This month at Long Beach we're doing a thing called Men of the Beach where a group of 25 or so guys are examining Biblical Masculinity for the month of March. As part of that, each week we have hour long talks at 6 AM on Thursdays. I'll be posting the notes from the various talks. It's at this time that I feel I need to acknowledge how much of a debt we owe to Steven Crawford for this whole program. This first week especially, but for all the talks overall, we are heavily indebted to him and the notes that he left from last time (which all we really had to do was tweak them a tiny bit).
And now, without further ado... Biblical Foundations for Masculinity:
I. Introduction
What is a man?
**Let’s start with the verse we put on the cards we handed out at Navs: “Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be men of courage, be strong.” 1 Corinthians 16:13
A short verse that seems fairly straightforward...but what does it actually mean? Even looking only at the instruction to “be men of courage”....what does that mean? What is Paul saying? What does it mean to be a man? Where do we look to for our “template”?**
A good place to begin is to draw a distinction between one half of our population and the other half. Elisabeth Eliot has a quote that will help us in this: “Men are men. They are not women. Women are women. They are not men.”
This simple-sounding quote is quite profound. Men are men. What this means is that they have certain innate characteristics that cannot be changed or altered no matter what culture they live in, no matter what environment they were raised in, no matter what education was given them. You are all men, a simple fact of creation. When God made you, he made you as a man and not as a woman. This fact has real meaning/significance.
However, just because we were made in a certain way does not mean that we understand ourselves. John Calvin says that there are two types of knowledge: knowledge of self and knowledge of God. It is important to remember that both types of knowledge are revealed knowledge, given to us in Scripture. Just as there are certain types of things that we can know about God from observing the creation (Romans 1:19-23), there are certain types of things that we can know about ourselves from self-observation. But even these things can be denied or suppressed, perverted or misused.
We also live in unique times. Now is one of the great times of gender confusion, self-misunderstanding, and the widespread suppression of the innate differences between the sexes. In academia, you can be fired for even suggesting that there might be differences between the sexes beyond the physical plumbing. This message has trickled into every area of thinking, from the church outward.
In the church, the 20th century was a great time of retreat from the uniqueness of each gender. The charismatic movement, with its emphasis on personal experience of the Holy Spirit, led the way with many charismatic women ministers leading large ministries and congregations. Add into this mix, widespread acceptability of homosexuality, a powerful unifiying popular culture, and you have a potent brew of confusion.
It is important to note that the things that are happening in our culture are not new. Homosexuality was common and unremarkable in Ancient Greece. The denial of gender differences has happened many times before. But the rise of science has diminished the effect of the natural greater strength of men. Few men in the west labor in a field in which women are physically incapable of performing. The effect of this has been to call into question whether the differences between men and women does go beyond the merely physical. The feminist movement of the 20th century argued that the physical superiority of men had for centuries kept women in a subordinate position so that men could exploit them. There is a great deal of truth to this.
At any rate, in order to understand man, we must return to the revealed truth of Scripture to guide us. It is God who made man, and therefore he alone is to be trusted to instruct us on what a man is.
You have to understand a few things:
1. Your view of man has been perverted by the culture. This has strongly affected, and will continue to affect the way you view yourself, the way you interact with other men, and the way you interact with women. KNOW THIS!!!!
2. The church has been remiss in addressing this deeply. In this, they have been complicit in the acculturation of our understanding of men. The result is the absence of strong male leaders in the church.
3. You need to filter not only your thinking, but also your emotions through the Scriptures, testing them and discarding what does not align.
4. The thing that lies in back of all this is our sin, our deliberate rebellion against God.
What is the purpose of Men of the Beach?
1. To give a compelling vision of Biblical Manhood.
2. To encourage the repentance and faith that allows us to restore ourselves to this vision.
3. To give you the tools you need to grow in manhood throughout the rest of your life.
Men of the Beach is a beginning. The restoration of your manhood will continue for the rest of your life and remain incomplete until the day when your flesh is remade, unstained by sin. Remember this: When you are remade, when you are raised from the dead and appear before God, it will be as a man, not as a woman!
**I’d like to make a note at this point and acknowledge that there are those of us in this room who were here two years ago for the first Men of the Beach here at Long Beach and there are those of us who weren’t. Let me repeat that Men of the Beach is a BEGINNING! This month will not transform us into perfect men! Rather, it will help to instill, either for the first time or as a re-emphasis/reminder, Biblical understanding and practices into our hearts. **
Appropriate attitude for entering into these things:
1. Holy self-doubt
You are much more wicked and rebellious than you can yet imagine. Your heart, your emotions, your patterns of thinking, all are stained by sin and will lead you astray if you trust them.
2. Humility
We must come into the word to be instructed, to be taught. Our cry to the Word of God must be “Change me! Transform me! Teach me!”
3. Hunger for God
At the bottom of all this is the desire to know God. And to come before him, we must come as we were created. We must come as men.
The Biblical foundation:
Genesis 2, Obs.
1. Man is made first, from the dust of the ground.
2. God breathes into man.
3. Man is given a task to do. This is what man was made for. He is not made to simply relax in the garden, but for a specific task. God gives him work to do.
4. God commits a command to man. This shows that man was made to live in submission and obedience to God. He works before God as his image in the world. As his image in the world, he rules over all creation.
5. Woman is made from man because man alone is an incomplete image of God. Alone, he does not reflect the fullness of God. Women completes man because their relationship is a mirror of the Trinitarian relationship.
6. Man looks at woman and names her. He identifies in her a complement.
--J.I. Packer: “Two sexes perceiving the other as having in it that which completes what each individual, male or female, is at present.
-Sexuality—men and women are different and complementary and thus desire each other.
7. When they are placed in relationship, a certain pattern of interaction comes inevitably from this. Woman is the helper, men takes her on as his responsibility to protect and care for her—this is what happens when he says “she is flesh of my flesh.” Paul refers to this in Eph. “love your wives as yourselves.”
Let’s sketch out the full picture:
A man is a creature designed for work in the context of submission/obedience to God. When he works in submission to God, he is fully satisfied.
He is presented with a perfect complement in which his role in the interaction is to lead and protect.
Here we bring out the full picture of what it means to be a man:
Obedience/Submission to God
Responsibility in work and towards woman
Initiation
This is what a man is designed for. To be the initiator towards woman. To be responsible for work and woman. To submit to God and obey him in all things. This is a man.
Summary of Chapter 2, this is what it means to be a man:
Submission and obedience to God
Responsibility toward work and woman
Initiation/Leadership
What happened?
Genesis 3, Observations from the fall
1) Adam was with her. God gave Adam responsibility for the garden and the woman, and he allows both to come under attack. He rejects his design as protector. His role requires action, and he chooses inaction. He chooses to be passive.
2) He ate the fruit. Make no mistake, Adam sinned as well. The rejection of his responsibility culminated in his direct disobedience of God’s command.
-- 1Timothy 2:14 says that Adam was not the one deceived.
3) He is ashamed. He hides from God because he was naked and afraid that God would see him in his nakedness. He doesn’t want God to know what he has done. Guilt, shame, self-condemnation.
4) In his passivity, he rebels against God. He openly states that he will not do what God has created him to do. There is a sin of commission when he eats the fruit, but long before that there is the sin of omission.
Observations from the curse
1) To dust you will return. God promised that if they ate from the tree they would die, and God is true to his word.
2) He was created to take care of the earth, and now the earth is cursed. He will eat of it only through painful toil, it will fight him, and he will work until he dies. He can find no life or satisfaction in his job.
3) There is a pattern here. He is created for a task, and that task does not change. It is cursed.
Summary: Man’s design is to be responsible for the woman and the garden. He sins by rejecting that responsibility. His design does not change. He is still responsible for the woman and the garden. But now his design is cursed. He cannot find satisfaction in his design. He toils in it until he dies.
Bringing it home:
1) Adam’s story is our story. As men, we were designed for these things:
Submission and obedience to God
Responsibility toward work and woman
Initiation/Leadership
2) We cannot change our design. This is who God designed us to be, and in our natural state, it is still who we are. Think of the things that bring you pleasure. Think of the joy you feel at doing a task and doing well. The satisfaction you feel after a hard days labor. The excitement of pursuing a woman, trying to win her heart. These things are natural to men because they are a part of our design.
3) The problem is that we disfigure our design through our passivity and sin. Isaiah 53 describes us as sheep who have gone astray, turning to our own ways. When we turn to sin, we turn from God in hatred. You have to believe this about yourself.
We reject our design in two ways:
i. We deny and suppress our design
ii. We embrace a parody version of our design
This is not a black and white scale. Both of these things are present in all of us, although we do tend to lean toward one or the other. Know that we will never find satisfaction in either of these extremes.
Examples:
Parody man:
Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) from fight club. The main character, played by Edward Norton, epitomizes Durden as the ideal man. Durden is ripped, he is funny, he is great with women, fights well. People respect him, he does what he wants and he lives free from the control of authority.
Parody man seeks satisfaction in his work. This is the lawyer who works 70 hours a week to be the best. They want to be the best at what they do. Society and pop culture epitomize them.
Like James Bond. He is always competent, always has a plan, always has a girl. He answers to know one, and he gets what he wants when he wants. He has to be the best at everything he does because…
Parody man is haunted by a simple question: Am I enough?
It haunts him, drives him crazy. He feels that he is not enough and so he hides behind his accomplishments. This is Adam, afraid because he was naked, so he hides. This question haunts us all. Am I enough?
He never finds satisfaction in his work, he never feels like he is enough, and so he hides. He is afraid of not being man, of disappointing, of being ridiculed, of being disrespected.
Suppression:
The other side of this coin is suppression. This is the man who denies his ambitions, who closes the door completely to the responsibility of men.
Jim Halpert from the office. It’s not that he doesn’t work. It’s that he is passive. He has no ambition. In his relationship with Pam, he lacks initiative. He is quiet, and doesn’t stand up for what he knows is right.
Other more comical examples include Homer Simpson, Peter Griffen. They are incompetent, lazy, and it is obvious that their wives are in control, not them. We laugh, society applauds, but what does it tell us about men? Is this what manhood has become?
It is important to note that homosexuality has its roots in the suppression of our design. This is not necessarily a conscious decision. Often it has its stems from some deep hurt that a man experienced as a child, usually from his father. Someone who does not understand his role as a man, begins to deny his manhood because he does not view it as a part of himself.
Two extremes. Suppression and parody man. Sadly, we see these played out all too often in our culture. Suppression of our design and rejection of our responsibility leads to addictions such as pornography, alcoholism or drugs. Parody man, thinking that women will fulfill him, view them as objects and abuse them.
Where does this leave us?
Man is defined by these three things:
Submission and obedience to God
Responsibility toward work and woman
Initiation/Leadership
All three of these are fatally weakened by sin. As fallen men, we follow the pattern of Adam, we reject our design, and embrace passivity. We need to be aware of these things. We need to know the Word of God, and what it says about our design as men. We need to realize our tendency to suppress this design or embrace the parody. We need to be honest with ourselves. Scripture warns us of the dangers of self flattery:
Psalm 36:2 For in his own eyes he flatters himself too much to detect or hate his sin.
We need each other. We need to repent. We need humility. We need to wipe the slate clean and start over. What does it mean to be a man? What does the Word tell us? Will we listen?
And now, without further ado... Biblical Foundations for Masculinity:
I. Introduction
What is a man?
**Let’s start with the verse we put on the cards we handed out at Navs: “Be on your guard; stand firm in the faith; be men of courage, be strong.” 1 Corinthians 16:13
A short verse that seems fairly straightforward...but what does it actually mean? Even looking only at the instruction to “be men of courage”....what does that mean? What is Paul saying? What does it mean to be a man? Where do we look to for our “template”?**
A good place to begin is to draw a distinction between one half of our population and the other half. Elisabeth Eliot has a quote that will help us in this: “Men are men. They are not women. Women are women. They are not men.”
This simple-sounding quote is quite profound. Men are men. What this means is that they have certain innate characteristics that cannot be changed or altered no matter what culture they live in, no matter what environment they were raised in, no matter what education was given them. You are all men, a simple fact of creation. When God made you, he made you as a man and not as a woman. This fact has real meaning/significance.
However, just because we were made in a certain way does not mean that we understand ourselves. John Calvin says that there are two types of knowledge: knowledge of self and knowledge of God. It is important to remember that both types of knowledge are revealed knowledge, given to us in Scripture. Just as there are certain types of things that we can know about God from observing the creation (Romans 1:19-23), there are certain types of things that we can know about ourselves from self-observation. But even these things can be denied or suppressed, perverted or misused.
We also live in unique times. Now is one of the great times of gender confusion, self-misunderstanding, and the widespread suppression of the innate differences between the sexes. In academia, you can be fired for even suggesting that there might be differences between the sexes beyond the physical plumbing. This message has trickled into every area of thinking, from the church outward.
In the church, the 20th century was a great time of retreat from the uniqueness of each gender. The charismatic movement, with its emphasis on personal experience of the Holy Spirit, led the way with many charismatic women ministers leading large ministries and congregations. Add into this mix, widespread acceptability of homosexuality, a powerful unifiying popular culture, and you have a potent brew of confusion.
It is important to note that the things that are happening in our culture are not new. Homosexuality was common and unremarkable in Ancient Greece. The denial of gender differences has happened many times before. But the rise of science has diminished the effect of the natural greater strength of men. Few men in the west labor in a field in which women are physically incapable of performing. The effect of this has been to call into question whether the differences between men and women does go beyond the merely physical. The feminist movement of the 20th century argued that the physical superiority of men had for centuries kept women in a subordinate position so that men could exploit them. There is a great deal of truth to this.
At any rate, in order to understand man, we must return to the revealed truth of Scripture to guide us. It is God who made man, and therefore he alone is to be trusted to instruct us on what a man is.
You have to understand a few things:
1. Your view of man has been perverted by the culture. This has strongly affected, and will continue to affect the way you view yourself, the way you interact with other men, and the way you interact with women. KNOW THIS!!!!
2. The church has been remiss in addressing this deeply. In this, they have been complicit in the acculturation of our understanding of men. The result is the absence of strong male leaders in the church.
3. You need to filter not only your thinking, but also your emotions through the Scriptures, testing them and discarding what does not align.
4. The thing that lies in back of all this is our sin, our deliberate rebellion against God.
What is the purpose of Men of the Beach?
1. To give a compelling vision of Biblical Manhood.
2. To encourage the repentance and faith that allows us to restore ourselves to this vision.
3. To give you the tools you need to grow in manhood throughout the rest of your life.
Men of the Beach is a beginning. The restoration of your manhood will continue for the rest of your life and remain incomplete until the day when your flesh is remade, unstained by sin. Remember this: When you are remade, when you are raised from the dead and appear before God, it will be as a man, not as a woman!
**I’d like to make a note at this point and acknowledge that there are those of us in this room who were here two years ago for the first Men of the Beach here at Long Beach and there are those of us who weren’t. Let me repeat that Men of the Beach is a BEGINNING! This month will not transform us into perfect men! Rather, it will help to instill, either for the first time or as a re-emphasis/reminder, Biblical understanding and practices into our hearts. **
Appropriate attitude for entering into these things:
1. Holy self-doubt
You are much more wicked and rebellious than you can yet imagine. Your heart, your emotions, your patterns of thinking, all are stained by sin and will lead you astray if you trust them.
2. Humility
We must come into the word to be instructed, to be taught. Our cry to the Word of God must be “Change me! Transform me! Teach me!”
3. Hunger for God
At the bottom of all this is the desire to know God. And to come before him, we must come as we were created. We must come as men.
The Biblical foundation:
Genesis 2, Obs.
1. Man is made first, from the dust of the ground.
2. God breathes into man.
3. Man is given a task to do. This is what man was made for. He is not made to simply relax in the garden, but for a specific task. God gives him work to do.
4. God commits a command to man. This shows that man was made to live in submission and obedience to God. He works before God as his image in the world. As his image in the world, he rules over all creation.
5. Woman is made from man because man alone is an incomplete image of God. Alone, he does not reflect the fullness of God. Women completes man because their relationship is a mirror of the Trinitarian relationship.
6. Man looks at woman and names her. He identifies in her a complement.
--J.I. Packer: “Two sexes perceiving the other as having in it that which completes what each individual, male or female, is at present.
-Sexuality—men and women are different and complementary and thus desire each other.
7. When they are placed in relationship, a certain pattern of interaction comes inevitably from this. Woman is the helper, men takes her on as his responsibility to protect and care for her—this is what happens when he says “she is flesh of my flesh.” Paul refers to this in Eph. “love your wives as yourselves.”
Let’s sketch out the full picture:
A man is a creature designed for work in the context of submission/obedience to God. When he works in submission to God, he is fully satisfied.
He is presented with a perfect complement in which his role in the interaction is to lead and protect.
Here we bring out the full picture of what it means to be a man:
Obedience/Submission to God
Responsibility in work and towards woman
Initiation
This is what a man is designed for. To be the initiator towards woman. To be responsible for work and woman. To submit to God and obey him in all things. This is a man.
Summary of Chapter 2, this is what it means to be a man:
Submission and obedience to God
Responsibility toward work and woman
Initiation/Leadership
What happened?
Genesis 3, Observations from the fall
1) Adam was with her. God gave Adam responsibility for the garden and the woman, and he allows both to come under attack. He rejects his design as protector. His role requires action, and he chooses inaction. He chooses to be passive.
2) He ate the fruit. Make no mistake, Adam sinned as well. The rejection of his responsibility culminated in his direct disobedience of God’s command.
-- 1Timothy 2:14 says that Adam was not the one deceived.
3) He is ashamed. He hides from God because he was naked and afraid that God would see him in his nakedness. He doesn’t want God to know what he has done. Guilt, shame, self-condemnation.
4) In his passivity, he rebels against God. He openly states that he will not do what God has created him to do. There is a sin of commission when he eats the fruit, but long before that there is the sin of omission.
Observations from the curse
1) To dust you will return. God promised that if they ate from the tree they would die, and God is true to his word.
2) He was created to take care of the earth, and now the earth is cursed. He will eat of it only through painful toil, it will fight him, and he will work until he dies. He can find no life or satisfaction in his job.
3) There is a pattern here. He is created for a task, and that task does not change. It is cursed.
Summary: Man’s design is to be responsible for the woman and the garden. He sins by rejecting that responsibility. His design does not change. He is still responsible for the woman and the garden. But now his design is cursed. He cannot find satisfaction in his design. He toils in it until he dies.
Bringing it home:
1) Adam’s story is our story. As men, we were designed for these things:
Submission and obedience to God
Responsibility toward work and woman
Initiation/Leadership
2) We cannot change our design. This is who God designed us to be, and in our natural state, it is still who we are. Think of the things that bring you pleasure. Think of the joy you feel at doing a task and doing well. The satisfaction you feel after a hard days labor. The excitement of pursuing a woman, trying to win her heart. These things are natural to men because they are a part of our design.
3) The problem is that we disfigure our design through our passivity and sin. Isaiah 53 describes us as sheep who have gone astray, turning to our own ways. When we turn to sin, we turn from God in hatred. You have to believe this about yourself.
We reject our design in two ways:
i. We deny and suppress our design
ii. We embrace a parody version of our design
This is not a black and white scale. Both of these things are present in all of us, although we do tend to lean toward one or the other. Know that we will never find satisfaction in either of these extremes.
Examples:
Parody man:
Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) from fight club. The main character, played by Edward Norton, epitomizes Durden as the ideal man. Durden is ripped, he is funny, he is great with women, fights well. People respect him, he does what he wants and he lives free from the control of authority.
Parody man seeks satisfaction in his work. This is the lawyer who works 70 hours a week to be the best. They want to be the best at what they do. Society and pop culture epitomize them.
Like James Bond. He is always competent, always has a plan, always has a girl. He answers to know one, and he gets what he wants when he wants. He has to be the best at everything he does because…
Parody man is haunted by a simple question: Am I enough?
It haunts him, drives him crazy. He feels that he is not enough and so he hides behind his accomplishments. This is Adam, afraid because he was naked, so he hides. This question haunts us all. Am I enough?
He never finds satisfaction in his work, he never feels like he is enough, and so he hides. He is afraid of not being man, of disappointing, of being ridiculed, of being disrespected.
Suppression:
The other side of this coin is suppression. This is the man who denies his ambitions, who closes the door completely to the responsibility of men.
Jim Halpert from the office. It’s not that he doesn’t work. It’s that he is passive. He has no ambition. In his relationship with Pam, he lacks initiative. He is quiet, and doesn’t stand up for what he knows is right.
Other more comical examples include Homer Simpson, Peter Griffen. They are incompetent, lazy, and it is obvious that their wives are in control, not them. We laugh, society applauds, but what does it tell us about men? Is this what manhood has become?
It is important to note that homosexuality has its roots in the suppression of our design. This is not necessarily a conscious decision. Often it has its stems from some deep hurt that a man experienced as a child, usually from his father. Someone who does not understand his role as a man, begins to deny his manhood because he does not view it as a part of himself.
Two extremes. Suppression and parody man. Sadly, we see these played out all too often in our culture. Suppression of our design and rejection of our responsibility leads to addictions such as pornography, alcoholism or drugs. Parody man, thinking that women will fulfill him, view them as objects and abuse them.
Where does this leave us?
Man is defined by these three things:
Submission and obedience to God
Responsibility toward work and woman
Initiation/Leadership
All three of these are fatally weakened by sin. As fallen men, we follow the pattern of Adam, we reject our design, and embrace passivity. We need to be aware of these things. We need to know the Word of God, and what it says about our design as men. We need to realize our tendency to suppress this design or embrace the parody. We need to be honest with ourselves. Scripture warns us of the dangers of self flattery:
Psalm 36:2 For in his own eyes he flatters himself too much to detect or hate his sin.
We need each other. We need to repent. We need humility. We need to wipe the slate clean and start over. What does it mean to be a man? What does the Word tell us? Will we listen?
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