The best argument for Christianity

The best argument for Christianity is Christians -- their joy, their certainty, their completeness. But the strongest argument against Christianity is also Christians; when they are somber and joyless, when they are self-righteous and smug, ... then Christianity dies a thousand deaths.
Sheldon Vanauken, A Severe Mercy

God, Manhood and Leadership

2 years ago I was asked to speak to a group of men (mostly college students) about the biblical call to godliness, authentic manhood and male leadership. The two sessions are below:

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Godliness, Manhood and Leadership, January 2007

As men, we’re in crisis. The crisis we experience is deeper and more pervasive than probably any of us realize. It’s a crisis which impacts us first as males -- then it shifts – and it twists and troubles relationships with others, especially with women. This crisis will impact our marriages, if we have them, it will affect our children and it will influence our children’s children. Of course, the crisis pervades and perverts our culture.

Tony Evans terms it a “crisis of manhood” and he nails it when he calls it is a theological crisis. That simply means we have abandoned what God says on the topic of gender, and in particular, on the meaning of maleness. Because of that abandonment, we’re paying ahuge price and we will continue to do so -- unless God’s men fulfill their calling.

The crisis of manhood began long before we were born and it influences every issue we’d name if we were to describe what it means to be a man -- what it means to be a man of God -- certainly what it means to be God’s man in relationships, marriage, and in culture.

We’re going to hit three areas today. This morning, we’ll talk about this crisis -- this predicament in which we find ourselves. I want to close our session this morning by giving some attention to what I will call “the prospect.“ Then later today, I want to hold out for you a powerful possibility -- the possibility that under Jesus Christ, we can be everything God meant for us to be as men -- His men, His leaders and His warriors in the cosmic battle that’s been raging since our first humans walked in the garden.

First, let’s think through the crisis we experience and how we got there -- this is The Predicament

To get some background, we need to go back to the headwaters of creation.
Look at Genesis 1-3. In Genesis we discover 1. We have an inheritance which betrays us.

Of course, I’m talking about our first parents -- especially our first father, Adam.

Genesis chapter 1: The first chapter of Genesis sketches a broad overview of God’s creation -- the heavens -- the earth -- everything on the earth. We don’t have time to look at the broader creation; let me make two observations.

First, for the world and everything that came from it, God simply spoke and it was created.

Light, the material world, the seas, the land masses, then fish, animals, botanical life forms
-- all of that, God simply willed, and He spoke and commanded it to happen, and -- because
God is God -- it happened. The creation of man is quite different.

Another observation: Everything in God’s original creation was good. More than once in the narrative, God takes time to observe His creative works and pronounce them good. At the conclusion of the world’s creation, God declares all of it good. Before the Fall, creation powerfully reflected the nature of God’s own goodness.

Some dramatic changes happen at verse 26. Then God said, “Let us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Here, again, there is an overview in Genesis 1 -- the perspective there is that mankind is created including both man and woman.

God commands them to rule creation and to reproduce. In verse 29 he gifts them with every good thing, all the plants that produced seed -- all the trees giving fruit -- all good things they can eat and enjoy. Verse 31 is the capstone of God’s much more personal and precise creation of man. God saw all that He had made, and behold it was very good.

Chapter 2. This is the detailed view of the creation of man, then woman, where chapter 1’s view is of God creating mankind. These are the details. Verse 8. After God carefully formed man, something He did nowhere else in the creation, He breathed into Adam the breath of life and Adam became a living soul. From the beginning we realize that this creature is remarkably different than all others. God planted a garden and places Adam there.

Again, God provides everything for him, all of it great to look at and good to eat.

This was a garden and orchard fully enjoyable to the eyes and to the taste buds. Everything was there to choose and enjoy. But, verse 9. The tree of life was also in the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

In verse 15 Adam is assigned the work of cultivating this wonderful place. Then God commands the man, saying, From any tree in the garden you may eat freely; (no limits there, there as almost unlimited variety) but, from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day you eat from it, you will surely die. That original command was not heard by both the man and the woman, it came to Adam because in the detailed account of chapter 2, woman has yet to be created.

Then, God determined something in His creation which was not good. It is not good that the man be alone; I will make a helper suitable for him. God parades all the animals before Adam, he names them, showing his headship over the natural world, but in that process, Adam himself came to the conclusion God had already reached: Each animal had a specific purpose, maybe he saw also that each one had a mate. In that naming process, Adam realized that for himself that there was no one who was like him, no one who could be his mate, his complement, no one to complete him.

Only then does God anesthetize Adam and take bone and flesh from him, and create, again by special, personal, precise means, this specific counterpart who, when Adam sees her, he also names; she is one like him, taken from him.

The observation we need to make from all of that is that -- at creation, man received headship. Leadership. Let me give you a definition of headship to chew on. Headship: In a partnership of spiritually equal human beings (man and woman) the man bears the primary responsibility to lead the partnership in a God-glorifying direction.

What evidence is there of man’s headship? The creation record tells us man was created first. The NT refers to the order of creation both for headship in marriage and leadership in the Body of Christ. Woman was taken from him. Again, Adam named her, showing headship. She is not unequal, she is not his to dominate, she is his to protect and lead. She is under his leadership.

Creation teaches us that it is man to whom God looks as the leader. That was man’s assignment. Adam failed in the assignment. Let’s move on into chapter 3. Enter the serpent. Chapter 3, verses 1-6. The serpent is described initially as the “most crafty of the beasts” -- we take it from NT interpretations that Satan himself filled and controlled this creature. In that form, he enticed the woman. He questioned God’s command.

He misstated God‘s command. He maligned God’s character. Finally he contradicted out rightly what God had said.

Quiz time: to whom had God given the command? To Adam. But Adam didn’t lead his wife with Truth.

Second question: where was Adam during this temptation? Verse 6: When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from the fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her (some translations say who was with her) and he ate. Now we can’t prove it beyond any doubt, but I tend to agree with Larry Crabb and others who suggest that the whole time Adam’s beloved was being addressed by Satan, Adam stood right there, and like a good sweet husband, he kept quiet.

Adam chose passivity. We’ll talk about that attribute much more this afternoon, but let me tell you this right up front. It doesn’t matter what you’ve observed in most men in most churches and Christian circles in America. Passivity is not godliness. The quiet, sweet, submissive man in the corner is not demonstrating leadership nor love nor godliness. When it’s time to act, it’s time to act. Passive men don’t.

What we draw from that is simply this: As a man, as our first father, and as an influence in our lives through inherited sin, Adam abdicated and men have leaned toward abdication ever since. He took the one fruit God withheld out of his wife’s hand, he bit and he fell into sin.

The NT says, Eve was deceived, but it was Adam who sinned. And why? Because, like we saw, he was the one to whom God delivered the command. He was the one who did not make absolutely certain that she had God’s command down pat. When the crafty serpent misquoted and misconstrued, she didn’t have the weapon of Truth in her armory.

Adam’s abdication continues. They ate, then hid -- God came looking for Adam -- verses 8 and 9 of chapter 3 -- notice it says, God walked in the garden in the cool of the day and….

The Lord God called to the man and said, “Where are you?“ God sought Adam out because Adam is the one to whom God looked for leadership. Man and woman were both in hiding. Instead of owning up, Adam ran.

God finds them, confronts them and again -- zero leadership. No ownership of sin.

Adam blames his wife, in reality he blames God. The first words out of his mouth were this woman you gave me.

So what did we inherit from our first father? Obviously a sin nature. But when it comes to manhood, our sin nature brims over with selfishness, with the urge to have my desires fulfilled. I want what I want, when I want it. I want to be served. I run from responsibility. We blame others for problems. We ditch the Truth. We prefer passivity. We let life happen and we respond only if and when it’s necessary. We avoid responsibility for the people around us who are ours to lead.

We have an inheritance which betrays us. There’s another force to reckon with, if we’re going to be what God wants us to be as men.

2. We have a culture which confuses us

Let me mention just a couple of significant cultural factors which have dramatically influenced modern men in the West.

One is what’s been called the “fatherless” generations. The impact on sons, and our current 3 generations of males is significant. The trend likely began with WW II -- first fathers went off to war -- those who returned, returned to work away from home 50 or more hours a week; they powered the engine of the economic miracle of the 1950’s. The fruit of men gone from their kids’ lives was a generation of sons -- my own generation of Baby Boomers -- who had much less influence of fathers in our lives. Divorce became acceptable, materialism ran rampant -- the end product was vital relationships and influence got sacrificed on the altar of that materialism.

Of course, when we in the Boomer generation became fathers, many of us had few or no models. We had lost our way. The only place many of us looked was defective models.

The father-son relationship is one of the weakest links in modern culture.

In your generation and the one following you, 60-70% of children spend part of their childhood without a father present. 1/3 of live births are to unmarried women. Over a million men with children under 18 are in prison. Every year, thousands of children lose their fathers to accidents or illnesses. The only possible result is that millions of us from the Boomers forward to you and to your younger siblings, either didn’t have a father or didn’t have one who was close and leading and nurturing. Where do you go to make up for the absence of a father’s love and influence? Our culture leaves us confused.

For the last 30 years, a second force swept through Western culture. Feminism not only brought the demand for equal pay for equal work, its influence has left both men and women without a foundation on which to stand when it comes to roles. There was a time when we as men doubted our role -- it moved to the place where a man’s role was diminished, then roles became indistinguishable from one another. Now, women and men are aimlessly, furtively, looking here and there to try to determine how things out to work.

We’re not only sons of our first father, we’re children of our culture. The result is mass confusion. We’re confused about what we are, what women are, we’re certainly confused as Christian men as to whether we ought to bow to the cultural trends or go off and find a model we like and mimic that.

Two prevalent kinds of men exist in the culture and in Christian circles. One is the passive man; the other is the dominator. Neither of those aligns with how God has made us.

Confusion has produced a fear of commitment. The statistics keep climbing of men and women who stay single or marry very late. I’ve had Christian guys in their mid-20’s

tell me, they’re afraid of marriage. On the flip side single gals tell my wife and me, they wonder why guys won’t commit. If and when we do commit -- for instance to marriage, we still suffer fear of intimacy. We don‘t reveal ourselves to the most important people in our lives.

Instead of becoming men, we hang back at the stages of boys or guys. We’re behaving what we’ve inherited, we’re just doing what we know, we’re out in the world, trying to succeed where we know we can -- in business or somewhere else -- instead of taking up the massive calling to lead God‘s way.

The fruit of confusion is self-absorption with no real satisfaction. If we don’t know what we ought to be, we just go with our gut and play out life as sons of Adam. We accede to the junk culture and our flesh often rules.

Men, like Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 13, there is a better way. There’s a higher calling. I trust you’re prepared to move in that direction.

Let’s talk about The prospect of that higher calling.

The apostle Paul wrote to his son in the faith, Timothy and said,

But you, man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith love, endurance and gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses. (1 Timothy 6:11, 12)

For the balance of our time, this morning, let me challenge you with three components I’ve got italicized in those words of Paul to a younger protégé.

First Paul calls him, man of God. Men, Settle your identity. Understand this first, last and always -- if you’re a Christian, then by God’s grace, you’re God‘s man, a man of God.

You have to get this guys: if you have come to know Jesus Christ by faith, you’ve been transformed -- you don’t belong to yourself any longer -- you certainly don’t belong to the culture which you happen to inhabit. When you know who you are in Jesus Christ, you can risk everything to live all out for Him.

Paul knew the most effective way to pull greatness out of Timothy was to remind him of who he was in Jesus Christ. As men we stare down temptations every day to pretend to be something or someone we’re not. Those temptations run the gamut between some hyper-sexual “studly” man all the way to a soft understanding velvet-covered dude.

The culture offers us choices of “real men” from Arnold the Terminator to metro-sexual sweet guys in touch with their feminine side.

I’m here to tell you guys, real masculinity is never a product of our contemporary culture. You’ll never find it there. Courageous men stop looking for it there. Scripture says you’re a man of God. That’s your identity. We have to begin with that understanding.

If you’ve either never come to know Christ in a person way, or if you’ve never understood the whole issue of God’s free grace and your new identity in Christ, let me or someone here today help you with that. Don’t careen into life and into marriage or another relationship without getting your identity settled.

The second observation in these verses comes from those words, fight the good fight of faith.

What Paul calls Timothy to -- what God calls us to, is to sacrifice like Christ. The more you walk with Jesus Christ as His man the more you will hear and respond to His call to give up in order to gain. He will say to you take up your cross and follow Me; you’ll hear him call you like He did in Matthew 6:33, to seek first His kingdom and His righteousness. There comes a point in every godly man’s life when he must finally choose to stop caring about earthly life so he can invest in populating and investing in eternity.

You probably won’t forfeit physical life to be God’s man, but you will get a summons to forfeit your will, and your wealth, and your recognition -- certainly your carnal appetites and your small, selfish dreams -- in order to be and to do all God has in mind for you as His man in this generation.

A little over a week ago, Marty Everding invited Trinity’s men to his home, to talk about what you’re discuss later today -- the battle for sexual purity. One of the men read a passage that so well spells out what God wants to see in us as men: Hebrews 2:10-11. The writer says

In bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering. Both the One who makes men holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers. (Hebrews 2:10-11)

Men, if you’ve never gotten there, today is the day -- today is the day to lay it on the line for Jesus Christ. Otherwise, everything else we talk about today will be moot. I need to tell you right up front -- you cannot be His man, you cannot be a godly leader, you cannot be sexually pure and follow in Christ’s ways, if you’re still gripping life your way -- if you’re not laying it down for Him and to Him. Take hold of eternal life. Look for His higher rewards. Keep before your eyes the vision of the day you will stand before Him and He’s not ashamed to call you His brother.

The third thing in Paul’s words: take hold of eternal life. Part of what he says to us is Invest in the Kingdom. When your view of God and your view of yourself is right -- when you’re willing to sacrifice your agenda to Christ’s -- it’s time to build something that you can’t take with you but that will go ahead of you into eternity. It’s time to start investing in building the kingdom of Christ right where you are -- your dorm, your house, your neighborhood, your job, your church, your world.

It’s time to think outside the box -- to dream big dreams for God. The last thing the Church and the Kingdom need are more religious guys. Like we’ll talk about later today, the very last thing Christianity needs is more good, passive, nice guys. I’ll go one step beyond that.

Passive guys are helping hasten the death of the American Church.

Men what we need are big, hairy audacious dreamers. Do you understand that we didn’t draw the battle lines. We’re just occupants of the current generation. Those lines were laid out long ago.

The questions today are for you as a man who wants to be God‘s man is this generation: Where will you stand while the battle rages for the souls of our generation? Where will you stand when people right around you wrestle with the Truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ?

Where will you be as Jesus Christ the Lord, does His magnificent work of building the Church in our time?

Adam has his assignment. He failed. The powerful Truth is, the NT tells us we don’t have to follow the first Adam any longer. A second Adam has come. It’s Christ. Real men follow Him. You’ve got a new inheritance. Pick it up. Use it. Depend on it. If you need help, grab one of the leaders here today and ask for it. Do whatever you need, but get started.

Scrap what you’ve learned from the culture. Arise and follow Him -- and be the man God always intended you to be.

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Part 2 (Evening session)

This morning we talked about our predicament as men; primarily we centered on two issues.

One issue is what we face because of our inheritance from Adam in the sin nature and Adam’s abdication. The other is a bunch of cultural baggage from which we have an extremely difficult time extricating ourselves.

So, what we have inside us and what we have all around us leave us in pretty sad shape when it comes to being men -- and godly men -- and men who want God to work in us and through us.

We began with our predicament. We ended our time with the prospect of a higher calling.

This evening I want to raise in your minds a vision of what I’m calling Our Promise.

The promise is of Authentic Manhood (1 Samuel 17:12-58)

One of my favorite accounts in the Bible is the one about the boy David, being sent by his father with food and provisions to the battle lines where his brothers were serving in King Saul’s army. It’s there, of course, that he has his famous encounter with the giant Goliath.

Notice I said David was sent “to the battle lines” -- because there was no battle.

Turn to 1 Samuel 17 with me. Let me read just verse 11 to start with. 1 Samuel 17:11 says when Saul and his troops heard the Philistine's challenge, they were terrified and lost all hope. (1 Samuel 17:11). There are words in that verse that ought to create huge contradictions in your mind. Troops -- heard words -- terrified -- lost hope.

Think about it: these are battle-hardened troops of a nation which has conquered vast amounts of territory to become the people and nation of God. You see any self-contradiction in those words? They heard some words and now they’re terrified and they’ve lost all hope. Why is that? Of course, it’s because of a big ugly Philistine named Goliath.

The account, from verse 20 to verse 30 is of David being sent by his father to bring provisions to his brothers at the front. He arrives, he leaves his load with the baggage keeper and goes off to seek his brothers.

That’s when we’re introduced to Israel’s encounter with Goliath. Apparently, one of the customs, to spare bloodshed, was for each army would choose a champion -- then each of the champions would come to the middle ground between the two armies -- and they would fight to the death. That one-on-one contest would determine the outcome of the war. If your man lost, you became the slaves of the nation whose champion won.

Goliath has come out. And for 40 long days, the text says, he taunted and trash-talked Israel’s troops, Israel’s nation and Israel’s God. But no one will go out to fight him from all of Saul’s mighty men. Now, Saul has offered treasure, tax-free living, even his own daughter in marriage -- but yet, no one will respond; no one volunteers. And big King Saul won’t go himself.

Enter the boy -- if you stretch things -- the young man, David. David exhibits what I want to hold up to you as the qualities of a real man -- an authentic man of God. Notice right off the bat, David didn’t resemble Arnold, or Mel Gibson, or even any of the so-called “real men” in his day. He’s never been in battle. Later, when he tries on Saul’s armor, he practically falls out of it -- he’s so small compared to it.

His brothers, we read, laugh and scorn -- even get ticked off over his suggestion that he fight the giant. They even question his motives for showing up at the front lines. When David goes out into the valley where Goliath has been raging, the giant curses and shows his fury because Israel has sent a boy to fight with him.

Here’s what we need to observe: it wasn’t the qualities you could have seen on the outside -- real men don’t have a look, or a physique or a sports prowess -- it’s not what you might have witnessed externally -- it’s not even what David had to offer in terms of experience.

What‘s vital to see is that inwardly David was a man -- and on this one day he’s going to be transformed in people’s eyes -- from a ruddy little handsome kid to a valiant warrior whom God has destined to rule Israel.

Robert Lewis has helped me more than any one to define manhood from a biblical perspective. Like we talked this morning, our contemporary models fall woefully short. Neither the Church nor the culture can help us much to answer the question “what’s a real man?” We’re tempted to run in one direction or the other -- like I said, either to men as dominators or passive men. We need to be convinced that neither of those is biblical nor satisfying.

Robert Lewis suggests four characteristics which I can largely find in David’s character and conduct here in 1 Samuel 17. I’d like to offer them to you for you to consider and apply as you see fit in your life and situation.

The first characteristic: 1. Authentic men reject passivity.

We saw this morning that passivity is a significant facet of manhood which we inherited from Adam’s silence and Adam’s sin. As men, we’re tempted to withhold, to hide, sometimes to completely back off; we hide, we go into a self-preservation mode.

Adam was passive when he should have been active. Again -- who received God’s commandment? Adam did, not Eve. Who was it therefore who had passed on a partial or faulty version of God’s command to his wife? Again -- Adam.

So when Satan came slithering in, instead of grabbing a hoe and chopping the snake’s head off, Adam stood quietly and passively by, while the devil lied to his wife, distorted God’s Truth and enticed her to sin. Adam stood guilty because he alone had heard God’s instructions about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Instead of instilling a precise and clear Truth from God into his beloved wife, he allowed her to believe lies about what God has said, and lies about God, and that made her an open target for Satan’s temptation. When Eve bit, Adam followed meekly along. He stood by in silence and passivity while evil invaded Paradise.

Men were designed by God to lead and protect, to jettison fear and to engage in the battles of life. We were not designed to follow meekly along, to allow ourselves to be meekly led in wrong ways. It doesn’t matter what feminism, or the culture or our natures whisper in our ears, God’s design and call hasn’t changed. His assignment for us is leadership not passivity.

Let me tell you something more -- from lots of interactions with people over the years.

It doesn’t matter what the culture tells you, there are godly women out there just waiting for a man like you to step up the bat and stop being passive. I’ve read about several studies that essentially ask the same question of women: what do you really want from men? Even secular studies return the same result -- most women want men who will step up and lead in authentic ways.

Caving to passivity won‘t allow that. David heard Goliath’s taunting, he took a look at this incomprehensible situation of an army being cowed by one man and he found the situation intolerable. He couldn’t believe that not a single man had accepted Goliath’s challenge.

He simply couldn’t stand by and hear the army of God’s people, and God, maligned.

The status quo is usually good enough for the passive man. The passive man’s favorite proverb is: “don’t rock the boat.“ It’s, “what we have now is better than the risk of going after something better“.

Passive people are risk averse. Let me ask -- are you content to take life as it comes?

Do you wait for things to happen, do you wait for others to take the lead? Do other people usually determine how you spend your free time? Do you let things like entertainment just kind of wash over you and begin to determine how you think?

What about your approach to your own maturity? Are you just hanging around? Just sort of waiting for something to happen to move you ahead spiritually? Do you have a plan for your own growth?

Do you go out of your way to take advantage of opportunities to get trained or be exposed to good solid people? A few years back someone at our church annual meeting asked me about my use of time. She said, “you spend time with men in discipleship and mentoring --

how do you decide who you’ll spend time with?” I said, “well, for one thing, I spend time with guys who ask for it.” Do you ask spiritual leaders to get together? Do you pursue someone building into your life? Are you making certain you’re growing?

Authentic men reject passivity.

The second characteristic: 2. Authentic men accept responsibility.

Kenny Luck writes: “Crises call for redeemers -- [redeemers are the kind of] men who will step in and convert otherwise hopeless situations into ones of value, opportunity and power.

Crises require forces for good -- men made of good stuff who will give away what’s inside
for God and for people.”

Crises demand men of truth -- men who are authentic, not just sympathetic and shallow. Crises need real beliefs and convictions that provide hope. Hope -- the thing Saul and his troops had lost listening to Goliath instead of to God.

You know what young David understood that no one else in Saul’s camp understood?

He understood the consequences of doing nothing. The others didn’t. He simply took on responsibility to do something about a situation he found so intolerable. What is it about our culture, or the environment you inhabit that’s intolerable to you? What do you sense God calling you to do about it?

There was something else in David: he valued the welfare of others over his own safety.

There’s a nation at stake. An army would be trounced and Israel would become slaves to the Philistines if someone didn’t act. David just had to do something! No one else was willing to accept the responsibility to do what was needed so David accepted the call.

The Bible says, the eyes of the Lord look to and fro throughout the whole earth, to find a man whose heart is fully His. 2 Chronicles 16:9

God was looking for His man that day. The Bible tells us that. When God spoke through the prophet Samuel to Saul and told him he had lost the throne, he said.

14 But now your kingdom will not endure; the LORD has sought out a man after his own heart and appointed him leader of his people, because you have not kept the LORD's command." 1 Samuel 13:14

God was looking for a man after His own heart, and His eye and choice landed on David.
Are you moving more and more to accept responsibility?

I'm talking tomorrow about the 12 spies that Israel sent into the land before they went in to conquer it. Two came back and said, “let’s go for it“; 10 came back and said, “we can’t handle it.” Men who don’t take responsibility, like those 10, forget the past -- they forget the magnificent miracles of God. And they are satisfied with the present -- the non-volunteers in 1 Samuel 17 probably were thinking: “we can get used to being the Philistines’ slave”. They also fear the future: what if I die trying to kill that giant.

Let me ask you again: are you moving to accept more and more responsibility? When your leaders are looking for men to step up and lead a Bible study, are you there? Can people count on you to do what you say you’ll do? One of the guys from Trinity who was here this morning came early, and he made himself available to me. He served me, and he served you behind the scenes. He said he’d be here and he was here. Men like that are rarities. Are you becoming one of them?

The third quality: 3. Authentic men lead courageously.

If you’re familiar with the account, maybe you’ve asked yourself, “what in the world made Saul agree to let David fight for Israel?”

Obviously Saul must have recognized that David had the courage of his convictions -- the courage to lead. John Maxwell says, “Leaders lead.” They don’t just point out the problems, they don’t just suggest alternatives, they don’t stand around and play Monday Morning quarterback and critique the efforts of people who are in the game: they go out and they get their hands dirty and they get their spears bloody. They lead.

Someone wrote about 1 Samuel 17, “inwardly, the throne changed hands that day“.

Saul wasn’t a leader -- even though he had the official title -- he wasn’t a leader because he was just like his troops; fear had immobilized them and him and he lacked the courage to lead.Real men lead with courage. They’re willing to stare down risk. Are authentic men afraid? Of course. That’s not the issue. The question is not, “are they afraid?“, it’s, “does fear hold them back?”

What moved David? Like I’ve already said, this was an intolerable situation. But there was something more. He told Saul, “I’ve been in the battle“. Verse 34: I was out guarding my father’s sheep, and along came a bear and then along came a lion. Those ferocious enemies stole a lamb -- and I went after them -- I rescued the lamb, when they turned on me, or rose up to attack me, I grabbed them by the beard and struck them and killed him. End of story.

He told Saul, your servant has killed both the lion and the bear -- this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of those. Here’s the secret: David’s full of courage because David had experience with God.

He knows he’s no match for a giant, but he also knows that the lion, nor the bear, nor that pagan giant are any match for God. Your experience with God is always your source of courage.

Have you learned to take risk? Take some steps of faith -- in leading people? Are you seeing God do some miracles in using your life? We talked this morning about that whole issue of advancing the kingdom of Christ. I’ve been reading a book called Risk. It’s all about how God builds into men and use them. The author describes how God used him to lead a Russian guard to Christ back in 1985 during the old Soviet empire. God did that in response to a simple prayer: two words -- “use me”. Use me God.

There are men around you, in whose lives God will use you. Each of us could list 10 or 15 men right now, men whose lives are connected with ours, men whom God wants to touch, if we’ll pray that prayer, and move out and lead courageously. Some need to be led to Christ. Some need to be get going spiritually. Some just need to be led in life. Authentic men step out, and step up and lead.

The fourth characteristic: 4. Authentic men expect a greater reward -- God’s reward.

I said earlier today that there are a couple of extremes we go to as men: One of course is we become passive. The other is we become domineering.

You should realize that with either of those unbiblical extremes, there are certain earthly rewards. Passive people avoid conflict. They think that’s the way to go. They quietly let life happen and usually don’t know what they’re missing out on. Domineering men get their way.

In our account, David asks his brothers and the soldiers a question before he offers to take on Goliath. He says, what will be given to the man who slays this Philistine and takes away Israel’s reproach? For who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should taunt the armies of the living God?

It’s hard to tell from the passage what David’s interest is in the rewards Saul had offered. But when you hear him scoffing at how this beast of a man maligns God and God’s people, you realize there’s more that motivates David than what Saul’s rewards.

Robert Lewis says, real manhood was designed by God to be liberating and a means of great reward. Listen: God’s not interested in your comfort. If it’s comfort you’re after, it’s passivity you want. And God’s not often interested in immediate rewards. Domineering men get their way, but they don’t get what they really want. God is in the business of rewarding men who step up, but the rewards will be long-term, not short-term.

Jesus set the example as the truly authentic man. He embraced all the Father gave Him to do -- he had a will to obey, a work to do, he even had a bride -- His Church to love. What moved Him? The reward He anticipated.

Listen to the description of Jesus in Hebrews 12:1, 2: Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

What kept Jesus in the race? A great internal motivation. The joy set before Him. Great reward. That pressed Jesus to finish strong. Every one of us needs a long-haul perspective if we’re going to make it.

Men, I don’t know where you are today? Most of you I never saw before today. But I know the kind of stuff we’ve all experienced, inheriting what we did, and living in this culture.

I know the simplest thing for you would be to take everything you’ve heard today about manhood, leadership, purity, commitment -- all of that -- and chuck it in the trash as soon as you get back to where you live.

That would be the simplest and the easiest. But most of you won’t. Because God’s been working overtime on you. He’s reminded you of some things: Who He is -- and who you are -- and how He wants to move in your life and through your life to do something that’s rare.

I had the privilege of sitting under Professor Howard Hendricks when I was in seminary. Prof Hendricks used to tell us, “a man asked me once, ‘how many men do you know, over the age of 50, who are moving out and making a difference for Jesus Christ?’” Prof said, “sadly, not that many!”

Picture this: you’re 50 years old. And you’re one of those men. Moving out, growing strong, and making a difference for Jesus Christ. Fighting battles -- and winning -- still rejecting passivity, still taking on responsibility, in the family, in the church, in the community. Leading courageously -- still winning other men to Christ, still populating heaven and depopulating hell -- and looking forward -- ever forward to a greater reward.

Men, picture that. And then tell me -- at least tell yourself: what will it take to get you there?
Who do you need to spend some time with this week yet? What do you need to make right? What sin is there that’s got you in its clutches? What relationship is taking you in a wrong direction?

And where do you need to take a stand? Will you stand with me right now and let God do some examining? No one needs to know what business transpires between you and your God tonight -- but I would wager that there’s not a man in this room who doesn’t need something to happen. Let it.

I’ll pray for us. If you need to talk to someone when we’re through, grab someone and talk. But let God have His way, and let him begin to build you into a man, a godly man, who leads His people. Sources: Tony Evans, No More Excuses; Robert Lewis, Raising a Modern-Day Knight; Larry Crabb, The Silence of Adam;
Kenny Luck, www.everymanministries.com

The Church is supposed to be a "grace place"

Singer and songwriter Ken Medema wrote, "If this is not a place where tears are understood, then where shall I go to cry? And if this is not a place where my spirit can take wings, then where shall I go to fly? If this is not a place where my questions can be asked, then where shall I go to seek? And if this is not a place where my heart cry can be heard, then where, tell me where, shall I go to speak?" Ken Medema, (c) 1977 Word Music.