As men who are called to lead, we must remember that every facet of our life, and every milisecond of our leadership, must be done in submission to the Lord Jesus Christ. He is our King and soverign. We are simply the stewards of His treasures and will be held accountable for how we care for His possession. At the heart of it, that is the essence of male leadership. It is not pomposity, abdication, nor machismo. True godly and masculine leadership is found in submission to Jesus. It comes in orienting our lives around loving, serving, obeying, and worshipping Him.

When we began this masculinity series a couple of months ago, I was convinced that the recovery of Biblical manhood was one of, if not the most, important issues that we face today. There is an all-out war being waged against men and the culture around us is suffering because of it. In the same way that a house will not stand if you knock down it’s load bearing walls, a culture cannot stand when you knock down its men. They are the ones who were designed by God to bear the load of the nation, they are the ones who were made to protect our most valuable and precious citizens, our women, who in turn care for and protect our children. So, when you cut down the men, pervert them, and cripple them, you leave everyone else exposed… Which kind of seems like the point.
Today, we draw our masculinity series to a close by talking about what it means for men to bear the load of leadership. In this episode, we will talk about where true leadership begins and we will give a Biblical case for what male leadership looks like, in this generation, and beyond. So, let us first begin with where leadership begins, and that is at submission.
Submit Like a Man
In order to lead like a man, you must first know the limits of your leadership. You are not sovereign, Christ is. You are not unlimited, He is.
We know this from many passages, but perhaps the most clear passage for us to consider is Matthew 28:18, where Jesus says
 “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.
Jesus’ perfect unbroken submission to His Father, along with His lifelong unblemished active submission to the law of God, as well as His lifelong unflinching passive submission to the covenantal plan of redemption – that would culminate in Him being crucified on a Roman cross, dying like a criminal, and buried in a borrowed tomb – is what earned Him supreme, unlimited, and unrivaled authority. When He rose form the dead, He did not claim a kind of amprophous or undefined victory… He triumphed over all powers, authority, and dominion. He earned maximal authority on earth, in heaven, over life, and over deah.
Knowing this, we may rightly conclude that there is no actual (or even perceieved) authority structure outside of Jesus Christ. Every king, every dictator, every potentate, and every single person exercises authority that is borrowed on credit from the Lord of glory. We will either bow our knee to Him, in this life, as humble slaves that have done our master’s bidding (Mt. 25:23) or we will bow in terror in the life to come, when He showcases His magnified and exalted position to all creation (Philippians 2:9-11).
As men who are called to lead, we must remember that every facet of our life, and every milisecond of our leadership, must be done in submission to the Lord Jesus Christ. He is our King and soverign. We are simply the stewards of His treasures and will be held accountable for how we care for His possession. At the heart of it, that is the essence of male leadership. It is not pomposity, abdication, nor machismo. True godly and masculine leadership is found in submission to Jesus.
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The Bible expects that men will act like men, worship like men, participate in the advance of Jesus’ Kingdom like men, by adopting the weapons of warfare like men, and by showing up looking like men, being groomed like men, and being dressed like a man. These things are a glory to a man, they are most suitable to his frame, and will equip us to fight in a way that glorifies our King. 

When I began this series on the fall and recovery of Biblical masculinity several weeks ago, little did I know that we were all about to witness a powerful and yet pitiful example of what fallen and impotent manhood looks like. Just as the brave Marines, holding the American flag atop a mound of rubble, on the war torn island of Iwo Jima, became a symbol for that entire era, so too will the slap heard round the world become a symbol of the weak and sickly manhood that is available today. Like the majority of the world, I had no idea that another award show filled full of opining elites had come and gone; that is until social media became a flurry with rumors that the fresh prince of Bel Aire slapped the Zebra from Madagascar.
Mildly intrigued, I went to youtube and saw the pitiful display.
And before we continue, let me begin with a few disclaimers. I detest celebrity culture. I despise award shows. I loath tabloid style gossip that thrives on who’s sleeping with who. And I have found that my life will be so much more productive, peaceful, and rewarding if I worry about what God has called me to do, rather than worrying about which celebrity is in rehab for shipwrecking their life. That may sound insensitive, but I have more than enough to fill my schedule with growing in the love God, fighting to prioritize my family, loving neighbor, serving the church, and being faithful to do the things God has entrusted to me to do with the precious seconds He has given me. Celebrity culture does not even crack the top billion on my list.
Yet, I am interested in what happened, if for no other reason than I think it poignantly and perfectly encapsulates the downfall of our society. But, being two weeks removed, I am not contributing to the cacophony of opinions on the matter, because Will and Jada Smith are not my point. I only bring Will Smith up as a microcosm for failed masculinity. Let me explain.
First, I am no expert on the comings and goings of the Smith’s, but you would have needed to live under a rock much larger than a comedian named Chris to think things were hunky dory in the Smith home. And while it is not my goal to air all of their soiled linens on this episode, I do want to point out that smacking Chris Rock for a joke was not at all a masculine act.
Masculinity would have been faithfulness to his own marriage vows over the years. Masculinity would not have stood idly by while his wife was sleeping with one of her son’s friends. Masculinity would have provided a home where his children did not grow up entitled and thoroughly perverted by his debauchery. In fact, after years of abdicating his responsibility as a man, his family has become the joke… The humor of Chris Rock was just the final straw atop an overly burdened ego.
This was not masculinity. This was not defending the honor of his wife. This was the petulant temper tantrum of a guilt ridden man, who knows what it is like to play a strong and successful male on television, but behind the mask, is a weak and pitiful example in real life.
This is why I say that this moment was the perfect encapsulation of modern culture and manhood. Mr Smith represents a generation of spoiled, entitled, emasculated boys, who would rather shift blame onto other people for their failures instead of facing the consequences of their decisions.
Mr. Smith showcased one way to fight, but it certainly was not how to fight like a Christian man, which is the topic of our present episode. Unlike Will Smith, or whatever societal image we may have seen of late, we need to know what it means to fight like a Christian man. We need to know how we are called to fight? Where are we called to fight? What we are fighting for? And who we are fighting for! That is what we will be answering today, and we will begin with understanding the battle.
Understanding the Battle
I hope it goes without saying that we are not called to fight with literal weapons. This is not a battle for geography, per se, this is a battle for the spiritual life and well-being of the world. We are called to make war with sin, make war against the kingdom of darkness, heralding Christ to all the nations, extending His Kingdom so that He may become greater as everything else becomes less. This war is a spiritual war, advanced in the souls of men, spreading out to the ends of the earth, putting everything under the feet of Jesus. But, before we can engage in that battle, we must first understand our enemy.
Understanding Our Enemies
When the Bible speaks about our enemy, we often get the picture of a serpentine dragon that is roaring about seeking whomever he may devour and that is certainly part of the story. We really do live in a world where the devil prowls about like a lion seeking whomever he may destroy (1 Peter 5:8). We know that Scripture tells us that this beastly fiend is the god of this world (2 Corinthians 4:4) and that the world, in some ways, is still under his dominion and authority (1 John 5:18-19). But we also live in a world where Christ has triumphed over and disarmed the devil (Colossians 2:15), bound him in order to plunder his kingdom (Mark 3:27), and has given us the ability to resist him (James 4:7) and to see Jesus’ Kingdom triumph over his (Mt. 16:17-19).
And while an exhaustive study on the devil would be helpful, the central point I want us to understand is that we are in a war and that Satan is one of our great enemies. He is a liar, a deceiver, and wants nothing more than to blind eyes and deceive the nations. As Christian men, we fight him by clinging to the truth, employing the means of grace, participating in the church and sacraments, by contending for the Gospel once for all delivered to the saints, and by seeking to see Jesus’ Kingdom extended to all the nations. Satan is our real enemy and as Christian men we are not called to tremble over him, but to wage war against him in Jesus’ name!
But, he is not our only enemy. The Bible tells us that we actually have three enemies, the world, the flesh, and the devil.
The world, according to Scripture, is the realm of sinful humanity who live by lies, hate the church, and are opposed to the Lordship of Christ. Think about it this way, Jesus is the King over His people, the elect, and we have become citizens of His glorious Kingdom to do His bidding. Well, in the same way, the serpent is the prince and power over his tyrannical kingdom, the world, and the reprobate are both pleased and equipped to do his bidding as well.
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The goal of male sexuality is Biblically defined, joy-filled, fully-satisfying, covenantally faithful, kingdom building enjoyment of one woman, for a lifetime, to the glory of God. That is what it is. And before you exclaim, “Oh wow! Now the Puritanical fun police are back in town to limit all of our freedom”, you must remember that all freedom is limited. You will either live according to the limits God has given in His Word, or you will live within the debased limits of a debauched human society. You will either align yourself with how the creator made you, or give yourself over to a carnal human imagination.

If masculinity were an island, and men its citizens, then attacks would be coming in all directions. Multiple invading armies would be closing in, countless bombs and bullets would be expended, cities would be leveled, leading to the choice of whether or not the men would surrender. This is exactly what happened to Japan in 1945.
In 1945 the US and her allies had all but won the most devastating war ever conducted. Millions of bullets, grenades, tanks, bombers, and blood had been spent trying to defeat the three pronged axis of evil which was comprised of Nazi Germany, Facist Italy, and Imperial Japan.
By 1945 the Allied troops had defeated both Italy and Germany. The autocrat Benito Mussolini had been captured and hanged in the Italian streets on April the 28th. Two days later Adolph Hitler committed suicide in an underground bunker in Berlin. And this signaled the end of the war in Europe. But, while the writing on the wall was certainly clear, the island of Japan persisted and refused to surrender. They would fight with valor, glory, and honor even if all of them would perish.
By May, B-52 bombers were torching Japanese cities like Tokyo and others with devastating fire bombs. Maries were capturing various Japanese strongholds, like Iwo Jima and Okinawa, in the pacific theater with massive Japanese casualties. And the United States, who had been secretly developing the weapon to end the war, was moments away from dropping it should the Japanese persist in their opposition.  This is exactly what happened.
On August the 6th of 1945, a new era of warfare was unleashed upon the world when one “Little boy” atomic bomb liquified Hiroshima in seconds. Between the initial blast and the nuclear fall out it is estimated that as many as 135 thousand people were killed with a single blast.  Three days later, with similar devastation, another atomic bomb vaporized Nagasaki, effectively ending World War 2, the bloodiest war in human history. With the Russians closing in on the Western front, and the US able to level entire cities and mass populations with a single bomb, the Japanese had to surrender in order to survive.
While all metaphors break down, and while there is no direct comparison between World War 2 and the attack on men, my point in bringing up this story is to show how some weapons can end wars instantly. They can vaporize your ability to fight. They can poison the population. And they can render the nation morally paralyzed to continue. This is what pornography and abberant sexuality has done to masculinity, and if we have any hope of rebuilding, and creating a healthy culture of men, we need to know full well what the Bible says about male sexuality. We need this so that we can avoid future attacks, raise up faithful and healthy future men, and also so that we can win the war that is being waged and see Christ’s Kingdom advance.
To do that, we will lean on what we have seen in the previous weeks, and will build towards a Biblical sexual ethic. We will look at the God-ordained goal of male sexuality and the God-ordained result of male sexuality. In the end, we will know what the Bible says, so that we can effectively wage war in this generation and beyond. Let’s begin.
Disclaimer, I will speak frankly from this point onward.
The God-Ordained Goal of Male Sexuality
The goal of masculine sexuality is not an a-sexual midnight masturbation session in front of a 4k OLED screen. The goal is not playing hopscotch on the calendar so you do not impregnate the girlfriend you have no intention to marry. The goal is not an endless reel of lustful fantasies about the women you know and work with that you will either indulge in private seedy delight or will carry on with pulverizing shame. The goal of male sexuality is Biblically defined, joy-filled, fully-satisfying, covenantally faithful, kingdom building enjoyment of one woman, for a lifetime, to the glory of God. That is what it is.
And before you exclaim, “Oh wow! Now the Puritanical fun police are back in town to limit all of our freedom”, you must remember that all freedom is limited. You will either live according to the limits God has given in His Word, or you will live within the debased limits of a debauched human society. You will either align yourself with how the creator made you, or give yourself over to a carnal human imagination. One of these limits brings life, the other brings nothing but vulgarity, vexation, and venereal diseases.
True freedom is experienced in limitation, not in unbridled hedonism. Think about it this way, the freest and most joy filled people who will ever exist are the future redeemed people who cannot sin in New Jerusalem. They are the people who are finally free to worship God, without the constant drive and pull to sin. And while they are substantially more limited than we, having no further ability to explore fallen lusts, yet they are infinitely more joyful and free than we.
The mere fact that we are limited does not stifle our ability to experience joy and freedom. What stifles these things is being bound to the wrong standard. As a fish cannot survive in canola oil, so the masculine sexual drive was not designed to live in sexual perversion.
So, what does the Bible say we were designed for? First, we were made to endure a profitable period of abstinence.
A Profitable Abstinence
Before marriage, we were not designed to gratify any sexual desire in any way, with any person, or any thing, at any time lest we invite judgment from God. We see this standard all over the Scripture. For instance, Job tells us in chapter 31:1

I have made a covenant with my eyes; Why then should I look upon a young woman?

Job is admitting that visual stimulation is a particular struggle for the man, who was designed to be aroused by the naked body of a female. And yet, while this is a God-given design feature that will cause a marriage to flourish, we are not allowed to enjoy this kind of stimulation before marriage. Job argues that we must protect the covenant of marriage and our covenant with God by making a covenant with our own eyes not to lust after a woman. He is saying that the old adage, I can look but not touch, is entirely wrong! It is an egregious sin, and if you indulge it, it will ruin your relationships with women, with your wife or future wife, and with your God.
He is telling us that, before marriage, every woman’s body is off limits to us. Her figure must not even dilate the eyes of our desire. After marriage, that desire is opened to a single woman who will delight our eyes exclusively for a lifetime.
That means, practically speaking, we do not turn our eyes toward the uncovered woman on the television and make excuses that we are only watching for the story. It also means we do not turn our eyes to the covered women at our workplace and think it is innocent because it is just looking. We do not gawk at the women who dress provocatively in public and we do not visualize what is under the clothing of those who adorn themselves with modesty. We do not linger over lingerie ads, stare at the woman on the beach, or navigate 3 clicks past holiness on that website. If we are unmarried, we fight lust, we subdue it, we kill it, and fight so that it would not be awakened until its proper time  (Proverbs 8:4), that being covenant marriage.
If you will fight that fight, in faith, by the power of the Spirit, for the glory of God, for your own benefit, then you will reap bountiful blessings in your future marriage that will contribute to a lifetime of unfettered pleasure. If you heed your sin, and drown your eyes with oceans full of lustful images, you willingly invite dysfunction upon your own head and sinful decay into your bed.
Paul says in Colossians 3:5

Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. – Colossians 3:5

Before we move on, I think it is important to point something out in this passage. Paul does not command mortal combat upon our sexual sin as a way to impress God with our purity. We do not grind out beleaguered holiness, or begrudgingly guard our eyes, minds, and hearts, just to lay at His feet our best, which is filthy, soiled, and polluted rags anyway. If that were the goal, we may as well eat, drink, and give ourselves over to whatever lusts we want because our best would never be pure enough to please Him.
We do not wage war to prove to God who we are, we wage war because we are enamored by who He is.
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Do not let the enemy win in your marriage. And do not let the enemy win in your season of preparing for marriage. Repent when you fall short. Stand up, trust the Lord, obey His Word, and repeat when you miss the mark. 

Introduction
Over the last couple of weeks we have been talking about the fact that there is a masculinity crisis in this world and nowhere is that felt more profoundly than in marriages. You can think about it this way: if healthy marriages are the bedrock of a community, and healthy communities unite together to form vibrant cultures, then the best way to topple a society is to attack its marriages. If you break that grand institution down, if you spoil the marriage, then you will cripple the nation. And there is no better place for Satan to begin an all out war on marriage, than to focus on the one God called to lead in the home, and that is man.
And, I want you to think about it this way, if manliness, godly masculinity, and a man’s role in the home is a targeted attack launched consistently by Satan, then what we really need to know and understand is how to fight back. And we do not fight with swords and shields…We do not fight with domination and aggression…We fight by orienting our life to what the Bible says, by doing what it tells us to do, and by refusing to be moved when the fiery arrows of Satan come! That is our warfare, brothers. To know and understand what the Bible says about Biblical manhood, to orient our lives in that Godward direction, and refuse to be moved from off that spot.
The enemy may attack and he may win a ground back in this culture. But we must be resolved that he will not win in this arena. He will not move us from our purpose as men. And there is no better passage to teach us about this than Ephesians 5:23-33, where we learn 5 ways that we must love like men!
And the first is that we must have a Shepherding kind of love. Ephesians 5:23-24 says this:
Shepherding Love (Eph. 5:23-24)

For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is the head of the church, He Himself being the Savior of the body. But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives ought to be to their husbands in everything.

The first aspect of manly love is godly leadership. Men have been called to lead in their homes in the same way Christ provides love and leadership to His church. And this is not a suggestion.
Think about it like this, the Church is blessed because of the leadership of Christ. We do not moan and groan under His sovereign rule; we flourish under it. And that is the case because we are no longer wandering in the valleys of the shadow of death, we have been brought into His strong, life-giving, stabilizing love, and we are infinitely better off because of it. We joyfully follow Him out of death and enjoy the life giving benefits of His rule without a whimper of objection.
Well… In the same way, men, God has called you to diligently lead in your homes. He has called you to bring your family together under your leadership. He has commanded you to bring life into your home through your godly care. He has called you to provide the same kind of benefits Christ brings to the church, albeit in a temporal way.
Suffice it to say, your family ought to flourish, spiritually speaking, under your consistent, godly, Christ honoring, active leadership. If you are leading correctly, your family will thrive. If your family is spiritually weak, emotionally sickly, relationally at each other’s throats, experiencing interpersonal decay, chaos, in-fighting, rampant immorality, or is declining in any perceivable metric, then your leadership needs adjusting and repentance.
It is not enough to point the finger at your wife and kids like Adam. And you certainly cannot succeed as a husband and family head if you adopt Adam’s passive care. You just can’t.
You have to stand up, buck up, grow up, man up, and lead. You have to take a look at your family and ask some hard questions about yourself. Are they struggling because of my failed leadership? Are there things I need to stop doing? Things I need to start doing? So that I can be more like Jesus, a better head over this family, and so that my clan can more faithfully honor God?
These are hard questions, but the buck stops with you. You did not marry into a democracy where everything is decided after spirited debates on a senate floor. You are a God appointed King, called to rule with the love and affection of Christ, for the good and health of your family. If you fail, the family will suffer. If you repent, the family will grow.
The first aspect of loving like a man, is having the guts to lead like Jesus. To shepherd like Jesus. To have a shepherd’s love.
The second aspect of Loving like a man, is to have a Sacrificing kind of love. Look at verse 25 of this incredible passage.
Sacrificing Love (Eph 5:25)

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her,

Here the love that Christ has for the Church is qualified in His desire, and joy, to give Himself up for her. His love was demonstrated by His willingness to give His life for her, and her life, health, and vitality, would be impossible without His sacrifice. These are wonderful and glorious truths of the Gospel that we celebrate and say amen to each week…
But what we as men often forget about is that these things have been required of us. Paul begins with “husbands love your wives”. And just in case you are not clear on what that means, it means being like Jesus and giving yourself up for her.
This means that your leadership cannot be used to advance your own agenda. You wake up for your family, go to work for your family, provide for your family, serve your family, go to sleep protecting your family, repeat and die in honor like a man who sacrificed for His family
And not just in those ways…Think about what Jesus did. He went to the cross! He gave His life for the spiritual well-being of His bride!
That means manly love sacrifices everything to make sure the people around us are thriving spiritually. It means praying with your wife. It means leading family worship with your kids. It means making them go to church when they do not want to go. It means modeling Christ like leadership when others want to cut corners. It means pointing to Jesus in the way you discipline… It means comforting your wife and children with the Gospel. It means putting yourself second so that someone else can benefit!
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I know we like to think that political engagement, social movements, big seeker-sensitive churches, and things like that will win the day. But they won’t! Satan is not attacking families as hard as he is for no reason. Godly, Christ-honoring, fruitful, and multiplying families are dangerous to the kingdom of darkness. If we want to win this battle, then we need to start waging our war accordingly.

INTRODUCTION
I normally avoid disclaimers, but if you understand what I am saying in this article, then you will not only understand almost everything you need to know about spiritual warfare, why this country is the way it is, and how Christians can wage war against it, but you will also come to see how the antidote is dangerous families.
Here is the argument.
THE ARGUMENT FOR DANGEROUS FAMILIES
POINT 1: Satan is the enemy of God. He hates the things God loves. He tries to pervert what God calls good. And he attacks the things God makes.
POINT 2: As a matter of warfare, Satan has focused his attack on the most precious thing God ever designed, that which God has called VERY GOOD (See Genesis 1:26-31)
POINT 3: The thing God called VERY GOOD, is a male and female, human, sexually healthy, covenantally faithful, child producing, monogomas marriage. Or to say that in a different way, a family.
POINT 4: God installed this VERY GOOD family as the basis for, and the most central unit, of all society (see Genesis 1:28)
POINT 5: Knowing this, one can reasonably assume that Satan’s most ferocious attacks, and the heart of all spiritual warfare, will be leveled against the family.
THEREFORE: The way we fight back is by raising up the kind of families that are oriented back toward’s God VERY GOOD vision, that threatens Satan, thwart his plans, resist his temptations, and will eventually topple his kingdom.
But, before we get into that, let us look at how Satan is waging an all-out war on the family. Below, I list a litany (although not an exhaustive list) of examples.
MODERN EXAMPLES OF SATAN’S ATTACK ON FAMILY:
This list could be pages upon pages long. But, here are some obvious examples of how Satan is attempting to destroy the family, which means destroying godliness, men, women, marriage, and children.
Gender confusion, perverted (woke) cartoons, divorce, sodomy, adultery, pornography, lesbianism, fornication, godless schools, cross-dressing, effeminate men, passive husbands, domineering women, pronoun confusion, feminism, transgenderism, hook up culture, woke college campuses, birth control, abortions, sex-ed curriculums, intersectionality, government propagated sexual perversion, subsidizing the murder of babies, etc.
HOW DO FAMILIES FIGHT THESE PERVERSIONS??
The reason we learn about spiritual warfare is not to sit down in victimhood, but to rise up as victors. This is impossible apart from a relationship with Jesus Christ, but for the Christian, spiritual warfare does not end there. Like soldiers, we do not put on the uniform of Christ and think the battle is magically over. There is training, education, fighting, deploying, war-waging, raising up new soldiers, and the eventual triumph after a long and hard-fought campaign.
Below is another non-exhaustive list of activities we can be doing, as soldiers of Christ, to successfully wage war against the serpent. (P.S. it has everything to do with the recovery of the family)
Read the Bible and submit to its truth, pray continually, commit to a local church, get baptized, take communion weekly, love Jesus, and be discipled. Then, while you wait on Jesus to return, guard your virginity, date with purity, protect your eyes and your heart from Satanic perversions, get married to a godly believer, and be faithful to your spouse physically, mentally, and emotionally. Have frequent godly sex so that you are not tempted, make lots of babies, raise them up in the Lord, and refuse to send them to our perverted public schools. Instead, disciple them to grow up and have godly, fruitful, and multiplying families, teach them to worship Jesus fiercely, and to storm the gates of hell advancing Jesus’ Kingdom. If you cannot have children, adopt children, help others raise their children, and be the kind of member of your church that cheers for and supports godly families. If you have kids, do not forget to teach them how to date, how to marry, and how to raise children the same convictions, so that they can make for you an army of grandbabies, that you will assist in preparing for the war.
If you are fortunate enough to live to see your grandchildren marry, then you will get to encourage another generation to take up the blessing of godly, fruitful, and multiplying family life, and you will get to die with an astounding heritage and legacy.
WHY WILL THIS KIND OF FAMILY WARFARE WORK?
Because every Satanic attack listed above is meant to pervert the family. Satan has exhausted all of his energy and effort to pervert boys, soil girls, poison marriages, and stop women from having children. In fact, I believe this is the very reason Satan attacks women as ferociously as he does, since it is the woman who will carry the next generation of serpent crushing Christian children in her womb. If he can cause a society to be confused about what a woman is, then the battle seems nigh to its conclusion.
But, this is exactly the point we have to stand up and fight with dangerous, Satan threatening, families! Because, we will certainly win if we just get in the battle and stop standing on the sidelines in confusion! We will win if we engage as God intended!
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The expectation for a man is that He is the strong one. Not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually. When tragedy hits the home, he is the life raft his family will cling to for security and strength. He may weep privately over many things, but a man is a rock for his family. His goal in life is not to be emotionally carried by his wife and children, his goal is to carry them. Be strong for them. Be an anchor for them. And to help them navigate the trouble waters of life with his love and provision at the lead. 

There is a masculinity crisis in the modern world. And what I mean by that is not neanderthalian, fart contest winning, beer bonging, grab happy, chest bumping caricatures of manhood that we have all been conditioned to accept as normative. Anyone can grow up to become a big-bodied mass with a penis… What I am talking about is men. Real men. Biblical men. And we need them now more than ever.
We need that same kind of iron clad warrior who bravely sounded the alarm nearly 200 years ago, against the coming plague of feminism, but the world was far too foolish to listen to them. Now, instead, we are the recipients of an emasculated world, where men appear in dresses on magazine covers, and the perverted laud them for their courage. We need real men. And let me clear, sinful masculinity is equally toxic as well. This post is about Biblical, godly, creation-ordered, manhood… Now, after a heart amen, I assume you are ready to continue? Well enough…
After decades of manlessness, the majority of men find themselves in the peculiar position of having no real clue what Biblical masculinity looks like. And frankly it is not their fault. Most men did not have fathers, grandfathers, pastors, mentors, or godly masculine men in their life, as they were growing up, so they have little to no vision of what that even looks like. And because of that, the next generation of boys will be just as blind as we all were when it is their turn to be at the helm.
For this reason, we need a revival of true masculinity. We need a return to God, a return to His Word, and a return to the God-blessed realm of what true manhood can offer the world, which God Himself called very good and blessed. And when we do that, we can change the world.
I would say many, if not most, of the problems plaguing this culture and especially the church have to do with failed masculinity, and weak, impotent, emasculated men. If that is true, then producing a new culture of Biblical, Christ-like, servant men will be an undeniable blessing, not only to the church, but to the entire world. Just as all ships in a harbor are lifted by the rising tide, all people will be benefited by the rise of a Biblically faithful culture of men.
No more excuses. It is time for us to open up our Bibles and get to work. Let’s go!
Over the next several weeks, we will be looking at 6 fundamental characteristics of what it means to be a godly man. We will speak frankly, unapologetically, but most importantly Biblically on this topic… And we will call men to imitate the true man, Jesus Christ, as we seek to ACT LIKE MEN, WORSHIP LIKE MEN, LOVE LIKE MEN, FIGHT LIKE MEN, LEAD LIKE MEN, AND BUILD LIKE MEN.
#1: What does it mean to act like men?
We begin today by looking at what it means to Act Like Men!
And there is no better place to begin, than by considering what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13:11. He says:

When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things.

This verse really does present the entire case for Biblical manhood in two basic words; “grow” and “up!” That’s right, I said it, we need to “grow up!” We need to stop acting like a battalion of lilly flowers, we need to stop thinking in childish ways, and eliminate the immaturity in our speech, and step into the real world of maturity that God designed us to live in!
But I do not want to speak in generalities here… So, let’s go a step further, just so it is crystal clear what this means.
In the home, the infant is the purest distillation of ego-centricism on earth. Dads, you may feel like you exist to entertain them. Moms, you definitely have felt like you exist to serve them. It can feel like they believe they are at the center of the universe demanding their every need.
They act as though their needs are the only needs worth caring about and that they are the only ones who matter. They do not seem to mind at all about screaming during your phone call, interrupting your precious sleep, and they seem totally oblivious to that essential task you were doing. Stop it and feed me, they seem to scream. Stop what you are doing and change me. Stop the things that are important to you and figure out why I am crying… I will stop when you get it right… Essentially the baby lives like his needs matter more than yours, dear mother, and if you do not believe me, it is because you have not yet had one.
I think God makes them so cute, so that we can’t help but love them. This is especially true for mom’s, who laugh, smile, ooh and ah, even while border on the verge of literal exhaustion and being treated by this baby like no reasonable adult in our life ever would! If you really think about it, and get past all of their cuddly cuteness, they are the most needy, whiny, self-absorbed, time-sucking people in your life! And you love them like no one else. What a beautiful love God has placed into your hear, dear daughter of Eve.
And that is certainly an endearing quality in a helpless babe who needs his mother incessantly for their entire existence, but I am sure you would agree that it is a noseauting quality in your man. No woman on earth wants to be a parent to a child and to a husband… But yet so many women end up feeling like they have adult babies for their spouses. I have heard that message consistently for years. It is a massive burden on a woman who wants to be led by you, to feel like she is the one leading you. And I am not excusing her sin, but your sin is not helping very much either, brother.
There are far too many men who live this way, and apparently did not jump through the necessary hurdles of maturation, only to graduate into manhood with a male body, but a fetal mind. This kind of man acts like their needs are the only ones that matter. They prioritize themselves, their emotions, their wants, their priorities, over everyone else. And they act just as spoiled as the soiled screaming toddler at their feet. The only advantage they seem to have in their manhood, is that they get to have sex with their wives, who struggles more than you realize, with how childish you and I can be.
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Instead of these erratic speculations that attempt to read our newspaper events into Holy Scripture, we have been called to do what the Bible plainly says. Instead of spending all of our time worrying ourselves silly about the end times, identifying nations, Antichrists, marks of the beast, and all of that, we have been called to faithful labor.

INTRODUCTION
Once every year or so, the tin-foil hat-wearing end times internet shamans and eschatology provocateurs will forget they own an actual Bible and will latch on to some new issue or story in culture, and then spray their poorly exegeted conclusions like a drunk man behind a machine gun. For instance, the current war between Russia and Ukraine is said to be a sign that Gog and Magog are on the move and the end is about to happen. Well, this is about the 10th time a Russian offensive has been applied to Ezekiel 38 in the last decade, each time being proven false.
But, error in calculations is not a new thing for the “end-times movement,” which boasts a perfect zero percent accuracy rating. For instance, a couple of years ago, memes abounded calling the vaccine the mark of the beast. Before that, Bitcoin was going to be the one world currency of Antichrist’s empire. And if you go back in time, you will see books written to convince us that Anthony Fauci, Barack Obama, Bill Gates, George Soros, Sadam Hussein, Fidel Castro, Adolph Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin, and even the Pope were all the actual Antichrist…
This of course is riddled with problems.
FIRST PROBLEM
The first and most obvious problem with these predictions is that none of them have come true! Think about it, after 2000 years of fringe Christian future-oriented prophecies, not a single one has had any merit. After tens of thousands of swings and misses, the “end times community” has yet to get a single one of them right, which means they have amassed even less trustworthiness than Michael Jackson as a babysitter. You would have better odds submitting a blank Powerball card at a gas station than thinking any of these predictions would ever come true. We simply must not continue going along with these silly fables when none of them have panned out yet.
SECOND PROBLEM
Second, since the punishment for false prophets is death by stoning, we ought to – at a minimum – think long and hard before running after the next sensationalist with a microphone. Better to follow serious biblical thinkers and scholars than a few wild-eyed firebrand rabble-rousers on YouTube.
THIRD PROBLEM
Third, this kind of newspaper exegesis appeals to our carnal sensations of fear by taking today’s headlines, which is truly frightening, and then giving those stories eschatological significance. We have been conditioned to think the world is always getting worse, Satan is always winning, and that we are just a few bad news cycles away from Armageddon. None of these things are true in Scripture, but this way of reading the Bible (eisegetically) appeals to our carnality.
FOURTH PROBLEM
Fourth, this kind of thinking – in general – reveals that we are not a biblically literate or thinking people anymore. For instance, a careful and faithful theologian today can barely sell books (no matter the topic), while the health and wealth charlatans, the heaven and hell tour guides, and the eschatology hucksters who peddle the latest end times fiction, all get fat and rich off their foolishness. In some ways, we must admit that the product being slung, says a lot about the consumer. American Christians – as a whole – have become enamored by the basest rubbish a publishing company can produce when the Bible speaks clearly and sufficiently on these issues.
WHAT’S MY PROBLEM?
Maybe you are wondering, geez Kendall, what has your knickers in such a knot? Well, I am sick and tired of eschatology agitators striking fear in the hearts of God’s people. While the blind goes on shooting flaming arrows in all directions, hoping to someday hit a bullseye, pastors in the trenches are quietly and patiently dealing with all the wounds these fools have created. We are the ones who have to clean up their mess, and carefully attempt to undo the fallacious thinking they have spread around like anthrax. And sadly, many believers will hold so tightly to their “Left Behind” / “Late Great Planet Earth” traditions, they will never see it for what it is, a lie and a dangerous fiction.
And perhaps you will retort, but Kendall, I saw a meme about it on Instagram… I watched a Tik Tok that was shot live from a corn farmer’s bomb shelter in Iowa, and he had charts to prove it… I watched a VHS tape or heard the mutterings of my closest friends saying that some pastor told them that Gog and Magog from the book of Ezekiel must be Russia and that Daniel 11 confirms the end is now!
And while I want to be very careful discounting meme theologians on Instagram, chart hockers on TikTok, your friends, or even farmer Joe in Iowa, as maybe not being true scholars of eschatology (snark included), I do want to affirm that I understand why you are afraid. I really do.
WHY WE ARE AFRAID
We live in a world filled with sin and sinful people. That is terrifying enough. Then when you add menacing autocrats like Vladimir Putin, who sit on top of the world’s largest supply of nuclear weapons, I would consider you to be a very reasonable person for expressing genuine concern. But just because it is reasonable to be concerned about a twenty-first-century event in Western Europe, does not mean we have to turn to unreasonable explanations to help us understand it. Furthermore, just because something is important in our day, does not mean it must have a corresponding biblical prophetic event, that we have to decode to understand the signs of the times. God did not write the Bible like the back of a cereal box and give us current events as our decoder rings. He wrote it to be understood!
With that, I would like to address the current Russian invasion of Ukraine and show that this is not an end-time event. I won’t be focusing on the play-by-play gory details that are going on in-country. As you have already discovered, getting accurate news right now is almost impossible and I do not want to be given over to speculation. My goal in addressing this topic is to help Christians decouple events like this from end-times madness and fear and view it as it is.
Then, in conclusion, I want us all to remember a few good old biblical truths that will calm our hearts, dispel our fears, and will remind us what we have been called to spend our time and energy on. And spoiler alert, it is not trying to figure out the identity of Gog and Magog.
EZEKIEL 38 IS NOT MODERN-DAY RUSSIA
My goal in this section is not to exhaustively deal with these passages. We could spend weeks going through them and still not be settled on the exact identity of Magog, that Ezekiel is referencing. That pursuit would almost surely take us outside of our aim for this post. My goal, however, is to show that this passage, as many are currently claiming, is not about modern Russia. In fact, as we will see, it can only be speaking about an ancient nation.
With that, let’s dive in.
The context for Ezekiel 38, is Ezekiel 37, which is a prophecy of the Messiah’s first coming. When Jesus comes, His purpose will be to bring spiritual life to His elect people who are described as a valley of dry bones (Ez. 37:1-10). The text says the graves will be opened (v. 12), which was fulfilled at the crucifixion of Jesus (Mt. 27:52), and gives us a time frame for this prophecy.
The text also prophecies that the Son of Man will put His Spirit into His people (v. 14), which we know occurred at Pentecost (Acts 2), further limiting the fulfillment of this passage to the first century. Further, the text predicts that Judah and Israel would be reunited under one messianic King, which seems complicated until you remember the early church was a mix of Jews from Judah, Gentiles that Paul claimed were grafted into the Israel of God (Gal. 6:16), all being led by one King from the line of David, whose name is Jesus. This King will bring His people together into one nation and will keep them in Yahweh’s presence forever (v. 28), which is certainly what Christ has done for us as a Church. In Christ, we are one people, gathering as one nation, with one citizenship, with one purpose, which is to commune with the triune God in our gathering (Mt. 18:20) When you understand this biblically, you will see that all of Ezekiel 37 is a prophecy about the first coming of Christ where He elected for Himself a nation, an army, and a bride that will be known as His Church.
When we come to the very next chapter of Ezekiel, it would be reasonable to assume that it flows naturally from Ezekiel 37 unless we have clear biblical evidence to say otherwise. What would be entirely unnatural, on the level of a tree frog mating with a great white ape, would be to insert a 2500-year gap in this text, with no biblical warrant for doing so. And yet, this is exactly what the end-time prognosticators have done.
David Jeremiah, who typifies this exceptionally bad scholarship says this entirely ludicrous statement:
“Approximately 2,500 years ago Ezekiel predicted specific events that will occur in Russia’s future. He begins Ezekiel 38 with a long list of nations that will attack Israel. None of these nations are called Russia; that name is not found anywhere in the Bible. However, the reference to Rosh in verse 2 is a shortened version of the word Russia. This can be determined linguistically and geographically. The Bible describes Rosh as being far to the north of Israel, which was the reference point for Ezekiel’s original audience.”
Dr. Jeremiah advances the claim that Ezekiel, with no logical or textual warrant for doing so, ignored his previous train of thought and bull-rushed into the modern world, narrowing his focus upon twenty-first-century Russia. To support such an outlandish claim, he misinterprets the word “Rosh” in verse 2, which normally means “prince” in Hebrew, to be some ancient form of the word Russia. Apparently, because it looks like the English word, it must actually be that same English word! Such logic gets us into some fairly odd situations when we take other Hebrew words like “Niagara” and assume they also allude to modern-day locations (like a waterfall in Canada) when the real word means toilet roll dispenser. That kind of logic clearly stinks, no pun intended.
Dr. Jeremiah continues this confusing line of thinking, saying:
“Persia is (also) mentioned in Ezekiel 38:5 and about 35 more times in Scripture. In 1935, Persia changed its name to Iran. Then in 1979, it became the Islamic Republic of Iran. Today, Russia is Iran’s strongest ally and Israel’s strongest enemy. This alliance will continue in the latter days.”
So, just so we are tracking… An easily avoided mistranslation of “Rosh” proves that the end times must go through modern-day Russia? Then, a real ancient empire called Persia, can’t mean what it actually means, but instead, it must mean the modern-day state of Iran?? And this proves that a Russia-Iranian coalition will storm into Jerusalem, beginning the great tribulation??? Forgive me while my head spins, but how has any of this been proven?
To bolster what some might call a point, David Jeremiah goes through the other names listed in Ezekiel 8 (Meshech and Tubal), showing how they too must have modern-day equivalents that Ezekiel and his audience would have known about, and that these nations will also join in a future Russian led federation against modern-day Israel that will more than likely, both probably and most definitely, will almost certainly have a good possibility of, beginning when modern Russia invades Ukraine… Right?
This very astounding way of establishing a point has no biblical warrant whatsoever to support it and would be as relevant to Ezekiel’s audience as a Model S Tesla. But, David Jeremiah, eschatology expert said it, so it must be accurate, right? Hardly.
DISPROVING THE FICTION
To disprove this line of thinking, one need only look at the biblical description. A novel concept, in such an age of speculation, I know. When we do that, when we honestly look at Ezekiel 38, whoever this army is, we see that it cannot be modern-day Russia… Or any other modern army for that matter.
I will demonstrate this with five simple observations from Ezekiel 38.
1 THE RESULT OF THE WARFARE
In Ezekiel 38, an army named Magog rises up against the people of God, and God Himself says that He will punish them. For fighting against His people, the Lord says that He will have hooks put in this Magog army’s jaws as a form of divine punishment (v. 4). This kind of torture was fairly common in the time of ancient Assyria and Persia, who prided themselves in dragging victims behind chariots and horses for public sport. That God would adopt such a specific kind of punishment would seem like perfect retribution on the enemies of God, who invented the punishment, it would seem encouraging to the people of God, and would have immediate relevance for Ezekiel and his audience.
If this were to apply to Russia, As Jeremiah has said, then the current invasion of Ukraine (that they aren’t doing too well at) would need to be the first among many successful invasions to establish the old Soviet Union. Supposing Russia had the funds and military might to accomplish this, they would also need to defeat all of NATO powers, who would be forced to respond (via article 5) when Poland, Belarus, or the Baltic states were invaded. This means Russia would need to defeat the United States along with 29 other nations, all before assembling the Soviet Union.
At some point, after they successfully run the gauntlet with the world’s most powerful nations, arising the victor of what must be World War Three, they would then need to march to Israel with Iran (as our end times scholar has mused), all to be defeated in Israel.  Once that defeat was complete, Israel would need to adopt a 2500-year-old torture method that was common in Ezekiel’s day, inserting rather large lip rings into the Russian army’s jaws, and dragging them about publicly for sport. You could imagine whatever media was left, all getting coverage of the poor Russian armies being dragged about like puppets for the remaining world to see.Since we know this kind of torture was common in the ancient world, relevant to Ezekiel’s day, and relevant to his prophetic situation, I find no reason to dream up a Russian myth just to make this modern.
2 THE MODE OF WARFARE
After the hooks, God will bring out the entire Magog army, both it’s horses and riders, who are splendidly attired with small metal shields and swords (v. 4). We know from history that ancient peoples in Ezekiel’s day, and the Persians after his day, fought on horseback with these kinds of buckler shields and swords. It should go without saying that none of the Russians rode into Ukraine on horses. And, it should also go without saying that these “horses” are not metaphors for tanks. If we reduce human language to that kind of whimsical farce, we may as well go ahead and buy our dream home in Wonderland right beside the white rabbit, because we would have lost all sense of reality.
3 LOCATION OF THE WARFARE
This battle apparently happens inside the nation of Israel, who is described formerly as “a continual waste” with its people being scattered throughout the nations (v. 8), but who would be drawn back to the land before this war. This just simply cannot apply to modern Russia or Israel. For starters, the current war that dominates our news cycles is not in Israel or even about Israel. But even if it were, modern-day Israel is not the kind of unoccupied wasteland Ezekiel is describing, but a thriving metropolitan nation, with a bustling economy, and paradise-like topography. Nothing at all about the current nation of Israel resembles Ezekiel’s vision. That description, of wastelands, and scattered peoples, returning to their homeland to rebuild a temple already happened! An event that occurred after Jerusalem was sacked by Babylon and the land lay empty for 70 years before the people returned and built the temple under Ezra. This return happened in 3 stages, which is also consistent with Ezekiel 38 and looks nothing like the reconstitution of the secular Jewish state today.
4 THE GOAL OF THE WARFARE
After the battle, the nation of Gog was accused, by God, of wanting to plunder Israel for her cattle (v. 12). This would make good sense in an ancient setting since cattle would have been an excellent commodity for any people to acquire as the spoils of war, and Israel was certainly known for her livestock, making her a fit target. Yet, Israel – by no stretch of the imagination – is known for its surplus herds of cattle today, and, modern Russia has not, nor ever would, enter into a war based on how many cows she would bring back to the fatherland. Can you imagine the Russian oligarchs, after defeating the majority of the world’s nations, sitting around a table saying we need more cows?
Can we just admit that the scene most clearly fits in the ancient world?
5 ORIGINATION OF THE WARFARE
This army of Magog is said to have come from the north, which must mean modern-day Russia, because surely there has never been a single nation of people, who lived north of Israel, at any time in Israel’s history. That is, until the present day? Again, the logic is abysmal.
So much more could be said, and even has been said by others, but the basic point has more than been proven. This passage has nothing at all to do with modern Russia or any modern country for that matter. It involves a prophecy that is future to Ezekiel, but past tense to us. To go on saying otherwise is to expose yourself as a fraud not worth listening to.
THE REAL POINT OF ESCHATOLOGY
Instead of these erratic speculations that attempt to read our newspaper events into Holy Scripture, we have been called to do what the Bible plainly says. Instead of spending all of our time worrying ourselves silly about the end times, identifying nations, Antichrists, marks of the beast, and all of that, we have been called to faithful labor.
Remember the parable of the talents? It wasn’t the one who worried about the terrible return of the Lord who was called faithful. It was the one who got to work, doubling the master’s investment, who was called faithful by His Lord. The one who was too busy worrying about all the various details of his master’s return, so terrified that he could not even bring himself to work, was the one who had his talent taken away. Our goal is not to live in fear about an uncertain future, but to get to work in the Kingdom of God.
Remember the parable of the ten virgins? The five foolish virgins believed the coming of their Lord to be of such imminent nature, they had no time to even bring their normal supplies. But, when their Lord tarried, they were exposed and left groping about in darkness while the wise virgins went in. The point is simple, we do not stop living, and stop making preparations, dropping everything for the coming of the Lord. That kind of urgency is foolish. May the Lord find us prepared, working, and faithful when He returns.
Do you remember the men of Galilee? When Jesus ascended into heaven, the poor disciples in Jerusalem – having never seen an event like that before – stood frozen and staring into heaven, straining their eyes to see when the Christ would come again. And do you remember what the Angels said to them? They said: “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into the sky? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in just the same way as you have watched Him go into heaven.”
The angels were teaching the disciples and all of us a valuable principle. Do not spend your life staring up into the heavens. You will be there soon enough if you are in Christ. And do not waste your life terrified and perplexed about the news of our day, straining your eyes for secret fulfillments of prophecy, afraid that someone will persecute you, worried that you will be left behind. Spend your days serving Christ. Use your talents well. Don’t bury them in the sands of eschatological fear and speculation. Run the race that Jesus has given you to run, and stop letting internet charlatans whip you up into an end-times frenzy.
Whether He comes today or in ten thousand years matters less to us than serving Him faithfully while we remain. Again, I am not saying that a godly passion to see the Lord return is wrong. I am saying that we must not be consumed with His coming to the point that it renders us immobile! When He comes, the only thing that matters is that He finds us working! Working in faith! Working to build His Kingdom! Working to advance His Bride, the Church, to the ends of the earth! Working to see the Gospel preached in all the nations! Working to see men and women saved, baptized, and discipled! Working to see His Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. Working and doing the good works that He prepared before the foundations of the earth for us to do!
Instead of being gripped with fears and bound in worries, let Him find us working. Let Him find us being good and faithful slaves. We must stop being afraid and get about the task of living!
Kendall Lankford is pastor of The Shepherd’s Church in Chelmsford, MA. This article is used with permission.