Program: FamilyLife Today

Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Wednesday, July 4th. Our host is the president of FamilyLife, Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine. Today we want to look at what the Bible has to say about authentic masculinity. Stay with us.

And welcome to FamilyLife Today, thanks for joining us on the Wednesday edition. It's Independence Day here in the United States, and we're glad that you're spending part of your Fourth of July with us.

We've got a treat for our listeners today, Dennis. We're going to hear from a military veteran who spoke to our staff about a decade ago, and this message was a classic. It was a real treat, Dennis.

Dennis: Absolutely. We had a guest speaker, and I'm hurrying to get through this introduction because I want our audience to hear every bit of this tape that they possibly can.

Stu Weber came by the office, and he had a chance to speak to our staff here at FamilyLife, and, well, you know what happened, Bob. We ended up rushing that tape through the editing process and making more than 250 copies for our staff here because the demand was instant, and our listeners are about to find out why.

Bob: Yes, Stu is a pastor, he is an author, many of our listeners know him as the author of the bestselling book, "Tender Warrior." He has also written a book, "Locking Arms," and he has just released a brand-new book that is destined to be a classic.

Dennis: It is. It's called "Four Pillars of a Man's Heart," and it talks about a man being a king, a warrior, a mentor, and a friend. And it's a challenge for men to bring strength into balance, that balance of submitting to Jesus Christ and becoming God's man.

Bob: Yes, and as our listeners are going to hear, Stu finds that the characteristics of authentic masculinity can get out of balance, and when they do, that's when sinful patterns begin to emerge in a relationship. Today we're going to hear Part 1 of Stu's message and then tomorrow and Friday we'll hear the concluding parts of this message as well. Here is Stu Weber.

Stu: [from audiotape.] This is a day when it's not easy to be a man. Lindy, a couple of years ago, saw me staring out the window and looking across the open spaces or something, and she said, "What's the matter with you? Where are you?" And I said, "You know, hon, I'm not sure what's the matter with me, but I've just been thinking, this is a strange world in which I live. I was a soldier when it wasn't cool to be a soldier. I'm a pastor about 150 years late in terms of community respect, and I'm a man in a day when it's politically incorrect to be masculine. It's no wonder I'm a little distant and confused.

It's not easy to be a man today, is it? Garrison Keillor said, "Manhood, once an opportunity for achievement, now seems more like an obstacle to be overcome." It does in our world. Some years ago Barry Arnold, the pastor of men's ministry and I at our church were working on a little Bible study lesson for our guys on Tuesday mornings, and he had run it through the spell check, and then he ran it through the grammar check, and the alarms in the computer went off when it came to the word "masculine."

And the computer said, "Too gender specific. Try to use without reference to gender," and suggested alternative words like "bravery," or "courage" or whatever, but don't use words like "manly" or "masculine," they are out of vogue. That's the world in which we live, and it's reaping its fruit, isn't it? For what's happening in our country, which is not good, is the fruit of masculinity gone awry.

Since 1965, all kinds of ugly things have happened in our country. Not only have the SAT scores dropped 100 points so that we've had to rescale them so we don't have to be humiliated by our own past, but all kinds of other things – teenage suicides have multiplied numerically – all kinds of things are happening, and I think it's because men don't know what a man is.

We don't know how to act as men. Fatherlessness is the scourge that's killing our country, and fatherlessness is just really applied masculinity. It has nothing to do with biology, it has everything to do with being masculine.

Two or three years ago in Oxford, we were walking down Broad Street, and I noticed these little stones out in the middle of the street there – 24 white stones in the middle of all these cobblestones paving the street, and the traffic was flowing over the top of it as though it didn't exist, and as I worked through some things, I discovered what had happened there on an October morning in 1555.

Two men, by the names of Ridley and Latimer, actually were burned at the stake on that spot. A couple of men that had come to faith personally in Jesus Christ and determined they were not going to leave that faith; they were not going to recant; and, consequently, it would cost them their lives.

We don't know all that they were thinking as the morning arrived when they were let out of Bocardo Prison into the sunlight of Broad Street and faced the stake, but we do know some of the elements that they exchanged because one of their conversations is recorded, and as they walked towards their deaths, Latimer turned to Ridley, and apparently noticed something going on in his face or his countenance or something in his friend, and he said, "Ridley, be of good cheer and play the man for, by God's grace, you and I shall this day light a candle that all England shall see."

"Play the man" – when was the last time you heard that in a positive, encouraging, meaningful, motivational way? Probably a long time ago. It's been a number of years since I've heard anything like that. "Play the man" – do you think Ridley had any idea what he meant when he said, "Play the man?" I think Ridley did. I don't think they were as confused in their day as we are about gender issues. I think Latimer was sending a message, and I think Ridley got it.

I think it was probably somewhat similar to the passage that David had in mind when Solomon came to his bedside, and he was dying, and he said, "I am going the way of all the earth, my son. You, therefore, my son, show yourself strong and be a man and keep the charge of the Lord your God and live according to His ways and His statutes."

I want to work a little bit with you this morning on what it is to be a man, because there are some things happening in our culture that are destroying some things, and I want to begin by reading to you at length from an article by a man that I regard as something of a contemporary prophet. Chuck Colson speaks the truth.

This is an article that appeared, as I recall, in "Christianity Today" some years ago about the time of the Clarence Thomas hearings, and he describes those hearings on national television. He says, "It was a national real-life soap opera – 200 million Americans pasted to their television sets mesmerized by lurid accusations of sexual harassment in high office. Center stage in the Senate Caucus Room was Professor Anita Hill, doggedly asserting her claims. Judge Clarence Thomas issued angry denials. Members of the all-male, all-white Senate Judiciary Committee, trying their best to look judicious postured for the television cameras with self-serving and meandering questions.

Mercifully, it's over, Justice Thomas sits on the Supreme Court, Anita Hill is back in Oklahoma, both will be shadowed by a cloud of suspicion for the rest of their lives." He says, "I reflected on all this in an unlikely place. On the Saturday of the Thomas hearings, I was in a California men's prison. Under California law, there must be no sexual discrimination in hiring guards. Female correctional officers walk the cellblocks freely. As I walked through the institution, I came upon an embarrassing scene – a young female officer strode into an exposed bathroom area, stood before an inmate seated on the toilet, and ordered him to report to the cellblock.

The prison already strips a person of privacy. Now, because of anti-discrimination laws, inmates suffer the added shame of having the most intimate details of their daily lives invaded by members of the opposite sex. Just then, across the cellblock, I saw a TV screen showing a sweating Judge Thomas being questioned for allegedly breaking the law by stripping an employee of her dignity through the use of indecent language.

Yet here, a female guard, by operation of that law, was stripping a naked man of his dignity, or what little there was of it left. Something was wrong with this picture – one law protects human honor in the workplace, another denigrates it and both laws, I realized, are the result of militant feminism, a movement that might have begun with worth intentions but soon ran amok.

Today I believe we are reaping the fruit of 25 years of militant feminism. In the Thomas hearings we saw the same women's groups who once proclaimed a woman's freedom to use explicit sexual language now righteously indignant in their claims that Clarence Thomas had allegedly talked that way to a woman. The very people who deliberately tore down older codes of chivalry and deference to women now wanted the protection they offer."

Now, it's this last paragraph I want you to hear – this is the prophetic statement – "The fundamental pillar of our society, the family," about which you and I, of course, are greatly concerned, "the family pillar of our society, the family, has been under assault for years, and its crumbling has long been of vital concern to Christians. But do not miss the progression. The artillery salvos are escalating against something even more fundamental, the very notion of what it means to be a man, the very notion of what it means to be a woman. Even more fundamental in the image and glory of God than the family are the very notions of what it is to be a man and a woman."

That's where we're doing battle today. That's where the evil one is attacking. That's where it's so obviously strong, and we need to understand that the gender issues are not primarily political issues, though they obviously affect the political world, and they're not primarily sociological issues, though they affect society profoundly. They are not primarily economic issues though they have financial ramifications.

But, at their root, these gender concerns are spiritual and theological issues. Gender is there from the get-go in the Bible; gender is there at the very foundations of civilization; gender is there at the very foundations of the glory of God; gender is there at the very core of the image of God. All of the physical world and all of the material creation including human beings and their physical bodies were intended to glorify God, and the image of God in male and female as He created us, is at the root of what we're experiencing in terms of battle today.

Isn't it ironic in a culture that prides itself on diversity, we are seeking to destroy it in its most obvious and most beautiful form. That's what's happening in our culture. That's because the evil one is hard at it.

Some years ago, Dr. Halverson, who is now with the Lord and was, at the time, the chaplain of the United States Senate – he hit the nail on the head when he said it this way – "Where can the enemy attack God most strategically? How can he most effectively destroy God's relationship with mankind? The devil's masterpiece is to deface the image of God."

Image is indispensable in our Madison Avenue Hollywood culture. It's the stock-in-trade of the public relations firm. Selling image is big business, billions of dollars worth. Bad image in our day is extremely costly, which is precisely therefore the point at which Satan makes his most strategic attack.

God created man male/female as His image in history. Anything the devil can do to destroy the male/female union will mar God's image. Anything that will alienate man from woman contributes to the destruction of a high view of God. The enemy has a multitude of tactics – premarital sex, extramarital sex, sexual deviation, divorce, male chauvinism, feminism as an end in itself, and on and on. Satan's effectiveness in destroying God's image through male/female alienation by whatever means has been incalculably costly to the human race.

That is so true. Don't miss the progression. It's moved from the family to the very notion of what it is to be a man and a woman. That's why you and I, as Christian people, need to be real alert to the Scriptures as it tells us what is a man and what is a woman and how do they act? How are they? What am I and why are there those differences? And if you and I don't understand it, then we have tossed in the towel at the very center of the battle, haven't we?

If you and I don't speak it, then we have walked away from the battle right where it's raging. Martin Luther said it this way years ago – "If I profess with the loudest and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that point in which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, then I'm not confessing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved and to be steady in all the battlefield elsewhere is mere flight and disgrace if the soldier flinches at that point.

So you and I need to be alert to gender issues, and we need to go right to the word of God. Fortunately, we don't get caught up in all the other stuff, you know, we don't have to be trapped by myth and legend and tribal lore. We don't have to find the truth in anthropological studies or relief carvings on cave walls. We can go right to the beginning.

And that's what I'd like to do with you. I'm not going to work on all the differences between males and females. You work on that already here, and you understand how different we are, and the reason we're different is because we represent together the full-orbed image and glory of God. That's why we're different. We complement one another so magnificently, when we will just recognize the differences. When we will celebrate the differences, when we will capitalize upon the differences rather than try to denigrate them.

But somehow equality has come to mean sameness, and we have, in the process, attacked the very image of God. We are different as men and women, our brains are made differently in their function and their structure, the presence of testosterone in the male does some things to the brain structure that makes us think and experience life differently. It's beyond debate. Even our culture is recognizing that technologically and scientifically.

But what we don't recognize is the way that reflects upon our relationships with each other as men and women and therefore glorifies God ultimately and displays His image.

So I'd like to turn with you, if you would, in your Bibles, to the early chapters of the Book of Genesis, and see if we can't go right back to the Genesis spring and find out a little bit about what God intended when He made a man.

Chapter 1, you know, of Genesis is the big picture – God created. And Chapter 2 is kind of the zoom lens, He zooms right in on the Creation of Man in His image as male and female. So in Chapter 2 let's start reading at verse 7 a little bit. The Bible says, "Then the Lord God formed Man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and Man became a living being, and the Lord God planted a garden towards the east in Eden, and there He placed the man whom He had formed" – definite article, specific – "the man."

Look down at verse 15, "Then the Lord God took the man" – there's just Adam now. We're going to see the creation of Eve in just a little bit, but we're working in a timeframe here. We're working in actual time and space, and there is now created, "the man." Verse 15 – "Then the Lord God took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it." I think we have something of a clue there as to one of the intentions that God had for man as part of His image. He said, in effect, "Adam, here is a realm, here is a garden, here is a sphere of influence, here is an environment, whatever, I want you to cultivate it and keep it; I want you to develop it; I want you to shape it; I want you to influence it; I want you to keep it; to oversee it."

I think there is something of a king in every man's chest as an overseer, as a developer, as one who has a charge, a responsibility for a realm or a sphere or a home or an environment or a garden or a people. There is something of a king in every man's chest. We'll come back to that, because we're not talking King Tut here, you know, we're talking a different kind of king.

"And the Lord God commanded the man" – verse 16 – "saying, from any tree of the Garden you may eat freely but from the Tree of the Knowledge and Good and Evil you should not eat. Adam, let's you and I go for a walk. Let's wander about in this real a little bit. Let me put my hand on your shoulder, so to speak. Let me point out some things about life to you. There is some information here I want you to have."

The implication is you are to be a steward of this information, you are to be responsible to this information; you are to responsible for it; you are to know it and relate to it and understand it and communicate it. You need to know about these things. I think there is something of a mentor in every man's chest to teach.

There is something of a king in every man's chest to provide; there is something of a mentor in every man's chest to teach. And then at the end of verse 17, the Lord says to Adam, "For in the day that you eat from that tree, you shall surely die. Adam, you need to know this about life on this planet. You could get killed here. For all of the paradise that we see, for all of the beauty and magnificence that there is here, there is also a threat. There is vulnerability in this realm." Implication – be alert to it. I believe there is something of a warrior in every man's chest to protect.

A king to provide, a warrior to protect, a mentor to teach, and then verse 18 – "Then" – that's a very time/space word – "Then the Lord God said, 'It's not good for the man to be alone. I will make an helpmate or helper suitable for him. Adam, you need to know this about yourself. You're not good by yourself. You're incomplete. There is a complementary picture that I want to produce here, and you need to understand that you belong together. There must be connection between you and another.'" I believe there is something of a friend in every man's chest to connect. And, obviously, the ultimate friendship is the zenith of all friendships inside marriage.

But I believe God has given us some implications here from the very get-go of what He intended when He made a man a man. There is something of a king in his heart to provide; something of a warrior in his heart to protect; something of a mentor in his heart to teach; and something of a friend in his heart to connect.

Bob: Well, we have been listening together as Stu Weber has shared Part 1 of a message that we're going to feature on the broadcast over the next couple of days, Dennis, talking about the four pillars of a man's heart.

And it's interesting, he talked about the need for these pillars to be tall and erect and not to lean to the left or to the right.

Dennis: That's right, because if they lean the wrong direction, you get an abuse of that aspect of manhood. And, of course, that's why God has given men the Scriptures and the Holy Spirit and a wife, because Barbara has helped this pillar straighten back up on more than one occasion, but it's because God has put within me a teachable heart, and I guess if I have a challenge for men as they have listened to today's broadcast and consider the next couple of days' broadcasts, it would be this question – do you have a teachable heart? When your wife or your son or daughter or that co-worker comes alongside you and corrects you, are you a man that's man enough to admit that you're wrong or that you're out of balance or that you're leaning to one direction or to another?

Let me challenge you to do a little holy introspection this evening, and ask God to create within you a heart that's steadfast, that's clean, that's pure, but also one that's spongy, that's teachable, that's receptive to where God wants to take you.

Bob: In the rest of this message, Stu is going to unpack for us what it means to be a king, a warrior, a mentor, and a friend, and I want to encourage our listeners to stay with us.

I also want to encourage them to consider getting a copy of Stu's book, which is called "The Four Pillars of a Man's Heart." I think this is a book that really is helpful to us, as men, to give us a picture of what godly masculinity looks like and how it can get out of balance and how, when it does get out of balance, it can be a distortion of what God intends.

We've got the book in our FamilyLife Resource Center, and you can go to our website, FamilyLife.com, click the "Go" button that you see in the middle of the screen. That will take you right to an area of the site where you'll find more information about Stu's book. You can order it online, if you'd like. If you have sons, this is a book to get for your sons and encourage them to read. In fact, if you have teenage sons, you could make this a summer reading assignment and pay them to read Stu's book. If you have older sons, just encourage them to go through this to understand, again, godly masculinity and what that looks like.

Our website is FamilyLife.com, click the red button in the middle of the screen that says "Go." It will take you right to an area of the website where you can get more information about this book, or you can order a copy online, or you can call 1-800-FLTODAY, although you'll get a recording if you call today because of the Independence Day holiday. We've got folks taking the day off and hope they enjoy the day off as well.

But tomorrow you could call 1-800-FLTODAY and say, "I'd like a copy of Stu Weber's book," or "I'd like to get an audio copy of his message," and at that point someone on our team can answer any questions you have or make arrangements to have the resources sent to you.

Again, the phone number is 1-800-FLTODAY, and our website, which is available here on Independence Day, now, that's FamilyLife.com.

I know that some of you who may be listening to our program today are not regular listeners. Today's holiday schedule has perhaps given you a chance to tune in, and you don't normally get to hear FamilyLife Today. We're a ministry that is committed to effectively developing godly families, to providing practical, biblical help for your marriage and your family. We want to help you succeed in life's most important relationships, and the way to do that, of course, is to line those relationships up with what the Bible has to say about marriage and family.

If you'd like to find out more about FamilyLife, go to our website, FamilyLife.com and take a little look around and find out what's available – past editions of our program, resources that are available, information about conferences and other events that FamilyLife Today sponsors. Again, the website is FamilyLife.com, and we hope you do take a chance to look around and hope you can find time in your schedule even on non-holidays to tune in and listen to our program or to stop back by our website where you can listen to FamilyLife Today online. And, again, thanks for listening to today's program. We hope you enjoyed it.

Well, tomorrow, if you can be back with us, we're going to hear Part 2 of Stu Weber's message on biblical masculinity, and Stu is going to unpack for us what it means for a man to be a king and to be a warrior and what happens when those pillars get out of balance in a man's life. I hope you can be with us for that.

I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, and our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our host, Dennis Rainey, I'm Bob Lepine. We'll see you back next time for another edition of FamilyLife Today.

FamilyLife Today is a production of FamilyLife of Little Rock, Arkansas, a ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ.