Manhood, Cultivating Gardens & Crushing Serpents (Genesis 2:10-17)

Hey, what's up? Good morning.

It's nice to see you. If you've got a Bible, just go

ahead and get that out right away.

We got a lot of ground to cover. We are in Genesis chapter 2.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

We're going to be looking at 2 paragraphs verses 10 through 17

as you're turning there. Let me just say, ladies, I'm

really excited for your retreat. Tracy Self is such a phenomenal

teacher communicator. I might just try to try to sneak

in and see if I can do if you, if you get a, if you get a sign

up, that's Colette. It's not me, but I'm excited to

hear that go. This is going to be good.

So if you're, if you're already there in Genesis, chapter 2,

Genesis 2:10–17

verses 10 through 17, welcome, welcome, welcome.

Welcome to the fun part of Genesis.

It's the fun part of Genesis. Because in this next section of

preaching, which we're going to take characteristically slowly,

we're going to see the emergence of gender.

Hey, oh, so we've got a couple weeks of diving deeply into

this. We're going to do a couple

sermons about biblical manhood. We're going to get a couple

sermons about biblical womanhood.

We're going to say, hey, equal and worth, value and dignity,

and yet distinct in the way that they function within God's

design. And so anytime I think like the

thing that you just got to say is in the current intellectual

climate that we live in on podcasts and YouTube and

everything like that, and the current intellectual climate we

live in, the conversation and dialogue around gender is it's

so filled with caricatures and assumptions that sometimes it's

hard to actually hear what somebody is saying.

We tend to hear the things that we want to hear and not hear the

things that are actually being said.

I saw it like just on a podcast this week, I saw two people

talking about gender. Person A said, I think men

should be dangerous. And by dangerous, I don't mean

violent or hostile. I mean competent, skillful, and

they should make an impact on the world.

And person B said, oh, so men should be dangerous.

So you think that they should be violent.

It's just like, oh, my goodness, we just cannot hear what we're

saying. And so I think that there's two

temptations you're going to experience hearing a sermon on

manhood this morning. The first assumption is what I

just unpacked for you, which is you're going to be tempted to

hear what I'm not saying and not hear what I am saying.

And so, for instance, if this morning I unpack to you, hey,

it's the man's primary responsibility to work and keep

and guard the garden, you will be tempted to say, oh, so you

don't think women are valuable? That's not what I'm saying.

That's not true. Equal in worth, equal in value,

equal in dignity. Hear the words I'm saying to the

best of your capacity and don't hear the words that I'm not

saying. The second thing is tightly

related to that, which is people tend to think that the gender

conversation out in the world is like AA0 sum game.

So like, if you elevate one gender, that means you think

lowly of the other gender. And so if I say like, I'm going

to next week, hey, womanhood is awesome, guys are going to be

tempted to think, oh, so you're saying that men are just pigs?

No, I'm not saying that. Or this morning, if I say, hey,

manhood is awesome and it was God's idea, I'm not saying that

womanhood isn't awesome. We're all going to get our time

in the ring. And I think it's actually

possible to elevate. I think the church can actually

be a place where we can elevate both genders and see the dignity

and beauty in both genders. Amen.

Amen. The brilliant anthropologist, Oh

my goodness, she, the brilliant anthropologist, Margaret Mead

famously said a long time ago. She said quote one of the

central problems of every society is to define appropriate

roles for men. Is she right?

Is she wrong? Her argument is when a society

defines appropriate roles for men, society flourishes.

When it fails to do that and leaves it in the land of

ambiguity, society tends to collapse.

And look, we You might want to huff and puff and wish that your

pastor didn't touch the subject of gender.

And maybe you just want your pastor to allow men and women to

merge into an amorphous BLOB of on gendered evangelic fish

goopity goop. And if that's you it, I might

actually suggest to you that the reason you feel that way is

because perhaps perhaps you are too privileged to know what it's

like to have people knock on your front door at odd hours of

the night. I've pastored now for nearly a

decade. That means that I sit somewhere

between rookie and pro. I am no longer either of those

things. But pastoring for almost a

decade means that I've seen a pattern, and I've seen enough

experiences to validate that pattern.

A person knocks on my door at 7:00 PM, ten PM, 8:00 PM.

There are tears in their eyes because of their spouses

verbally, emotionally, spiritually or physically

abusive. What we do, what we've done, is

we make a bed for that person. We make tea for that person.

We pray for that person. We care for that person.

We feed that person. We create a safe space for that

person. We listen to them.

And in my decade of ministry so far, again, it's happened enough

that I have noticed what a person might call a pattern.

The person knocking on my door, at least in my first ten years

of ministry, has always been a woman.

And when you see that enough times, what happens as a leader

is you develop something in your heart.

You. You develop a toughness in your

heart that recognizes that the church cannot be silent on the

issue of gender. So just know that this morning

as I preach and on pack, I'm going to do my best to keep it

within the Bible, be biblical. And also I'm I'm speaking for

the women who knock, the women who knock and wish that the

church would call their husbands to sacrificial masculinity.

And so if Margaret Mead is right, and if one of the central

problems that every society faces is defining appropriate

roles for men, the question as Christians that we should be

asking is does God have a solution to this problem?

Does God have anything to say about this?

And we'll discover that answer together.

So if you're able, you can go ahead and stand for the reading

of God's Word. I will catch you back up if this

is your first Sunday or you've missed the last couple weeks.

But we see the Garden of Eden right here, right there in verse

10. Get your eyeballs on it.

A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it

divided and became four rivers. It's reaching the four corners

of the world. The name of that first is

Pishan. It's the one that flowed around

the whole land of Havilah, where there's gold.

What type of gold is it? The gold of that land is good.

Delium and Onyx stone are there. The name of the second river is

the Gehong, it is the one that flowed around the whole land of

Kush. And the name of the third river

is the Tigris which flows east of Assyria.

And the fourth river is the Euphrates.

All these are real rivers. And then the Lord God Yahweh

took the man Adam, put him in the garden.

The Hebrew word for put right there is a it's a very specific

word that means intentionally placed.

The Lord of God took the man and intentionally placed him in the

Garden of Eden to work it and keep it.

And then we see the emergence of something new in the story and

the Lord command the Lord God commanded the man, saying, you

may surely eat of every tree in the garden.

There's an entire world of yeses.

Yep, eat that. Yep, go get that one.

Go get them, have a blast, have fun.

But one, no, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,

you shall not eat, or in the day that you eat of it, you shall

surely die. We do not know what type of

death God is talking about yet, but there's the promise of death

if man pursues the one No what's going on here?

Heavenly Father, I pray that you would bless the preaching of

your word this morning. I personally was just wrestling

with the effectiveness of preaching wrestling it

struggling with does all the work put into this just is it

just a bunch of hot steam? And as I was wrestling with that

question, Lord, I feel like I heard you whisper, what if

everybody in the building ignores you?

But I'm still glorified. And I thought I'd make that

deal. And so I might be ignored this

morning. I might be misunderstood this

morning. I might be the object of

people's wrath, but I guess that wouldn't bother me so much if

you still glorified yourself through the preaching God.

So it's in God's precious name that all God's people prayed.

Amen. You guys can have a seat.

Welcome to Eden. What we see in these verses is a

description of Eden and it's a description of the world.

That is the world is good, but it's not perfect.

The the biblical word that God uses to describe the garden in

the world in Genesis is not perfect.

It's it's good. And what that means is that the

the earth, though it's good, if it were perfect, there would be

no work to do. And so the earth is good, but

immature. And as an immature earth, it's

going to require cultivation and guarding in order for it to grow

into its potential. God designed the earth this way

because God desires human partnership.

For whatever reason, he loves to work with humans to bring about

his task of bringing heaven to earth.

And so as we describe and look at Eden here, there's three big

categories that form a picture of Eden.

Eden, what are there, What's going on?

What's Eden look like? There's three things we see we

see beauty. It's right there in verse 11.

There's gold verse 12 describes the land that has delium and

Onyx stone. Eden is glittering with beauty.

Beauty is God's idea and God likes beauty.

But we also see water. There's a river running through

and out of the Garden of Eden splits into four rivers.

That's a metaphor for and in reality, that this nourishing

life, source of water that God's given us is big enough, grand

enough, to reach the whole world.

God can water the whole world and make it beautiful.

We see beauty, we see water, and then we see trees.

We see lots of trees, Beauty, water trees, gold, Onyx stone,

rivers, trees. Here's where all these things

come together in the Old Testament.

We'll find out later that temples were made of gold.

And what kind of stone do you think they were made out of?

Onyx stone. Interesting.

The prophets have a vision of the temple.

Do you know what they see running out of the temple?

River temples are filled with makeshift trees, and so the

point that Genesis is telegraphing would have been

obvious to the original audience.

Not as obvious to us though. What God has done is this

created Eden like a cosmic temple.

It's like the OG temple. It's the original temple where

the God of heaven dwells with mankind on earth.

And so Speaking of all these things, let's zoom in on trees.

Lots of trees, big trees, small trees, great trees, lots of

trees. But there's two trees have

become main characters at this point in the book.

The plot of Genesis becomes a tale of two trees, a tale of two

trees. It'll be the best of times and

it'll be the worst of times. A tale of two trees.

In the previous paragraph, we saw the tree of life.

What's that about? That's a tree of healing, where

the very gift of God's life is freely given to human beings.

Relationship is shared. That's a tree of dependence upon

God where relationship is freely shared.

But there's this second other tree.

And as the camera zooms in on that tree, maybe you even see a

dark cloud over top of it. And here's some bom bom bom

music, verse 16. What's the second tree?

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, don't eat it. Why?

Because on the day that you eat it, you shall surely die.

So this is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Like I said, tale of two trees. We see the life tree which is

symbolic of dependence upon God, relationship with God.

We see the knowledge tree also, which at this point in the story

represents independence. And so this, this knowledge

tree, it's going to require a little bit more theology and a

little bit more attention from us to understand what's, what's

going on. Why would God create a tree

that's that's bad? What have you ever wondered

that? What's going on here?

And I would answer that question first and foremost by telling

you about a news story that I saw online this week that made

me laugh my butt off. And it was a story.

You can go look it up if you want.

It was the story of a man who got arrested because he showed

up to his gym butt naked. And that's not the funny part.

I'm not. I'm going to take a bold stance

here. I'm anti nudity and gyms.

Thank you for your applause. Bold stance.

OK, that's not what made me laugh.

What made me laugh is that it happened at Planet Fitness.

So. So apparently when the cops came

in to arrest the guy, they put him in handcuffs.

And before they could he he pointed at the giant sign on the

wall that said judgement free zone.

So homies getting handcuffs and he's like, what's the deal?

I thought it was a judgment free zone.

And this is the example of a man who has prematurely eaten from

the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

That's what's going on there. He's saying, hey, since there's

no judgment, says it on the wall.

I can define what's right and what's wrong.

I can define what's good and what's evil.

You might say that it's evil to show off the Planet Fitness

naked. I say that it's good, right?

It's a man who's taken morality into his own hands.

It's a man who's taken defining good and bad into his own hands.

He's seizing a throne. That's not appropriate.

He's trying to be the king. And that's exactly what would be

going on with the knowledge of the good and evil.

There's nothing, this is important to say.

There's nothing intrinsically wrong with the knowledge tree.

God's not the author of sin. He did not create sin.

He didn't create a sinful thing. So there's nothing intrinsically

wrong with the knowledge tree. This is not evidence either that

God is anti knowledge. No, don't listen to people who

try to put that on you. The whole Bible is knowledge of

good and evil. It's what it is.

Christians created schools. Christians created universities.

Christians created printing presses.

Christianity is absurdly, totally, enthusiastically pro

knowledge. So why is the knowledge tree

forbidden? And what's helpful here is the

way that historical context brings us into focus.

The phrase knowledge of good and evil in the ancient world had a

very, very, very specific meaning.

It was a phrase that described, Listen to me here.

It described the responsibilities, the

responsibilities of kings and kings alone.

It was kings in their civilizations that were

responsible for defining what's good and what's evil.

It was only a job for kings who were mature enough and wise

enough to say, no, that's evil. Yes, that's good.

So do you see how this puts the knowledge tree in a different

light? What God is doing is he's

forbidding humans to eat from the knowledge tree because at

this point in their maturity, they are not responsible enough

to operate like kings and they are not responsible enough to

define reality for themselves, to define morality by

themselves, their children who are not mature enough for that

responsibility. I mean, do I need to connect

that to what's going on in our culture or that's pretty obvious

that human beings, we cannot handle the job responsibility of

defining morality and saying this is good and this is bad.

It's bad for us, clearly. And so the tail of these two

trees sets the plot for the rest of the Bible.

It poses a question. And that question is, you're a

careful reader, right? So what you're thinking with

these two trees is, OK, will humanity eat from the life tree

and be radically dependent upon God and live out of friendship

and relationship with God? Or will humanity prematurely eat

from the knowledge tree and declare their independence from

God and say, we don't need you, We can define what's good and

what's bad. We're going to seize the throne

ourselves. What will they do?

Suddenly the world's become a moral laboratory.

All of the sudden, in this perfect world, there are good

things that are good to do, and there's also the opportunity,

for the first time, for a human to do a bad thing.

As they say, the plot thickens. This is the way that Henry David

Thoreau says it. He says our whole life is

startlingly moral. There's never an instance truth

between virtue and vice, never an instance truth.

We are either doing things that are virtuous or we're doing

things that are vices. And this is exactly where I.

In the climate of the postmodern world, step out onto thin ice.

Did you guys hear that? Did you hear that underneath

your feet? That was the sound of the ice

cracking because the ice is particularly thin.

When we see the emergence of more conflict in verse 15.

In verse 15 we see something that should stop us in the

tracks. Verse 15 says the Lord God took

the man and put them in the Garden of Eden to work it.

Everybody say work it and keep it.

Everybody say keep it. Sounds like a song doesn't work

it, keep it, work it. Here's the thin ice.

Those descriptions working and keeping, Those are the essence

of biblical manhood, and two descriptions work and keep.

I want you to get you to see this.

We've got to do some theological work.

OK, so here's my theological work for you.

This is not a simple rephrasing of the cultural mandate in

Genesis one. We read about that in Genesis 1,

where God gives Adam and Eve a cultural mandate to fulfill in

the world. This is not a simple

recapitulation of that. The cultural mandate in Genesis

1 is given both to Eve and Adam, both woman and man.

The call to work and keep the garden is given to Adam

distinctly before Eve is created.

This is where we see the emergence of what theologians

called the created order. This is exactly why Paul in the

New Testament appeals to the creation order when he unpacks

the distinction between men and women.

And First Timothy chapter 2, verse 13, Paul makes a massive

1 Timothy 2:13

statement on a distinction between women and men, and he

grounds it in a big statement. He says, for Adam was formed

first, then Eve. That's a reference of the

created order, and the idea behind the created order is not

that men were created first, so they're privileged or they're

superior. No, no room for that in our

church. Created order does not imply

superiority at all. Scripture is clear.

No wiggle room right there. OK, The men and women equal in

worth, equal in value, equal in dignity, both in the image of

God. So the created order is not

about superiority. It's not even about privilege or

opportunity. The idea behind the created

order is sacrificial in nature. That's what the created order

implied to the ancient audience. The fact that Adam was formed

1st and then Eve, like Paul says in First Timothy 2.

It means that Adam is. This is critical.

It means that Adam's responsibility is to be the

first to die. The first to die was If I want

to be a biblical man, what's it mean?

It means that I'm the first to die.

That's exactly the idea of Jesus being called the first born.

Does Jesus have a beginning? No, he's eternal Alpha and

Omega. So why would it be called the

first born? Well, the point there, the

reference of Jesus being the first born, is the created

order. It implies that Jesus bears the

responsibility of sacrifice for the rest of his family like a

first born son. So what we see with Adam here is

that Adam uniquely bears the responsibility of being the

sacrificer for Eve. That's what the creation order

implies. So let's just let's unpack these

words a little bit more. Let's talk work and keep.

These are massively important words, so let me break them down

in a couple different ways. The word work, when God says

work it, the word work is great. It's a perfect translation and

other translations are also good in saying that it could also be

translated as cultivate. You see that in other

translations, both of them, the Hebrew language, the Hebrew

language is just more colorful than the English language.

And so sometimes seeing 2 words side by side actually gives it

depth and breadth that's originally there in the Hebrew

language. And so the word cultivate is

also a good one. Cultivation.

What what cultivation is, is its tenderness.

It's tender thoughtfulness. Adam is not not to do with the

garden whatever he darn well pleases.

He's to tend it, work it, according to the contours of his

own nature that he learns, so that he draws out its built in

potential and then the garden flourishes.

That's what it means for man to work it or cultivate the garden.

But then what do we see? We see that second description,

don't we? Keep it.

I like keep it. That's perfect.

Other translations say guard it also.

Great. What's guarding?

Guarding is toughness. You see those two

characteristics coming together in a singular sentence.

These two descriptions, cultivate and guard or work and

keep, are a comprehensive guide on biblical manhood.

Men who love Jesus should be known as tough and tender.

Tough on truth, tough on discipline, tough towards the

abusive world that threatens their garden, tough in their

work ethic and tender. Tender towards those in their

care, tender towards those that they love.

Tender towards the downcast, the oppressed, the needy, tender

even towards God and their affections.

Men should be tough and tender. They should cultivate and guard.

I just want, let me hear it coming from your voice.

Everybody say guard. Guard what?

What? What do you mean guard?

From what? Humans haven't even sinned.

Humans haven't even fallen yet, right?

Humans haven't. But this word guard seems to

suggest that perhaps there is something out there that has

fallen, Something, I don't know, in the shadows, perhaps

Slytherin around, that's a threat to his garden.

God says guard, guard, guard, keep.

Now, yes, I'm going to be holistic here.

There is when it comes to the word guarding.

There is such a thing as being overprotective and controlling.

And Christian men should not be characterized by those words.

Again, the second word is in relationship with the first

word. The first word is work or

cultivate, so there's no room wiggle room in the scriptures

for men to just choke out the garden by being over sheltering

and controlling. I don't mean that that makes

sense, but the word guard still stands.

Men were made to guard. And the driving idea behind that

word, again, the sacrifice. What is guarding?

Guarding is sacrificially putting your body on the line so

that their garden will flourish. That's what guarding means.

And so the role of cultivating and guarding is not about

machismo. It's not about cultural warrior

caricatures. It does not mean control your

wife. No.

It doesn't mean always be suspicious of the world.

No, doesn't mean posture yourself as an alpha protector

and start a new YouTube channel to monetize how tough you are.

No. Does it mean dictatorship?

None of that. What does it mean?

It means when, not if, when there's a bullet fired at your

garden, you step out in front of it and take it.

It means men should be the first to die so that the garden

flourishes, the first to bleed that the garden flourishes it.

So let's start to let me spread this out among groups.

I'll start to make it a little bit more theological and

practical here. Next week, I'll speak bluntly to

married women, unmarried women, and even unmarried men, so I'm

not forgetting about you guys. You guys got yours coming.

Sound good? Right now I want to talk to

married men because I think there's a tendency maybe to hear

me. And thank surely, Cole, you're

not talking about old fashioned ethics of if an intruder breaks

into the house, then the man needs to be the first one to go

confront him. I'm very much advocating for

that. That's precisely theologically,

practically what's embedded in this description in Genesis.

Think about it through the lens of Genesis.

That's the literary context of these verses.

Suppose there is a threat to the garden.

I don't know, say just pull something out of my mind, say a

serpent. It would be Adam's job to crush

it, to put his own body in harm's way so that the serpent

doesn't spread his venom throughout the garden.

And you might think, that doesn't sound fair.

What? What if he gets bitten?

To which I would say, what do you mean?

What if that's what serpents do? He's going to get bitten.

And this is a great warning to young men.

If you want a garden, you will have to deal with serpents.

A lot of men want gardens, but no Dragons.

They come together. You want the garden, you get the

dragon. Yeah.

Fight the dragon, man. If you want the garden.

There's venom coming from you. And well, Well, it's not fair.

What if he gets bitten? Yeah, I know that.

But hasn't God also given Adam access to the tree of life?

Why should he fear the venom? If he has access to the tree of

life, he has a place healing he can run to when he gets bitten

life he can run to when he gets bitten, bitten.

If Adam trusts God, he will not fear the serpent.

He won't fear the venom to speak, you know, hypothetically,

and this works itself out in practical ways as well.

I think it would be helpful, and this is a bit of a theological

claim here, that I think it would just be helpful for me to

say that as a modern Christian man it this theological point is

important. Serpents are mythologically and

biblically shape shifters. Again, we haven't met the

serpent yet, but maybe there's one in the future of Genesis.

Spoiler alert. Serpents are mythologically and

theologic biblically shape shifters.

They sometimes appear as serpents, but they also

sometimes appear as angels in light.

Other times they show up as shining ones.

And so if the serpent is a shapeshifter, what does that

mean? That means that serpents come in

many forms. And that means that guarding

isn't just waiting at your door with a club in your hands.

It also makes demands on you spiritually and emotionally.

Why? Because serpents come in many

forms. False doctrine, lies, intrusive

negative thoughts, temptation, sometimes legitimate predators,

sometimes ideologies. Serpents come in many forms.

Did you know? Did you know that they have a

recorded conversation, an interview with the most

notorious sex predator of the century?

It's chilling. If you go and listen to it, it's

it's chilling. The guy agreed, like, yeah, I'm

going to give up my strategies. I think maybe they gave him a

little bit of time off. I don't know how it worked, but

you can go and listen to it. And in the conversation, the

interviewer asked him, what do you look for strategically as a

predator? Chilling.

You know what he said, said The first thing I look for for a

victim is I look for an absent father, a distant father.

Warning. This does not mean or imply that

every instance of abuse means that the father was an absent

father. Not at all.

Please don't hear me say that you shouldn't feel guilt or

shame if that's happened underneath your leadership if

you were present. Please.

I'm just saying that according to this guy, it's a pattern or

strategy of the enemy. He strategically looks for

absent fathers who are not cultivating and guarding.

And I wonder if that is what the serpent is like.

I wonder if the serpent if there is one.

We'll wait for a moment where Adam is physically, spiritually,

or emotionally absent to spread his venom.

Who knows? We got a whole book in front of

us. But This is why I've said I just

don't have any problems saying it.

I said it last year. I'm going to say it again.

This is why I've said, and I believe that testosterone is

good and it was God's idea and it was God's design.

Unfortunately, it's a banned substance in many modern

churches. It's banned.

And here's why this is worth talking about.

God puts on average, biologically on average,

obviously there's differences here.

He puts on average 7 to 10 times more testosterone in healthy men

than healthy women. And I will say the opposite or

the other thing next week, which is estrogen is good.

And estrogen was God's idea, and women need to be glorified in

that way. And so the reason why I bring up

testosterone is because the quantity of testosterone in men

is one of the biggest biological differences between women and

men. And I said it's a band substance

in most modern churches. Why?

Well, just think with me. Biologists make the same

observations. They say high testosterone

traits are assertiveness, competitiveness, risk tolerance

and the desire for achievement. You know what all those

qualities share? All of those qualities make

modern churches blush, right? In most modern churches,

politeness is way more important than courage.

And they're most, they're both important.

It's just the value system's out of whack, right?

Politeness is way more important than courage.

Niceness is way more important than strength.

Harmony is way more important than conviction.

And So what a lot of men intuit is this is this is not the place

where I bring my best gets to the table.

I'll show up, sit down, I'll mumble along to the hymns if it

makes her happy. Sometimes that's the way it

works itself out. So here's here's the big problem

as I say it, and This is why I keep pressing on this.

The big problem as I see it, is this OK?

It's if the Church has no use for testosterone, the devil

does. I need to prove that to you with

everything that's going on in the last couple months.

I don't think I do, right? The devil's like, hey, if the

church doesn't want men, I'll take them.

I'll take them right? There's, I think there's

specific specifically 3 strategies that Satan uses for

targeting men. And these are, these are not

original to me. These come from Michael Foster.

The first is 1 of Satan's strategies for diminishing

manhood and spirituality is to harness them.

Harness them, the devil says, if you don't want men, I'll take

them and I'll put them to use. And so by harnessing, I mean

this is when the enemy redirects masculine traits towards evil

rather than good. These are men whose manhood has

been harnessed by Satan and they are abusive in their marriages.

They participate in sex scandals even when they're in leadership

positions. They're domineering as leaders.

They're power hungry pastors and they use their aggression

against their kids. Those are men whose testosterone

has been Co opted by Satan and used for demonic purposes.

If he can't harness men, the second thing he'll do is he'll

pacify them. Pacify them how?

Pacify them. These are men who are sedated.

They're sedated by any such thing.

Maybe sedated by porn, maybe sedated by drug addictions or

virtual addictions. Or maybe they're just men who

have become so passive that they can't even like they they can't

even allow themselves to even feel conviction inside of them,

or wholeheartedness. These are men that the enemy has

convinced to trade their strengthen for approval and call

it virtue. God demands men be kind and

tender hearted. But these are men who are

performatively nice. Performatively.

Meaning they aren't kind or genuine out of honest love and

affection, but they perform kindness because they fear

rejection. Big difference.

A performatively nice guy underneath that fragile shell.

We'll deal with deep anxiety, resentment, and cynicism, even

though he presents himself as a nice guy.

Pacified. If Satan can't do one or two,

what will he do? I'll just destroy him. read

Exodus. Pharaoh's literal game plan is

to murder all the Hebrew baby boys.

Just destroy them. So what?

So if we don't want the devil to harness or pacify or destroy

men, then what does the church do with masculinity?

And my answer to that question is pretty simple.

What we want is we want in the church.

We want sanctified testosterone, or what smarter people than me

would call integrated masculinity, masculinity that is

integrated into Christ like Christ likeness under the

lordship of Jesus. And so the church shouldn't

punish assertiveness. We should integrate it into

men's desire for truth. We shouldn't punish

competitiveness. We should integrate that and

tell them he was made to wrestle with God, to push himself

spiritually, to challenge himself spiritually, to sing

loud, to pray loud, and to lead well.

We shouldn't punish risk tolerance and the desire for

achievement. We should integrate that into

God's grand purpose for mission and tell men, hey, there's a

world to win out there, Amen. A whole world who doesn't know

Jesus. Take your competitive drive, go

get him. Go tell him about Jesus. 7 to 10

times more testosterone in average men than average women.

It would be a good question to ask.

Why was it? Why would he do that?

Why would he load guns like that?

What is God doing? Why would he do that?

I think Genesis 2 provides us a better answer than any biologist

can. Because his job requires it is

not to make peace with the serpent.

Integrate them into the family system.

Hey, what a cute snake. Yeah.

No. Come on in, man.

No, it's good. Why?

What's he supposed to do? Crush.

Right. Fight made the fight.

I nothing has taught me more about this then being married to

Chloe. I remember when we were dating,

one of the first times I ever played Rocky, it hit me.

We were watching Rocky and if you could look at Chloe and I's

faces during the fighting scenes, totally different,

right? My face is like Chloe's face is

like, what is that? It hit me for the first time in

that moment it hit me. I was like, oh, I identify with

the character who's doing the punching.

Chloe identifies with the character who's getting punched.

Why? What's underneath that?

Our biological makeup men were designed to fight.

Not against flesh and blood, not even against Drago and Rocky 4.

So maybe that wasn't a good analogy.

Not against flesh and blood, but against lies, temptation, fear,

spiritual apathy, injustice, Dragons and serpents.

And this is not a personality. This is where I feel like maybe

I have a little advantage preaching on biblical manhood as

a guy who's like 5, seven, 135 lbs and it's is a literature

geek. It's like I don't it's not a

personality, right? You can be a total giga Chad and

fail at your job to guard and keep, be a total jock and fail

at your job to guard and keep. It's not a personality trait,

it's a responsibility. You can be introverted,

extroverted, a serious person, a playful person.

You can be a sports guy, you can be a literature nerd.

You can be a Fine Arts guy. You can be an enneagram 12345678

or 9. You can still do this job.

You've got to fight. And so all of this I think boils

down into something really practical.

You need to ask yourself, men in the church, you need to ask

yourself, am IA good man. And the way you answer that, you

don't, you do not. If you want to be biblical, you

do not answer that question based on how much you make, how

much you bench press, or how high up the corporate ladder you

can climb. How do you measure it?

How do you measure it biblically according to Genesis is really

with a simple question. Is your garden flourishing?

That's the test. And by garden I mean in this

order, family, if you have one, you're responsible for church

and work, family, church and work.

Do those gardens flourish when you're there or do they wilt?

That's your answer. Got to fight, got to fight,

guard and keep and that that brings me to my final story from

my annual allowance on wrestling stories.

I give myself 2A year. I'm using up my allowance this

morning. State wrestling was last week,

which means that now my season is over and I'm both sad and

relieved at the same time. I always struggle to answer the

question like, hey, how did state wrestling go?

I appreciate you guys asking me that question.

I never know how to answer it because it's like, I don't know.

It's kind of like getting kicked in the nuts at your own birthday

party. Like it's like there are awesome

things happening. And also there is so much pain

inside of me. We had a guy win state.

That's awesome. Yes, we had a guy not make

weight. Never had that happen before.

And it didn't help that he was one of my favorite wrestlers.

I'm not supposed to have favorites.

I do because I'm human. And so this I've just never had

a wrestler not make weight at stage and not get to compete or

or wrestle all all morning the morning of wans, I spent all

morning in sweats wrestling with this kid to get him sweating, to

break a sweat to get that weight off so that he could he could

wrestle. And he gets up on the scale he's

got. He's got to weigh one O 8.0.

He gets up on the scale right before he gets on the scale.

I'm trying to get him to spit into a bottle.

Nothing, no saliva, just dry like a razor.

So he steps on the scale. He weighs 108.1, 7 scales.

They gave them all the scales. A couple of them flickered from

one O 8.1 to one O 8.0. But it's got to sit on it and

when sit on it. So when the 7th scale was one O

8.1, I just cannot, I cannot describe to you what it's like

investing in a kid with hollowed out cheeks and to have him look

at the scale for that scale to read 108.1 and then his first

instinct to look at you like the look in his eyes.

Man, I want to jump into a rah rah rah speech.

God works together all things for your good and there's going

to be a time where you recognize this is for your good in the

future. In the 1st 30 minutes, all that

does is cheapen their pain. So you just have to, this is the

hardest thing as a coach. You just have to let them hurt

and be with them. It's like, and that night around

midnight, I get a text from this wrestler, lengthy as one could

imagine. And essentially in the text

message he says, in many words, I'm sorry for disappointing you

and I'm sorry for wasting your time.

And that hurt more than missing weight.

So I go into my basement and I get my phone out and I tell them

in many more words than this, I don't coach wrestling so that

you can achieve things on the map.

That's not what I'm doing. I wouldn't give that time and

energy to just teaching you a half Nelson, right?

And so if you want to repay me as a coach, the greatest gift

you can give me as an athlete is not to win on the map or a

medal. It's like, dude, the greatest

gift you can give to me as an athlete is the gift of knowing

you, seeing you become a better man, the best version of

yourself. The greatest gift you can give

me is relationship. I've received that gift and it

was like an electrical current ran through my body.

And in that moment I just felt the Lord whisper, Hey, dummy,

are you listening to yourself? Because that's my, my temptation

is if I fail at something, I'm like, I'm like, I'm sorry, I'm

unlovable. I'm, I'm no, I'm the worst.

And I'm sorry I wasted your time.

And so when I said that it's about relationship, I felt the

Lord just say, are you listening to yourself?

Because that's the way that I love you.

And the reason why I need to hear that is because as a man, I

fail at this job. And as a man, you will fail to,

you will abdicate when you should be pursuing.

You'll be spiritually absent when you should be emotionally

present with your kids. You'll twiddle your fingers and

pick your nose for some seasons when you should be cultivating

and guarding. All of those are failures.

They are failures to make weight.

They are failures to fight. They're failures to execute on

the mission that God has given to you.

And despite those failures, and this is the gospel of Jesus,

despite those failures, what God wants most from you is

relationship. Relationship.

That's why the tree of life gets planted before Adam gets the

Commission. And that's why God replants the

tree of life on the earth outside of Eden.

It's available to you now. Have you ever noticed that in

the New Testament, A tale of two trees grow as into a tale of

three trees? Old Testament is a tale of two

trees. New Testament is a tale of three

trees. Jesus Christ is nailed to a

tree. It's crucified on a cross.

Some of the biblical writers say it was nailed to a tree.

Why? Because he's also our Onyx

stone. The Bible calls him our

cornerstone. Jesus to us is more precious

than gold. But those three elements sound

familiar to you. Trees, gold, stone.

Maybe I'm reaching. And perhaps I would be reaching

if the soldier didn't Pierce Jesus aside on the cross.

When Jesus aside is pierced on the cross, what flows out of his

side? Water.

The river of life. Do you see what the gospel is

telegraphing to you? It's so clear.

Jesus is our tree of life. When we go to Him, we get

relationship with God, we get eternal life, we get the

forgiveness of sins, we get imputed righteousness.

We get to know God truly and deeply.

We get access to the divine. And so, guys, when you screw up,

men, when you screw up, go to the cross and eat and drink

freely. All of us.

When you screw up, go to the cross and eat and drink freely

from the tree of life. Amen.

Heavenly Father, thank you for this gift.

Also thank you for our roots volunteers who got a little bit

longer of a morning. So I pray for their forgiveness

and I pray that you would that you would work deeply in the

life of both our men and women so that men and women are both

valued and exalted rightly in this church.

It's in Jesus name that we pray. Amen.

Yeah.