Man's Purpose & Struggles

Amen.

Well, good morning, Sacred Mission.

Hey, my name is Justin.

I'm one of the pastors here, and it's my joy and privilege to bring God's word to you this morning.

Um, we are in this series, as Jeanette just said, male and female, he created them.

Last week we tried to lay a theological groundwork uh for the purpose and reality of the image of God being known and realized in the distinct sexes of male and female.

And we rooted that in the purpose that God gave them, right?

To fill and to subdue.

And before we dive into what it means to be a man distinctly in their gender expression, here's what I want to say.

During this sermon series, there may be some things that is said that's challenging for you to receive.

There may be some things that you've got questions on.

There may be some things that you vehemently disagree with.

What I want you to let you know is that's fine.

What we want to encourage you to do in that is reach out to your elders to grab a coffee or a lunch and to allow us to hear and listen, answer questions, and try to walk alongside you as we work to submit ourselves to the truth and beauty of God's word.

Right?

Because here's the reality of family.

What does family do?

Family has disagreements.

They have uh uh things that they that they argue about or that they don't see eye to eye on.

But what else is the beauty of family?

That there's the work to reconcile in spite of those things.

Because that's where genuine and authentic relationship is discovered, is when we can actually come together in reconciliation, even though we had maybe some sense of strife between us, right?

And so that's where we find genuine relationship.

So we want to encourage that in our own church community.

We're not expecting that everything we say you blindly just receive and embrace.

We realize that there's gonna be some of those who need to work harder or try to seek to understand more clearly the things that we're preaching.

Amen?

Amen.

All right, so hey, here we go.

We're gonna look at the beauty and power and strength of man this morning.

We're talking about gender expression and relationship to a person's sex.

So we talked about last week.

Sex refers to a person's biology, right?

And gender refers to the social roles associated with men and women.

Last week we talked about the sexual binary of male and female being rooted in God's purpose for his image bearers.

So here's fundamentally what we have to do.

I'm trying to give you a bigger picture of God.

The more glorious, the more full of majesty and splendor, the more sovereign and powerful that we see God, the better it's gonna be for us.

And so the very reality of our maleness or our femaleness has got to be rooted in something bigger than us.

Because what's our propensity to do?

Our propensity is to make us really big, right?

We make ourselves magnified.

And in that, we tend to worship and serve a very small God.

And in fact, we twist it, and what we tend to do is we fabricate a God of our own image and we expect it to serve us.

That's mankind's propensity.

You're seeing that clearly walked out in culture today, specifically around gender and sex.

What does God call us to do?

God calls us to magnify him, to make him great, to make ourselves small that we in submission bow ourselves at his lordship and serve him because he deserves all glory and honor.

So I want us to get a big picture of God, and the purpose of our sexual binary has to be rooted in his purpose for us as his image bearers.

And what does he call us to do in our purpose?

We have this joint purpose of filling and subduing, filling the earth with the image of God, right?

In our procreation, we were to fill the earth with the image of God, and we were to subdue creation, meaning we were to exercise the dominion that God gave us for fruit bearing.

So we talked about last week about the potential of creation, right?

And the potential of creation outside of man's dominion is chaos.

But when it's exercised, when man's dominion is exercised in creation, it flourishes.

And we see fruit bearing take place.

And so we were called to fill and subdue the earth.

And if our very sex of either male or female is rooted in that purpose, then our gender expression of male and female must tether itself to that very purpose also.

Rooted in the purpose of God, for his image bearers, we will see the gender expression of male and female work toward defining distinct roles and responsibilities while functioning within the shared creation mandate.

Here's what I mean by that.

When God gave the creation mandate, he gave it to male and female.

We are called in complementary of one another to fill and subdue.

Yet in the midst of that, there is a distinction between the expressions that we exercise so that that end purpose is accomplished.

Both men and women are given indispensable roles in the achievement of God's ultimate purposes.

And before we dive in too much, there's something that I think tends to happen within the church.

I think that we tend to hear when we talk about the differences and distinctions of male and female, I think what we tend to hear is soul instead of primary.

What I mean, soul, is that man or woman alone have this or bear this or function in this, where really the Bible communicates primary, that there is a primary held on either male or female to function in certain ways.

We tend to talk about biblical expression of gender.

We tend to hear it through the filter of soul meaning unshared, rather than primary meaning shared yet foremost.

And let me talk about this in two different ways that we tend to see this.

One way we tend to see this is in the preaching of the gospel.

We'll say that the Bible communicates that men hold the primary responsibility of the preaching of the gospel in the context of the local church.

What do we tend to hear?

We tend to hear men have the sole responsibility of preaching the gospel.

That's not true.

Women are called to preach the gospel.

Women are called to preach the gospel to other women, to their family members, to their friends, to their co-workers.

The only thing that the Bible brings restriction around is within the context of the local church, authoritatively proclaiming the word of God.

But so it's not soul as man alone, unshared, but it's primary as man holds the primary responsibility for the preaching of God's word, but it is a shared reality upon women also.

But let's flip the script and let's look at childbearing.

Women, you know, this isn't a slam, this is just an honest observation.

You will not give glory to man in childbearing.

You take it all for your own.

Right?

It's my work.

And man's over here like, I did I did something too.

Yeah, that's right.

Why?

Because it's not soul.

Women, newsflash.

If you didn't have us, you couldn't have babies, right?

And so is there a primary glory that should be crowned upon the female?

Absolutely.

Should it demonstrate power and strength?

Yes, it should.

Should it be solely hers?

No.

Because it's shared, and the complement of the two sexes produced what?

Something beautiful together.

Praise God, women take the primary glory in that.

Praise God.

But without the complement of one another, we could never have the end result.

You see, the propensity in our reaction to the assumption of soul rather than the biblical posture of primary, is actually to contend for unbiblical equality.

We are equal in the sense of both male and female bearing the image of God and investing dignity and worth to us.

But we are also equal in the sense that our distinctions of male and female make the sum whole of mankind.

You see, it's actually what makes us different that brings the glory of mankind forward before creation.

Unbiblical equality or sameness has blurred the line so drastically between men and women that they are becoming altogether erased.

You see, when we reject biblical difference and distinction for the sake of unbiblical sameness, we lose the beauty, strength, and glory that each sex brings to the table of fulfilling God's purpose for his image bears, and we cultivate immense harm and destruction rather than the good that we were intended to.

And you're and you're seeing this in culture today.

Women, if I can say anything this morning to you, it's that what culture is contending for, unbiblical sameness, is doing more harm and destruction to women today than we have seen in our modern time.

And let me tell you this, we're just beginning.

If you think you've seen the fullness of man's depravity expressed toward the harm of women, we've just begun.

And so we want to reject unbiblical sameness and we want to embrace biblical distinction because it's in the strengthening of both of those differences together that we receive, that we achieve the glory of mankind in our compliments.

Man was made in the likeness, in the image of the triune.

God, we talked about this last week.

The eternal beauty of the Trinity is most evident in their distinction rather than in their similarities.

The Father, Son, and Spirit are all to be honored and glorified in the works of creation, in their providence, and in their plan and execution of redemption.

But as Scripture consigns certain elements of the works of God to specific persons of the Trinity, so also must we, all the while taking nothing from the glory of any one of them.

And here's what we mean by this: one God accomplishing redemptive history, distinct in their personhood, playing different roles within it.

The Father wills, the Son accomplishes, the Spirit applies.

And how dare we try to take glory from any one of them because we're highlighting their distinctions and differences when what we should do is bow in reverence and honor of the finished redemptive work they accomplish in unity.

It is only in the context of biblical gender expression and submission and alignment to God's design and purpose that we see the true and distinct beauty of male and female.

Because it is displayed in the codependency of the complementary halves to express the glory of the whole.

I think Paul seems to be thinking this way as he's writing in 1 Corinthians chapter 11, 11 through 12.

1 Corinthians 11 · chapter mention

He says this He says, Nevertheless, in the Lord, in Christ, woman is not what?

Independent of man.

We see codependency language, nor man of woman.

For as woman was made from man, so man is now born of woman, and all things are from God.

What Paul seems to be doing is affirming differences.

He's affirming differences, and in affirming that, he sees with every difference there is a counter indispensability of the other.

So with that in mind, let's dive into the indispensable glory of the distinction found in being a man.

As we turn to Genesis chapter 2, verses 5 through 17, we see this man is a priest judge of the temple garden.

Genesis 2:5–17

Man is a priest judge of the temple garden.

Verse 5 says this when no bush of the field was yet in the land, and no spall plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not create caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground.

Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed in his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.

So verses five through seven, we see man being designed and created in intimate purpose.

Right?

This is the first part of creation where God is not just speaking and things are coming about, but God bends down and intimately forms man of the dust of the earth, and he breathes the breath of life into the nostrils of man.

But one thing that we have to look at in five through seven is that God made man in retrospect to understanding that there was not yet anything to be worked.

There was not yet anything to be cultivated.

And so what does Genesis 5 through 7 help us understand?

That man was made to work.

God had not caused anything to grow or sprout up from the ground yet.

Why?

He says right there, because man had not been made yet to work it and to cultivate it.

Now that man is made, now God is going to bring forth vegetation so that man can fulfill his purpose in working.

So in verses eight through nine, what we see is God establishing a temple garden.

God establishes a temple garden.

God planted a garden, it says, in the east of Eden.

And he placed man there.

And God caused fruit-bearing vegetation to come forth, including the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

And what we see is that this temple garden that God had created and placed man inside will become the blueprint and function for both the tabernacle and the temple to be modeled after.

We can look at creation and the expanse of it as the outer court of the temple.

And then the garden that God planted in the east of Eden as the holy place.

And then Eden, where God Himself dwelled as the holy of holies.

This three-sphere reality of garden and creation would be the exact blueprint that the tabernacle and the temple would be structured after.

And so here's what I want us to understand in this.

Adam wasn't just being placed in some tedious agricultural experience.

Adam was being placed in a holy temple.

That's bigger, right?

We tend to think of the creation account of like, all right, here comes Adam with a sickle, just cutting stuff down, picking some berries, you know, maybe he's playing with some animals or something like that.

We might think of some like tedious agricultural experience because we're not seeing the big picture of what's happening.

God in his sovereignty comes to man, condescends to man, and chooses to dwell among him.

And what does he do?

He establishes a temple for his presence.

And in the midst of that garden, he places man to work.

The temple garden would also have the tree of life.

In the midst of the tabernacle and of the Israelite temple, we would see the menorah, the golden lampstand in the holy place, pointing toward the tree of life, communicating and pointing to a hope for future of never-ending fellowship and communion with God, their Maker.

You see, Adam was being placed in the very dwelling of the living God.

Verses 10 through 14.

A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers.

The name of the first is the Peshan.

It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold, and the gold of that land is good.

Bedelium and onyx, stone are there.

The name of the second river is the Gahan.

It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Cush, and the name of the third river is the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria, and the fourth river is the Euphrates.

What we see in verses ten through fourteen is a river bringing life to all of creation that flowed out of Eden and broke forth into four rivers.

We talked last week about how Eden and Adam are but shadows and types of something greater to come.

We see the very picture of this river in Revelation 22.1, that which flowed from the throne of God.

Revelation 22.1 says this.

Then the angel showed me, speaking of John the evangelist, who had this revelation, the river of the water of life brought as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb.

I'm trying to help us see even more clearly this temple garden that God was putting Adam into.

And here in verse 15, we start to dive into the means by which Adam would work this temple garden.

Verse 15 says this the Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and to keep it.

So if the creation mandate of mankind was to fill and subdue, right?

To fill the earth with the image of God, to exercise dominion to bring creation into fruit bearing, the means by which man would do that was in this working and keeping.

This word work is the Hebrew word Avad.

And it's this language of serving.

It would actually mean for us to worship God through obedient service.

There's the reality of what is being communicated in Genesis chapter 2 is that Adam would be a priest.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

He would serve God, he would worship him through obedient service, and is communicating the priesthood of Adam.

We see the same language of Avad to serve, to minister in Numbers 3, 5 through 7, as the Lord was communicating what the role and function of the Levites, the uh tribe of priests would perform in the tabernacle.

In the 10 of meetings, he says this.

And the Lord God spoke to Moses, saying, Bring the tribe of Levi near, and set them before Aaron the priest that they may minister, serve Avad to him.

They shall keep guard over him and over the whole congregation before the tent of meeting as they minister, Avad, serve at the tabernacle.

And so what God is putting them there, it what God is putting Adam in the garden for to work is to serve, to function as a priest, that he might worship God through faithful obedience to his commands.

But it's not just to serve, to work, it's also to keep.

This is the word shamar.

Shamar means to guard.

To guard what is holy from defilement.

Now it's fascinating in Genesis 2.

We have no account of a serpent.

We have no account of something unclean within the garden.

But before that ever happened, before that ever occurred, Adam was positioned in the garden.

He was placed there by God to be a guard.

To guard that holy temple from anything that would defile it.

We see this in Numbers 3, 5 through 7 as well, corresponding to the role of the Levites.

And the Lord God spoke to Moses, saying, Bring the tribe of Levi near, set them before Aaron the priest that they may serve him.

They shall keep guard, Shamar, over him and over the whole congregation before the tent of meeting as they minister at the tabernacle.

This was the primary role of the priest in the tribe of Levi, that he would serve, he would minister before the Lord.

And they were called, they were commissioned to cast out what might be unclean, to guard the holy presence of God from that which would defile it.

In fact, what we see in the very ordination servant service of the priests of Levi, Moses commanded that they would slaughter the men who defiled the name of the living God, and they drew their sword from their thigh, and 3,000 men were put to death that day.

That was the ordination service of the tribe of Levi.

That they would serve before the Holy God and that they would guard against anything that would defile his name.

But we also see this working of Shamar in the guarding of God's covenant, in the guarding of his commands for his people.

It says in Genesis 17, 9, God's speaking to Abraham, and God said to Abraham, As for you, you shall keep, you shall guard Shamar, what?

My covenant, you and your offspring after you throughout their generations.

We also see this in the very character and nature of God, that God keeps and guards us.

And this benediction, this blessing of Aaron, we see in Numbers 624, may the Lord bless you and keep you.

He's literally saying, May the Lord guard you to keep you undefiled.

That's the work of God and his sovereign keeping of his people.

You see, the Levitical priest who Adam was a type were to serve and worship God as well as to guard his holy presence, presence from being defiled by that which was unclean.

These attributes, roles, and responsibilities were first given to Adam in the temple garden in Eden.

So we don't have woman yet in Genesis 2.

We have this distinct responsibility invested into man that he would be placed in the garden to serve and to guard.

And it's in the context of that that God will require of him a helper.

But this responsibility was first invested to man.

Adam was placed in the garden temple to be a priest judge before the Lord, to serve God through worshipful obedience to his creation mandate, and to guard the temple garden from anything clean, unclean that would defile it.

Verses 16 through 17 we read, And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in that day you eat of it, you shall surely die.

In Genesis 2, 16 through 17, we see a covenant being made between God and man.

And it's a covenant of works.

And God lays before Adam instruction, command, and he lays before him a consequence if he, in rebellious disobedience, fails to uphold what God had commanded of him.

That if he ate of that tree, he would surely die.

Theologically, we call this a probationary period for Adam and Eve.

It was this aspect where God was seeing, proving their faithful obedience before him.

And what we can infer from this is that on the other side of every covenant that God makes with man, there's not just the consequence if we disobey, but there's the blessing if we do obey.

And what was on the other side of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, juxtaposed to it, was the tree of life, the never-ending, unbreakable fellowship and communion with your Maker.

So we can infer that if Adam in this probationary period would have been obedient unto the Lord to serve and to guard, that he wouldn't have taken from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and ate, but he would have ate from the fruit of the tree of life, and he would have had unending fellowship with his Maker.

But the covenant was broken by man.

And through rebellious disobedience he brought death into creation rather than the life that he was charged to cultivate.

And so in verses 17 through 24 of chapter 3, we see mankind experiences death because of man's disobedience.

So listen to those words carefully.

Mankind, male and female, experience death because of man's disobedience.

Let's look at it.

Verses 17 through 19 read this.

And to Adam he said, Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, you shall not eat of it.

Cursed is the ground because of you.

In pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life.

Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the plants of the field.

By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken, for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

In verses 17 through 19, we see that man suffers the consequence of abdicating his role and responsibility.

Because Adam set aside, because Adam forsook the role and responsibility that God gave to him, death comes in.

God says to him, Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I command you, you shall not eat of it.

Cursed.

Adam failed to serve.

Adam failed to serve.

He failed to worship the God through faithful obedience to his commands.

But not just that, Adam also failed to serve because he didn't proclaim the true and faithful word of God.

You see, the serpent comes in, and what does he do?

He deceives because he says, Did God truly say?

What Adam should have done was to declare the word of the Lord back to the serpent.

God did say, These are the promises of God.

This is what he's declared to us.

And that faithful proclamation of the word of God, he could have defeated Satan himself.

But he failed to serve that way.

We see this in the role and commission of the priest.

We see this in the local church of the pastorate.

We are called to what?

Proclaim the faithful word of God that Satan might be defeated in your own life.

We're called as pastors to pick up what Adam set aside.

But Adam wasn't just failing to serve, Adam failed to guard.

Because Adam failed to cast out that unclean serpent.

That was what he was commissioned to do.

That was the role that he had to play.

To cast out the unclean serpent from the garden.

To guard both Eden and Eve from being defiled.

And because he abdicated his responsibility, it wasn't Eden that was just defiled, as that would be enough.

But Eve, his own wife, was defiled in the process also.

Think about the promises of the gospel.

What does Christ do for his church?

He picks up the mantle that Adam so recklessly tossed aside.

And he presents a bride without spot or blemish.

He presents an undefiled bride before God the Father.

Because he will cast out the unclean serpent forever.

Man, the gospel is powerful.

So Adam failed to serve, Adam failed to guard.

But the failure and sin of Adam began through the reversal of roles.

God said, Because you listen to the voice of your wife.

Let me submit this in sobriety this morning, church.

Fundamentally, the curse came through the abdication of headship.

It was Adam who was supposed to lead.

And it was Eve who was supposed to receive his leading.

But the disobedience and the absence of Adam serving and guarding came through him receiving the leading of Eve.

You see, Adam was with her.

And it's when he listened, when he allowed her leadership to be received by himself, when he reversed the roles, what was the outcome of that?

Serving was tossed aside, guarding was tossed aside, and death and decay enter in.

You see, we see my man's primary responsibility linked to the curse that he now bears.

The tilling of the ground to produce fruit-bearing beauty would come through great toil and strife.

Man's purpose would not be removed, but it would be ultimately frustrated.

And this is something that we have to understand as the church today.

That purpose isn't removed from us as men, to serve and to guard.

It's not removed, but it is frustrated because we're functioning under the curse.

Verse 20 through 24.

The man called his wife name Eve because she was the mother of all the living.

And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.

The Lord God said, Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil.

Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever.

Therefore the Lord God sent him out from the Garden of Eden to work the ground, serve, from which he was taken.

He drove out the man, and at the east of the Garden of Eden he was placed the cherubim and flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.

Do you see that?

Adam would not be serving in the temple garden.

Adam would be serving in the thorn and thistle soil of creation.

And because Adam failed to guard, God had to step in and guard Adam.

And so what we see in 2324 is that God would begin to pick up the work that man failed to accomplish.

Though mankind would truly experience death through banishment from God's blessed presence, we see a condescending reversal of roles as God takes up the work of new creation upon himself.

God would serve man by clothing them.

It says that he took animal skins and that he clothed them.

This is a foreshadowing, a representation of God's work in serving mankind by covering their very sin.

But also God would guard man in their being exiled.

What does God say there at the end of Genesis 3?

He says, Something's happened to man.

He took of that fruit, and now he is like us in a way that he wasn't supposed to.

He now knows good and evil.

Lest he take the fruit of the tree of life and what?

Solidify eternally his fallen state.

We need to exile him.

And at the gate of the garden we'll put a cherubim with a flaming sword to guard.

That's grace.

Is that banishment?

Is that exile?

Yes.

Is it grace?

Yes.

That God would guard what Adam failed to so that we could experience a future redemption through Christ.

So God begins to take upon Himself the role and responsibility of man to ensure his purposes in creation might be fulfilled.

Here's our main idea for us this morning, church.

God designed man to serve and guard the flourishing of creation.

God designed man to serve and guard the flourishing of creation.

And here's what I want to put before us, and I want us to really wrestle with this.

This is the distinct and primary expression of strength in men.

Here's what I'm not saying.

I'm not saying women are weak and pathetic.

But I'm saying there's a distinct strength in man that's evident to all of us.

And there's a strength that man is invested with that he is supposed to exert for the good and flourishing of others around him.

And that strength is not characterized by some cultural caricature.

That strength is characterized by bearing responsibility.

How can you be a strong man?

No matter your physical stature, no matter your interests or hobbies, you are a strong man when you use the strength of your back that God gave you to bear the responsibility He's commissioned you with.

That's how strength should be characterized in the heart and life of every man.

Man has been invested with a strength that is distinct from women, so that he might bear primary responsibility.

And we exert that strength through the serving and guarding of the new creation mandate.

You see, we men like Adam bear the mantle of priest judge still today.

If you're a husband, you are a priest judge for your wife.

You serve her by laying your life down for her.

As Christ laid down his life for the church.

Do you understand what strength had to be exerted in the God man Jesus Christ to lay his life down for the church?

You see it in his words and exchange between him and Pontius Pilate.

Pontius, you think you have power?

No one can take my life unless I lay it down.

That's strength, like you can't imagine.

And what does he do?

He does it for the good of the church.

And men, we're called to serve our wives in the way that Christ served the church.

But we're also called to guard her.

That we should put on display the reality that Christ will present for himself a bride without spot or blemish.

He has casted out the unclean serpent that would defile his church.

And we as men should work to see our wives be undefiled by our care.

That we should cast out whatever is unclean in our homes, that we should be men who don't use our strength and exert it to mar and to stain and to tarnish the very women that God put under our care.

Because that's the problem.

This is the countercultural reaction, is that there's been too many experiences of men exerting the strength that God gave them for their own good and flourishing.

And so the stains of their sin mar their bride.

No, we are to guard her in the way that Christ guards us.

Fathers, we are priest judges.

We serve our children by raising them in the wisdom and knowledge of the Word of God.

There is no greater service that you can give your child than to raise them in the Word of God.

And we guard them from that which is unclean and would defile them.

Last week I said something at the end of my sermon that was I didn't take enough time and consideration to unpack in a way that would have been fruitful and beneficial for y'all hearing.

I stand by what I say, but I regret that I didn't take the pastoral care to do it rightly.

One thing I said is that God hates sexual sin.

That's an abomination because it works to strip away at the very power and purpose of the gospel.

I stand by that.

But here's what I want us to understand.

If God is ever going to be as passionate and as zealous of a lover that we try to even understand or comprehend him to be, he must also passionately and zealously hate that which harms and destroys and breaks down his children.

You know what makes a good father?

You know what makes a loving father is when he hates the things that hurts his kids.

And here's what we have in culture.

We have too many men who don't hate enough.

We have too many men who allow unclean things to come into our homes and defile our children.

Man, if we would love them so passionately, if we would love them with so much zeal, if we would love them so much that we would hate the very things that defile them.

But what do we do?

Man, in the stillness and in the dark of night through a glowing screen, we allow, we invite unclean things into our children's own bedroom.

Look at the way that our children are being discipled through cultural media and social media.

Look at the ways that we don't hate the things that are harming our children, the way that they're being discipled through culture, the way that the institutional systems around us are shaping their worldview and establishing their convictions, that we don't hate the things that harm them.

We don't love our kids as much as we might confess that we do, and it's evident in the way that we fail to be a guard for their purity.

Praise God that he hates what harms us because that makes him a lover of his children beyond what we can imagine.

Pastors, we are priest judges.

We serve as under-shepherds, tilling the soil of man's heart, primarily through the preaching of God's word, in order to keep, to guard the sheep from the attacks of the enemy.

Look at the beauty of what happens in the creation mandate through the Old Testament covenant into the new creation mandate of the church and what will be?

Adam, if he would have just confessed, if he would have proclaimed faithfully the word of God, he would have been able to destroy the serpent.

And he failed to do that.

What was Adam's primary role?

Adam's primary role was to till the soil.

We see that in the cursing that Adam would be working among the thorns and thistles.

Why do you think that the preaching of God's word stands as the primary responsibility of men in the local church?

Because it's through the preaching of the word that we are tilling the soil of man's heart, that we might plant the eternal seed of the promise of the gospel within you and it might bear fruit.

Do you not see the reflection and the resemblance and parallel that we're fulfilling the new creation mandate in alignment of our creation one that God gave to us as men?

This is the beauty of the church.

This is the beauty of the gospel.

That there's redemptive realities and power now and here that we can cling on to.

Yet of primary importance, in the new creation mandate, the calling we have as priests and judges is not necessarily a calling to be violent or military.

Militant or aggressive towards people, but rather towards everything inside of our chests that would be contrary to the glory of God and the dignity of those made in his image.

You see, a crucial part of our priestly calling is being violent against our own sin.

Men, if we're going to be priest judges, there is a call first and in its primary to wage war against the sin in our own heart.

How dare we exert so much time and energy and effort to create a culture war and spend so little time waging war within ourselves.

And let me tell you something, what's going to happen?

Here's a cultural prophecy of our time.

Many of the men you admire that reflect some sense of masculinity.

Whether you watch their YouTube channel or listen to their podcast or read their blogs, here's what you're going to see man after man fall because they've exerted too much time and energy into fighting a war out there than fighting the one that's right here in their chest.

I hope there's something that flips with inside of our culture here inside of this church.

That we are more known of being holy because we wage war on the sin inside of us more than as a church who wages war with the culture around us.

I'm not saying that there's not a fight to be had.

I'm not saying that there's not a guarding to exhibit with inside of the society we find ourselves in.

But I'm saying we better, first and foremost, wage war within ourselves.

We are called to discern and judge the difference between good and evil, and we are called to execute judgment upon unrighteousness in our own hearts.

You see, man bears the responsibility to exert this distinct strength for the flourishing of those around him.

But I would be a fool to assume that for all of the women in our room, this is easy to embrace and swallow, to submit to, or to hear as good.

Because here's what I know that each and every one of you, in some way or fashion, have experienced man exerting his strength not for your good, but for his own.

And we have husbands and fathers and pastors who have abused you because they exerted their own strength for their own good.

And let me tell you something.

Your elders here hate that with every sense of the word.

We so passionately hate that as much as we love you.

And so I'm not going to pretend that this will be easy, but I want to convince you that it is good.

When men exert the strength that God has given them to bear the responsibility and serve and guard those around them, women flourish in ways that we can't even imagine.

Because it's by men stepping up and doing what they're called to do that women have the freedom and the capacity and the power to step up and do what God called them to do.

And that's a good thing.

But our hope is not in how awesome or pathetic of a priest judge we are.

Our hope is in Jesus, the perfect priest judge.

Jesus is the perfect priest judge.

Let me lay something before you real quick.

I'm going long and I apologize, but it was according to the sovereign wisdom, discernment, and knowledge of God that Jesus was a man.

And I want you to wrestle with that in your worldview and your understanding of gender and sex and all that's coming to the table of culture right now.

I want us to wrestle with the reality that it was according to God's wisdom and knowledge that Jesus was a man.

Because it was in the strength of the God man exerted by bearing the responsibility of you and me that we were able to experience redemption at all.

Jesus literally carried the burden of Adam's forsaking of his role and responsibility as he walked the Via Della Rosa up to the top of Galgotha.

He carried the beam of our responsibility upon his back because it took the strength of a man to do that.

Not in the literal physical sense of the beam, but of the carrying of our sin and shortcomings and rebellion upon him.

Jesus is the perfect man, the perfect priest judge.

And look at what we see in the ministry and life of Jesus.

Right after Jesus' baptism, what does he do?

He goes out into the wilderness and he's tempted by Satan.

Satan, in certain ways, literally says, Did God say?

And what does Jesus do?

Jesus perfectly does what Adam failed to do.

He declares the true and living word of God back to the enemy.

And he defeats Satan in the wilderness.

But not only that, what does he do?

He comes into the temple and he cleanses it.

As a priest judge, he executes judgment upon the money changers and those who were selling sacrificial animals with inside the temple gate, and he cleanses the temple in the way that Adam failed to do.

But not only that, he exercises dominion in his public ministry as he goes from town to town casting out demons, exercising the dominion and authority and power that Adam failed to do.

Jesus perfectly obeyed the will of the Father, laying his life down and submitting himself to him.

In perfect obedience, he served God.

And Jesus was what?

He was crucified on a decision tree.

Think about this for a moment.

The curse came through a decision tree.

What is good and what is evil?

And that taking of that fruit and eating it would give us that information, it would give us that insight, that revelation.

What do we find Jesus?

What do we find the context of Jesus right before he's crucified?

Pontius Pilate is wrestling between a decision.

What is good?

What is evil?

What is right?

What is wrong?

What should I do?

What can I do?

And when we see the fruit of that, a curse.

Jesus became a curse by hanging on a decision tree in our place.

And he's cast out.

He's cast out as something unclean.

He was taken beyond the city limits of Jerusalem, a place where those who were not citizens of God's holy covenant people had to be taken to be crucified, to be put to death.

He's literally casted out of the city of God as something unclean and of himself.

He was buried and then rose again in new resurrection life.

And he's given us the church, the seed of his word, the promise of his gospel, that we can start to see, but also participate in the beauty and power of the new creation mandate.

And as believers in Christ, as those brought into the kingdom of his light, what do we await for?

But his second coming.

Jesus is coming again.

And what's he gonna do at his coming again?

He's gonna finalize what Adam failed to do.

He's gonna cast out that unclean serpent forever.

Let's read about it in Revelation 20, verse 10.

Revelation 20:10

And the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night, forever and ever.

Praise God for Jesus, the perfect priest judge.

But it doesn't stop there.

Jesus is building for himself a new city, a new temple city, where Adam failed to do what he called, was called and commissioned to do by God.

Jesus comes and he establishes a new temple city where the throne of God resides, where the river of life flows from its base, and where the tree of life as a canopy covers each bank, communicating to us, investing to us, unending, unbreakable, forever communion and relationship with our God.

I want for a moment, as we we're gonna read Revelation 22, 1 through 5 here in a moment, but this is what I want you to do.

I want you to close your eyes, and I don't care how corny you think this is, and I want you to picture the fruit, the resolve, the outcome of a perfect man perfectly doing what he's been designed and created or uh instilled to do.

This is what manhood expressed in creation is supposed to accomplish.

And Jesus does it perfectly.

Revelation 22, 1 through 5.

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb, through the middle of the street of the city, also on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month.

The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him.

They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads, and night will be no more.

Because they will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.

Man, that's the fruit of a perfect man who perfectly did what he was commissioned to do.

And that's beautiful.

Let us celebrate men and manhood and masculinity as we look to the perfect man, Jesus Christ.

So here's our vision for us, Sacred Mission.

And I'll close with this: that we would exert strength by bearing the responsibility to serve and guard for the flourishing of others.

That's what I want us to be known as.

A church where men exert their God-given strength by bearing the responsibility to serve and guard for the flourishing of others.

You see, this is still our calling, no matter what.

This is still what we are called to be like in our masculinity.

No matter how imperfectly we do it.

And men, let us find comfort that we are redeemed by the one who perfectly did.

Let's pray.