If we are to love our neighbor as ourselves, in the whole truth of God, we muse show forth the joy of gospel grace, of the eternal blessings which we experience now and in the future in Christ. We are to speak boldly, with surety and without fear of man, yet in a spirit which shows the gentleness of a dove.

One of the downsides of being a Christian is that we do not have the freedom to let the truth work for us. We live in a world where most people don’t really have much compunction shading things toward their point of view. A little touch here and there so that the story becomes one where they are the champion and everyone else comes short. These are things which can frustrate believers as we live and breathe in a world soaked in sin. There are times when our faith in the risen Christ and love of those things that are good can get in the way of advancement at work, opportunities for extracurricular fun, whether that be sport, hobbies, competitions, or whatever.
Much temptation awaits.
For today’s prayer and worship help I want to come at this question with a positive message. Telling the truth, maintaining the truth, and accepting the truth should be a central part of the identity of every single believer in the Lord Jesus. The church shouldn’t be a place where we struggle to deal with the same fight against untrustworthiness and vanity that we do out in the domain of the prince of the power of the air. I’m not naïve enough not to recognize that we have sinners in the body of Christ. However, as Paul writes in Romans 6 we are to be found as those who love the word, and who seek to put to death the old man, and be conformed to the image of our Savior. Our fallibleness is not something we should lean into, rather we who rest in the grace of Jesus should more readily deal with sin and turn away from its lies. It is in the hope of the gospel that we live and move and have our being. The way this works itself out in the subject at hand is that as Christians we are to be those who value truth above all things primarily because we live in the household of the God of truth. It is the currency of our faith. We live in the full assurance of redemption because the Lord’s word is always yeah and amen in Himself.
Living in complete integrity is one way that we express the second table of the law to our neighbor. You’ve heard me say before that we cannot love our neighbor until we love ourselves first. At first glance that sounds kind of arrogant bordering on selfish. However, the more we learn to center our own soul in the covenant promises the more we are drawn to see the blessing of Christ’s words to Paul in 2 Corinthians 12. Truly His grace is sufficient for all of our needs.
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Written by Jeffrey A. Stivason |
Friday, September 30, 2022
The response of Habakkuk is not to pull up his bootstraps but to call upon the Lord. He asks him to bring about faith that shall enable him to live. It seems that this is an excellent example of where inducements ought to lead hearers. When they hear them, they should turn to the Lord.  However, it is also a good reminder for preachers and teachers. They are to persuade men, women, and children, yes, but they are to realize that God’s Spirit is the ultimate persuader.  They are only instruments in the hands of the Redeemer. They are not more. But they are certainly not less. May God make his ministers persuasive men.

Perhaps the most difficult aspect of pastoral work is the work of persuasion. In other words, how do we persuade others? How do we persuade unbelievers to see the beauty of Christ (II Cor. 5:11)? And how do we persuade Christians to do what they ought to want to do (Heb. 3:12)? The temptation for the minister is to act like a magistrate. However, there is a problem. We don’t have the power of a magistrate. John Chrysostom delineates the difference between the magistrate and the minister in his worthwhile, The Six Books of the Priesthood.[1]He writes,
“For Christians above all men are forbidden to correct the stumbling of sinners by force.  When secular judges convict wrong doers under the law, they show that their authority is complete and compel men, whether they will or no, to submit to their methods. But in the case we are considering it is necessary to make a man better not by force but by persuasion.  We neither have authority granted to us by law to restrain sinners, nor, if it were, should we know how to use it, since God gives the crown to those who are kept from evil, not by force, but by choice. For this reason a lot of tact is needed, so that the sick may be persuaded of their own accord to submit to the treatment…and be grateful for the cure.”[2]
A page after this quote Chrysostom writes, “But if a man wanders away form the right faith, the shepherd needs a lot of concentration, perseverance, and patience.  He cannot drag by force or constrain by fear, but must by persuasion lead him back to the true beginning from which he has fallen away.”[3]Strikingly, we have an example in Scripture as to how to do this very thing.  The Christians in the book of Hebrews were thinking of deserting the Faith and returning the Judaism. And in Hebrews 10:32-39 we have an example of persuasion.  I’d like to briefly unpack the thought.  In other words, I am going to show the inducements used by the preacher to persuade.
The Experiential Inducement
The preacher encourages his hearers to “recall former days when, after you were enlightened…” In other words, he asked them to remember the early days of their faith when God’s gospel light poured through the windows of their soul (II Cor. 4:6).  Obviously, the days had become difficult.
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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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