You guys look good this morning. My name is Kyle.
I serve as lead pastor here. I want to welcome you to New
Life Community Church, especially if you're visiting
with us today. Special thanks to you college
students. You showed up in force today.
Welcome back, or welcome to for the first time, New Life
Community Church. We're glad that you're here, and
we look forward to being able to serve you this semester if
you'll allow us. All right, so get plugged in
with Logan and Adeline, and we'll have a lot of fun this
year anyway, if you need anything.
Also, while you're in town, come see us.
We're we're happy to try to help you out.
All right, So if you have your Bible, could you turn to
Genesis, Chapter 2? Genesis, Chapter 2.
Genesis is a book of beginnings. It is the beginning of our holy
scriptures. And so it's right there at the
front of your Bible. It's easy to find and we'll be
in Chapter 2 this morning. We kicked off a series last week
that's called Happy the Home, which was taken from a hymn that
reads Happy the home when God is There.
And the idea is to recover in this series, a biblical view of
the household, a biblical view of the home, if you will.
What is it that God has done in the ordering his creation, but
ordering families, especially in the way that he has designed
them. And so last week we looked at
how God created us and he created us, male and female, in
his own image and likeness. We looked at what that meant.
We saw that we are to be worshippers of God, that we are
to take our marching orders from the Lord.
We are to submit ourselves to Him as we think about maleness
and femaleness. Yes, there are only two genders.
Amen. Amen.
And so we today are going to look at manhood from creation.
The next week we're going to get into womanhood from Creation.
And so this week's going to be focused more on what it means to
be a man. I don't think that that means
that women should check out. I think that there's much to
learn here about how it is it got his wired.
A man designed, a man created a man to operate and to live and
to work and to to do the things that he does for the glory of
the Lord. And so it's important for women
to learn here. Boys in the room, right?
You young men in training. This is an important sermon for
you. So making paper airplanes right
now, I need you taking notes, son.
All right. We want to be learning how to be
men. That Wells knows I'm messing
with him. I hope so.
So my sermon today is manhood from creation.
Now, you're probably aware, but in our world today, there are
many differing opinions. I mean, they're they're unending
opinions on what manhood or masculinity consists of what?
What's its makeup? What?
What makes a man a man? Is it that he can smoke a cigar
and drink a six pack and sit in a recliner and watch a football
game and not do the things that God has called him to do?
No, right. That's not what it means to be a
man that that's that's godless abdication of his duties.
Amen. But then there's a there's
another kind of man who seeks to to dominate things and to rule
through domination. And this is a godless.
It's a godless pursuit of dominion.
It's a godless domineering, I'll say that, of what it means to be
a man. And so the world, because of
those two, I think at least ditches as it pertains to
manhood. Because of those two, the world
has formed 1000 opinions on what masculinity is, isn't what it
should be, should not be. And it leaves largely men,
especially young men, men and even more so down the spectrum,
men without fathers, good fathers.
It leaves them questioning what is my purpose?
Why do I have the strong feelings I have?
Why has God created me with a a a body that has broad shoulders
and a voice that's deep and the desire to want to work and to
create and to seek adventure and enjoyment in life, like and then
the world kind of comes at you and says that these things are
sinful and they're not. You're wired that way by God for
purpose. And so that doesn't mean they're
not doing sinful things in those.
But coming back around to the notes, we most of the opinions
about manhood out there in the world are negative or negative.
And so our first concern is not what the world says about
masculinity and manhood. We don't look to the world first
to try to figure out, okay, how can we create a manhood or
masculinity that's palpable for the world, that the world could
choke down, right, and swallow, That they could agree with.
The Western Church has gotten itself in a myriad of dangers
and troubles by looking at the world and letting the world
dictate what the church does. We must not be these kind of
people. We we can't coddle the world in
the way that we're called to live.
In fact, it's not good for the world, and our church has become
more worldly than godly when we do that.
And so we don't want men who are becoming more worldly than
godly. So we're not going to look at
the world first and say, all right, what is manhood?
No, we look at the scriptures. We always go to the scriptures
every time when it when it comes time, you know, to pick the
fruit of what the Western church has produced, we have found that
the fruit is rotten. And so we don't want rotten men,
we don't want rotten women, we don't want rotten boys and
girls. We don't want rotten churches.
We want churches that are alive by the Spirit of God, bearing
the fruits of God in the world. Amen.
This is the kind of thing that God wants for us.
If we'll go to His scriptures and see how do we do this, and
we'll submit ourselves to His work, we will see fruitfulness.
I promise you. God loves to answer the
petitions of His people which are in accordance to His will.
And when you pray, Lord, help me be the kind of man who honors
you. He answers those prayers.
Let me be the kind of woman who honors you.
He answers those prayers. And so our first concern always
is what does God's word say about this?
What does God's word say about masculinity and manhood?
That's the heart of the sermon, right?
What does manhood look like from creation?
When God made the first man and gave him orders, what was he
doing? What was God doing in that?
And so we want to see it clearly.
And that's part of my job today. So if you see clearly the
scriptures, we want to confess that these things are true after
we have seen them, and then we want to rejoice in God's good
design of men Today. God has blessed us in creating
men. It is good to be a man, and God
has blessed us in creating women.
It is good to be a woman. It's not good to be a woman if
you're a man, and it's not good to be a man if you're a woman.
Amen. These things are not okay.
So for my time, I want to explore what is masculinity
according to God, and then I want to charge us to walk in
these things. And I hope to provide for you a
command, a foundation, and a hope for your pursuit of godly
masculinity. And so I want to start with the
definition, and then we'll read our scriptures, biblical
manhood. And you can write this down if
you're taking those. Biblical manhood is bearing the
image of God by working and keeping all that God grants a
man in Christ's strength. Biblical manhood is work.
Sorry. Bearing the image of God by
working and keeping all that God grants amend in Christ's
strength. I'll give you just a second
before I have you stand and read God's Word.
All right. For you slow riders, that will
be up there again. All right, but let's stand and
read God's word. Sorry, Alan.
We're going to read Genesis 2 versus 4 through 17, and we're
going to notice here creation, particularly the creation of the
man and the creation of a place. These are the generations of the
heavens and the earth when they were created in the day that the
Lord God made the earth and the heavens, when no Bush of the
field was yet in the land, and no small plant of the field had
yet sprung up. So the Lord God had not caused
it to to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the
ground, and a mist was going up from the land, and was watering
the whole face of the ground. Then the Lord God formed the man
of dust from the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the
breath of life. And the man became a living
creature. And the Lord God planted a
garden in Eden in the east. And there he put the man whom he
had formed. And out of the ground the Lord
God made-up, made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to
the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the
midst of the garden. And the tree of the of of the
knowledge of good and evil. A river flowed out of Eden to
water the garden, and they're divided and became four rivers.
The name of the first is the Pachon.
It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Havilah, where
there is gold, and the gold of that land is good.
But Alium and Onyx stone are there.
The name of the second river is the I should have looked these
up, Gahan. It is the one that float around
the whole land of Kush. And the name of the third river
is the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria, and the fourth
rivers, the Euphrates. And the Lord God took the man
and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.
And Lord God commanded the man, saying, You may surely eat of
every tree of the garden. But if the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil you shall not eat from the day that you eat of
it, you shall surely die. This is the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God. Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word.
Lord, let us see now your wisdom in creation.
Let us see your purpose in the creation of men.
And Lord, may we submit ourselves to your word and to
your will for our lives. Lord, I pray that you would move
up on our hearts by your spirits as we go through this passage
today, as we study it, as we hear it preached.
Would you by your spirit give us faith?
Give us a desire to please you and our lives gives us give us
knowledge of our sinfulness and our need of repentance.
And the Lord by your spirit, would you reassure us by the
Savior, Christ Jesus, that we have reconcile us to the Father,
Lord, it's in Christ's name, I pray.
Amen. Amen.
You may be seated. And so, as we have seen already
last week, God created man in his own image.
And the image of God he created a male and female, He created
them. There's an old confession of
faith called the London Baptist Confession of Faith, and it sums
up with the first man and woman were like.
And these are some of the things we talked through last week, but
it's worthy of of mentioning today.
They were made in the image of God being endowed with
knowledge, righteousness and true holiness.
They had the law of God written in their hearts and the power to
fulfill it. Even so, they could still
transgress the law because they were left to liberty of their
own will, which was subject to change.
And So what we see in the garden is that when the man and the
woman were created, they were in the image of God.
And that the man is like the president's impress on a coin.
We said last week, he is not God, He is not the president,
but he resembles him. He resembles God.
And then we see what they were supposed to do by way of a
blessed command from God. And and God bless them.
And God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill
the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of
the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over every
living thing that moves on the earth.
And so man burying the image of God is to exercise dominion.
He's blessed by God. The man and the woman were
blessed to fill the earth as image bears with other image
bearers. This was the purpose of
marriage, which we'll look at in a couple of weeks.
It's for the purpose of subduing and exercising dominion in such
a way that the garden paradise would extend to the ends of the
earth. God meant for them to spend
their lives and worship to him as they lived out the roles that
He had given them, as they'd lived out the way that he had
created them, to live and operated in the ways that were
obedient to his commands, all for his own glory.
And so the first thing we must understand about true manhood,
true masculinity, is that it bears the image of God.
It has to. True manhood.
Manhood that's been reconciled to God the Father bears the
image of God. It's working these things out.
But what should it look like? What do we mean when we say it's
burying the image of God? Right?
We have to define them. We have to answer that question.
Adams created in the image of God.
He's told to do these things, but how does that flesh itself
out and in what ways is he burying the image of God?
Well, that's what I want to get into.
I'm glad you asked. It's working.
And keeping all that God grants a man.
This is how we bear the image of God in the earth, is that we
work and keep all that God grants a man.
So Genesis One is like a 30,000 foot view, if you will, of the
creation account. Genesis 2 recalls in vivid
detail the creation of the man and the woman and their purpose.
And so we read here in Genesis 2 that he created the man from the
dust of the ground that he breathes lives into him, meaning
he literally breathed into his soul.
The breath of life gave him his soul, and then he planted a
garden and placed the man in it. Genesis 2738 literally says
these things right. The Lord God formed the man of
the dust of the ground. He breathed into his nostrils
the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.
And then the Mercedes says the Lord God planted the garden and
Eden in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed.
So these are sentences that I have read over and over again in
my life. There's some of my favorite
passages and scripture I love to go back to, especially these
creation passages of Genesis One and Two, and even into the fall
and and chapter 3. Because so much of what we do as
a people, as a church, as a as fathers and husbands, as mothers
and wives, as sons and daughters, so much of what we
do, we find its inception, its beginnings.
In Genesis One and two, we receive our marching quarters,
so, so to speak. It informs who we are and what
we're to be doing. And so there's some of my
favorite passages. We vividly see the creator at
work. But it wasn't until just a few
years ago I noticed the order and what I think is the
significance of God putting the man in the garden, which I
didn't see until I was looking at Matthew Henry's commentary a
few years ago. You see, the man was made
outside of paradise. He was not made in the garden.
The whole earth was not the garden.
God created the man from the dust of the ground and then put
him into Eden. He was made outside of paradise.
It's after God forms him that he takes the man and he puts him
into the garden. And so he places the man in the
garden. And Matthew Henry words it this
way, says the man was made of common clay, not of paradise
dust. He was made of common clay.
You and I are made of common clay.
This is one reason to worship the Lord is that we are.
We talked about this last week, right?
He's the Potter. We're the clay.
We we hold this valuable thing especially as believers and
vessels of clay. The man lived outside of Eden
before he lived in it. Why?
Well, so that he may see that all the comforts, all the
comforts of his new life, of his new paradise home, were the
result of God's free grace, and not the result of anything that
he had yet done. He had not yet cultivated the
ground. He had not yet worked, or kept
or done any of the things that God is going to command him to
do. He's created.
And then God places him in the Garden of Eden.
And so he sees the world outside, and then he gets to see
the world inside. Adam could not plead a
residential right to the garden. When it came time to kick him
out, he could not say, no, God, this is my garden.
Because he had been placed into it, he couldn't claim the land
as his. He was not born within its
borders. He only had what God had
graciously given to him. Therefore his boasting had to be
and got alone. It was in, it was in God alone,
right Matthew Henry again. He says the same God that was
the author of his being was the author of his bliss.
He that made us is alone able to make us happy.
But he that made us is alone able to make us happy.
And we don't want to miss the point here in Genesis 2 that
only the Creator wields the power to form bodies.
Only the Creator wields the power to father our spirits.
Only the Creator wields the power to provide blessed
happiness for both your body and your soul.
It's only the Creator that can do that.
And so, brothers, you must see today that any circumstance in
your life can be comforted. When you understand that God has
gone before you. When you see that God has gone
before you and he's placed you into it.
If you will trust the Lord, if you will follow His will, you
will find a paradise where you could not have expected a
paradise to exist. Got alone makes gardens out of
graves. Got alone redeems the what
others mark unredeemable. Got alone comforts, the sufferer
got alone shades. The sojourner got alone restores
the broken. He alone gives strength to the
weak. You could go on and on.
And so we do. As we read scriptures, we find
time and time again that God alone meets the needs of his
people, however vast they may be.
You can't do it yourself. And so the bottom line is, is
what is impossible with man is absolutely, unmistakably so
possible with God. Whatever we think is impossible.
We look at God and say, but we know that God this is possible
for you. So what do you mean you ask?
Well, again, I'm glad you asked. You're asked a lot of really
great questions today. Thank you.
This gets us to our second observation.
In the passage, we we see what God commands the man to do.
Look at verse 15 again. The Lord God took the man and
put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and keep it in a
sentence. God gives the man employment.
He gives the man something to do.
It gives him a job. He gives him a purpose more than
a job, right? Sometimes our jobs don't feel
like our purpose. There might be an end, a means
to the purpose, to to completing something.
But here we see that God gives the man employment.
God puts him in the garden to work.
It's the idea of working. Here is the idea of cultivating.
It's it's it's digging something up and planting something in and
helping it grow. Like it's the work of
cultivation. It's not just to work.
He's not just to cultivate things right.
He's not just out there building things and, you know,
discovering tools. I mean, you think about it like
there was fruit hanging in a tree at some point that he had
to figure out how do I get that fruit out of that tree?
And so he picks up a stick that he can whack the limb with.
Right now he's got now he's got a fruit picker, right?
That's not all that he was called to do.
He's called the keep. Also, God says it's not just
that the man works the ground or works.
He doesn't just cultivate, he keeps, which means he protects
you. See man, you were wired by God
from before the fall to be a worker and the keeper, to be one
who cultivates things and protects things.
This is why you feel called, drawn to those two tasks so
heavily. All right, now, I'm not saying
we don't get it out of shape. We'll get into those things.
But right now, I just want you to see that that drive you have
in you to work and to keep is from the Lord, It's from God.
These are good things for men to know about themselves, right?
It's not a fatal flaw of manhood, like these are good
things. So the man was tasked by God
with stewarding creation. He was given a place to dwell
and work to do. Be fruitful.
Adam multiply, fill the earth, subdued creation, exercise
dominion over it, work and keep Adam.
See, Adam was God's under shepherd in the field.
He was tending to God's creation.
God holds all things together by the power of His word.
God holds all things together. By his His might, His power got
a sovereign over all events. There's nothing outside of God's
control or his providential hand.
He orders his will to be done and guess what?
It gets done and God executes. So what I don't want you to miss
about this. God executes his providential
plans, his providential work through the hands of his people.
Many times, God's Providence has come through the hands of
people, right? People.
He's ordained to do things for His purposes.
And so you were not put on this earth, brothers, to be idle.
You're not put on this earth to be idle.
You're not put on this earth to to stand still, right?
You're not Leviathan. You know who Leviathan is and
the Old Testament. And Job.
Leviathan is a he's a dragon, let's be honest, right?
He's a he's a dragon beast who plays in the water.
And we read about God that he created this dragon beast who
plays in the water because he's a good creator for his own
enjoyment, essentially. But you're not Leviathan.
You're not meant to be a dragon beast who plays in the water,
although the summer some might have described you that way,
right? You are men, and God created you
and gives you the command to work and keep your fields.
You're not put on the earth to be idle.
God has given us souls and bodies, and in other words, he's
given us the tools to work with, to be workers and keepers, and
he has given us habitation on this earth.
He's given us a place, right? He's given us something to work
on. So you work and keep, but what
are you working keep. You're working and keeping all
the things that He's given you. How are you working and keeping?
You're working and keeping by the things that He's given you.
Your body, your soul, right. Your mind, your intellect.
God has wired you to be workers and keepers.
Matthew Henry again says he that gave us being has given U.S.
business to serve him and our generation and to work out our
salvation. If we do not mind our business,
we are unworthy of our being and maintenance.
We do not mind our business if we do not get to the things that
God has called us to do, that we are unworthy of our being and
the maintenance it requires to keep us afloat, keep us
breathing. So think of your life, brothers,
young men, men, boys. In here, think of your life.
What has God-given you? What fields, so to speak?
We use this terminology of fields in biblical manhood.
What? What fields has God-given you to
work and to keep? Do you have a breath in your
lungs today? If not, somebody call 911,
right? Yes.
Do you have a body? I don't see any.
Just spirits floating around here today.
Right. You have a body.
Are you employed? Maybe some of the boys in here
like how, But man, I want to be right.
You are employed, sons. You're employed in the business
of school. You're employed in the business
of obeying mommy and daddy in your home, of learning to be the
kind of man who works and keeps his territory, his room, his
things, his stuff, right? Hard at work in those ways.
Are you a friend and you have friendships to cultivate and to
protect? Are you a father?
Well. Do you have children to work and
to keep? To cultivate their hearts, their
minds, their souls to love? The Lord our God, who we know is
1 Above all else, according to Deuteronomy 6, you have your
marching orders for fatherhood. Are you married?
We'll get into that in a couple of weeks.
But you have your marching orders, Especially in a passage
like Ephesians 522. You see that this is how a man
is to live along his wife. This is how a woman is to live
alone, her husband. It's how they're to treat one
another, to dwell with one another in unity.
And so you have fields that this if you're single, right?
You say, well, I'm not married yet.
I don't have that. Well, you're you're cultivating
your own heart and your own mind, right?
We're all doing this anyway, but as a single man or single woman
in here, especially a single man, you need to become the kind
of man that would attract the kind of woman you think you're
worthy of, right? Whether you're a teenager or a
college student or young adults, an old adult doesn't matter.
You're single. This is what you're after,
right? You say, well, I want to be
married at some point and you need to look into the you need
to look into the scriptures and see what kind of a woman should
I be looking for. And once you find that out, you
need to say what kind of a man does that woman seek?
And you need to align yourself with the word of God, right?
So we all have, if you're a churchman, right, like you have
duties as a churchman. If responsibilities as a member
of the church. And you men do an incredible job
around here, like, I'm I have no problem praising the men in this
church. You're worthy of it.
You work hard, you, you seek to preach the gospel to others.
You want to create areas around here where people can come to
know Christ as Lord and and to serve him.
And I praise you for that. Right.
So you got desires, you have hobbies, like you understand,
like your fields, everybody's got fields and you can start
like here in your heart and you start here in your mind and you
can say, all right, let me begin here.
And for that, just read Proverbs chapter One and on into, you
know, 31. But you can begin to work and
keep your heart, your mind by learning wisdom, the wisdom of
God. And then you got to go out from
there, though. Like if you have a marriage and
you have children, you have employment, you have a city, you
have a church, right? Like, these are things we're
responsible for, men. Tim Chally's wrote a chapter in
a book about employment and these kinds of things, and in it
he said this. He said your life is each of
these and and the sum of these, individually and altogether,
they are a platform from God that allow you to extend to
others the goodness and kindness of God on behalf of God.
And whenever you do that, however you do that, God
receives the glory. Amen gets a star point last
week. We're not glory seekers.
We're not seeking our own glory. We want to glorify the Lord.
So God could could have created a world in which in such a way
that He did all of these good things himself with without
involving us at all. However, he ordains the work of
men instead, and he He assigns task to men.
And he says for you to do things right, to work and to keep and
to to subdue creation and to be fruitful and multiply.
And so you serve as a kind of conduit for the goodness of God.
You're you're the water pipe, so to speak, and He's the source of
the water. And you're you're helping these
things happen. So whatever roles God's given
you, those are your daily opportunity to glorify God by
serving others. Like this is the way we redeem a
job that we hate. We understand that the job that
we hate is grumbling against the Lord.
The Lord has provided a job that we hate you.
You see what I'm saying? It's not okay to hate the job
that God has given you. It's not it's not a bad thing to
look for other employment at some point.
But be grateful for what you have and serve the Lord in your
job in such a way that people can see He's grateful to God,
He's grateful to the Lord, right?
Whatever roles He's giving you, they're your daily opportunity
to glorify the Lord. And this is what it looks like
then to to be a faithful servant to the God who glorifies himself
by serving men. We want to glorify him.
It's working unto God is worship unto God.
He is the source of each one of the fields.
And and so there's dignity and working and keeping your field.
And Ephesians 210 We see that as we have been born again, we have
become the workmanship of Christ created, the workmanship of God
created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepares
beforehand that we might walk in them.
So again, all the things that you have as fields are things
prepared by the hand of God beforehand that he's granted to
you in his grade. And so you ask yourself, who has
God made me to be? What gifts do I have?
What skills do I have? What passions has God-given me?
What roles and responsibility has he assigned to me?
Those are your fields to 10 You cultivate them.
You work them out of love for God, out of love for the people
that he surrounded you with. You do those things. 1st
birthday in 717. We have a wildly freeing verse.
If you grew up in church, you might have grown up in like the
calling era. Everybody had a calling.
Everybody had to be called to something grand and amazing.
And this youth group and that youth group, they're going to be
world changers. And here we are, decades later,
in the world's largely the same. So we must be missing the point.
If we're just missing. And then the point that we're
missing is this life is mundane and ordinary, and we need to get
used to it, because this is how God works.
He uses the mundane and and and and the ordinary for
extraordinary, majestic purposes.
But it's okay to live in the mundane and ordinary.
It's okay to just wake up and put your shoes on, right?
And like, brush your teeth and go to work and love the people
you work with, love your family that you come home to like.
These are good, godly things. And so first, we're at the
seven. Sorry.
Paul writes here, and it's just a wildly free verse.
He says only let each person lead the life that the Lord has
assigned to him and to which God has called him.
This is my rule in all the churches.
Amen. Lead the life that God has
assigned to you. That's your calling.
Are you a husband? Well, then God called you to be
a husband. Are you a?
Are you a father? Well, then, God has granted you
fatherhood, and you were called to be a father.
Are you single, then? God has called you to singleness
in the season, right? Like that.
You need to cultivate and keep that and protect that and walk
in it and so many other things, right?
All these things I'm mentioning so true.
Manhood does not rest on the appearance of the man.
It it rests on the actions of the man.
It rests on what does the man do?
Because this is where we see his character and his convictions.
This is where we know if the man is worth something, and so geez
illustrates this. For in a parable it's a parable
of the talents. The master is going on a
journey, and he entrusts his property to his servants.
To one of the servants he gives 5 talents, to another he gives 2
talents, and to the last servant he gives one talent.
They gave to each according to his ability.
And while the master was away, the man with five talents made
five more talents. The man with two talents made
two more talents. The man with one talent went and
dug a hole, and buried his talent in the hole.
Now one of these is not like the other, right?
The master returns, and he wants to settle his accounts with his
servants. And to the man, to the men who
wisely stewarded what was given to them, the master said.
To to the two who doubled what they were given.
He said, Well done, good and faithful servant.
You have been faithful over a little.
I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your
master. That's a wonderful principle
that we need to understand about management again.
If if you're a college student male and you're driving a beat
up old car and you're living in a 12 by 12 dorm room, right?
That feels like a jail cell at times and you're having to share
that with a couple of guys, right?
Like you can start to think, dude, what's this guy talking
about? I don't have anything to
cultivate and to keep, to work and keep.
But you do. And and what God has given you,
He's saying be faithful in And as you're faithful with the
little things that you think are nothing, God is going to give
you more things that you might actually be working towards.
But you have to be faithful in what God's given you today.
Amen. This is why I tell my boys like
you guys need to be faithful in school.
This is your job. I don't care if you don't like
it today, right? Because it changes from
day-to-day. But you, you need to be faithful
here. And the stuff that you're
giving, you need to take care of the stuff that the Lord blesses
you with, right? And we're just teaching this
concept of working and keeping at an early age so that I want
my sons to be able to work and keep a family one day.
I want them to work and keep real jobs, right?
I want them to to work and keep churches and other men and all
of those things. But we have to start where we're
at. We don't wait till later, right?
And so the master returns. He wants to sell his account.
Now he turns to the one who buried his talent, and he says,
why did you bury the talent? And he says, Master, I knew you
to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow and gathering
where you scattered no seed. So I was afraid I went and hid
your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.
The man misunderstood his master's graciousness and giving
him work. So he was lazy and he exercised
bad stewardship. The master tells him He said you
could have at least put it in a bank where it would have drawn
interest. The point of the parable is to
be a faithful steward is to work and keep all that God and trust
to your care and proverbs 12 We read verse 11.
Whoever works his land will have plenty of bread, but he who
follows worthless pursuits lacks sense.
Oh, so now there's the rub, right?
There are lack. There are pointless pursuits,
and if you pursue those things you will lack bread.
But if you'll work the ground and cultivate the ground that
the Lord is granted to you, you'll eat, you'll eat, you'll
enjoy the fruit of your labor. In the Garden of Eden.
This Genesis 2 account, we observe a similar event.
Now we see that God gives the man a command concerning his
stewardship. And Lord God commanded the man
verse 16, saying, you may surely eat of the tree of the garden,
but if the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not
eat from the day that you eat of it, you will surely die.
So in our passage now, God has shown himself to be man's
powerful creator and his bountiful benefactor.
He appears now as his ruler and lawgiver.
God put the man in the garden for purpose.
It wasn't to live, however the man thought best.
It wasn't to. It was to live according to the
commands of God. It was to live according to the
rule of God on his life. Man wasn't to be idle as we
said. He wasn't to be willful and to
do whatever he pleased. Though man had God-given
dominion over creatures, he was himself a creature of God's
dominion. You know Adam was given a
command. You may surely eat of every tree
in the garden, but the tree of knowledge of good and evil, you
shall not eat of it, for when you eat of it, you will surely
die. So within the command you have
to notice this is a massive amount of grace.
There's a ton of grace here. There's tons of blessing here in
the command. And this is true of all of God's
commands. I I need you to know that today,
that when God issues a command to you, Sir, he's giving you a
ton of grace and a ton of blessing.
It's not a thumb coming down on you like a hard taskmaster.
Amen. Though the law when disobeyed,
Paul says it's like a hard taskmaster that the law when
obeyed it's blessing, it's fruitful.
And so this is true of all God's command.
To see them otherwise is rebellious and therefore sinful.
And so look closer. You may eat of every tree in the
garden, Adam blessing all of those I've given to you for life
and sustenance. Take of their fruit.
Eat it. But if you eat of the tree of
which I've said not to eat, you will be miserable, As miserable
then as you are happy right now, which is the life of the
disobedient ones. Amen.
When you're disobedient, you're as miserable.
Then, after your disobedience as you might have been in the
middle of it, or as you might have been happy before it, right
now, recognize that we all once walked in disobedience.
As Christians and even still today, we wrestle with
obedience. And so as you're aware, Adam
disobeyed God. He and his wife took of the of
of that forbidden fruit, and they ate their sins, removed
their purity, removed their innocence.
We're going to get into that in a couple weeks.
But they were kicked out of the garden because of the thought of
eating of the tree of life was, and and gaining immortality in
their sinful state was more than God wanted for them.
It's not what he wanted for them.
So God sent the man into the world to work the ground, which
was now cursed with thorns and thistles.
His work would be much more difficult than before, but worse
than that, his sin brought death and separation from God into the
world. And so, brothers, it's difficult
at times to submit to authority. But you will never faithfully
steward your godgiven fields if you do not submit to God's
authority over your life. It cannot happen.
You cannot seek your own way, right?
You cannot. Jesus says you can't serve 2
masters. He's the Creator, and so He has
granted you life. He's given you fields to 10.
He alone has the right to rule you, and you are obligated to be
ruled by him. Obligated.
And so you must not let your passions, your lust, your
desires, thwart God's commands. We cannot live in contradiction
to or in competition with the holy will of God and expect
fruitfulness. We have to we have to follow the
example of the perfect man, Jesus Christ, by doing only and
all that which God has commanded us.
And so that brings us to the final points in Christ Strait.
From the very beginning the Creator has informed creation of
its marching orders. His command has not changed the
command. This command from God is known
historically as the cultural mandate.
Even after the fall he expresses his covenants once again with
Noah. Once the floodwaters have
societed, he says be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth
and subdue it, He expresses it again, or versions of the same
with cut with his covenants to Abraham and David as well.
And so the presence of sin does not lift this command from God.
The the problem we have an image bearing, The problem we have in
fruitfulness and multiplication and subduing and exercising
dominion is not that we're men. It's not that.
It's manhood and masculinity are the issue.
We need to overcome those and become less manly or less
masculine and more like a woman. It It's not that at all,
although the world would have you to believe differently.
The problem is sinfulness. You, you and I are sinners in
need of the grace of God. You and I can't work and keep
all that God grants to us without the strength of Christ.
Because we're sinful. We have no strength.
We have no ability to carry these things out.
And if we look into the scriptures, we see how far we
have fallen. We see how the image of God upon
us is vandalized. The image of God exists on every
person, though the remains of it be small.
We talked about that last week, and so we seek the renewal of
His image upon our souls. By His redeeming grace,
brothers, Christ is now to us, the tree of life and a
Revelation. 2. Verse seven.
We read He who has an ear. Let him hear what the Spirit
says to the churches, To the one who conquers, I will grant to
eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.
Christ is to us the bread of life.
Jesus says so much. John Chapter 6 I'm the bread of
lie. I'm the living bread that came
down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he
will live forever. And the bread that I will give
for the life of the world is my flesh.
Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the
Son of Man and Drake his blood, you have no life in you.
So He's foreshadowing his coming crucifixion and how we must be
partakers of His crucifixion by faith in Him if we are to have
true life. Jesus obeyed his father unto
death. He died on a tree outside of
Jerusalem. His body was broken, His blood
was shed. All for the forgiveness of the
sins of all who will call on his name to be saved?
His people. And just as God graciously
clothed Adam and Eve as he's kicking them, sending them out
of the garden, He closed them in animal skins.
He graciously closed close us now in the righteousness of
Christ. And when you have received God's
spirit unto new life, which comes by God's grace through
faith in Christ, when you've received that you become a new
creation in Christ. Your old man passes away all
those old desires, all those old ways of living, all those wants
that you have right, that are sinful, that have gotten you in
a world of trouble, maybe. Have you here today thinking
there's no way God can forgive me?
I want to tell you, like the great theologian Oscar Meyer
says, baloney, good dad joke. He can forgive you.
You are forgiven in Christ if your faith is in Christ.
Christ did what you could not do, what you would never be able
to do. He is satisfied not only the
wrath of God, but the commands of God.
He lived perfectly. He was sinless.
And so when you trust Christ as your savior, when you say I am a
Sinner in need of a Savior, I've made a mess of my life and I'm
repenting now, and I'm submitting myself to Christ
Jesus as Lord. When you do that, you receive
the righteousness of Christ as your own.
You're justified freely by His grace, meaning the count.
The the account of your sin is cast as far as the East is from
the West. God remembers your sins no more.
He does not keep a record of your wrongs, your sins, past,
present, future, forgiven in Christ Jesus.
You guys have to become shouters, because that's
something worthy of shouting about.
And one day in heaven, you'll shout, You become a new
creation, an old man gone, New desires come, new fields to
tend, and sometimes just a new perspective on the fields.
You've been given already a New Hope.
And some brothers, I charge you, under the authority of God's
Word, to steward your lives in the way of Christ today.
Put to death the deeds of the flesh grow in the deeds of the
Spirit. And in this way, as you're doing
that, you will work and keep in Christ's strength all that God
grants to you. As we said at the beginning,
biblical manhood is burying the image of God by working and
keeping all that God grants a man in Christ's strength.
In John chapter 15, Jesus is speaking just before his
crucifixion and he's got the disciples within.
They're probably in the garden where he's going to pray and
sweat drops of blood, so there's probably vines around.
He says this. He says, I'm the true vine and
my father is the vine dresser. Every branch of me that does not
bear fruit, he takes away, and every branch that does bear
fruit, he prunes that it may bear more fruit.
And so today may be a wake up call for you.
You may be learning that you're a fruitless professor of Christ
for the very first time. You may be learning that you've
never truly submitted your life to Jesus's lordship, and so the
Spirit is calling you now to repent of your sins.
It could be, too, that in a sermon like this, you're coming
to see you're you're being convicted by the Spirit.
You're being pruned by the Father, cutting away things in
you that are godless, that are fruitless, exposing them by his
grace so that you can become the kind of man that God's called
you to be. Both of those things are worthy
of praise. Both of those things are worthy
of saying, God, how could you love a Sinner like me in such a
way that you would expose these things so that I might come
freely to you? Jesus goes on, He says, abide in
me and I and you, as the branch, cannot bear fruit by itself
unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide
in me. I'm the vine.
You are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I and
him, he it is that bears much fruit for part.
For me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me,
he is thrown away like a branch and Withers, and the branches
are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burnt.
If you abide in Me and my words about and you ask whatever you
wish, and it will be done for you.
By this my Father is glorified that you bear much fruit, and so
prove to be my disciples. He goes on.
I mean it just true. As the Father has loved me, so
have I loved you. Abide in my love.
If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I
have kept my Father's commandments and abide in His.
And so we abided Him. We're called by Christ to abide
in Him as He abided in the Father, and in that place and
that abiding you will be pruned their tough messages through
reading God's word through trials and sufferings.
But God is working in you, that you may flourish with the fruit
of Christ. If you will not abide in Christ,
you will not do anything of positive eternal value.
That's what you said. Apart from me, you can do
nothing. He's not saying that you'll sit
there like a lump on the log. He's saying that everything you
do matters not for eternity. Make no mistake, however, God
will be glorified by His judgment over your disobedience.
And if you will obey Christ's commands, you will be one of
those who abides in His love, just as he obeyed the Father
abides in His love. So you don't want to miss what
Christ is promising to those who give themselves, those who give
themselves to His rule. He promises that you will love,
that you will know the love of the Father, that you'll know the
love of the Son. He promises, just a verse later,
that his joy will be in you and your joy will be complete.
The Father will love you just as He loves his Son.
So therefore the command to abide is a promise of joy.
It's it's not just any joy. It's a promise that you will
know the joy of Christ as your own.
This is incredible, right? And and your joy will be full.
Saint Augustine worded it this way.
He said. My heart is restless until it
finds its until it finds its rest in you.
My heart is restless until it finds its rest in you.
What a blessed hope we have received in Christ Jesus.
Then I hope that is undefiled. It's kept in heaven for us and
he who will make all things new and the new heavens and the new
earth is making you new. Right now as we behold Christ,
we are being changed from 1 degree of glory to the next in
the same image of Christ. We bear the image of God in this
world because Christ saves sinners and sets his Spirit upon
them, that they might be able to look at Christ and bear the same
image of him. And therefore we carry that
image into every field that God has granted to you.
And you work it and you keep it for the glory of God.
We are the salt of the earth. We're the light of the world.
Christ says we join Christ and his redemption of all things.
He says that by your good deeds people will see that you know
the Father, and they'll glorify him.
And so, brothers, we want to hear the words of John as he
pins the revelation which he received from God.
And I think this is good to keep in front of us so that we know
the ending. It's good to know the ending,
isn't it? You might not know all the story
of your own, but you know the ending.
And John 21 versus 135, he says that I saw a new heaven and a
new earth for the 1st heaven and the first earth had passed away
and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, New
Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a
bride adorned for her husband, and heard a loud voice from the
throne, saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with
man. He will dwell with them, and
they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as
their God. And he continues, He will wipe
away every tear from their eyes, And death shall be no more.
Neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain any more.
For the former things have passed away.
That's great. But that ain't even the best
part. Listen.
And he who was seated on the throne said, Behold, you know
what it means to behold. It means to take hold of
something with your eyes. And he's telling John the
Revelator. He's saying, behold this.
This is what you're going to see.
You're going to see it with your eyes.
Take hold of it. Don't let go.
Behold, I am making all things new.
Brothers and sisters, you're involved in a work of
redemption. Not only your stories, but the
stories you're helping or hide as you faithfully steward all
that God grants to you. Then Christ guarantees it with a
promise, He says. It looks, it looks at.
Johnny says write this down, for these words are trustworthy and
true. If Christ says it, that finishes
a guess. That's it.
That's all you need. And in these words, remind us
that God wins. Whatever your circumstances
today, whatever mess you've gotten yourself into, whatever
things have happened to you from outside, whatever father you had
or didn't have, whatever, Whatever job you've done with
manhood or haven't done with manhood, however you've steered
it well or not steered it well. I want you to know God wins.
What seems impossible with man is not impossible with God.
And every effort therefore, that you exert now for the glory of
Christ is an eternal victory. It will not come back void.
It's worthy of our effort. It's worthy of our work.
It's worthy of our keeping. And so yours is the task of
bearing the image of God by working and keeping all the God
grants to you in the strength of Christ.
For me. Dismissed.
Let me remind you of that parable of the talents I once
heard. There's three possible responses
to that parable. One is to be like the man who
buried his talent in the ground because he feared A harsh
master. Cultural responsibility, then,
is just too hard. And so escapist.
Religion is born. It's for someone else to do.
It's not for me. The second really likes the idea
of Dominion gets him excited, You know, to rule things, to
subdue things that exert, to be able to use His Manliness.
It's weird for a shrimpy guy like me to try to exert
manliness. Sorry.
Some of you could do a better job for sure.
And so he begins to eat and drink, and he beats the fellow
servants. He's a harsh man.
Empower religion. Then is born.
The third though the third man. The way of the two who did it
right. The 3rd way you can respond to
this is to humble yourself and to enter into godly dominion
through and in Christ. That's the way.
That's how we do it. Brothers, I encourage you,
humble yourselves before the Lordship of Christ.
Enter your Godgiven fields, whatever they may be, you define
them because you know your life, right?
I've given you so many. But if you want help with that,
come see me. We'll talk about it.
Happy to talk through this. So I want you to humble yourself
to the Lordship of Christ. I want you to enter those
God-given fields and take godly dominion through and in Christ
Jesus. Amen.
Let me pray for you. Heavenly Father, appraise you
for today. I thank you for your word.
I thank you for your kindness toward us and in giving us such
revelation about yourself, about creation, about our design or
makeup. In it, we see we don't have to
wrestle with our masculinity. We don't have to wonder if
manhood is good. We know, Lord, that you've wired
us for purpose, to work and to keep.
And so I Join Now with my brothers in prayer and I ask, or
that you would grant us wisdom. We would work and keep in the
strength of Christ. By doing so, then we would truly
bear the image of God in this world.
Lord, with my brothers in prayer now I I repent ways that I've
abdicated on my responsibilities, that I've
stepped aside thinking, well, someone else can handle that.
But I repent of ways that become domineering, even seeking to
exert my own will, my own thoughts, my own desires, my own
plans. Having become harsh, Lord, I
repent. Father, We confess that Christ
is Lord. We confess that we are not.
We ask that you would give us hearts a surrender to His
Lordship, seek His will for our lives.
Would you restore us in Christ to yourself?
Put upon us the seal of the Holy Spirit, that we might know that
we are yours, that we might bear godly fruit in the world, that
we might tend these fields, that you've given us with great care
and responsibility, seeking to work them and keep them as you
command. Lord, we love you.
Thank you for these moments, which are holy.
They're meant for our sanctification.
They're meant for our help. Praise you that you take such
care of your people. Christ's name Apriya.
You've been.