus.3 And he faces a holy God he doesn’t know and cannot please…without Jesus.4

What, then, is the root cause of men’s problems? The root cause of men’s problems is that they don’t know or care about Jesus.

Why Jesus? Because without Jesus men cannot escape slavery to sin

Let’s face it, we men love sin. Or to put it in ordinary secular language: we men love evil. We love illicit sex. We love porn. We love exalting ourselves at the expense of others. We love living off of someone else’s dime. We love lying when we can get away with it. We love going our own selfish way, even if it means abandoning our wives and kids. We love cursing. We love road rage. We love warfare. We love beating people up and watching people beat each other up. We love getting even. We love putting others down. We love climbing the ladder and stepping on everyone else in the process. We love clicks. We love getting high. We love avarice. We love gluttony. We love being noticed. We love having a nicer car and living in a nicer home than our neighbors.

We may think these things are just temptations. But we are only tempted by the things we love. Dog food does not tempt us. Baby back ribs do.

It’s true. Men have a chronic temptation to descend into barbarism, or “toxic masculinity,” as some call it. In response to this overwhelming temptation, human culture has devised two polar opposite and contradictory solutions, which I call “The Bikini” and “The Burka.”

• The Bikini – Indulge Oneself

When it comes to lust, most men choose hedonism…at first. They choose it because indulging oneself is the path of least resistance. There are no moral absolutes, men think. So why bother with niceties? All that exists is the physical world and the pleasures it offers. “I’m just a man, doing what men do.”

The problem with this approach to dealing with one’s passions, as men soon find out, is that hedonism is both self destructive and also relationally destructive. It is self destructive because we become addicted to our chosen evil. It is relationally destructive, because no one wants to live with a selfish, self-absorbed man who hurts those around him.

• The Burka – Control Oneself

Legalism is the exact opposite of hedonism. Instead of addressing men’s lusts by giving in to them and even encouraging them, legalism seeks to tame lust through external sets of strict social rules — usually religious rules — enforced with various cultural sanctions like ostracism, corporal punishment, prison, and even execution.

The Taliban in Afghanistan, Amish culture in Pennsylvania and elsewhere, and Hasidic Jews in urban New York, Los Angeles and Israel, all exemplify this legalistic and artificial approach.

The problem with legalism is that it is external and superficial only and does not deal with the real interior spiritual, emotional, and psychological problems men face. All legalism does is repress, control, and restrict both men and women with contrived rules and regulations that make no real change in their moral fiber.

Notice, too, that both the bikini and the burka solutions to men’s natural attraction to evil have this in common: they result in men becoming obsessed with dealing with it. On the one hand, indulging one’s lusts results in deeper and deeper addiction, more and more broken relationships, chronic sickness and even death. On the other hand, trying to control one’s lusts results in endless and fruitless ritualistic behavior.

Why Jesus? Because Jesus reconciles men to God

You noticed that I changed my terminology from “sin” to “evil” above. That is because modern men can stomach the concept of evil, but we have a knee jerk reaction to the concept of sin. Why? Because evil doesn’t make any reference to the God of the Bible, but sin does. One can imagine evil as something impersonal that just exists — like “the dark side” in Star Wars. But sin is personal, very personal. Sin is open rebellion against a holy and personal God.

The problem isn’t just that we men love evil, but that we love evil because we hate God who is holy. We hate any claim he has over us. We hate his authority and we hate his character. This is why we love to debase God by using his name and his son, Jesus’ name, in curses.

This is also why we men are willing to endure the painful consequences of evil, and even inflict evil on others around us, if only we can ignore a holy God to whom we know, either consciously or subconsciously, we are answerable. We are, to put it bluntly, damned and worthy of God’s wrath.

But God, who is holy, is also love. God is not just loving, God is love itself. God is all that love ever has been and ever will be. So, to satisfy both his holiness and his love, God sent his Son, his only son, to die in our place so he could take on himself God’s just wrath for our sin. In doing so, God satisfied both his holiness and his love.5

As a result of Jesus’ sacrifice, God offers us forgiveness and eternal life if we acknowledge our sinful state and put our faith — meaning our confidence — in Jesus Christ as the one who paid the penalty for our sin. Won’t you do that right now by telling God in prayer that you are trusting the Lord Jesus Christ as your savior from sin and its penalty?

Why Jesus? Because Jesus frees men from slavery to debauchery and legalism

As a result of a man’s faith in Jesus, many wonderful things happen to him, both immediately and long term. He is born again and becomes a “new man.” All of his sins are forgiven. He enters into a right relationship with God. He has eternal life. Suddenly the spiritual world comes alive for him because he receives the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. He becomes a member of the universal church, the Body of Christ. He has a special supernatural spiritual gift given to him to use in service to others. Jesus becomes his intercessor in the presence of God. As a result, this new believer has direct access to God through prayer. He has new insight into the Bible, God’s inspired Word. And, most importantly, he has a new love for God and his Son, Jesus Christ, and wants to do things that please them.

On the other hand, this new man still has issues. He still has his old sinful nature that has not been touched by his salvation. He also still lives in a sinful world with all of its temptations. And he still has an enemy, Satan, who hates the fact that he has now become a Christian.6

At first, this situation can seem untenable. But this new Christian man has been given a solution, and it’s called The Cross.

• The Cross – Ignore Your Old Sinful Nature and Follow Jesus

The mistake new Christian men often make is that they think the the purpose of their salvation is to remake their sinful nature into something good, or at least something better than it is. But that is impossible, as they soon find out; they discover that they still have the same temptations coming in from the outside world, and the same lusts going out from their sinful nature. And they will experience these realities until the day they die. So the tendency is to revert back to either giving in to those temptations and lusts (hedonism), or trying to subdue them through keeping a list of things they have to do (legalism): in this case, the “Christian” version of legalism usually takes the form of a checklist that looks like this:

Because I am a Christian, I must be sure to do the following:

• Attend church? Check.
• Read my Bible? Check.
• Pray? Check.
• Give money? Check.
• Do good things for people? Check

The problem is that, as we have seen above, keeping obligatory legalistic checklists such as this have no impact on our sinful flesh. In fact, they just give our flesh opportunities to rebel even more.

Why Jesus? Because Jesus gives men the freedom, the passion, and the supernatural ability to do good

So what is the solution Jesus gives us? The solution he gives us is a third option: instead of giving in to the flesh through hedonism, or trying to control it or reform it through legalistic efforts, we simply ignore the flesh and focus on Jesus, on what he has done for us, and on what he wants us to do for others. In this way, Christian practices like attending church and reading the Bible become means to an end and not merely ends in themselves. With this third option in mind, the Christian practices above (and any other Christian practices) look like this:

Because of what Jesus Christ has done for me on the cross:

• I attend church in order to worship God and develop loving relationships with other believers.
• I read my Bible in order to understand God’s dealings in history and his will for my life.
• I pray in order to communicate with God my love for him and what my needs are.
• I give money in order to support the work of the church and meet the needs of others.
• I do good things for people in order to help them and show them the same love Jesus Christ has shown me.

As we men learn to engage in these practices for the proper reasons, something begins to happen: we become more aware of God, we enjoy the presence of the Spirit of God in our lives, we have a deeper appreciation of Jesus’ love for us, and we are motivated to engage in sacrificial service for others in need. In essence, we have been set free from slavery to sin and our sinful nature and have, instead, become willing and joyful slaves to God.

As a result, we are no longer obsessed with our flesh and instead, as we have victory over sin in our lives, we acquire a strong inner motivation to do the good that God saved us to do. We are, in effect, experiencing “the expulsive power of a new affection,” as Thomas Chalmers put it in his famous sermon by that title.

Why Jesus? Because Jesus is alive and coming soon

Of course, none of this matters if Jesus is dead and gone. But Jesus is not dead and gone. Jesus rose from the dead, just as the Bible predicted he would, and ascended into heaven. And there is plenty of historical evidence to prove this.

Of course, no amount of evidence for the resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ will ever be enough for a man who is unwilling to acknowledge his sin and his love for evil. But for the one who has, and who has cast himself in faith on Jesus Christ, Jesus is very much alive and impacts everything he thinks, says, and does.

He lives for Jesus now, and he looks for Jesus in the future, because he knows that Jesus is coming soon and that he will see him face to face.

And that is the greatest meeting of all.

So, Men, here is a question we must ask ourselves: Are we saved?

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A Men's Ministry Men Want to Know -

To Do God's Good Works,

a Man of God Must Know His Bible Well

“From infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures.” 2 Timothy 3:15

There are many ways that I identify with young pastor Timothy as he was starting out on his ministry. Both Timothy and I are rather shy. Both of us had strong godly male role models who were pastors. And both of us grew up in homes with multiple generations of Christians.

But the primary way I identify with Timothy was that he learned the Scriptures “from infancy.”

Timothy learned the Bible from his Christian grandmother Lois and mother Eunice (2 Timothy 1:5) while I also learned the Bible as a child from my parents and from my church.

Here is my story.

The room with the red ribbons

The room with the red ribbons was a room in my childhood church, Church of the Open Door in Los Angeles. It was dedicated to Scripture memory and had no furniture in it. Instead, all four walls were completely covered with dozens and dozens of long thin red ribbons that dangled down to the floor. At the top of each ribbon were the names of students in the children’s ministry. One of those ribbons had my name on it, “Herbie Reese.”

On those red ribbons were various colored paper emblems with Scripture references on them. The emblems corresponded to the Scripture references. For example, the emblem for Psalm 23, “The Lord is my shepherd…,” was a sheep, for Ephesians 6:10-18, “Put on the whole armor of God…,” a shield, and so forth. Every time you memorized a passage, you got to put the corresponding emblem on your red ribbon. Obviously, you also got to compare your own progress with the progress of the other kids at church. Some only had one or two emblems on their red ribbon while others had emblems down to the floor and even onto the floor.

The cool thing about this was that the passages were not just one or two verses, but often long sections of scripture or even entire chapters, like Isaiah 53, Psalm 1, Psalm 2, Psalm 110, Ephesians 1, the Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes, and on and on.

I have fond memories of sitting at the table after eating breakfast and memorizing those passages with my mother’s help before I went off to school.

I wasn’t the best in my Sunday school class, by far. But I did pretty well. I think I almost got down to the floor on my ribbon. As I matriculated through the Christian education program at church, I continued to memorize Scripture, including most of the Book of Romans and all of 1 John.

Now here’s the interesting thing. Later, when God called me into ministry, I went on to do the four year master’s program at Dallas Seminary and then I entered the pastorate, where I prepared and preached sermons every week. As I did my preparation for those sermons, I noticed something. What first came to my mind as I studied for those messages wasn’t what I learned in four years of seminary, but the Scripture passages I had learned as a child.

And that still happens. It’s been six decades since I learned many of those passages, but I still remember them as if it were yesterday.

And that means I’ve had six decades to meditate on them.

And that means I’ve had six decades to live them.

The importance of knowing our Bible plays a central role in our “passage for getting there”

“Everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evildoers and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” 2 Timothy 3:12-17

Of course, unlike Timothy and myself, many of us did not grow up in a Christian home and consequently were not taught the scriptures “from infancy.” We can, however, make sure that our own children begin learning the Bible at an early age. We can also participate in our Church’s Christian education program and help teach children the Word.

But what if some who are reading this are adult believers who feel that their knowledge of the Bible is rather shallow. If this is so, then I would encourage you to take some steps to learn the Word of God well. Our “passage for getting there,” 2 Timothy 3:12-17, gives us three reasons why we should make sure we have a solid knowledge of the Bible.

Knowing our Bible is important because our Bible is holy

We live in a sinful, God-forsaking world that is filled with hatred and loneliness and ugliness and pain and suffering. But there is one thing that we can hold in our hands and instill into our minds and infuse into our hearts that is utterly holy, the Word of God.

As such, our Bible is for us what scuba gear is for a scuba diver: something physical that contains information that is spiritually life-sustaining in a world that is spiritually life-destroying. Without the Bible, we simply cannot sustain a healthy and holy spiritual life for long.

Knowing our Bible is important because all of it is God-breathed

If you took forty people, put them in a room and told them to write something about God, what you’d get is forty disassociated essays that would make little sense when put together.

On the other hand, the Bible was written by over forty authors over a period of more than fifteen hundred years. Yet it has a coherence that is undeniable. It tells us the story of God and his dealings with humanity. It tells us who God is, who we are, and why we humans are the way we are. It tells us about sin and death and what the solution is to sin and death. It tells us what God has done in the past about our sin, what God is doing now about his kingdom, and what God is going to do in the future.

Consequently, the Bible is the most influential book in the history of the world.

The Bible has this coherence and influence because, while it was written by dozens of people, it really has only one author, God himself. In our “passage for getting there,” 2 Timothy 3:12-17, Paul reminds Timothy that all Scripture is useful because all Scripture is God-breathed, or inspired. We sense the breath of God on every page of the Bible, for it speaks of him and through his Spirit, it speaks to our souls. As such, the Bible is completely trustworthy and our ultimate authority for living.

This is why, if there is one word you could use to describe me, it would be “biblicist.” I believe the Bible is inerrant in the original manuscripts and I use it as my authority in everything I do and teach. Hopefully, you have noticed that emphasis in my writings.

Knowing our Bible is important because all of it is useful for its ultimate purpose: doing God’s good works

Imagine you suddenly come across a set of written instructions that tell you exactly how to please God and how doing so will bring you and others around you immense benefits forever and ever.

That is what we hold in our hand when we pick up your Bible. Our Bible is a handbook for doing good, God’s good. We live in a world that is against us. It wants to exploit us, enslave us, even kill us. Our Bible, on the other hand, tells us how to get the God of this universe on our side: through faith in his Son and obedience to his will as expressed in our Bible.

The good works that God’s Word then equips us to do are not the good works of the world; mere kind gestures the preserve the self-will of the one doing them. The good works our Bible frees us to do are revolutionary because they are done by someone who knows God, loves God, and loves those around him with their very lives.

Have as a goal to know the Bible well enough so that you can meditate on it at any time

“Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither—whatever they do prospers.” Psalm 1:1-3

I chuckle to myself when I hear men’s ministry leaders – and any spiritual leader for that matter – tell men that if they’re going to grow in their walk with the Lord then they need to read their Bibles every day. The reason I find that amusing is because printed books have only been around for the last five hundred years. If daily Bible reading is critical to to our spiritual growth, that means no Christian in the first fifteen hundred years of the church would have been able to grow to full maturity.

But obviously that is not the case. Scripture makes it clear that it’s not Bible reading that is critical to spiritual growth, but Bible memory. “I have hidden your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you,” the Psalmist writes in Psalm 119:11. The prime example of this verse? Jesus, who quoted Scripture each time he was tempted by the Devil.

Actually, it’s not just Bible memory that is essential to our spiritual development, but Bible meditation, of which Bible memory is a prerequisite. “On his law he meditates day and night,” the Psalmist writes in Psalm 1:2. One of my Greek professors at UCLA knew the entire New Testament by memory in Greek. But he didn’t believe a word of it. It was just Greek to him, so to speak. He was living proof that one can memorize the Word of God without thinking it worthy of our meditation. But on the other hand, we can’t meditate on the Word of God if we haven’t memorized it.

Unlike my Greek professor, the Bible is not just Greek to any believer…or Hebrew for that matter. It’s our lifeblood. Our very souls and our eternal destiny depend on our understanding of it. It is, in fact, a true depiction of reality. The degree to which we depart from it is the degree to which we lose contact with what is real, and then stub our spiritual feet in our self-imposed darkness. So our goal is to live in the Bible and then to live out the Bible. The only way to do that is to meditate on it…all the time.

And the only way to do that is to memorize the Bible.

Ways to learn the Bible

• Study the Bible at your church

Pay attention to the sermon and to the passage the sermon is based on. Also, find classes is your church that focus on the Bible. Your church doesn’t have such a class? Maybe you can start one.

I am assuming, of course, that your church teaches the Bible. Sadly, not all churches do. If yours doesn’t, then you need to find another church.

One great way to learn the Bible is to teach a children’s Sunday School class or youth group. Preparing Bible lessons for others naturally creates a weekly Bible study discipline. You will learn more than your students will in the process.

• Study the Bible on your own

The great thing about studying the Bible on your own is that you can set your own pace. But be careful. You can wind up simply meandering randomly through your Bible without retaining much. I suggest you set goals and work toward them.

• Gain a general Biblical overview in order to understand the different types of literature in the Bible. Ask your pastor if you can borrow a book on Bible survey from his library. (Just be sure to return it!)
• Learn biblical history by studying each of these books: Genesis, Exodus, Joshua, Judges, 1 & 2 Samuel, 1 & 2 Kings, Luke, Acts.
• Study the other three gospels of Matthew, Mark and John to gain a deeper understanding of Jesus’ earthly ministry.
• Understand the significance of the Biblical covenants. For example, do you know which Biblical covenant governs our relationship with God?
• Study these three Pauline epistles to deepen your understanding of theology: Romans, Galatians, Ephesians
• Learn biblical prophecy by studying the major and minor Old Testament prophets, along with the Book of Revelation.

Obviously, you can’t do all of this in a week or a month, or even in a year. These goals will take several years. But that is the point: always be learning something new from your Bible.

• Study the Bible with other men

Find other men who are serious about Bible study and learn with them. One organization that I highly recommend is Bible Study Fellowship for Men. Bible Study Fellowship (BSF) is a non-denominational, international organization that offers Bible study classes for people of all ages and genders. While BSF offers classes specifically for men, it also offers classes for women, couples, and children. The number of men’s classes offered by BSF may vary depending on the specific location and availability. It is best to check the BSF website or contact a local BSF representative for information on the availability of men’s classes in your area.

• Memorize the Bible online

The Navigators are best known for their Bible memory system. You can access it at this link: Topical Memory System for iphone and ipad. Another organization that I like is BibleMemory.com, an online Bible memory group that emphasizes both individual verses and entire passages and books of the Bible.

• Study the Bible online

I highly recommend the following two organizations that provide high-quality, free and/or low-cost Bible courses:

• Moody Bible Institute offers several free or low-cost online Bible courses for non-students through Moody Enrich.
• Dallas Theological Seminary offers dozens of free online Bible courses.

• Attend a Christian college and/or seminary

Of course, if you really want to thoroughly learn your Bible, take some time off to attend a reputable, biblically based Christian college or seminary. The time I spent getting my seminary training was well worth it. I simply would not be fully equipped to do ministry without it.

Whatever you do, know that the time you invest in the study of Scripture is well worth it and will increasingly enable you to do the good works God saved you to do.

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A Men's Ministry Men Want to Know -

To Do God's Good Works,

a Man of God Must be Open to Biblical Rebuke

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for…rebuking. 2 Timothy 3:16

As we proceed through the process of becoming men of God who are equipped for every good work, our next focus is the importance of being open to scriptural rebuke. For if we are unwilling to admit when we are wrong and are deviating from the Word, then we will most certainly permanently go astray.

But biblical rebuke is not fun. Here is one of my experiences of how the Bible rebuked me.

My one foray into civil disobedience did not end well

“Mommy, why is pastor Herb sitting in the back of that police car?”

“I don’t know, honey.” The mother grabbed her little girl’s hand and almost dragged her towards the theater entrance. “Hurry, we’re going to be late for the movie.”

The story of how I wound up with my hands in handcuffs behind my back in the back seat of a police car that was parked in front of our local AMC Classic Quincy 6 family theater in Quincy, Illinois on a Friday night begins that morning around 6 am.

I was eating my usual bowl of oatmeal with raisins and brown sugar in the deli section of Hy-Vee Grocery Store and reading the newspaper. This was back when people read actual physical newspapers. I came across an article about a new movie, “Showgirls.” It was rated NC-17, featured full frontal nudity and it starred a girl that was well known to underage children as a TV personality. It was showing in theaters nationwide.

I was shocked. I had never heard of an NC-17 rating before, but it sure sounded like pornography to me.

But I soon went on to read other articles and quickly forgot about it.

I couldn’t believe an NC-17 movie was being shown at our family theater

That evening my oldest son asked me to take him and his friend to see a movie and I said I would. When we drove up to our one and only movie theater in town, AMC Classic Quincy 6, I saw the marquee and on it were listed the six movies being screened, including the one we came to see. But the movie that jumped out at me the most was “Showgirls.”

Suddenly, everything I read about it came flooding back.

After the boys and I entered AMC and sat down in our theater and waited for our movie to begin, I started getting angry at the thought of a pornographic movie being shown in our family theater and I decided to do something about it.

I got up, left the boys to watch the movie, went out into the lobby and began preaching against Showgirls at the top of my lungs.

Not satisfied with that, and realizing that Showgirls was about to begin, I marched into that theater, went down to the front, and faced the audience. There were less than a dozen attendees present. I told them they may as well go home, because I was there to make sure Showgirls didn’t play. Then I began preaching at them.

Two police officers arrested me

It took about five minutes for the police to show up. There were two of them. They walked down to the front and stood next to me as I preached. After a few seconds of me ignoring them, they told me to stop. But I continued to ignore them and kept on preaching. Again they told me to stop. I still ignored them and continued to preach. Finally, one them grabbed my right wrist as I jabbed my arm out to make a rhetorical point. He twisted it down behind my back and put handcuffs on me.

I stopped preaching.

Silently, the two officers, one on each arm, marched me out of the theater and put me in the back of one of their police cars that was parked in front. I sat there for several minutes as the officers talked with the theater manager.

During the brief ride to the police station, I chatted with one of the police officers as he drove and explained why I had done what I had done. He, in turn, reminded me that there was something called freedom of speech in America and theaters had a right to exercise it.

“I have a right to exercise my free speech too.” I countered.

They told me that, yes, I had a right to my free speech. But there were lawful ways to exercise it and trying to stop a movie by preaching in a theater wasn’t one of them.

I expected a mug shot, finger prints, and a cell when we arrived at the station, but instead, the officer just sat me down in a room where I remained alone for an hour. I was charged with misdemeanor criminal trespass and bail was set at $40. Since I didn’t have enough cash on me to pay the bail, and my son and his friend were still back at the theater, they let me call the chairman of the board at my church (It was before cell phones and my wife wasn’t home.) to come and bail me out and another church member to pick up the boys at the theater.

Over 500 people showed up to peacefully protest the movie

To say that word spreads rapidly in small towns would be an understatement when describing Quincy’s reaction to what I had done. In a small midwestern town where a PTA meeting can headline the local TV news, the arrest of a pastor protesting a movie featuring nudity shot across Quincy like a sonic boom. On Saturday, pastors began calling me and saying they agreed with what I had done and that we needed to organize a mass demonstration.

So we did. We planned the demonstration for the following day, Sunday, after church at 1 PM in front of the theater. We preached about it from our pulpits and then invited our congregations to show up and protest.

And they did. Somewhere between five hundred to a thousand people arrived and demonstrated for two hours. We covered the entire block-long sidewalk in front of the theater. News of the demonstration even made the local news in St. Lewis.

I experienced rebuke from the Word of God like I had never experienced before

I woke up Monday morning feeling pretty proud of myself. After all, hadn’t I stood up for morality and decency and led a demonstration that made an impact on the entire city?

But around 10 am that morning, something dramatic happened. A passage from the Bible seeped into my consciousness.

“Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended. For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also as a matter of conscience.” (Romans 13:1-5)

Suddenly, a deep sense of guilt spread through me like I had just bitten into a hot pepper. My Bible was doing its work. It was showing me clearly in black and white that what I had done was wrong. Civil disobedience is not an option for Christians today. “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.” Jesus said to Pilate (John 18:36).

I immediately repented of my sin and confessed it to God. The following Sunday I stood up in my pulpit and confessed my sin to my congregation. I explained that while it is appropriate to lawfully protest a movie, breaking the law to do it is not. Then I preached a sermon on Romans 13:1-5.

The Bible is full of examples of believers being rebuked

Biblical rebuke is a normal experience in the Christian life. In fact, if we have never sensed the Bible rebuking us, something may be wrong with our walk with the Lord. There are many examples of God, or God’s representatives, rebuking believers in the Bible. Here are some of them.

Peter (3 times!)

(1) From that time on Jesus began to show His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and that He must be killed and on the third day be raised to life. Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him. “Far be it from You, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to You!”  But Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me. For you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.” Matthew 16:21-23

(2) Peter replied, “Even if all fall away on account of you, I never will.” “Truly I tell you,” Jesus answered, “this very night, before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times.” But Peter declared, “Even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you.” And all the other disciples said the same. Matthew 26:33-35

(3) When Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood condemned. For before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group. The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray. When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas in front of them all, “You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs? Galatians 2:11-14

Paul

Paul looked straight at the Sanhedrin and said, “My brothers, I have fulfilled my duty to God in all good conscience to this day.” At this the high priest Ananias ordered those standing near Paul to strike him on the mouth. Then Paul said to him, “God will strike you, you whitewashed wall! You sit there to judge me according to the law, yet you yourself violate the law by commanding that I be struck!” Those who were standing near Paul said, “How dare you insult God’s high priest!” Paul replied, “Brothers, I did not realize that he was the high priest; for it is written: ‘Do not speak evil about the ruler of your people.’ Acts 23:1-5 

Moses

“Moses and Aaron went from the assembly to the entrance to the tent of meeting and fell facedown, and the glory of the Lord appeared to them. The Lord said to Moses, “Take the staff, and you and your brother Aaron gather the assembly together. Speak to that rock before their eyes and it will pour out its water. You will bring water out of the rock for the community so they and their livestock can drink.” So Moses took the staff from the Lord’s presence, just as he commanded him. He and Aaron gathered the assembly together in front of the rock and Moses said to them, “Listen, you rebels, must we bring you water out of this rock?” Then Moses raised his arm and struck the rock twice with his staff. Water gushed out, and the community and their livestock drank. But the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not trust in me enough to honor me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I give them.” Numbers 20:6-12

David

“Then Nathan said to David, “You are the man! This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul. I gave your master’s house to you, and your master’s wives into your arms. I gave you all Israel and Judah. And if all this had been too little, I would have given you even more. Why did you despise the word of the Lord by doing what is evil in his eyes? You struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and took his wife to be your own. You killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. 2 Samuel 12:7-9

The entire church in Galatia

You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh? Galatians 3:1-3

The entire church at Corinth (one of many rebukes)

If any of you has a dispute with another, do you dare to take it before the ungodly for judgment instead of before the Lord’s people? Or do you not know that the Lord’s people will judge the world? And if you are to judge the world, are you not competent to judge trivial cases? Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more the things of this life! Therefore, if you have disputes about such matters, do you ask for a ruling from those whose way of life is scorned in the church? I say this to shame you. Is it possible that there is nobody among you wise enough to judge a dispute between believers? But instead, one brother takes another to court—and this in front of unbelievers! 1 Corinthians 6:1-6

Doing good can go to our heads

We should not be surprised, then, when we sense that we are being rebuked by the Word of God. In fact, we should expect it. The problem with doing good is that it can engender a sense of pride. And pride, in turn, can keep us from seeing that we may be attempting to do good in the wrong way.

We must fight to replace the temptation to be proud of our good by remembering that the good we are doing is simply obedience to God’s will and God’s Word. That is, we are just doing what we are supposed to be doing, as Jesus teaches in Luke 17:

“Suppose one of you has a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Will he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, ‘Come along now and sit down to eat’? Won’t he rather say, ‘Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink’? Will he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’” Luke 17:7-10

So, yes, now I have a rap sheet…and a new credo

My Credo

As a Christian, I am not engaged in the process of making America Christian, but in the process of making Americans Christian.

The first is political coercion. The second is the Great Commission.

The first is cultural warfare with flesh and blood. The second is spiritual warfare with Satan himself.

The first is Christians grabbing power and not letting go the way one clutches a live wire with a spasm’d fist…and dies. The second is Christians relinquishing power…and living out the life Christ.

The first always results in the corruption of the church. The second, the multiplication of the church.

The first forces people to obey the law of God through the laws of men. The second disciples Christians to obey the law of God out of love for God.

The first results in the society’s repudiation of the church the way one vomits a foreign object. The second results in the penetration of the church throughout society the way salt permeates a bowl of soup and seasons it.

The first is ugly Christians doing ugly things. The second is the beauty of meekness in the church that adorns the gospel.

The first is self-defeating. The second cannot be defeated.

The Great Commission

“Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Matthew 28:19-20

Our Real Battle

“We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” Ephesians 6:12

Salt and Light

“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden.” Matthew 5:13-14

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A Men's Ministry Men Want to Know -

To Do God's Good Works,

a Man of God Must be Trained in Righteousness

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for…training in righteousness. 2 Timothy 3:16

Now we are getting into the meat of 2 Timothy 3:16. In this series, we have seen that God saves us, surrounds us with other believers who want to do good works, gives us his inspired Word, rebukes us, and restores us. Now Paul says God trains us to live a certain way: in righteousness.

Imagine this

Imagine a world where everyone knows God, loves God, and obeys God. In this imaginary world, because of their love for God, everyone also loves each other. They honor each other, speak truthfully to each other, trust each other, and work towards each other’s good. The world made up of these people has no crime and it has no locked doors. Instead, people spontaneously invite each other into their homes for fellowship around their dinner tables. In this imaginary world, people resolve any disagreements quickly and amicably. This world has no class or racial divisions because everyone accepts everyone else on an equal basis. And finally, this world has no poverty because each person considers it their personal responsibility to meet the needs of their neighbors who find themselves unable to meet their own.

“Right! If only. Pure fantasy,” you say. And you are right. This imaginary world I have just described is quite different from the actual world we live in.

And yet, we can all agree that living in a world like this would be nice. Something in us longs for this kind of world, a world where everyone indeed loves each other.

Our “God-forsaken world” is not so God-forsaken after all

Possibly the first thing that comes to our minds when I describe this imaginary world is heaven. But while it certainly is true that this imaginary world resembles what we will experience in heaven, nevertheless, I am talking about an imaginary world. In fact, it is not even imaginary. It is this world. It is this world as it will be in the future.

The Bible says that the imaginary world I described above will indeed exist, but it will not happen until “the regeneration, when the son of man sits on his glorious throne,” (Matthew 19:28). Jesus’ reference to “the regeneration” on Matthew 19 refers to the Millennium, the 1,000 year reign of Christ that he will institute after his return to earth in glory as predicted in biblical prophecies, such as Zachariah 14:16-21.

Sometimes the Bible refers to that future time of righteousness, prosperity, peace and blessing as “the day” and contrasts it with our present time of sin, suffering, war, and poverty as “the night.” But the Bible also teaches that, while “the day” has not yet dawned, believers can, in anticipation of the dawn, “wake up” and “light a light” until “the daybreak comes.” Paul uses metaphors like these in Ephesians 5:8-14 when he describes precisely this betwixt and between situation we believers find ourselves in when it comes to living righteously in a sinful world:

“For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord. Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. It is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. But everything exposed by the light becomes visible—and everything that is illuminated becomes a light. This is why it is said: ‘Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.'”

Like the old saying, a man of God doesn’t curse the darkness, he lights a candle

Paul says in this passage that even though the reign of world-wide righteousness (“the regeneration”) that will characterize Christ’s rule is still in the future, nevertheless, we can experience the essence of that reign in a substantial way now by living a righteous life in this unrighteous world. Or, continuing the analogies of night/day (referring to specific periods of time when unrighteousness and unrighteousness reign over the world ) and darkness/light (referring to specific states of unrighteousness and righteousness that characterize individual behavior), even though the sun has not come up yet and everyone is still asleep, we can rise early in the morning and, in anticipation of the dawn, light a candle so that we can see clearly until the sun comes up.

Thus, a man of God who lives righteously has a different moral compass from the rest of the world. He thinks differently. He acts differently. He treat’s money differently. He responds to his boss at work differently. He talks differently. He treats women differently. He has different attitudes towards marriage, sex, and procreation. He relates to his neighbor differently. He even fills out his taxes differently.

Consequently, a man of God cannot live out his faith without being noticed. There is no such thing as an incognito man of God. “Everything that is illuminated becomes a light.”

True, a man of God is righteous in God’s sight through faith in Christ, but in his daily life he must learn how to live righteously

The moment someone places their faith in Christ as their savior from sin, God removes his sin and imputes the righteousness of Christ onto him.

“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” 2 Corinthians 5:21.

Christ took our sin on himself and experienced the consequences – death. We have taken Christi’s righteousness on ourselves and also experience the consequences: life. Eternal life.

But when it comes to living righteously, that is something quite different from our position in Christ. Living a righteous life is the result of learned behavior. It does not come naturally for us.

Living righteously in the Bible refers to the practice of relating to God and others righteously, fairly, and justly. God expects us to live righteously because we have been made righteous in Christ. Consequently, righteous living is the logical conclusion of our faith in Christ and our consequent position in Christ.

“As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.” Ephesians 4:1-3

In this passage, our “calling” refers to our position in Christ as righteous saints. But “live a life worthy of the calling” refers to our need to live righteously in our daily lives.

Years ago, I baptized a new believer at church one cold winter Sunday morning. Unfortunately, the person responsible for filling the baptistry forgot to turn on the baptistry heater. I made the discovery when I stepped into the baptistry and immediately started shivering. But when the baptismal candidate stepped in, he spontaneously shouted out for everyone in the church to hear, “D…n this water’s cold!”

Of course, we all laughed. But it was also a vivid reminder to us “seasoned Christians” that when we started our journey of faith, we started it from mile zero.

A man of God learns how to live righteously primarily by reading and learning and obeying his Bible

Fortunately, the believer has several sources for knowing how to live righteously, such as our conscience, the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, and the examples of other believers.

But by far, the primary source of our knowledge of what a righteous life looks like comes from the Bible. The Bible is full of commands and exhortations to righteous living.

“The New Testament provides numerous examples of righteous living, which include:

• Loving one’s neighbor as oneself (Mark 12:31)
• Forgiving others (Matthew 6:14-15)
• Living a pure and holy life (1 Corinthians 6:19-20)
• Being humble and serving others (Philippians 2:3-4)
• Being honest and truthful (Ephesians 4:25)
• Speaking kindly and building others up (Ephesians 4:29)
• Honoring God and putting Him first (Matthew 22:37-38)
• Sharing the gospel and making disciples (Matthew 28:19-20)
• Practicing generosity and caring for the poor (Luke 12:33-34)
• Resisting temptation and overcoming sin (Romans 6:11-13)

These examples demonstrate that righteous living involves both personal obedience to God’s commands and a commitment to serving and loving others.”1

Taken together, the total exhortations to righteous living in the New Testament number in the hundreds and represent a body of truth that is worthy of our constant meditation and implementation.

Living righteously and doing God’s good works overlap, but are not the same

Our foundational passage for learning how to do God’s good works reads “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, restoring and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16, 17)

Notice that our training in righteousness is the culmination of our being “thoroughly equipped for every good work,” not the performance of the good works themselves. True, doing good works is righteous in itself. But living a righteous life without giving thought to doing the good works God has planned for us negates the whole purpose of our salvation.

Failing to understand this distinction between living righteously and doing God’s good works can choke off our spiritual lives and denude us of our calling.

Prime examples of focusing only on one’s righteousness and ignoring good works are the Priest and the Levite in the story of the Good Samaritan. When they passed by the left-for-dead stranger waylaid by robbers, they were practicing righteousness according to the law, which commanded them to avoid dead bodies after being purified at the temple. But they forgot the importance of good works and therefore ignored the man they passed by.

Bringing this distinction between righteous living and doing God’s good works forward to our own history, during slavery, churches in America’s southern states focused almost entirely on personal righteousness but, like the priest and Levite, forgot the radical nature of good works and thus ignored the plight of the slaves in their midst.

Finally, we can apply this same distinction to our present day when, as so often happens in the vast majority of churches, we attend church on Sunday and worship with other believers (righteousness), but ignore the pressing needs of the widows, single moms, and fatherless children who are worshipping with us in that same service, needs that should be met with our good works (Titus 3:14).

Living righteously is simply a prerequisite for doing all of God’s good works

We can think of righteous living in terms of the old medical doctrine, “primum non nocere,” “First, do no harm.” In other words, “Whatever you do for your patients, don’t make things worse.” But doing no harm to others is not the fulfillment of what medicine is all about. Medicine is much more than maintaining the patient’s status quo. Medicine is about curing a patient’s illness. Medicine is about healing a patient. A physician who only does you no harm but fails to cure your viral pneumonia violates the whole purpose of medicine.

In the same way, righteous living is primarily about doing no harm to others and unrighteous living is about the harm such an unrighteous lifestyle causes others. One cannot do God’s good works when one’s lifestyle hurts people.

On the other hand, doing God’s good works goes way beyond simply maintaining the status quo by not hurting people any more than they already have been. God’s good works proactively reach out and heal the harm that we and others have caused. God’s good works ameliorate the pain and suffering that sin and Satan have brought into the world, announcing in the process the imminent presence of the Kingdom of God.

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A Men's Ministry Men of God Need to Know -

(Part 1):

Every Man of God has Feet of Clay

Just because we are “Men of God” does not mean we have already arrived

We have seen from my last series, “A Men’s Ministry Men Want to Know,” that men who have a passionate desire to serve widows and single moms have an acquired taste. That is, the average non-Christian man on the street does not normally think and act that way.

Rather, to become a “man of God,” we must be saved from our selfish, self-centered, and godless ways and come into a right relationship with God through faith in his Son, Jesus Christ. Then, having done so, we must come to understand God’s heart for widows and single moms by learning his Word, by developing a clear overview of spiritual reality that results in sound doctrine, by accepting biblical reproof and restoration, and by learning to live righteously. As we do, we become men of God who are “fully equipped for every good work.”

But just because we are in the process of becoming men of God who are engaged in doing God’s good works, this does not mean that we have arrived, that we are free from sin, or that we will never make major mistakes in this life. Take, for example, Paul’s statement in Philippians 3:12-14:

“Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”

If anyone has been a “man of God,” it was Paul himself. And yet even Paul knew that he had not “already arrived.” That mentality, “I have not already arrived,” must be every man of God’s mentality. Yes, we are busy doing God’s good works. But while we may be doing the works of God, we still have issues. Doing good works does not mean we have “already arrived.”

Every man of God has feet of clay

This truth that no man of God has already arrived was impressed upon me in my teens and early twenties by my mentor, role model, and uncle. “Herb, always remember. Every man of God has feet of clay,” he would say.

That metaphor, “feet of clay” refers to “a weakness or hidden flaw in the character of a greatly admired or respected person” (Dictionary.com). It has its origin in Daniel’s interpretation of King Nebuchadnezzar’s vision:

“Your Majesty looked, and there before you stood a large statue—an enormous, dazzling statue, awesome in appearance. The head of the statue was made of pure gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of baked clay. While you were watching, a rock was cut out, but not by human hands. It struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed them.”

From a distance, the statue Daniel described to King Nebuchadnezzar was enormous, dazzling, and awesome. But when he got up close and looked down, he saw something disappointing: feet of clay mixed with iron. That is, the feet were not capable of holding up for long the otherwise fabulous statue. The entire stature was, therefore, a huge disappointment.

In its context, the statue in Daniel chapter two refers to consecutive historical kingdoms, each lesser in glory and stability. But the idea of “feet of clay” came to be applied to men (and women) of great social stature who, nevertheless, have severe and often hidden flaws.

The Bible is full of examples of men of God who had feet of clay.

• Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and his twelves sons struggled with their generational sin of lying.
• Moses lost his temper.
• Aaron allowed his impatience to drive him into idolatry.
• David was a rapist and murderer.
• Elijah was depressed.
• Peter struggled with pride.
• John Mark was disloyal and abandoned Paul while on mission.

All of these men of God demonstrated “feet of clay” after they had been called by God to serve him.

It is true, “every man of God has feet of clay.” By impressing this truth upon me, Uncle John, as our family affectionately called him, was protecting me from disappointment. And he was right to do so because, sure enough, some of the men of God whom I have known have indeed demonstrated that they have feet of clay.

One man of God I knew,  a pastor, got embroiled in a huge argument with his church board, became embittered, and left his church in a huge mess. Another man of God was arrested, tried, convicted, and imprisoned for decades for secretly sexually assaulting women in alleyways. Another man of God confessed to pornography addiction. Another man of God had an affair, divorced his wife, and married his lover. Another man of God got caught and convicted for embezzling funds. All of these men were, and are, true men of God, were respected leaders in their churches, and later repented of their sin.

And all of them had feet of clay.

And yes, I have feet of clay too. I have a problem with my temper. I documented one example for you here.

Therefore, every man of God not only ministers to others through his good works, but also needs to be ministered to by a local church men’s ministry

While I don’t know all of the circumstances surrounding the above examples, I believe there are several reasons why men of God may succumb to their feet of clay.

• They may not recognize that they have unresolved issues in their lives.
• They do not know the reasons why they have these unresolved issues in the first place.
• Once the issues manifest themselves as trials or temptations, they are not willing to honestly talk about them with trusted friends.
• Indeed, they may not have any close friends at all to talk to, and instead feel isolated and lonely.

The reason why all men of God need to be involved in their church’s men’s ministry is because effective local church men’s ministries give men of God who have feet of clay — that is, who have a sinful nature — two things: insight and light.

First, an effective local church men’s ministry helps men of God honestly identify and deal with their own unique weaknesses and sins. This is insight and it is the first step in achieving genuine healing and victory over sin.

Second, an effective local church men’s ministry gives men of God the opportunity to talk openly with trusted friends about those weaknesses they are struggling with. This openness is “light” and it is the final step in achieving victory over sin.

“Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.” James 5:15

The reality that all men of God have feet of clay means that God not only seeks to minister through the good works that he has saved and called men of God to do, but God also seeks to minister to men as they do them. And one of the best ways for God to accomplish that is through a local church men’s ministry.

And pastors, I’m speaking especially to you. It is vital for you to personally participate in your local church men’s ministry, even if only as a participant. By doing so, you telegraph the message that you, too, need this ministry, for you, too, have feet of clay.

(For an idea of what a local church men’s ministry looks like when it genuinely ministers to men of God who have feet of clay, see my post, “The First Men’s Breakfast“.)

God’s first priority is ministry through a man of God and God’s second priority is ministry to a man of God

So witch comes first, ministry to men, or ministry through men. That is, after conversion, do we first help a man deal with his problems and only then begin to teach him to do good works? Or do we first emphasize good works and deal with his “clay feet” in the process? I believe Scripture teaches both explicitly and by example that we should immediately invite the new believer to get involved in doing good works and then, as issues manifest themselves, help them deal with those issues.

First, Scripture clearly states that the whole purpose of a new believer’s salvation is for him to do good works. We see this emphasis in Ephesians 2:8-10; Titus 2:14; 3:3-8 (especially v. 8); and Titus 3:14.

But Scripture also gives us specific examples of new believers immediately being  encouraged to practice good works.

The priority of ministry through new believers before ministry to new believers in the ministry of John the Baptist

“The ax is already lying at the roots of the trees. All the trees that don’t produce good fruit will be cut down. They will be thrown into the fire.” “Then what should we do?” the crowd asked. John answered, “Anyone who has extra clothes should share with the one who has none. And anyone who has extra food should do the same.” Even tax collectors came to be baptized. “Teacher,” they asked, “what should we do?” “Don’t collect any more than you are required to,” John told them. Then some soldiers asked him, “And what should we do?” John replied, “Don’t force people to give you money. Don’t bring false charges against people. Be happy with your pay.”

The priority of ministry through new believers before ministry to new believers in the ministry of Jesus:

“Zaccheus stopped and said to the Lord, “Behold, Lord, half of my possessions I will give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will give back four times as much” (Luke 19:8).

The priority of ministry through new believers before ministry to new believers in the early church:

“All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.” Acts 2:44

The priority of ministry through new believers before ministry to new believers in the ministry of Paul:

“Anyone who has been stealing must never steal again. Instead, they must work. They must do something useful with their own hands. Then they will have something to give to people in need” (Ephesians 4:18).

The priority of ministry through new believers before ministry to new believers in the Old Testament:

Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, David and Elijah, whom I cited above, were all called and practicing their ministry, their “good works,” before God dealt with their “clay feet.”

A problem with modern men’s ministry is that we too often ignore the first priority – ministry through a man of God by his good works – and focus only on the second – ministry to a man of God’s felt needs

Modern conservative Christianity tends to entirely ignore the topic of good works, mainly because we have a strong emphasis on salvation by faith as a free gift, not as a result of our good works. But this imbalanced emphasis ignores the central role that good works do play after salvation in the life of every Christian (Ephesians 2:8-10).

This imbalance on the topic of good works has lead to a dearth of teaching on the subject in men’s ministry. Rare, if at all, is the book, article, post, or conference speaker who teaches on the role of good works in the Christian life. Consider the following list of sixteen breakout seminar topics at one nationally syndicated men’s conference ministry:

• Essentials of Manhood & Marriage
• W-O-R-K: More Than a 4 Letter Word
• Three Common Mistakes Churches Make
• Speaking into the Next Generation
• Raising Godly Boys
• How to begin a Hunting and Fishing Outdoor Adventure Ministry in your Church
• Spiritual Fathering – making disciples of the next generation
• God Loves Do-Overs
• Overcoming Procrastination:
• Impotent No More
• Christ is All
• Building a Marriage to Withstand Life’s Storms:
• Breaking A Myopic Leadership Cycle – Improving our foresight to change our outcomes
• Communication Still Works
• Redeeming the Time
• Building the Winning Team to Reach Men
• Empowered Relationship Through Athletics
• Leading your Adult Children
• If The Horse Is Dead Dismount
• Playing the Back Nine
• How to Build a Diversified Men’s Ministry
• Men and Their Health

One would never know from this list that the entire purpose of a man of God’s salvation is to do good works, even though there is one workshop listed above on a Christian man’s everyday work.

But we don’t want to make the opposite mistake and focus only on the first priority – ministry through men – and ignore the second – ministry to men

And yet, “Every man of God has feet of clay.” That is, every man of God still has a sinful nature and has issues. Ignoring this fact will lead to an imbalance in the opposite direction: focusing only on the good works a man of God is to do and not addressing his felt needs.

I know of one local church men’s ministry where all they do is use teams of men to serve their widows and single moms. This is inadequate men’s ministry. (New Commandment never intended men’s team ministry to be a standalone men’s ministry.) The men on those teams have needs too, sometimes very dramatic, intense needs. Those needs must be addressed as those men of God do the good works God saved them to do.

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A Men's Ministry Men of God Need to Know

(Part 3):

Every Man of God Needs to Learn How to Respond to Severe Tests, Trials, and Consequences

Assuming The “Van Kemps” were pillars in my childhood church; godly, faithful, and respectable people. Their two sons, “Steve” and “Phil” were in my youth group. One day, terrible news spread throughout the church: the Van Kemps’ oldest son, Steve, had been diagnosed with osteosarcoma, bone cancer. Sadly, it had already metastasized and he died a few months later.

But the family tragedy didn’t stop there. A few years after Steve’s death, Phil developed the same cancer and died from it as well.

And then, adding tragedy upon tragedy and sorrow upon sorrow, Mr. Van Kemp also developed the same cancer and he too died from it.

I was a teen at the time and lost contact with Mrs. Van Kemp. But over the decades since, I have often wondered how she survived those terrible Job-like tragedies.

As if it is not enough that, as I chronicled in my last post, men of God have to deal with their sinful flesh, a disdainful world, and a hateful Devil, at some point we will also experience terrible events that feel like we have been punched in the gut by God himself. I am sure that is how Mrs. Van Kemp felt when she experienced the deaths of her two sons and her husband. I call these extremely difficult events hurdles. They are hurdles because they challenge our faith in a good and all powerful God and responding the wrong way can “trip us up” and prevent us from doing the good works that God saved us to do.

The nature of our hurdles

The world’s reasoning about the existence of evil and God goes along these lines: since there is evil in the world, then God, if he exists at all, is either not good or not all-powerful. He can’t be both at the same time. For if he were good, he would want to rid the world of evil. Therefore, since there is still evil in the world, he must not be all-powerful. And if he is all-powerful, he can rid the world of evil. In that case, since there still evil in the world, he must not be good.

This theological problem, called “theodicy,” has bedeviled the human race ever since one of the earliest pieces of human literature – the book of Job – was written. The conundrum, “Why has a good and omnipotent God allowed this horrific thing to happen to me?” is at the core of each hurdle that every man of God must overcome. It perplexed Job, and it perplexes us believers to this day.  Our hurdles challenge us at every level of our being – spiritually, intellectually, emotionally, volitionally, and physically – and reveal what we truly believe about God’s character and God’s power.

Three types of “insurmountable” hurdles every man of God must learn how to respond to appropriately

I have great respect for track and field athletes who run the hurdles. How they manage to run a race at lightening speed while leaping over each seemingly insurmountable hurdle after insurmountable hurdle is an amazing sight to behold.

Like those track and field athletes, every man of God who is doing the good works God saved him and equipped him to do eventually also faces three major types of what seem at the time to be insurmountable hurdles in his life, hurdles he must respond to appropriately or else he will get tripped up. These three types of hurdles are called tests, trials, and consequences. All three of these obstacles are always difficult and unpleasant experiences and sometimes, like Mrs. Van Kemp, they feel utterly overwhelming. Nevertheless, they are necessary experiences in our Christian life.

The first step in overcoming our hurdles is to understand what they are, why they are happening, and where they come from

There is no such thing as tragedy for a man of God. All of our hurdles, all of our obstacles, and, yes, all of what the world calls irrational, meaningless tragedies instead have a purpose for us and are ultimately for our good. “All things work together for good to those who love God,” Paul reminds us in Romans 8:28. Therefore, it is not the obstacles themselves, but whether we overcome them, that is important. Or, as the old adage goes, “It is not what happens to us, but what we do with what happens to us that matters.”

The first thing to do, then, when we have painful experiences is to understand what they are. Let’s look first at tests and trials.

Tests –  δοκιμάζω (dokimázō) – and trials – πειρασμός (peirasmos) sometimes appear together in the New Testament and can be used interchangeably. For example, James writes in James 1:2-3, “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials (πειρασμοῖς, peirasmois) of various kinds, for you know that the testing (δοκίμιον, dokimion)  of your faith produces steadfastness.”

But while tests and trials can be used interchangeably, they do have slightly different meanings. For example, in James 1:2-3, we see that trials refer to the actual experience of our pain and suffering while tests refer to the outcome or result of our pain and suffering. We see this same distinction in 1 Peter 1:6-7, “”In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”

So, when we experience trials in the form of pain and suffering of various types, we are doing so in order that we may pass a test. I like to think of these tests as being on three increasingly difficult levels: pop quizzes, tests, and final exams.

Pop quizzes

I think of the everyday trials and travails of life as pop quizzes. These are the normal nuisances – the lost keys, the overflowing washing machine, the speeding ticket –  that occur in the warp and woof of life that test our patience, but are relatively easy, or at least should be easy, to overcome.

Tests

On the other hand, there are the major, and sometimes predictable, sorrows of life, like illnesses, problems with children, and difficulties at work.  I call these tests. How we handle tests, along with pop quizzes, often predict how we will respond to the next and final level, the final exam.

The final exam – the ultimate test

Pop quizzes and tests are one thing. But then there is the dreaded final exam – our ultimate hurdle – that we prepare for all semester (or, like me, cram for at the last minute). God’s final exam for us refers to a shocking and nearly unbearable experience we have that challenges our very faith in a good and all-powerful God. Below are four biblical examples of “final exams” that God gave Job, Abraham, Peter, and Jesus.

• Job

Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil. And he still maintains his integrity, though you incited me against him to ruin him without any reason.” “Skin for skin!” Satan replied. “A man will give all he has for his own life. But now stretch out your hand and strike his flesh and bones, and he will surely curse you to your face.” The Lord said to Satan, “Very well, then, he is in your hands; but you must spare his life. So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and afflicted Job with painful sores from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head. Then Job took a piece of broken pottery and scraped himself with it as he sat among the ashes. His wife said to him, “Are you still maintaining your integrity? Curse God and die!” He replied, “You are talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?” In all this, Job did not sin in what he said.” Job 2:3-10

• Abraham

Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” “Here I am,” he replied. Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.” … Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!” “Here I am,” he replied. “Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.” Genesis 22:1-2, 10-12

• Peter

 “Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift all of you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.” But he replied, “Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death.” Jesus answered, “I tell you, Peter, before the rooster crows today, you will deny three times that you know me.” Luke 21:31-34

• Jesus

Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.” Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written: “‘He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’” Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’” Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.” Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’” Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him. Matthew 4:1-11

Summary

Note that out of these four examples, God gives his final exam to only one, Abraham, toward the end of his life. God tests the other three when they are relatively young. Also note that all of the tests are different. They are tailored to the individual person. In addition, except for Abraham, both God and Satan are involved in each test. For Satan, the purpose of the test is to tempt the believer to recant his faith, or, in Jesus’ case, to disobey God. But for God, the purpose of the test is to prove the genuineness of the believer’s faith and obedience.

Proven faith: what God is looking for when he gives us our final exam

“In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials, so that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which perishes though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” 1 Peter 1:6-7

God has one ultimate goal when it comes to our faith: to prove that it is genuine. But what is genuine faith? To answer this question, we need to look at proven faith in the context of three other types of faith.

• Ordinary faith – Ordinary faith is the kind of faith that everyone, Christians and non-Christians alike, uses to navigate their daily lives. Ordinary faith is so common that we are rarely even conscious of it. But without it we would remain curled up in a fetal position in bed, too terrified to get up and leave our home, a psychological condition called agoraphobia. The reason ordinary faith is so crucial to our existence is because we are finite, contingent beings with limited knowledge and experience. It is impossible for us to know everything about everything, so we make assumptions about things and act on them in faith that they are true. We believe that the signal for the cross traffic in our intersection is red and that those cars will stop when ours is green, but we don’t know for sure. We believe that the bridge we are crossing has been inspected and will not fall down, but we don’t know for sure. Nevertheless, we still go through the intersection and cross the bridge. That is ordinary faith and we exercise it all the time. But it is also not inconsequential. We stake our very lives on it. Cars do run red lights and bridges do fall down.
• Evidence based faith – However, sometimes we feel the need to shore up our faith by researching the details of a particular situation before taking action. But here, too, no matter how much information we glean from our research, we will always have to exercise a certain degree of faith. When we purchase a home, for example, we hire a title company to research the title to the home to make sure the person we are buying the home from actually owns the home and has no leans against it. But we can never be absolutely sure the title company is completely trustworthy. (In fact, our last title company sent our buyer’s payment to the wrong account and we had to wait several hours to get our money!) When we deposit money in a bank, we may want to research its solvency or check to see if it is insured by the federal government to make sure we can get our money out again. But we can never be absolutely sure we can get it out again. This is also evidence based faith. When we read about the resurrection of Jesus Christ, we can ask, “What is the evidence for Christ’s resurrection?” and do further research. But no matter how good the evidence is (and yes, the evidence is good), we will always have to exercise faith in its reality. Again, this is evidence based faith.
• Saving faith – When it comes to the kind of faith that saves us, the Bible is very clear and explicit. We are not saved by believing that something is true (“You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder” James 2:19). Rather, we are saved by believing in or on someone who has done something very important for us (i.e. “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life”). Here, saving faith includes the concept of entrusting ourselves into the hands of Jesus Christ as the one who paid the penalty for our sin and delivers us from God’s wrath. Flying on an airplane is an example of the difference between believing that something is true, and believing in it. We can believe that a Boeing 727 can carry us from Denver to Seattle. But we don’t really believe in it until we step off the causeway and onto the plane and actually let the pilots fly us on it from Denver to Seattle.
•  Proven faith – The Bible tells us that there is a big debate going on in heaven between Satan, “the accuser of the brethren” (Rev. 12:10), and God. The debate is about who we believers belong to, Satan or God. The issue centers around our faith, whether we truly believe in God for who he is, or whether we believe in him just because he does good things for us. Satan’s argument, as we see in the Book of Job (chapters 1-2), is that our faith is bogus because we are only believing God for what we can get out of him. God, on the other hand, argues with Satan that our faith is genuine and will stand regardless of how bad our circumstances get. This debate forms the basis for our “final exam.” In our final exam, God allows Satan to test us to demonstrate the nature of our faith, whether it will stand or fail (Luke 21:31-34). In order for this test to be effective, it has to be severe. This is why it is likened to fire. God is looking for faith in his goodness and his omnipotence, in spite of our suffering. This final exam – this extreme hurdle – doesn’t save us, our faith in Christ’s death on the cross for our sins does. But it does demonstrate to both God and Satan that our faith is real. Of course, God already knows that, but Satan doesn’t. Proven faith, then, is extremely valuable to God and us, because it brings him and us “great glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ” 1 Peter 1:6-7.

One day Jill was happily married. The next day she became a widow. Then the day after that she became a single mother. It was her final exam.

“Jill” is our daughter’s best friend. They have known each other since grade school. Through their friendship, my wife and I have gotten to know Jill’s parents and siblings, and they are stellar Christians. Jill’s father is a wonderful man of God and a leader in his church and her mother is a kidney donor.

Jill and our daughter, along with our two families, have marched through many of life’s milestones together: graduations, marriages, new homes, pregnancies, births. …and a funeral.

Yes, a funeral. Jill’s husband’s funeral. She was nine months pregnant with their first and only child the morning her husband died. That morning, he got out of bed, went to the kitchen for breakfast, and suddenly collapsed on the kitchen floor while Jill was still in bed. Hearing the commotion, Jill got up and discovered that her husband had died of a heart attack.

That night, while grieving her husband’s death, Jill went into labor and the next day she delivered a beautiful, healthy baby girl. Within the span of forty-eight hours, Jill had gone from being a happily married, expectant mother, to a grieving widow and single mom with a newborn baby. Her entire world had been turned upside down.

Several days later, while driving to the funeral, I wondered what I would witness upon meeting Jill after she had gone through such overwhelming trauma.

What I witnessed at the funeral was a woman who was still grieving the loss of her husband, but thankful to God that a wonderful baby girl had been born. Jill’s faith in God’s goodness was holding firm. I walked away from that funeral knowing that, yes, the next months would be very difficult, full of extreme ups and downs. But Jill was passing her final exam.

As if to prove to the whole world that Jill had indeed passed that exam, God arranged for her and her daughter to meet a young Christian widower at her church who worked in the same profession as Jill’s former husband. Jill and he fell in love, married, and they now have two more children along with Jill’s first child.

The correct response to the first two hurdles: “God is proving my faith.”

We have seen that not all trials and tests, the first two hurdles, happen to us because we deserve them. In fact, many trials and tests occur specifically because we do not deserve them. It is this very fact that makes these types of trials and tests so difficult. Job’s three “friends” ignored that reality and tried to make the opposite case to him: “What did you do, Job, to deserve this? It must have been something terrible,” they accused him. “Otherwise God would not have let it happen to you” But in reality, we know from the first two chapters of the Book of Job that Job was a righteous man and the text specifically says that he did not deserve what Satan did to him. Job himself knew he didn’t deserve the pain and suffering he was experiencing and defended himself against the accusations of his three supposed friends throughout the rest of the book. Therefore, the correct response to the first two types of hurdles is to answer the question, “What did I do to deserve this?” by saying, “Nothing. God is testing my faith.” And then hold onto God with all our might until the testing ends.

“No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.” 1 Corinthians 10:13

Consequences: the third hurdle

“Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.” Galatians 6:7

But sometimes we experience pain and suffering and we know very well the answer to the question, “What did I do to deserve this?” The reason we know the answer is because there is a direct correlation between something wrong that we did and the pain and suffering that we are experiencing from it. In this case, the answer to the question, “What did I do to deserve this?” is always manifestly obvious: “I wrote a counterfeit check and now I am serving two years in prison for it;” or, “I cheated on my wife and now she is divorcing me;” or “I drove while drunk, and now my license has been revoked.”

In these cases, the correct response to this third hurdle – consequences for our actions – is to confess our sin to God and make amends to anyone we have hurt.

The consequences of forgiven sin

But make no mistake, there are still consequences of forgiven sin. I don’t remember where I read that phrase, but “the consequences of forgiven sin” is an excellent biblical observation. When we confess our sin, God forgives it and restores us to full fellowship (1 John 1). But there are still consequences that result from our sin. Here are four biblical examples of men of God who suffered consequences for their forgiven sin.

• Moses

In Numbers 20, we read that God commanded Moses to speak to the rock and it would produce water. Instead, out of anger Moses disobeyed God and struck the rock.  As a result, God told Moses that he would see the promised land, but he would not enter it. And that is what happened.

• David

David sinned against God by raping Bathsheba, getting her pregnant, and murdering her husband. David confessed his sin and God forgave him. But David suffered severe consequences (a civil war, led by one of his sons, and temporary exile from Jerusalem) for the rest of his life.

• Peter

Peter denied Jesus three times, even thought he said he would never do that. After his resurrection, Jesus forgave and reconciled with Peter, but also predicted that Peter would die by crucifixion (John 21:15-29).

• Paul

Prior to becoming a believer, Paul (called Saul) persecuted the church relentlessly. But at his conversion, Paul experienced God’s love and forgiveness, but was also told through Annanias “how much he would suffer for my name.”

While it is true that much of the pain and suffering we experience in life happens they are trials and tests that prove the genuineness of our faith, some of our pain and suffering happens because it is self-inflicted. We know this type of suffering is the consequence of past forgiven sin because there is an obvious connection to it.

The correct response to the consequences of forgiven sin: humble patience and a willingness to learn

The fact that there are consequences of our forgiven sin does not mean that God cannot or will not use us after our sin. It simply means he is disciplining us as a loving Father who uses us, often very fruitfully, in spite of our sin. As the writer to the Hebrews writes:

“In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. And have you completely forgotten this word of encouragement that addresses you as a father addresses his son? It says, “My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son.” Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father? If you are not disciplined—and everyone undergoes discipline—then you are not legitimate, not true sons and daughters at all. Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of spirits and live! They disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. “Make level paths for your feet,” so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed.” Hebrews 12:4-13

Are we experiencing discipline for forgiven sin? Praise the Lord! We are sons of our Father in heaven who disciplines us that we may share in his holiness.

So how do we respond when we experience the pain and suffering the consequences of our forgiven cause us? We respond with patient acceptance and a willingness to learn from the sin.

No one said this would be easy

O man of God, let us not think that following Jesus Christ and doing his good works is a walk in the park. We have a world, our flesh, and the Devil to fight, and huge obstacles to overcome. But we have this promise, Jesus Christ has saved us, the Holy Spirit indwells us, our Father in heaven watches over us, our church supports us, our loved ones surround us, and the Word of God abides in us. As Jesus says:

“In the world you will have tribulation. But be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” John 13:33

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A Men's Ministry Men of God Need to Know

(Part 5):

Every Man of God Needs to Know How to Handle Fame

My late uncle and mentor was a pastor. When I was a young man he told me, “There are three primary temptations for a pastor: money, sex, and fame.” He was right. I have seen men of God become compromised because they fell victim to one of these three occupational hazards. In this chapter, I will discuss fame and how insidious it can be, not just for pastors, but for any man of God who seeks to do the good works God saved him to do.

Every man of God will struggle with fame at some point…and it can get very ugly

“Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. ‘All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.'” Matthew 4:8-9

“He must not be a recent convert, or he may become conceited and fall under the same judgment as the devil.” 1 Timothy 3:6

By “fame,” I am not simply referring to someone with a mass following, but anyone who is tempted to exalt themself over others, who wants to command a following, even if it is a following of just one other person. We all struggle with this temptation because we think having the attention of others, and the power that comes with it, validates us and gives us a sense of success. But striving after fame always creates conflict.

Many years ago I invited a successful and wealthy Christian businessman onto our board at New Commandment Men’s Ministries. Our focus at New Commandment, of course, is to help churches use teams of men to serve their widowed and single parents. The church this businessman attended had a thriving men’s team ministry. But eventually I noticed something. This man never joined one of his church’s teams in order t serve the widows in his church. He also never supported New Commandment financially. He was only interested taking control of our board. He had no real concern for the needy in his church, or any other church, for that matter. He just wanted power and control over the ministry.

One does not have to be a pastor or on a ministry board to “become conceited and fall under the same judgment as the devil.” I have seen two Christian men argue over who drives the church van. But, in reality, pastors, because of their position in the church, can find this temptation especially overwhelming. Here is why.

Non-liturgical churches tend to foster fame because they are personality driven

I confess, whenever I have traveled abroad, no matter what country I was in, I sometimes ate at the always-ubiquitous McDonalds because, while it certainly doesn’t offer up the greatest food in the world, I knew exactly what I was getting and I could get ice in my water.

But in all of the McDonalds I ate in, I never learned the names of those who cooked my food because it made no difference who cooked my food. The reason was because everything had been standardized by the McDonalds corporation. Consequently, I didn’t made it a practice to go behind the counter of a McDonalds and congratulate the workers in the back with, “That was a fine Big Mac you cooked up for me!” It never even crossed my mind to do so.

Liturgical churches are like McDonalds: say what you will about them being boring and staid, but at least you know what you are going to get. You know what you are going to get because the service has been standardized by the denominational hierarchy. In these churches, the sermon, or “homily,” is normally short and plays only a minor role. Because of this focus on a standard liturgy, any priest anywhere in that denomination can perform the liturgy pretty much just as well as any other priest. Therefore, who the priest is is relatively unimportant.

On the other hand, in non-liturgical churches — and here I’m talking about most of conservative Protestant Christianity — one gets served up a whole panoply of worship styles, depending on which church one attends. But while these churches can be rather fluid in the way they design their worship services, nevertheless, all of them have one thing in common: the sermon is the most important part of the service.

There are a some good reasons for our emphasis on the sermon, of course. One is our belief in sola scriptura; that the Bible is our sole authority for faith and practice. Therefore, preaching the Word of God well is of utmost importance in our worship services. Another reason for this emphasis is that the rest of the worship service is not sacramental in the sense that it bestows Devine grace on us. So by definition, it has less importance. Rather, in worship we celebrate the Divine grace (that is, salvation) that has already been bestowed on us through faith in Christ. This is why we do not believe in sacraments, but rather ordinances, which are baptism and communion.

Because the sermon has such a central place in non-liturgical churches, who preaches the sermon and how they preach the sermon takes on primary importance.

Or rather, instead of a liturgical worship service that is like a McDonalds fast food restaurant where the service is always the same predictable, albeit boring, stuff no matter which church in the denomination you attend, non-liturgical churches are like one-star Michelin restaurants where the chef is all-important, and therefore praising the chef for his great cooking is a natural response.

Consider how the following article idolizes a Denver chef who is referenced in a Michelin guide book: “Michelin inspectors were impressed by Chef Michael Diaz de Leon’s approach to seasonality and locality, all the way down to the grains that are milled or nixtamalized in-house. ‘The menu, which is Mexican at its core, has a clear narrative, and is perhaps best displayed in lamb prepared two ways — as a street-style taco and ground lamb leg kushiyaki with a quenelle of mole chichilo,’ the guide says.”

That writer’s adoration of Chef Michael Diaz de Leon and his nixtamalized food is the same adoration we give our pastors who preach to us. And it can turn them into monsters. “O pastor! That sermon was wonderful. It moved me to tears!” we tell them as we walk out the door of our church in what someone has called “the glorification of the worm ceremony.” Give a pastor enough of that kind of feedback and he can become drunk with self importance and not even know it.

As I have said above, the threat that lionization brings isn’t limited to pastors and preaching. Any man of God doing whatever the good works God has called him to do faces this threat. The reason is because our good works are like light. And while that light is meant to glorify God, it also, invariably, illuminates ourselves as well.

God often counteracts our craving for fame by requiring us to earn a B.D. degree (Backside of the Desert degree)

To inoculate us men of God against the temptation we have to forget our place, to “think more highly of ourselves than we ought,” God often starts our discipleship by isolating us in desolate, strange places. In the Bible, we see God do this in the lives of Abram, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, David, Elijah, Jesus, and Paul. I am sure many reading this have had this experience of God isolating you from everything you hold dear: your family, your work, your home, even your church. The effect this isolation has on us makes us feel lost, alone, small, weak, anonymous, and, yes, forgotten; exactly the opposite of fame.

When I graduated from seminary, I was twenty-five, single, and inexperienced. I had a dream of preaching in a church, but no church wanted a twenty-five year old, single, and inexperienced pastor. (Except one church in Snook, Texas, and only because the church had a young woman in their congregation they wanted me to marry!) So I took a job in Houston as an oil and gas lease broker. I was making great money, but I was miserable. Driving around rural Texas leasing mineral rights from ranchers was the last thing I expected to do after seminary. This city-boy did indeed feel lost, alone, small, weak, anonymous, and especially forgotten … by God.

But God was teaching me an important lesson. He was teaching me my place in the grand scheme of his Plan.

Victory over a craving for fame happens when a man of God learns to be the unworthy slave…and loves it

“He made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a slave.”

Truth be told, we are all just infinitesimally small, ephemeral gnats in this vast universe. But our Bible tells us that we are God’s gnats; created in his image and redeemed through the blood of Jesus, who himself became a gnat like us. And it is this kenosis, this emptying, that Jesus did in order to save us that God wants us to imitate. God wants us to imitate Jesus because it is Jesus’ act of utter humility, and his alone, that cures us of our craving for fame.

I am going to quote Philippians 2:1-8 here, but I am going to reverse the order, putting verses 5-8 first, and then 1-4 after because Paul makes it clear that, as he writes verses 1-4, he already has 5-8 in mind. We know this because of the way 5-8 begins, “In your relationships with one another:”

“In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a slave, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!” (Ephesians 2:5-8)

So Paul is talking about our relationships with fellow believers and how the Incarnation informs those relationships. But what kind of relationships with fellow believers will the Incarnation produce if we truly understand it and emulate it?

“Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.” (Ephesians 2:1-4)

What, then, is the cure for a craving for fame? The cure is an attitude of a slave in service to others. Willful, joyful, humble, obedient slavery to the One who himself became a slave for us.

The unworthy slaves at New Commandment Men’s Ministries

“So you too, when you do all the things which are commanded you, say, ‘We are unworthy slaves; we have done only that which we ought to have done.’”

Having the mind of Christ, Paul teaches us in Philippians 2:1-8, always results in service to our fellow believers. “Selfish ambition or vain conceit” (in other words, “fame”) cannot thrive in that kind of environment. Rather, we “value others above ourselves” by “not looking to [our] own interests but (and here he is emphatic) each of [us] to the interests of the others.” Jesus practiced this selfless attitude toward us as a slave. Now he calls us to practice it as well toward each other…as his slaves. When we do, we starve our selfish, self centered, and sinful nature and our new man blossoms.

Because of that experience I had years ago with the wealthy, power hungry board member, I always make sure now that everyone who joins New Commandment’s board is already involved on a team of men at his church serving their widows and single moms. Because all of us on our board know what the “mind of Christ” feels like in our service to our widows and single moms, we also know what the “mind of Christ” feels like in our service on our board. As a result, over the years we have become close friends, united with Christ, sharing in the Spirit with tenderness and compassion. We are, after all, unworthy slaves, just doing what we are supposed to be doing.

That attitude is God’s will for every man of God in your church as well.

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A Men's Ministry Men of God Need to Know

(Part 7):

Every Man of God Must Kill the Bear Stalking Our Homes

As a pastor for twenty years, I spent a good amount of time counseling married and engaged couples. I could write an entire book giving marriage advice. But if there is one thing I would tell Christian couples today, this is it:

There is a bear stalking our homes

Fifteen year-old Hayes Sherman and his friend were watching TV in Hayes’ Lake Tahoe home while his mother slept upstairs. Suddenly, a hungry bear entered their kitchen through an open garage door and began rummaging through the refrigerator. Realizing that the sounds of grunts and crashing containers of food emanating from the kitchen were sure signs that there was a bear in their home, Hayes urgently called his mother upstairs to tell her about the ravishing bear trashing the kitchen and that she shouldn’t come down the stairs.

As he talked to his mom, the bear bumped into the door separating Hayes and his friend’s room from the kitchen. While they held it shut, the door shook as the bear tried to open it multiple times.

“That is the worst-case scenario as a parent, to have a bear between you and your children,” Hayes mother recounted latter to CNN. “I am glad that I didn’t run downstairs, because that probably would have just agitated the bear.”

After speaking with his mom, and still holding the door shut with the help of his friend, Hayes called 911 and soon the police arrived, opened the door, and let the bear out of the house.

Like the bear in that Lake Tahoe home, there is a bear in our homes and it seeks to destroy them.

Moral relativism is the bear stalking our homes

That “bear” is moral relativism and it is as destructive to our marriages and families as any literal bear possibly could be. The philosophy of moral relativism views moral values as “relative” to individual beliefs and prevailing cultural norms. This philosophy holds that there are no objective morals that are true for all people in all societies at all times. Rather, moral values can change, depending on the person and the culture that the person lives in, or, as the saying goes,  there are “different strokes for different folks.”

With respect to sexual morality, moral relativism is the de facto  law of the land in American culture. The logical conclusion of relative sexual morality, therefore, is a laissez-faire attitude toward marriage and family. One can arrange one’s sex life and one’s family life, according to one’s own desires and convictions, that is, if one wants to get married at all.

The result is an implosion of the institutions of marriage and family in America.

While Christians have been warning about this cultural maelstrom for years, the sad fact is that moral relativism now infects even our churches, along with the hearts and minds of individual Christians like ourselves.

Our homes need men of God to protect them against moral relativism

Notably, the story of the bear in that Lake Tahoe home makes no mention of a husband and father who could protect the mother and children from the deadly bear.

Like that defenseless family in Lake Tahoe, millions of American families stand helpless against the bear of moral relativism because it has robbed them of faithful men who will always be around to protect them. Without the basic guiding principles that 1) sex outside of marriage is wrong, and 2) marriage is between one man and one woman only, principles that buttressed Western civilization for two thousand years, men dessert their families by the millions and let them dissolve into chaos.

Even many men of God who should know better have allowed moral relativism to seep into their homes. Some dabble secretly in pornography. Some have affairs. Some approve of same sex marriage. Some even allow their adult children and unmarried partners to live with them so they can save money to buy a home.

One important way men of God can combat moral relativism is by demonstrating fidelity to our wives and children

Given our current cultural debauchery, faithfulness to one’s marriage covenant, as taught in the Bible, is a radical lifestyle these days. Not laughing at a crude sexual joke told by one’s boss, not looking at online pornography, not longing for someone else’s wife, not approving of an adult child’s relationship with an unmarried live-in lover, not going along with the crowd when it comes to attitudes about same sex marriage, not watching movies that trash marriage and biblical sexual morality, all of these actions are examples of how we can counter the bear that threatens to destroy us and everything we stand for.

We truly strike a blow for Jesus Christ and biblical truth when we bravely and boldly demonstrate fidelity to our wives and children by our actions.