The Path of Lost Manhood

Well, church family, you want to thank our choir and orchestra for them ministering to us.

Thank you, Jake, for sharing your gifts with us.

We are so incredibly blessed week after week, and I'm grateful.

Hey, have you ever had a car out of alignment?

Maybe you hit a pothole one day, it's happening a second, and and uh you went on driving, and everything seemed sort of the same except it just sort of pulled to the left.

You knew you needed to take it in and get repairs done, but instead, sometimes what we do is we just sort of compensate.

You just sort of turn a little bit more to the right, get in the middle, and uh it feels like uh it works just fine.

But after a few weeks or months, what happens?

Even though it's driving right because of that unconscious turn, what's happening is it starts to affect your tires.

You have uneven wear, and eventually you have some maintenance issues because you didn't address the problem.

And that's really kind of describes what we can have the danger of doing.

We're talking about a shaped at home.

We don't address some of the things that are going on beneath the surface.

Sometimes, even though everything can seem okay on the surface, there's stuff happening beneath that can really uh take a toll.

And uh, so that's where we are.

We're talking about this series where we're we're looking at our upbringings, recognizing that a big part of who we are comes out of where we were raised.

And this is not science, this is born out of the word of God.

We oftentimes, uh, when we talk about our early childhood, we speak of our formative years, and literally we're saying how we were formed, right?

And so that's the heart of this series.

Our past does not give us excuses, but unpacking our past can help us give some whys to thoughts and behaviors, and looking back can lead us to repentance and freedom.

That's the point of Shaped at Home.

And throughout this series, I'm gonna continue to say that this impacts all of us.

There's nothing I'm gonna look at from the pages of scripture that doesn't impact all of us, but I've been praying specifically as we've led to this series for the hearts of our men.

And I have to tell you that today's message specifically speaks of the hearts of men.

Doesn't mean it doesn't apply to all of us here, but it certainly applies to men.

And I'm guessing that all of us have men in our lives you can look back on, maybe tangentially, or someone you knew, or maybe in a very personal way, you've seen uh take some of these steps and you've seen the heartache that it's caused.

And so for some of you, this is gonna be a healing time, recognizing maybe some of the reasons why some of those things happen.

And I am praying that God would bring healing to the hearts of the men among us.

So last week we talked about how we were shaped at home.

Today I want to talk about what happens when we ignore what took place there.

So, would you turn in your Bibles to Genesis chapter 37 again?

Genesis 37 · chapter mention

Genesis 37.

Some of you in your community groups have already or will this week look at the same passage, but I want us to look at it at a little different angle.

We looked at Joseph.

I want us to look at the other men in Joseph's life because we get a picture here of how manhood can go wrong.

What is it that causes the lives of so many men to get off track?

And how can it be that God's called men to be servant leaders, willing to die for the people they love, and so many men instead live for themselves and ultimately go off mission?

Last week we saw, kind of as a review, Joseph's dreams, Joseph's coat, the brother's bitterness.

And now it all comes to a head in Genesis 37.

Let's begin reading in verse 12.

His brothers, Joseph's brothers, had gone to pasture their father's flocks at Shechem.

Israel said to Joseph, Your brothers, you know, are pasturing the flocks at Shechem.

Get ready.

I'm sending you to them.

I'm ready, Joseph replied.

And then Israel, remember, Israel is another name for Jacob.

We see Jacob and Israel, the names used interchangeably in this passage.

Then Israel said to him, Go and see how your brothers and the flocks are doing, and bring back word to me.

And so he sent him from the Hebron Valley, and he went to Shechem.

Now, what we're gonna see in this passage is a contrast between faithful Joseph and his failing brothers.

And as you read the text today, you're gonna see this downward spiral that takes place in their lives.

And it's really the downward spiral that takes place in the lives of any man that walks away from God's best in their lives.

And so, some of you, if you're here for Kings on the first time, you're gonna say, Man, that dude is the most depressing guy.

Like, and I hope the others around you say, usually he's really positive.

But this is a this is a really tough passage that I need to unpack today.

And it's a heavy passage.

And for some of you, it's gonna remind you of some pain from your past or some things you're walking through right now because of what's happened in the life of a man or the heart of a man that you know, and I grieve for you.

But I think all of us understand we need to understand what's happening.

We need to recognize what the enemy is trying to do in the hearts of our men.

Because if we can do that, we don't have to live that way anymore.

The same dangers are faced by every man, and what we see here are some specific destructive steps that always lead to brokenness.

Four steps toward brokenness.

Here's the first step: unresolved hurt leads to insecurity.

So remember we left off last time.

If we have pain in our past and we don't deal with the pain, that unresolved hurt shows up in some very strange ways.

So go back to verse 11.

I passed through it, but I want us to go back where we left off last time, the very last verse we read last week.

Because remember, they watched Joseph receive love from Jacob, and they also longed for that same love, and they witnessed the coat.

Remember the coat of many colors, the coat with long sleeves.

It was a coat of authority, and they endured the learning of dreams, and it led to verse 11.

Look what it says.

His brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the matter in mind.

So his father was pondering it.

What did the brothers do?

They were jealous.

There's some deep-seated hurt in the hearts of these brothers.

We know that.

But isn't it interesting?

Of all the words that could be chosen, the description of their feelings is jealousy.

Jealousy is defined as a strong desire for a quality or possession of another.

It doesn't say bitterness, it says jealousy of all things.

And it begs the question: what were they jealous for?

They're not jealous for the coat because that had already been addressed.

That was before.

It's not the dream itself.

I think they're jealous of the father.

The dreams that he had exposed their own longing for the attention of their dad the same way they were watching that attention play out in the life of Joseph.

And think about what these men had watched their entire lives.

Their father loved Rachel more than he loved their moms.

Rachel had a son, and Jacob made no effort to hide his preference for Joseph.

The coat, the dreams, the attention.

Every time Joseph walked into the room, his brothers were reminded of something they desperately wanted, but they could not seem to get the blessing of their father.

And it's interesting because that's one place insecurity grows.

It grows in the assumption that the blessing you longed for didn't come because of something you didn't do.

I'll tell you something ironic about insecurity.

Insecurity doesn't always look insecure.

It often presents itself as other things, as arrogance or anger or a controlling persona.

It's the guy who has to win every argument, who makes the most money, and make sure everybody knows what he's accomplished.

A man who cannot feel safe in his own skin, so he controls and he performs and he hides.

And instead of celebrating what their brother Joseph received, they experience it as an evidence of what they lack.

Do you see?

Here's what these brothers don't understand that you and I should be able to understand on this side of scripture of the New Testament is that they don't have to wait on anybody else to demonstrate that love for him.

All they have to do is go to the Lord, Jesus, and experience all of it.

Only the Heavenly Father can ultimately provide that affirmation, that approval.

And that's the message of the gospel, the good news that Jesus Christ has come.

God loved you so much that he entered into our mess and he paid the penalty for your sin.

And so anyone can call on Jesus and experience love, forgiveness, wholeness, and freedom.

It's the greatest message that I could give you today.

That's what's here.

True security is rooted in what God says about you, not what somebody failed to say to you.

But unfortunately, when that hurt remains unresolved and it leads to this insecurity, it rarely stays in one place.

Eventually, it begins affecting something else.

And here's the next step.

We see that unresolved hurt leads to security or insecurity, and insecurity leads to drift.

Drift.

I chose that word for a reason.

Because I've never heard the testimony of a man who began by saying, you know, there just came a point where I wanted to destroy my life and do evil.

That's rarely how it happens.

In most cases, he just checks out of some of the key decisions and he goes off mission.

Drift simply begins with choosing something less than God's best.

In fact, uh I found that oftentimes drift is not happening when you run to something, it's when you just walk away from good things.

You just you check out of some things that you know were healthy and good for you, and you disconnect from those.

Some of you have been to the beach, and you know what it's like to be out in the surf, sort of treading water, enjoying yourself, not paying attention, and you look up and what's happened?

You've drifted like a hundred, 150 yards away from where you were.

You didn't do anything in order to do that.

You probably didn't even feel yourself move, but you recognize that the drift caught up the current took you far from where you intended to be.

And that's what happens in drift.

Look at Joseph's brothers down in verses 15 through 17.

Speaking of Joseph, it says, A man found him there, wandering in the field, and asked him, What are you looking for?

I'm looking for my brothers, Joseph said.

Can you tell me where they're pasturing their flocks?

They moved on from here, the man said.

I heard them say, Let's go to Dothan.

And so Joseph set out after his brothers and found them at Dothan.

He left Shechem, they left Shechem and went to Dothan.

The text doesn't tell us why they moved, but there's an interesting picture here.

Joseph goes looking for them exactly where they're expected to be, and they're somewhere else.

And that's exactly what drift does, doesn't it?

It's not necessarily one catastrophic decision.

You just keep moving from where you used to be.

And we have a world full of millions of men who are off mission, drifting away from God's plan.

And here's another danger of drift.

When a man gets off course, one of the most dangerous things he can do is drift away from others who love him enough to tell him the truth.

You see, drift leads to isolation.

Now the story gets a lot worse, as it always does in the heart of a man or woman who's walked away from God's best.

You see, when when drift progresses, eventually you turn inward to a place that lacks either compassion or community.

And you're not going to see anybody, interestingly, in this passage, who's all alone.

You say, I thought you were talking about isolation.

That's one of the great myths or misconceptions about isolation.

Is some people think to be isolated, you have to be by yourself.

No.

Some of the most isolated people I know have people all around them all the time.

And that's what happens here.

Guys, we're especially gifted at this, let's be honest.

We can sit and talk for three hours, and by the time we're done, I can tell you the uh the towing capacity of your truck, and I know the team that you root for, I know what sports you played in high school, and I know your favorite barbecue joint, but I don't know anything about your heart.

Because we're good at just talking about unimportant things.

Listen, isolation is not the absence of people, isolation is the absence of genuine connection with people.

And you look at these men, ten brothers, standing around one another, and they are completely alone.

Look at verse 18.

They saw him in the distance, and before he had reached them, they plotted to kill him.

They said to one another, Oh, look, here comes that dream expert.

So now, come on, let's kill him and throw him into one of the pits.

We can say that a vicious animal ate him.

And then we'll see what becomes of his dreams.

When Reuben heard this, he tried to save him from them.

He said, Let's not take his life.

Reuben also said to them, Don't shed blood, throw him into this pit in the wilderness, but don't lay a hand on him, intending to rescue him from them and return him to his father.

So they're planning together, but nobody's telling the truth.

Reuben sort of took a stand, but it was a half-hearted one.

Do you notice that?

He's saying, Well, don't kill him.

Let's make his life absolutely miserable and abandon him in the wilderness.

That's not exactly a great friend there.

What they're experiencing is counterfeit community.

Do you know one of the differences between real community and counterfeit community?

If everybody around you agrees with everything you say, that's counterfeit community.

What you've done is assemble a jury who's already determined that you're innocent, and that's not really helpful.

It's enough to reinforce one another's bitterness, but not close enough to confront one another's hearts.

That's what they have.

Can I say a word to our students, junior high and high school?

Let me tell you something.

The loneliest place you can be is in the wrong crowd.

Because when you're the wrong crowd, not only will there be nobody to tell you the truth, they will help you assemble or amass bigger lies for your life.

You will eventually become very much like the people you hang around.

Make sure you pay attention to your community.

When you're isolated from healthy community, eventually something even more dangerous happens.

You see, there's another step.

A man disconnected from healthy relationships eventually stops caring at all, which leads us to the final step.

Isolation leads to passivity.

The choices of these men spiral, and Joseph pays the price.

There's always a price for going off mission.

And listen, if you're not engaged in the mission God gave you for your life, you're going to end up with a bunch of uncontrolled impulses that leave a wake of destruction in your path.

Look at verse 23.

When Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped off Joseph's robe, the long-sleeved robe that he had on.

Isn't it interesting that the first thing they do is take aim at the robe?

Then they took him and threw him into the pit.

The pit was empty without water.

And they sat down to eat a meal.

And when they looked up, there was a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead.

Their camels were carrying aromatic gum, balsam, and resin going down to Egypt.

So I don't want you to miss this.

Joseph is in a pit, and what do they do?

They sit down to eat.

Now, we have a really tragic insight into what happened here when the brothers look back on this event in Genesis 42.

Just listen to this verse to really recognize what's happening here.

Then they said to one another, or each other, obviously, we are being punished for what we did to our brother.

We saw his deep distress when he pleaded with us, but we would not listen.

That is why trouble has come to us.

It appears the only way it makes sense for them to hear him pleading with them is that he heard, they heard him while they were having lunch and he was in the pit.

So while he's in the pit, they're just far enough away where they're still an earshot of hearing his pleas, but they're busy having a picnic.

Imagine how hard your heart would have to be to get to this place of saying, My brother's suffering because of me, but I'm hungry.

I don't want to interrupt my lunch.

And that brings us all the way back to Reuben.

I'll tell you why Reuben's important here, because I'm betting most of the men here cannot relate to brothers who would abandon their flesh and blood and be so cruel or think about killing them.

But a lot of us can relate to a man who would have good intentions but never really act on those intentions.

There's a faucet in our bathroom that's leaking, just a little drip.

And I want you to know that I've tried to address the problem.

Here's how I've addressed the problem.

I actually went to the hardware store and got the little gasket that goes in there to place to fix the problem.

It's sitting in the bag next to my sink.

And the way I address the problem, every time I go to brush my teeth, I look down at that dripping faucet and I say, I need to fix that.

You know what's crazy about it?

Even though I've said it multiple times, the faucet's still dripping.

It turns out that intention is not the tool that's going to fix my faucet.

Can you believe it?

You might want to write that down.

It hasn't solved the problem.

And that brings us back to Reuben, who makes this half-hearted attempt to save his brother, but he's just as guilty.

You see?

Look at verse 29.

When Reuben returned to the pit and saw that Joseph was there, was not there, he tore his clothes and he went back to his brothers and said, The boy is gone.

What am I going to do?

So they took Joseph's robe, slaughtered a male goat, and dipped the road in its blood.

Now, of all the things he could have done in that rhetorical question, what am I going to do?

That wouldn't have been my first choice, okay?

What am I gonna do?

Deceive my father, enter into the lie, that's what I'll do.

Watch this, it gets so sad.

They sent the long-sleeved robe to their father and said, We found this.

Examine it.

Is it your son's robe or not?

His father recognized it.

It is my son's robe.

And he said, A vicious animal has devoured him.

Joseph has been torn to pieces.

And then Jacob tore his clothes, put sackcloth around his waist, and mourned for his son many days.

The beginning of verse 29 says, When Reuben returned, which begs a question, where was Reuben?

We don't know.

Some guess maybe he's just watching the flocks.

I mean, somebody has to be watching the flocks where they're doing this evil and having lunch.

Or some have guessed maybe he went away and he was planning to come back in the dark of night and rescue his brother and be the hero.

But verse 22 tells us Reuben intended to return and rescue Joseph.

He intended to, and that raises the question: why didn't Reuben just take his stand right then?

He had a chance to shut this whole thing down.

He had a chance to reverse the course and say, we've got to check our hearts.

Look what's happening here.

He had a chance to tell the truth, but instead, he participated in the cover-up.

He kept down the road.

He ended up with all the heartache of deception over his father.

And this reveals something absolutely prevalent, I think, in more men's hearts than we want to admit.

Reuben's intentions might be strong.

He knows what to do.

But he plans to do it later than the moment requires now.

He has a calling.

He's just going to do it later.

Churches are full of men like that.

Families are full of men like that.

And as a result, people who are counting on the men in their lives to stand up on their behalf are being carried away by the enemy.

And those four steps create this sad picture of forsaken authority.

And as we've been gathering with our men these last couple of weeks, I've called it something.

I call it the broken four.

Insecurity, drift, isolation, passivity.

I want us to get real personal before we close.

Because when you look at that list, I have a question for you.

Which of those has your name on it?

You say, Yeah, Pastor, that's me.

That's where I am right now.

Maybe it's more than one.

But here's what I know: you can't plan to do later what God's calling you to do today.

I talked to an old friend this weekend who made a horrible decision.

Wrecked his life.

He's lost everything.

And it breaks my heart.

And to be clear, listen, the wounds in his past didn't make those decisions for him.

That's not the message.

He's responsible for the choices he made.

But the reality is there was some baggage from the past that he didn't address that kept working beneath the surface, that created an avenue for the enemy to get in.

And it caused all sorts of mess in his life and his family's life.

And it doesn't have to be that way.

Guys, I'm telling you, God has something so much better for us than this downward spiral the enemy's trying to get us in.

You know, the really sad thing about this story is you can say, well, the brothers ended up being redeemed by Joseph.

Like, yeah, they did.

I mean, he forgave them, he provided for them, he restored them to family, all that with a happy ending.

But that was 22 years later, between Genesis 39 and Genesis 45.

22 years of heartache and betrayal and distrust, conviction, sorrow.

Didn't have to happen.

Men, you don't have to wait 22 years to get right.

First of all, I know there's probably somebody in the room, and you've never trusted Jesus as Savior and Lord.

There's men and women in the room who've never done that.

And today is the calling to come to Jesus.

Some of you need to address those old wounds that are beneath the surface that you've never dealt with.

Bring them to the Lord and say, God, would you bring healing?

Some of you need to confess secret sins that you've been hiding.

You need to repent and receive forgiveness from God.

Some of you need to do both.

But all of us, every one of us here, every man and woman, we have the opportunity not to come to Joseph, but to come to Jesus and to be redeemed.

Do you see?

And walk according to the freedom that God has afforded us.

Would you bow with me for prayer?

I'm going to close in just a moment and then we'll have an opportunity to respond.

Right now, just allow the Spirit of God to speak to your heart.

Maybe as soon as I said that somebody in the room has never trusted Jesus, you knew I was talking about you.

And today's going to be that day.

In a moment, you need to respond.

Perhaps you've gotten really good at covering up the mess that's in your heart.

The spiral that's happening.

God already knows.

But do you understand that the God we serve is not waiting for you to come to him so he can beat you up and beat you down.

He's waiting for you to come to him.

So he can redeem your heart and you can live the life that he intended you to live.

That's the invitation.

So, Heavenly Father, I thank you for this really hard, heavy message.

God, I thank you that it doesn't end with a sad ending where we say, Well, I guess there is no hope for men.

No.

God, I thank you for what Christ has done.

That we don't have to live this way.

We don't have to walk according to those lies one moment longer.

And I pray for freedom in the hearts of our people today.

Bring freedom, Lord.

We pray these things in Christ's name.

Amen.

Hey, Pastor Ryan Rush here, and I just want to thank you for being with us at Kings Among Line today.

What an honor.

I'll tell you what it'd be even better.

We'd love to see you get connected with the physical church in the days ahead if you haven't already.

And that means maybe if you're local in the West Eastern area, we'd love to see the Kings.

We'd love to help you.

And we can do that.