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The shorter series and series in the past, but it’s about manning up, and the reason I find it significant is because with within the church today, you typically find an average of more men or women who attend than men. And that’s not just the case for our church. It’s with every church. And it gives this ideal for young children. Being raised in our church. Is that following after Jesus is a woman’s thing and not a man’s thing, and which is totally ungodly. In fact, when you read Scripture, you see that the Bible encourages the man to lead his household and to be a man without fear, guiding his wife and his children, his community and people around him towards God. And so when we talk about manning up today, ladies don’t don’t feel bad because a lot of these principles we’re going to apply still works in your lives as well. And you’ll notice in your bulletin you’ve got a man up card. You can just write woe in front of that, okay. And it will apply to you as well. And I’ll explain what those cards are in just a little bit. There’s a quote that says many men desire to seek God at the 11th hour, but tragically, most men die around 1030. Hahahahaha. You know, I read in Scripture in the Bible tells us in Genesis chapter three. It describes for us where sin began. And I got to think, when we start a series like this, man, one of the things I don’t want us to feel is guilt towards what it means about manning up.
Okay, what it means to be a godly man after the Lord. Because this is what I believe is that God wants to do some incredible things in your life and rather than feel guilty about this stuff, what I want us to do is look at it and encourage us to pursue God in our lives. And ladies, the same thing with you. What does it mean for our families, our lives, our community, the people around us to get serious about our relationship with God and wo man up or man up in that sense? There’s a quote that says, when mama ain’t happy, nobody is happy, and And when dad isn’t happy, nobody cares, right? The Bible wants to tell us as women, this is for you guys to encourage you as well. Ladies, what we don’t want you to do when you walk away from this series today is to go home and immediately start nagging your husband. Actually, don’t even nag your husband about this series. Don’t go home and say do not quote this. Did you hear what Pastor Nathaniel said? Did you hear what he said today? You are not doing that. You know, that’s. I’m sorry. If that’s not my woman’s voice, I’m sorry if that would be a little. But that’s not what we want.
We want to accomplish today, okay? Nagging men is is about the worst thing you can do to encourage a man towards living a godly life or living a godly life. But guys, it works the same way for for the ladies as well. Nagging your wife is about the most discouraging thing that you could do to encourage them to pursue God in their lives. In First Peter, Peter actually talks about that. He begins writing to the ladies and in verse one, you know, I always love about when we talk about marriage in the Bible, it always seems that God talks more to the ladies and to the men. He’s got to keep it simple for us. But he explains, he explains in the first few verses it says verse one. In the same way, you wives must accept the authority of your husband. Then, even if some refuse to obey the good news, your godly lives will speak to them without any words. They will be won over by observing your pure and reverent lives. You should clothe yourselves instead with the beauty that comes from within, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit which is so precious to God. God’s encouragement for you to hear and as we pursue this topical series together is if you’re really concerned about men in our church and the men and the godly examples they set forth, and maybe even think of young children in our church that godly men would raise up and be examples for them.
The concern that you should have is not to to nag them about the concern that you should have is to begin to pray for them and love them. So the tendency is with even in our own marriages, this shouldn’t happen, but it does cause a lot of times we’ll as ladies, you can pursue God in your life and maybe your husband doesn’t have that same heart. And so you build this bitter attitude towards them. And so you’ll say to them, you know, you can go do whatever you want, but I’m going to do this over here and live for Jesus. And we separate the relationship between husband and wife in that sense. And and God is saying exactly the opposite of this passage of Scripture. He’s saying rather than separate yourselves with this, this is what I want you to do in a loving way. Speak to your husband’s heart out of your lifestyle. Demonstrate to him the beauty of what it means to follow after Jesus and out of his need in his life. You should seek to pray for him and godly wisdom and guidance. Today, what we find in the church is that there are generation, and in this world there are a generation of boys that have no idea what a real man looks like. 40%. Up to 70%, depending on where you live.
The statistics say that 40 to 70% of homes grow up without the influence of a biological father. And in America today, especially, there are a few examples of what a man looks like in the home. I like the quote that one guy placed upon it he called men today ban rather than a man. What he emphasized was that rather than be becoming a man, what we find today in our culture is that we prolong adolescence and rather than be a man, they are banned, which is a combination of a boy man. Today, if you study statistics, it says the number one consumer of video games are men between the ages of 18 to 40. Rather than devote time to the development of young children, family, wives, they devote three hours a day to video games. So the question I want to ask for this morning is, what kind of man guys do you want to be? Maybe even to the ladies. Ladies, what kind of woman do you want to be? Bible says in in Joshua chapter 24 and verse 15, it comes at a significant point in the book of Joshua. Joshua was just going in. He’s conquered the entire land of Israel. He’s he’s come into this new land after Moses has died. He’s the first to bring the children of Israel into the Promised Land that God told them about. They separate and divide into the 12 tribes and disperse themselves, and while they’re dispersed, the goal that’s been given to them is they need to to wipe out the rest of the civilizations that are going to tempt them to follow after false gods.
But what we find, we get to the end of the book of Joshua is that the nation of Israel was disobedient, and they allowed the pagan people with their pagan gods to begin to influence the nation of Israel. And towards the end of Joshua’s life, he makes this statement. He says, if it is disagreeable in your sight to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves today whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served, which was were beyond the river, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. The statement comes to Joshua at an age probably well over 100 years old at this point, and he’s looking up at the nation of Israel that is floundering in their relationship with God. And he’s saying, man up. He’s saying to them, get serious about your relationship with God. You can’t even tell what God you’re worshiping. Do you want to worship the gods of old, that the false gods that they worshiped in the Babylon with Abraham? Do you want to worship the false gods that we’ve come into when we saw this land? Or do you want to worship the real God who’s helped us to conquer the nation of Israel and provided for us as people? As for me and our house, the decision that we’re making is to man up, pursue that relationship with God, to grow up and to be what God has called you to be.
Bible tells us in Genesis chapter two that God created us to be fruitful and multiply. Excuse me. In chapter one. Ephesians chapter two. You were created in Christ Jesus for good works. God made you for a purpose, to live it out in him and through him. Interesting thing happened in my house this week. It happened because my wife had read an article. Apparently this article said at 18 months old, you should cut your child off from a bottle. I don’t know where it came from. So in our house we made the decision. Grayson’s right. At 18 months old, he no longer has a bottle. He’s growing up right. The Bible kind of paints a picture of a young child as it grows up. In Corinthians, Paul wrote to the Corinthians. He said, chapter three I gave you milk to drink, not solid food for you, not able to to receive it. Indeed, even now you are not able to receive it. First Corinthians 13 he says, when I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child. When I became a man, I did away with childish things.
The picture for a moment. Your child. If you’ve ever had a child or held a child, know of a child. Just the beauty of a baby, right? So innocent. Smells so stinky half the time. Cries. You feed it, it’s happy, right? It’s beautiful just to have a little kid. As they begin to grow up and your feet get to hold them in your arms, feed him a bottle, nurture that child. Picture this for a moment. That child is now 30 years old. You’re still changing its diaper. You’re still feeding it a bottle. You’re still burping it on your shoulder. I don’t know about you, but when Grayson turns 30 years old, my plan is to not be doing that for him. Right? Matter of fact, that would look gross, right? A grown man changing the diaper of another grown man when he’s capable of doing it on his own. There’s just. It’s just not right. But the Bible gives the same picture for us as people and our spiritual maturity. Paul is saying, how disgusting is this? You think about this when you were a child. Yes, you were supposed to behave like a child, but you’ve been following after Jesus for quite a while. So it’s about time that you begin to grow up. And rather than take and take and take, you begin to feed other people and provide spiritually for this world as well.
And Joshua, in between Joshua and Corinthians, we get a a diversity of expectation of what is supposed to be there in the believer’s life. Joshua was saying, man up and grow up. And Paul saying, listen, if you don’t, it looks disgusting. Picture that in your mind. You’ll notice in your bulletins today you’ve received there’s two things I want to make you aware of. One is the man up card throughout this series. This is the challenge to us as people, as ladies. You can take this as well as men especially. I want you to look over this card. There are only two points you come up with here every year. It’s a good opportunity for us to challenge ourselves in the relationship with God. Just as Joshua got to the end of his life and challenged the nation of Israel, it’s good for us as people to challenge ourselves and our relationship with God. The point is, here is, what do you want to challenge yourself with before your family? Maybe there’s a couple of things you’ve been thinking about you want to do to encourage your family and your relationship with them, to encourage your family and your relationship with the Lord. You can write some of those things down this on this number one and number two, put it in your Bible. Remind yourself, put it on your fridge, remind your family, hand it to your wife for accountability.
Right? Or your spouse or to someone that you trust. Whatever it is, the desire that God has for us is that we become examples for community, friends, family, to those around us to challenge ourselves, to grow that we recognize the importance of mania. The second is this here at Alpine Bible Church, man, we take the shepherding of families seriously. The separating of our church family, the shepherding of individual families in the place that God has put us in. We’re always looking for ways to encourage us in our relationship with God. And if parents, if you’ve been made aware of this, but we’ve begun a new series in our children’s church about a month ago, and it’s walking your kids through the entire Bible in a year to understand what it’s all about. And with with that comes every every week they get a take home card. It’s the opportunity for you as a family to shepherd your children to what they’re learning in Children’s church and reiterate that. So if you’re ever interested, they’re usually in the children’s church room or on the entry table. You can grab one and take it home. As a father, as a mother, you can encourage your kids to be that way because it’s important to us. It’s important that we see our responsibility not for the church to disciple our kids, but for you as families to disciple your own children as well.
God has called you first to be that example to your kids, and then for the church to aid in that and not in the reverse order. Bible challenges us to think to ourselves every year, every day. How can it be more like the Lord in my life? How can I live more like Jesus? An example to those around us. So the question I want to ask this morning is what is a real man? What is a real man? Bible tells us in Proverbs chapter 24 and verse 30, when past went past the field of a sluggard. Past the vineyard of someone who has no sense. Thorns had become up everywhere. The ground was covered with weeds and the stone wall was in ruins. I applied my heart to what I observed and learned a lesson from what I saw. A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the arm. The hands to rest. And poverty will come on you like a thief. And scarcity like an armed man. A real man, according to this passage of Scripture, is one that rejects passivity. It’s easy to become passive, according to what this verse says in Proverbs 24, to sort of check out on our families and our relationships. But a real man rejects passivity. It tells us in the very last verse that passivity results in poverty. Choosing to do nothing is doing something. There’s a quote that tells us it says all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that godly men do nothing.
It’s not about what you don’t do, but it’s about the fact that you choose to do nothing. A real man rejects passivity, and it says by rejecting that, you walk away from poverty. And when the Bible talks about poverty, it doesn’t always have to just be financial. When we talk about leading families and being an example to friends and those around us, poverty doesn’t just have to be financial, though. Poverty can exist in financial disaster. Poverty can also exist in physical poverty and spiritual poverty in relational poverty. God’s desire for you is to be intentional in life, in pursuing relationships, for him to be intentional in life towards not only your own spiritual growth, but the encouragement of your family as well. You know, as a man, I’ve got to be honest, one of the most difficult places for me to be a godly example sometimes is with my wife. It’s all day long. I get the opportunity of people coming to me with different needs and praying for those needs and encouraging people throughout Scripture. But my wife knows me better than anybody. She knows my pitfalls and my shortcomings, and the humility it takes sometimes for me to come before her and say, you know what? I was wrong. And and let’s just pray together. Let me be the encouragement that you need in your life and forgive me for where I mess up.
The Bible desires for you as individuals to not be passive, but intentional for what God desires for your life and those around us to engage your relationships for the better good of God. Your kids are always being influenced, and the question we have to ask ourselves is whose voice do we want them to hear? I heard of a young man once reflect that when he was a boy, his dad took him through the book of Proverbs and he hated it. He hated just studying that with the Bible. In the Bible. With his. With his father. But, you know, the book of Proverbs was written as a father to a son, for a son to understand how to live in this world and to walk in a godly way. And he reflected as he became a teenager, the moments that he had going through the book of Proverbs in his life, as he heard what the world wanted to tell him, and the disobedience towards walking away from God that existed in this world, rather than listen to it. What he would often hear is the voice of his father telling him to live a godly life, and to reflect on those proverbs in which he had learned to the point that he became a man. And those proverbs were ingrained in his life. The point for us as people is that we engage our culture, that we be intentional about the relationships that we seek, to be intentional about your relationship, even with your children.
I think fathers, what God has called you more than anything in this world is to love your lives, your wives, with all your heart, and to be an example to your children to show your daughters daughters. This is how a man should treat you one day to get there before that snobby teenager, right? To set the expectation and the bar high. That way she just doesn’t seek love and fall into any arms. But she learns what true love is and how to look for that godly mate. To teach your your young men or your young boys how to become men. It’s funny, we were at home a couple of weeks ago. We had this young lady. She’s in college learning about her relationship with the Lord, and she came to our house and she hung out. And turns out college girls, they talk a lot. So we found a lot. Not only to talk about Lord, but we found out a lot about her life and she kept sharing this one thought all she wants to do, she wants to find the right guy in her life, and she wants to be a stay at home mom, and she wants to take care of her family and love her family, which is it’s a great goal. But we asked her, um, how are you going to do this? What’s your plan here was her plan.
She goes to the library at college and she goes to the very highest, highest floor in the library because she knows that’s where the nerd of all nerds study. Her goal was we asked her, you know, what kind of man do you look like? Or do you look for in life? And she said, I don’t. I don’t care if they’re ugly or not. I just want to be able to provide for my family. So the point is, for you young guys, no girl is going to turn down a young man who who gets a job and supplies an income and walks up to her one day and says, you know, I want to marry you. I’ve already got my house taken care of. I already owned my car. And here’s your engagement ring. Okay? Pursue taking care of a family. It’s. It’s a godly thing, all right? A real man rejects passivity. Dads, it’s our goal in life to train young men how to reject that man. It’s the goal in life to train young men how to love young ladies in a godly way. Do we see that in our culture today? Most of our culture idolizes sex and taking advantage of each other for our own personal gain. It’s not about truly giving yourself away. It’s about getting everything that I want from the relationship.
A real man. In addition, the Bible says a real man accepts responsibility. It says in Ecclesiastes 910, whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might. For there is no activity or planning or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol where you are going. She holds an Old Testament word. Let me just say in a condensed sense it means the afterlife. Okay. And what he’s saying to us in Ecclesiastes, this comes from Solomon. It says to us as people, you’ve only got one shot. Some of us are way behind the curve in understanding our responsibility and our families. What God has called us to do above and beyond everything in those relationships. He’s saying, you’ve only got one shot in this world, but you you need to understand the importance of activity and planning and understanding and preparing to guide your family. Colossians 317. Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father. When we reject our burden in this world, we’re causing it to become someone else’s responsibility. When you reject the purpose for which God has created you in the position in which God has placed you, you are casting your burden as to someone else’s responsibility. Can I tell you maybe as a place of frustration, you’ll take this in a godly way because you guys are very encouraging people. But, um, in churches I’ve dealt with in the past, a lot of times what families have sought, especially with their teenagers, is for the youth pastor to take the place of a father or a parent in a home.
I’ll tell you, one of the most unhealthy things for you to do is to allow the youth pastor to take the place of the Or. The parents role should be in the home. God doesn’t desire for us to be passive, but accept our responsibility. In addition to that, he wants us to lead courageously. As written for in chapter ten of the Book of Ezra. Ezra had to deal with a very difficult subject with the nation of Israel. He comes before some of the leaders in the nation of Israel, and this is their advice to him. Arise. For there is matter in your responsibility, but we will be with you. Be courageous and act. It’s not saying you have to be a professional and be able to do this, but what it’s saying is we understand there are things in this world that look fearful, things in this world you may not know exactly how to understand or how to how to handle it, but do something. Ask the question, God, what would you want me to do? And then make an attempt at doing something? It’s better to attempt and fail than not to attempt at all, right? Sometimes in this world, we we don’t plan to to fail, but we fail to plan.
So in Ephesians five, Paul lays this out for us as as husbands, we lead courageously. He says in verse 25, we saw something to the wives in first Peter three but to the husbands he says, husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her. It’s unconditionally, sacrificially. We don’t love because they’re loving. We love because love has called us to love. Love is about giving itself away regardless of what other another person would do. And because she is your spouse, you have promised before God that above anything else, you would choose to love her regardless of how she might respond to you. That’s God’s calling you. And so it says in verse 26, so that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that he might present to himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, but that she would be holy and blameless, points a husband’s in that passage of Scripture. He’s describing for us how the love of Jesus has made us as people, beautiful in the eyes of God, as God has lavished his love on him. The Bible tells us we love him because he’s first loved us. And the more Jesus loves us, and the more that we respond to that love, the more beautiful and sanctified we look as people.
And so he’s saying to men, the more that you choose to love women in the godly way, and especially your wife, the more beautiful she becomes each and every day to you. Godly man rejects passivity. He accepts responsibility, and he leads his family courageously. Some guys might say, well, you know, I have, um, I have loved my wife. But right now in our marriage, she feels more like more like she’s distant, more like a neighbor than than a wife or a friend. And I will say, that’s okay. The Bible says love. Love your neighbor too, right? The Bible also says, no matter how much she may feel like an enemy at certain times, the Bible says to also love your enemies. First Timothy chapter three describes for us what godly leadership is all about. It says in the church that you are to appoint elders to lead the church. But when the. When it describes how to discover those elders that are which are appointed to lead a church, it says that you are to find godly men who love their families. Godly men who have proven in their own character, in their walk with God what it means to lead a family. And as they lead a family, they identify themselves as individuals who are also capable of leading the church, because the church is a larger form of the family. When it talks about the leadership in first Timothy three and all the things that emphasizes in first Timothy three, 90% of the passage of a of a of a leader in a church deals with his character.
What is he like in difficult situations? Who comes out? Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, right. What kind of individual does it become when pressure is placed upon him? Last I would say this a real man. A real man desires to be with God. Matthew chapter six Jesus has given his sermon on the Mount. He says in verse six, but you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your father who is in secret, and your father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. Verse 33 he says, but seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. A moment of pause for us as man and his people to ask the question, how often do you seek the face of God? If we took it a little deeper and said, how often do you seek the face of God on behalf of your family? How often do you pray for the needs of your children? Pray for the needs of your spouse or your marriage. The relationship that you have connected to your church, family, or community. How often do you take the time and the quietness of your heart to intercede on the behalf of others? Let me ask another question.
It says in verse 33 that we seek the kingdom of God. A man or maybe women by by watching your behavior. What would your family say is your greatest reward in life? If your kids kids catch on everything, don’t they? If your kids were able to examine your life, who would they say that you love more than anything in this world? Or what would they say that you love more than anything in this world? Maybe that would be something for the comment card this week on Man Up. Take the time when you leave church today to ask your kids, kids, who do you think that I love more than anything in this world? They’ll be honest with you. They’ll say it so bluntly without thinking about it might cut straight to the heart. God has called you to desire a relationship with him more than anything. This is what we believe in that relationship, that as you begin to pursue it, God teaches us to love more deeply and care for the needs of others more personally than for our own personal needs. So we look at all that together, and we answered the question of really, what is a godly man about? And there’s more that Scripture would tell us. And we get to this point. And the reason I want to stop here is, is we’re going to study this in weeks ahead. But the question I ask now is, now that we’ve been pummeled and guilted and all that’s been thrown on us, where do we start? That’s good for us to stop and recognize.
You know what? I’ve been falling short. Um. Wives who’ve come with your husbands today don’t go home and beat them up, okay? Because we’ve learned right now, there’s a point in our lives where we have fallen short. Ladies, as we look, we need to draw ourselves to the attention of, you know what? I do need to always challenge myself in my relationship with the Lord and seeking after God. And what does God have me here for? What’s the most important thing that God’s called me to do? How in the world do I start at this point in my life? Because I think one of the most important things for us to learn is, number one, we learn to control our passions. Do you know that your passions will bring you destruction if they’re bad passions? But not only that, your passions will also bring you great success if your passion is in the right thing. And it says in Proverbs chapter 16, he who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit, than he who captures a city. Saying, those guys, when God calls you to lead, when God calls you to lead as a lady in any position, wherever you are that God calls you to lead, the one of the worst things that you can do.
And in discovering God’s will for your life and following after that path is to allow anger to control you. Because in those moments now anger is in charge of the situation rather than God. Listen to this in Proverbs chapter five. For for many men, lust becomes a passion for us that takes takes guys out of control. But it says this as a as a father written to a son in Proverbs chapter five and verse one, my son, pay attention to my wisdom. Listen carefully to my wise counsel. Then you will show discernment, and your lips will express what you’ve learned. For the lips of an immoral woman are as sweet as honey, and her mouth is smoother than oil. But in the end she is a bitter. She is as bitter as poison, as dangerous as a double edged sword. Her feet go down to death. Her steps lead straight to the grave. For she cares nothing about the path to life. She staggers down a crooked trail and doesn’t realize it. So now my sons listen to me. Never stray from what I’m about to say. Stay away from her. Don’t go near the door of her house. If you do, you’ll lose your honor and you will lose merciless people. All who have achieved strangers will consume your wealth, and someone else will enjoy the fruit of your labor.
In the end, you will groan in anguish. When disease consumes your body, you will say, how I hated discipline. If only I had not ignored all the warnings. But in verse 18 he says this let your wife be a fountain of blessing for you. May you rejoice in the wife of your youth. For the Lord sees clearly what a man does, examining every path he takes. An evil man is held captive by his own sins. They are ropes that catch and hold him. He will die for lack of self control. He will be lost because of his great foolishness. The Bible calls us as individuals to control our passions, to be serious about our relationship with God. And in the seriousness of that relationship, he calls us to develop a godly character. Micah six says this know old people, the Lord has told you what is good, and this is what he requires of you to do what is right, to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. Some translations say to do justice and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God. Humbly means this, that we admit God’s authority over us and the fact that we can’t meet our needs on our own. The fact that we can’t do it on our own. Recognizing the importance of men or women. That when we fail before our families, when we fail before our friends or before anybody, that we have the willingness in our humility to walk before that individual and confess that we messed up thinking about our own personal relationship and the health of that relationship with with God that we are to live humbly.
But he also says that we are to love justice and mercy, or that we are to do what is right and to love mercy. I love this about being a dad. Is that, um, Grayson has this mean growl. Now, we’ve we’ve learned how to be a cat for long enough that he growls. He’ll run after the house and growl after everything. He attacks everything right now because he’s at that age. But. But God’s goal in my life for him is to teach him how to do justice and love mercy. Meaning we don’t take advantage of the weak, but we attack those who are robbing the world. Meaning, when Grayson gets old enough to carry a sword and wield that around the house, I’ll pretend to be the bad guy to teach him how to bring justice and mercy on those who are evil, and to love and care and bring mercy on those who need it. Bible tells us to love the widows and the orphans, to love everybody. It tells us to do justice and to love mercy, to learn to tak the things that are wrong and to live rightly for the things that deserve it. To be that example to our young people in the last is this accept your responsibility.
It says in first Timothy five eight but those who won’t care for their relatives, especially in their own household, have denied the true faith. Such people are worse than unbelievers. Bible saying this. If you say that you know Jesus and you have a family and you have neglected the care of your family, I remember we looked at poverty. It’s not just financially, it’s spiritually. It’s relationally. It’s physically. It’s it’s every area that your family might have a need if you are purposely rejecting that you hate Jesus. What God has called you into this world is to be that example for him. More than any responsibility that you carry. If you’ve taken on a family, that is where God has called you to lead, guide and direct. The church is only as strong as its families as they pursue God and more than anything, what God desires for you in this world is to pursue him and direct your family. There is a story of two men who went hunting. It was a father and son. They were elk hunting and and the father had prayed before they left that day he said to God, God, let my aim be accurate. Let my arrows shoot. True. They go on the hunt. And the sun was the first to kill an elk. And so to help his father kill an elk, he went off into the bushes a little bit of a ways.
He began to call in another elk so his father could shoot it with his bow. He begins to get one in, and he draws closer to his father, so that way he could begin to to take aim and to shoot this elk. And he was excited because it was a large bull elk, and all of a sudden, out of the thicket, this elk just darted out of nowhere and fled the scene. And the son thought, how strange that that elk would leave, and all of a sudden he stands up in the thicket. When he begins to stand up, he notices why the elk ran, and standing right before him is a grizzly bear. And as he stands up and he sees this grizzly bear, the grizzly bear begins to take charge of this young man, and the father sits there, counting the moments as he saw this grizzly bear running to his son, and he was so far away that he was helpless to to meet the needs of his son. And it tells us in the story that the grizzly bear grabbed the son by the arm, and it flung him over the shoulders and began to shake him around like a rag doll. The only thing the father could think to do was that he needed to just draw his bow, and to take aim and shoot this grizzly bear.
And the whole time he’s worried that when he when he lets go of this era, that rather than hit the bear, he’s going to hit his son and he lets go of this arrow and he shoots it at the animal, and the animal continues to ravage on his son and and he has no response to this air. And the father thinks that he missed the bear. And so he runs up to the bear, and he takes a stick, and he begins to beat the bear. Eventually the bear lets go of his son, and he’s he’s maimed, but he’s alive. And the bear begins to walk off. And it it takes a few yards forward and it collapses and it dies. The father helps the son up, and they walk over to the bear, and they dust, dust themselves off, and they roll the bear over, and they notice that the arrow had hit the bear directly in its heart. A lot of times, as fathers and as mothers when it comes to raising children, it feels like we don’t have the answers. It feels like when your child becomes a teenager that you no longer have control, that they’re beginning to make decisions on their own. And our prayer for us as men and for women, for your children, is God. Let my aim be accurate. God, let my arrows ring true. God has called us to protect our kids from the garbage of this world.
Men, God has called you to protect the virtue of your daughters. Out of your young boys. To call out the man that God desires them to be. A man who teaches his daughters about true love and how to be loved by someone who will not take advantage of them. All week long, people are going to influence your kids and pull them from you and your relationship. All week long, things are going to pull from you in your marriage and the desire that God has for you and your spouse to become one flesh. God’s desire is that men would man up to draw to God and protect them as a family. Men, when you let when you mess up that you would ask for forgiveness before your family. Maybe we should ask today that if you were to die, what would your legacy be? As you think about your relationship with your children, your wife, and your community, when you come to the end of your life, what would you desire for your legacy to be? Here’s what I understand in Scripture that regardless of where we are, we can be who God wants us to be. We can let go of the past and live in the moment in our relationship with the Lord. Joshua looked at the people of Israel who had walked away from a relationship with God, and they came to a crossroads in their life. And where God said to them, listen, choose this day whom you will serve.