Ep. 191 - A Biblical View on Masculinity

If you're going to take care of my daughter , you need to be able to be the provider of her , you need to be a protector of her and you need to be a prophet or a priest to lead her .

Well , but I would love it if we could maybe just spend a moment here in defining what does it mean to be a biblical man , what does biblical masculinity look like , so that we can take inventory of the people that are listening and say where do I need to check off and what do I need to work on ?

I haven't seen that one .

Okay , do you remember when that dude swallowed that guy ? Yeah , you thought that was cool .

I got to preach on our anniversary in Singapore , but something that Mark would hate is the Singaporean food vibe . So in Singapore they have these things called hawker centers and hawker centers and basically what they did is they like street food was a major culture in Singapore .

But , as they wanted to kind of clean up the streets and make it more available for tourism , they created these hawker centers where they pushed all the street vendors into and so the locals go there to eat and you can like get dishes for $2.00 . And there's like food I've never even heard of before .

And so my strategy was I'd walk into the hawker center , I'd find the longest line , I'd get in it and I'd get to the front . I'd just be like I'll take whatever everyone else is having and I ate some of the most incredible food . I have no idea what I was eating , but it was so good .

So chewing gum it is a $2,500 fine to litter , which includes spitting your gum out .

Ray , mark , easy and Oscar provide encouragement for me to share the gospel with family , friends and any person with a pulse . In my church I've been known as the Living Waters guy , not because I push the Living Waters agenda , but because they have noticed I'm comfortable and excited to speak about the Bible , apologetics and evangelism .

And they wonder how do you know this stuff ? And my answer usually is I learned it from a book or study or tract or movie or YouTube video or audio book or podcast episode or the evidence study Bible from LivingWaterscom . Let me put a bunch of Rs like the way I say it . I've also got to say don't cry . As easy as easy .

But a recent episode with Pat Nemmers had me choked up in tears right before getting out of the car to head to my office . I'm so grateful for this podcast and this ministry . I encourage any and all Christians to take a listen and take advantage of the resources provided by this incredible ministry . Wow , man , what a comment , thank you . Thank you , skyler .

I hope you guys touch us and take heed to his advice and visit the LivingWaterscom .

I mean , our world is destroyed because of departure from God's truth on this topic Many others of course too , but on this one in particular for our purposes today and the ramifications

are so far worse and I think people realize , and I think it's the proverbial frog in the pot and we've been slowly being boiled and femininity .

This is very , very key , and this is the future , really , of apologetics , where man attacks man , created in the image of God , right , and this is why our next episode after this is a biblical view on what it means to be feminine , right , so we have to always go back to our ultimate source of authority , which is the word of God .

So this isn't new and we need to be ready for this attack . So I'm actually very excited that Oscar spearheaded this whole idea to deal with this , and excited to see what he's going to come up with . Yeah , I got nothing .

He is designed to be the prophet , priest and king of the land , and he fails as a prophet . He fails as a prophet when he lies and blames the women . He fails as a priest when he doesn't protect her . And he fails as a king when he abdicates his throne and ultimately gets kicked out of the garden .

And then you see a response from Eve , which she'll have a desire over , which is an authoritative challenge .

So right there in Genesis , you see the beginning of this contention of what it means to be a man , a failure from a man , and also what it means to respond to being a man , which is a challenge from the woman , and it hasn't stopped in every culture , but the challenge . I think I did recommend this , maybe a little too early , because I'm still .

I've read a handful of books on it . I've been really curious about it . I'm interested in what it means . To try to boil down and distill what biblical manhood is , because the challenge is , we have a lot of cultural interpretations .

I think there's two cultural narratives as what it means to be a man , and both of those narratives fall short of the scriptural narrative . And on top of that , I confessionally tend to impose cultural standards and expectations that are extra biblical on what it means to be a man .

And , just as an example , if you think back throughout history , think about how we think of masculinity today , like in the fifties , men wore cowboy boots and you had cowboy culture . In the seventies , it was motorcycles . In the 10th century Persia , though , men wore high heels . That's where high heels started , was for men .

It was a form of expression that was totally accepted and considered good and beautiful when men cried . So what does it mean to be a masculine man ?

We're gonna bring our own interpretations to it , and we have to be careful when discipling other people that we don't impose cultural standards , but rather we truly get back to what the Bible says about biblical masculinity .

So , for example , yeah , it's cultural in other eras or other contexts , nations where men wore skirts or dresses or whatever . The Romans wore many skirts , yeah , right , well , the Irish and the Scottish right Do as well . You know what I'm saying , but obviously within our context here , if a man were to wear a dress , what have you done ?

Ray knows them all .

In my perspective , like I remember in my 20s and in college , all of my friends were wearing skinny jeans and it got to the point where some of the guys were buying girl jeans because they wanted the skinny jeans and all the older guys were like you guys are wearing girl clothes , like that's ridiculous .

And then today , like I talk to a lot of Gen Zers and I see guys with black nail polish . Okay , I don't feel comfortable with that , that's not my thing . You will never see me putting nail polish on . But as I'm discipling men , I have to be careful not to impose my generational cultural expectations on them .

Where I'm like why are you putting black nail polish on , dude ? Like because it's a cultural standard that I'm imposing . That's not biblical , right , it's extra biblical .

Obviously that's cultural , because even within the Hebrew culture at the time , there were others around that may have wore things that they wouldn't have worn within their context . So I think it's definitely one to tease out .

I would say for a man to walk around wearing a dress , makeup , nail polish , high heels , in our context is something that would be inappropriate . I agree , yeah , so yeah , I know we're saying the same thing . I'm just trying to kind of you know clarify .

You're just simply saying I don't need to point that thing out right now , but as they mature , as they grow , eventually I wanna address that because of the appearance that it has .

Within New Testament , first century culture , it's believed that men didn't have hair as long as we see them depicted in paintings , but it was longer than what would be the clean cut modern American man . But you know , earrings , those were like whoa when men first started wearing earrings

. They've become more common . What do you think about that ? Does that bother you or do you think some of it is cultural , that there are changes that can happen ?

And so if I was to talk to a non-believer that was wearing lipstick a guy , yeah , I'd say you got the liberty , put lipstick on your one if you want , but you can offend a lot of people , especially the older generation , because it's just . It's just against nature , so to speak , in our culture . I remember when I became a Christian I got my haircut .

It used to be just look like plumbers rope hanging on my shoulders . I got it trimmed only because I didn't want to offend anybody . Yeah , I just wanted to clean up for the sake of my new Christian testimony , and so it should reflect what's in our heart never to cause any other Christian to stumble by what we do or say or where .

Yeah , that's really good .

I think we should strive to say look , of course there's a cultural context . Right , I'm not gonna talk to a brother who may be wearing a woman's skirt here in the US the way I would talk to a guy in Scotland who's wearing a kill . Right , I mean it's , you have to be sensitive to that .

But I do think , like we're talking about a cultural context has some bearing on some of these Principles we find in scripture and man not wearing what pertains to woman , a woman wearing what pertains to a man . So yeah , so go ahead . Oscar , you're gonna say that's really good .

In culture there's that seems to be felt necessity to emasculate masculinity , and that narrative is essentially the nuclear family is patriarchal and masculinity is Intrinsically toxic . That's the narrative that's out there . And the problem with this narrative is it doesn't know what to do with men's God-given roles .

They view men as a problem to be solved Rather than a role to be celebrated and cultivated which is given to us by God .

And the problem with that too is that I think men feel Ellen alienated , frustrated and Instunted and these God ordained ways in which he has called us to love and lead and protect Both women , children , vulnerable in the world around us , we don't know like , if you ask much of the culture , there's no place for masculinity . Yeah , it needs to be Masculated .

It's a danger Someone said it like this in a betrayal of the integral union of manly traits and ethical excellence that the etymology of the term virtue implies , modern visions of the good man are seldom of someone who is very good at being a man .

So , in other words , we just don't have a place for true masculinity in much of the culture , because it's a fear no , but there's also . So that's emasculating masculinity . And then there's a response that's also not biblical , which is toxic masculinity . And toxic masculinity is prevalent in our culture as well .

The traditional Christian view of masculinity has been mostly replaced by secularism , social Darwinism and the Industrial Revolution . And so , if you think about , like pagans in the 15th century , they treated marriage as a legal contract to procreate and extra merit affairs was common . And then on comes the Christian scene .

You know , 2000 years ago , and the husband was expected to be faithful to their wives . This was very unusual in pagan culture . They are supposed to love their wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her . Masculinity was a rare thing in pagan culture and it was very unusual .

And the problem is that in the Industrial Revolution , during the Industrial Revolution , something radical changed when it comes to men . In the Industrial Revolution , men went to work away from the home . You see , pre Industrial Revolution , men worked in the home alongside their wives and their children .

If I was a carpenter in the 1400s , my workshop would be in my home , my children would work with me , my wife would help with the finances and maybe be a . As someone came and ordered something , she might be the one that takes the order and gets the measurements and etc .

We worked together as a family , which means the husband was home to disciple their children , to be with their wives , and during the Industrial Revolution men went to work away and they got separated from their wives and from their children for extended period of times and so they were considered a religious , undemesticated and Intrinsically dangerous to the family ,

because now they were gone and out of that come the cowboy ethos . And so in the 70s , which you get is like this the real man embraces separation from the family as like the justified way of Darwinianism . Instead of being a family man , cowboy culture promotes this idea of like the anti family man .

It's like your job is to go out and be manly and do manly things and then come home to a Domesticated way , and so the result of the real man because of that is like men have a physical force , men are Independent . We get the phrase noble savage , that that's what it means to be a man .

They're untamed , they tell it like it is and you get bad examples today , like I hate to say it , but Andrew Tate , steve Crowder , mark Driscoll , charlie Kirk there's this idea that they are what men are and I just someone just sent me a clip of Charlie Kirk , mark Driscoll talking and I was so Disgusted about the way they were communicating Masculinity .

He said a famous cigarette billboard pictures of curly-headed , bronze faced , muscular macho with a cigarette hanging out of the side of his mouth . The sign says where a man belongs . That's a lie . Where a man belongs is at the bedside of his children , leading in devotional and prayer . Where a man belongs is leading his family to the house of God .

Where a man belongs is up early and alone with God seeking vision and Direction for the family . What say you , mark ?

We need to go back to what the Bible has to say and , unashamedly , without reserves , without apology , start there and stay there . Right , and we have . I remember I was out witnessing in Huntington Beach and I began to explain something to a woman , and a woman had said you're mansplaining . And everything within me wanted to say what is mansplaining ?

And the moment she explained it , I wanted to say why are you woman-splaining ? You know to me , right ? So we , it says , if we can't have a conversation in gender politics , is Leading the charge here and we need to be careful .

Right when I had met with this young man named Ryan , who's dating my daughter , I told him to prepare for my daughter , you need to prepare yourself , and the whole adage of things where what are we looking for in a man ? Right , it is a man . If you're gonna take care of my daughter , you need to be able to be the provider of her .

You need to be a protector of her and you need to be a prophet or a Priest to lead her .

Well , but I would love it if we could maybe just spend a moment here in defining what does it mean to be a biblical man , what does biblical masculinity look like , so that we can take inventory the people that are listening and say where do I need to Check off and what do I need to work out ?

You know , the world basically wants to blur those lines and they wanna say there's no male nor female , unless it comes down to something that they want . So it's like a woman has a right to talk about abortion . I mean , we've talked this a how many times . But what is a woman ? We don't know , right , I mean utter stupidity .

But , ray , the Bible makes clear distinctions and this does not equate to inequality , it's just a difference of roles .

He has been , and I remember seeing a movie about John Wayne and this woman was lying on a rock and she was gonna shoot him because he killed her kid brother and so she shot him . He fell off his horse onto the ground and she walked up and kicked his body and suddenly he hits her in the back of the knee . She falls on the deck .

She looks up at him and says how could I have missed ? And then , in typical John Wayne fashion , he gets his big masculine hand , grabs blood from his shoulder where she shot him , swipes that blood across her jacket and said you didn't ,

he shot him . And John Wayne is tough . I mean he's the guy that's still got 200 arrows in his back when he's shooting Indians . But in real life , I mean that's Hollywood in real life . When John Wayne died of cancer , he called for a preacher to be by his bedside .

So there's a Hollywood world and there's a real world , and that Hollywood world is what the world pushes forward , john Wayne . You never see him crying like Jesus cried . You never see him being gentle with a woman like James Bond is just typical masculinity shoot guys and conquer women .

That's the whole image they have , and so we need to relook at what the Bible says about what a real man is . I love the way Jesus cleared the temple . You realize this was a carpenter with strong hands .

You kind of think to yourself I don't know how many men were in the temple buying and selling , but they put this hey guys , this guy's tipping my tables over . There's only one of him and there's like a hundred of us . Let's beat him to death . But no , jesus was so strong and so manly , he just freaked them out .

And I love that image of someone who picks the woman , talks to the woman well in gentleness and picks the woman out of the dirt who's been caught in the act of adultery and treats people with respect and weeps over Jerusalem . Weeps , takes children to himself , puts them on his knee . John Wayne didn't do that sort of thing .

I think this gravitation toward him and also by supposedly Christian men I don't mean to say that they're not genuinely Christian , but I think it speaks to the fact that there is a vacuum in our culture and so men are gravitating towards toxic guys like that .

I cannot understand for the life of me how a man of God could use that guy as the example for manliness . This guy is a crass , godless , harsh , arrogant man .

Vodibhakum said something really interesting about the standard the world sets for what a true man is . The ball field , the bedroom and the billfold that's the world standard . The ball field hey , how are you in sports . The bedroom , yeah , you know how do you . And then the billfold how much money do you make ?

But I want you guys to listen to something that had me in tears this morning , and the interesting thing is is that this was written by a woman , gloria Furman .

It's masculinity that fervently loves others from a heart that has been born again , born not of seed , which is perishable , but imperishable . True masculinity is reborn through the living and abiding word of God . The unashamed masculinity I love to follow in my home is far more impressive than macho pride .

It's masculinity that is willing to take the painful shrapnel in the battle against his own sin , rather than run from sin and hide in the comfort of silence . It is a masculinity that willingly exposes its life to the iron sharpening iron of open and honest male accountability relationships .

The unashamed masculinity that guards the hearts in my home puts away rash , cutting words that pierce like a sword . My husband's Christ honoring masculinity understands the power of words and he uses words to bring healing to me and our children .

The unashamed masculinity I cherish in my home is such that fixes its eyes on Jesus and turns its eyes away from all the vain things of this world that hold a potent charm over other men . My husband's Christ honoring masculinity flees from promises whispered by a hiss Wow .

The unashamed masculinity I need in my home is concerned that others find their delight in God . Nothing quite says I love you to me than when my husband is willing to humbly stand up to the things I pursue that obstruct my everlasting joy in God .

His loving masculinity reassures me of Christ's atonement made on my behalf and of the privilege I have to boldly approach the throne of grace . Unashamed masculinity has less to do with how many horses a man owns or how fast he can run . Unashamed masculinity is about what a man does with the gospel . Where can you see this unashamed masculinity ?

You see it wherever a man has peered into the empty tomb and found new motivation to lay down his life , to spread the gospel in the soaks of Casablanca , into the office spaces in Dallas , into the cafes in Geneva , into the shanty towns of Mumbai , into the boroughs of Sao Paulo and into the universities of Toronto .

I want to model what it looks like to be a godly man , yeah , where we are continually forgetting those things which are behind and we press onwards , we push upwards and we leave the results to God . I kind of accumulated a quick little list here on what it means to be a man , what it looks like to be a man . What is ?

He controls his appetites , hmm , right , and what does that mean ? He controls his , his sex drive . He doesn't put himself in a position where he tempts the enemy to tempt him . He also controls his eating right . Is he eating to live or is he living to eat ?

We need to be simple in our approach to these sort of things , because when the enemy comes knocking in either one of those areas when our eyes are focused on the Lord , we will not be given over to the left or the right , and we have accountability that is attached to that . Next is he protects his family . We talk about that , you know .

Every single day I watch a video from a guy named John Korea on active self-protection on YouTube and he teaches you kind of the ends of the ounce on how to protect yourself or to be on the lookout when a situation arises . That just seems a rye right . So we need to protect our family from physical harm and from wrong thinking .

Yeah you know , when we recognize that , or for watching a movie , don't be afraid to maybe just pause that movie . And to Oscar , you said that you do this with your kids . I think it's absolutely beautiful . What are we seeing that's off here ? What logical fallacy is employed here ? What is going on ? Just pause .

Yeah , I have a friend who every time he's watching a movie , there's a little sign underneath this television that says the five-minute rule is an effect Meaning if there is a blasphemy that I apply that that happens inside the movie . He pauses the movie for five minutes and then they fellowship and they talk .

Hmm , it may take 12 days to get through that Right , because they should just turn the movie off . Yeah right , I mean I can't , I can't force my thing on him , but that's what he does and that's what he thinks works for his , his family .

We need to provide for our family Financially and we need to provide for them spiritually , and a godly man is going to do that . And that's not to say , obviously , that a woman cannot bring money into the house , that she can't be a doctor or even a mechanic .

You know that we may think that's ultimately typically a male Responsibility , but if you're gonna provide for your family , especially in today's day and age , you're gonna try to figure out ways to diversify your income to be able to have maybe even side hustles , in order to Not give your kids better than the way you had it , but to demonstrate to your kids how

to be a better giver in today's society . Hmm , and then you need to be able to lead your family . You need to lead your family . In order to lead your family , you need to study your family . These are individual people , yeah ,

and you need to lead them with family devotions . And even if the kids will not be a part of that , you're there with your wife , and if your wife won't be a part of that , you are by yourself inside the living room , leading in devotion as well as you possibly can . And then , finally , is having humility before god .

You recognize who you are Inside , of being saved by grace . There's a dependence upon god and there's an acknowledgement of imperfection . Without god , I can't do it , but with god I can do all things and I think that's a pretty good example of what it means to be a Biblical male .

I read it because I wanted to to see what they were saying , and after about three or four books I was discouraged because I just couldn't find anything out there that I felt like . I felt like there was just a missing space for True biblical masculinity .

And then I found a book by brant hanson called the men we need and I cannot this enough For all guys to read , and even ladies , especially if you're single , so that you know what to look for in a man . And essentially he calls men keepers of the garden and he distills it down to five things . What does it mean to be biblical masculinity ? For sakes in ?

Protect the vulnerable , which you talked about . Be ambitious about right things , make women and children feel safe , not threatened he has a whole chapter dedicated that . One's really good and then take responsibility for your own spiritual life . Those are the five areas in which he says biblical masculinity Transcends all cultures .

If you do these five things , you are adhering to what biblical masculinity has for you . That's really good .

Right , you're a hater . And I think , too , we do have to be careful , because sometimes the world takes the term Toxic masculinity and they they apply it to everything you know .

And so we have to , as as believers , be able to discern between that and recognize they may call it that , but that it's not toxic because it aligns with scripture , you know , but right , I think a big hallmark of true biblical masculinity is someone who's a servant leader . I mean , leadership is huge .

Obviously it was a mandate from the very beginning , wasn't a part of the fall , as some Egalitarians will try to tell us . But from the beginning God gave man dominion . He appointed him to name all the animals later . It's referenced in the New Testament that man was created first , and so that there is a headship given there .

But a servant leader is what's key .

And Jesus washed his disciples feet and he said I've seen an example , and Humility and masculinity should go hand in hand , obviously if you're a Christian yeah , and you know we talked about mark your reference .

If you look at the whole milieu of scripture , that's part and parcel with with what biblical manhood is , and so I think it's important for us to remember those key things and recognize that it's not on the basis of what culture thinks or what we feel , but man .

It's walking like Jesus , it's living like the Savior , and my encouragement to men is read 1st Corinthians 13 , the fruit of love , and ask yourself Do I bear that in my life ? Oh , are you gonna say something ?

And then p Andrew Sandlin said one of the most tragic cultural shifts of the us is in the last quarter century Is a loss of rugged manliness . In my experience , most young men , including young christian men , suffer from laziness , lack of ambition , obsession with cheap entertainment , avoid of chivalry or protection of women and a whiny , self-centered , non-risk taking .

Wow , I love that . That defines , I think , our culture well , and I just think . I think we need to step back , reexamine and say lord , where are we ? What are we doing as men ? Are we living According to the design you've laid out ?

David was an incredible leader and yet he at times fell short of being a man . And the reality is that we all me included at times fall short of being a biblical man . I fall short at any time . I don't have a gentleness towards the people around me who are weaker than me . I fall short any time . I advocate responsibility and we all ultimately fall short .

But there is one who'd never fell short of being a man and that was Jesus .

And the beautiful thing about him for the guys listening out there who might be convicted that you've fallen short of biblical manhood the beautiful thing is that he ultimately does not fall short and he offers up his life for us as a sacrifice so that we can be free from all of the tempting ways that we want to abdicate our manhood .

We can be free from that and live a life in Christ to be more like him , so that we become the men that the women and children and world around us need to be . That happens only through the blood of Jesus .

And then there I said , real men demonstrate character , courage , commitment , conviction , devotion , valor and loyalty and , what's more , they're willing to sacrifice for the sake of others and for causes that are greater than themselves .

Most importantly , real men are willing to fight for what's right and they do so in the energy and spirit of those indispensable attributes I highlighted . And so , men listening to me , the biggest problem today that is destroying men is the issue of pornography .

And if you really want to be a real man , repent of this sin , because it's destroying you , it's destroying your family , it's destroying the glory of God , it's destroying the testimony of the gospel .

There's so many resources out there to help you , especially God's grace , so I hope you take that challenge , brothers , all right , friends , that's the end man seriously . We could have gone a couple hours on this . Hopefully we kind of scratched the surface , at least a little bit .

We'll see you here next time on the Living Waters Podcast , where still we have no idea what we're doing .