Fathers—Indispensable or Oppressive Patriarchs?

Fathers—Indispensable or Oppressive Patriarchs?

On 20 June, 2026 By Gary Yagel

Happy Fathers’ Day to you who are dads and granddads!

I want to begin with the familiar truth: Ideas have consequences; bad ideas have victims. One of the bad ideas causing massive victimhood today is egalitarianism, the denial of creation role distinctions between moms and dads, and the heretical denial within the church that “the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church.” The first egalitarian was Satan, who demanded the right to be equal with God. As the father of lies, who masquerades as an angel of light, his strategy is to label the biblical teaching about gender oppressive patriarchy and then support this accusation with dishonest reasoning that in every case, violates the laws of logic. This episode reviews those dishonest arguments, makes a fresh biblical case for fatherhood and reviews recent research that substantiates the significance of God’s fatherhood design.

The words, patriarch, patriarchal, and patriarchy seem confusing to all of us. Abraham is called a patriarch in church, which means that he lived to be the ultimate great-grandfather, a good thing. But increasingly in our culture, patriarchy refers to an abusive, unjust system of government in which men hold all the power, The rising generation is being taught that when the Bible makes distinctions between gender roles, it reflects the sinful patriarchy of an unenlightened, old-fashioned cultural system that abused women and children.

Unfortunately, since Satan is the author of these attacks and he masquerades as an angel of light, the accusations of biblical oppressive patriarchy can sound right on the surface. Satan is a subtle liar. We have to place the lens of “logical fallacies” over these arguments to see that they are lies. Here are five logical fallacies that make up the core of the argument that denies that the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church.

A. Straw man. This way of arguing misrepresents your opponent’s views. The biblical teaching of male leadership at home is falsely identified with an extremist point of view, like that of the Vision Forum movement that believes that women should not vote, that higher education is not important for women, and that unmarried adult women are subject to their fathers’ authority. In my denomination of 250,000 who believe in biblical role distinctions in marriage and the church, I don’t know a single person who holds such views. This dishonest approach is taken because egalitarians can’t defeat the biblical truth.

B. Circular reasoning. Circular reasoning assumes what you are trying to prove but doesn’t actually prove it. Here is an article entitled Is the Bible “Patriarchal” Yes and No--An Excerpt from Gender Roles and the People of God, by Jeremy Bouma. Bouma writes: “Proponents of gender-based hierarchy don’t believe ontological equality of men and women leads to functional equality; equality of being does not lead to an equality of roles.” Bouma assumes that “hierarchy,” i.e. an authority structure, proves inequality, but doesn’t give the logical support for that claim. And, in fact, that logical leap is false. Does a citizen submitting to a police officer mean that he believes he is inferior to the police officer? Does an athlete submitting to her coach mean she is an inferior human being to the coach? Does anyone actually believe that a child submitting to his parent implies that the child is a human being without as much intrinsic worth and dignity as the parent? God, the Son is fully equal to God the Father in every single way. But for the purpose of salvation, he submitted to the Father’s will. Submission does not mean inequality! But egalitarians still make this claim.

C. Implying causation when there is only correlation.  A coach who always wins when he wears a certain pair of socks reflects this logical fallacy (if he actually believes it). This argument is: a) the Bible gives leadership power to men in the home, b) men in the home use that power to mistreat women, c) therefore the cause of the problem is God giving men the leadership position in the home. The truth is that it is not the structure that is the problem; it is human sinful nature. Furthermore, objective research cited by Nancy Pearcey in The Toxic War on Masculinity reveals research showing that it is those most committed to the Bible who are the best husbands. “Those who attend church at least three times a month are more loving to their wives and more emotionally engaged with their children than any other group in America. They are the least likely to divorce and they have the lowest levels of domestic abuse and violence”(p 36).

D. Misrepresenting the facts. The word, “patriarchy” comes from PATER “father” + ARCHE “rule.” Historians tell us that Roman households were patriarchal; the father had absolute power to rule. This practice was called “patria potestas.” If after his child was born, the Roman father gave a thumbs up, the child was kept. If he gave a thumbs down, the child was immediately drowned. The power of life and death over wives was practiced rarely but wives generally had no legal rights. However what was true of Roman fathers was never true of OT or NT ones. Neither Israel in the OT, nor the church in the NT were patriarchies, when it comes to absolute legal power. No Israelite or Christian wife or child was under the naked, individual, capricious rule of an all-powerful father. Both Israelite citizens and church members were under the Rule of Law. OT fathers were under the Mosaic Law and NT fathers were held accountable for their behavior by the church elders.

However, the term patriarchy is also used, generally speaking, for male leadership and specifically for societies in which the land was transferred through the male line, which was true of Israel. Egalitarians dishonestly confuse the definitions, attributing abuse to OT  and NT fathers.

E. Ad populum argument. This argument ridicules the other side as being completely out of date with modern thinking. It says, in essence, “People who hold your view sound like the people who once thought the earth was flat.” Here is an example of this argument. It is from a Christianity Today article, entitled Leaving Patriarchy in the Past, which reviews John Stackhouse’s book, Partners in Christ: A Conservative Case for Egalitarianism.

“Stackhouse acknowledges that certain New Testament passages embrace a sweeping complementarian viewpoint. He maintains, however, that once a culture has left its patriarchal origins behind, these passages are no longer meant to be obeyed.”

This argument is based upon condescension towards anyone who holds the outdated idea that men should lead their homes. It reeks of arrogance, i.e.  assuming that our current Western egalitarian culture, which calls viewing differences in male and female roles sexist, is enlightened more than every other culture that has not “left patriarchy behind.”

The egalitarian argument sounds good, but it is based upon deception. God warns us twice in Proverbs: There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death (14:12. 16:25)

God has designed human beings to need a father. This truth is easily lost when loud voices in our culture proclaim that gender differences don’t matter. Let’s examine the case for the significance of fatherhood.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF FATHERHOOD

A. God, himself is called, God The Father. Names matter in Scripture. God did not call himself God The Mother. Jesus, as the Second Person of the Trinity repeatedly referred to himself as the Son and in prayer called the first person of the Trinity, Father, teaching his disciples to do the same (Matt 6:9) When Jesus gave his marching orders to his church, he commanded, Go and make disciples, baptizing in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of The Holy Spirit. There is something about the very nature of God that is described by the word, Father.

B.  Adam and Eve were created as God’s image bearers for an intimate love relationship with him pictured by “walking (together) in the Garden in the cool of the day.” (Gen 3:8). This relationship was severed by sin. Jesus, the Second Adam comes to restore his people to the original relationship we were created to enjoy. Jesus is the picture of fully restored humanity and as a human, the Second Adam, he relates to God as his heavenly father. This paradigm for our restored personal relationship with God is picked up by Paul in Romans 8,  For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” It is true that Paul uses sons here, instead of “children” probably because he has in mind our inheritance, which in Judaism came through the father. Nevertheless, all believers have the privilege of calling the God of the universe, Abba! Father! Abba, which could be translated, dad or daddy is a tender term that represents the intimacy, closeness, and dependence that a child feels towards his father. Paul does not say that we can now call God Mama.

C. The environment that God chose for growing a child to physical, emotional, and spiritual health is a family where the child is loved by both a father and a mother. Creation, itself, tells us that the nuclear family is not just a social construct. The biological fact that conception takes place in the context of husband and wife making love speaks volumes about the best environment for that child to be nurtured to healthy adulthood. I want to say that again. The very way a child is created speaks volumes about the environment God designed for them to flourish, namely a mom and dad who deeply love one another. In God’s obvious creation design, for a child to fully thrive, he needs a family with one mom and one dad who love each other. Denying God’s design of male and female to complete each other is not only a denial of God’s special revelation, his Word, but of general revelation, what we can observe in the natural order.

D. The family code sections of Ephesians and Colossians are significant. They, address wives, then husbands, then children—commanding them to obey their parents. So, we might expect the next group Paul addresses to be parents; but it is not. How about mothers? No. Elsewhere, Paul does command older women to train the younger women to love their children (Titus 2:4). But it is striking that when Paul addresses household responsibilities, especially the training of the children, God doesn’t mention mothers but gives commands to fathers. This pattern of responsibility began with Abraham, the Father of the Christian Faith. God said of Abraham, I have chosen him, that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice, so that the Lord may bring to Abraham what he has promised him (Gen 18:19). This responsibility was not given to Sarah.

When it comes to household management and training the children, Paul writes, Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. We are not told why mothers are not specifically addressed, even though children are commanded to obey both parents. But, may I suggest that fathers being given this specific command does make sense given that one of the primary results of the fall is that men inherit Adam’s passivity. Adam failed to step up, defend Eve against Satan’s temptation, and lead the way to flourishing, by being obedient to God’s command not to eat the fruit. He failed in his masculine calling to protect those in the garden and to cause them to flourish (Gen 2:25). Masculine passivity in training the children makes their discipline of the children haphazard, random, and inconsistent. Inconsistent discipline is one of the fastest ways to provoke anger in a child. One moment, he gets away with murder, the next time he barely steps across the line and is slammed with punishment. That will provoke hot anger. However, consistent discipline trains a child to know what the boundaries are. It is not a harsh, seat of the pants, reactive discipline that only provokes anger.

In contrast to provoking anger, says Paul to fathers, bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.  Three important words in this phrase describe the biblical approach to rearing children. First, dads are NOT to watch their children grow up but to bring them up. This Greek word means literally “out of nurture.” A father’s discipline begins with tender care, the way a nursery worker nurtures along a small, tender sapling. The second word (ESV discipline) is PAIDEA, from which we get pediatric. It means the training of children. A father’s authority is never to be used selfishly, or reflexively. Rather, it is to be part of a TRAINING plan. The third word, instruction, means literally “to put into the mind.” Deuteronomy 6 gives a picture of this process.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates (vs 5-9).

Certainly, moms help teach and instruct the children. Eve is created to be a suitable ally and helper to Adam. But the responsibility for training the children rests on the shoulders of the father.

E. The significance of fatherhood is not only clear in Scripture (special revelation); it is also clear from observing the world around us (general revelation).

  1. Ernest Hemingway understood the significance of broken father/son relationships. He wrote a story about a father and his teenaged son. In the story, their relationship became strained and the son ran away from home. His father began a journey in search of his rebellious son. Finally, in Madrid, Spain, in a last desperate effort to find him, the father put an ad in the local newspaper. The ad read: “Dear Paco, Meet me in front of the newspaper office at noon…all is forgiven…I love you, Your Father. The next day at noon in front of the newspaper office, 800 “Pacos” showed up. They were all seeking forgiveness, love, and restoration from their fathers. (Ernest Hemingway short story, The Capital of the World.)
  2. Here are some facts about the effect of father absence on children in American society from the US Census Bureau data for 2019 the Percent of Children Who Live With Their Mother Only is about 45% for Black children, 24% for Hispanic children, and 18% for White Children.
  3. According to the US Dept of Justice report, "What Can the Federal Government Do To Decrease Crime and Revitalize Communities?" children from fatherless homes account for:
  • Suicide: 63 percent of youth suicides
  • Runaways: 90 percent of all homeless and runaway youths
  • Behavioral Disorders: 85 percent of all children that exhibit behavioral disorders
  • High School Dropouts: 71 percent of all high school dropouts
  • Juvenile Detention Rates: 70 percent of juveniles in state-operated institutions
  • Substance Abuse: 75 percent of adolescent patients in substance abuse centers
  • Aggression: 75 percent of rapists motivated by displaced anger

RECENT OBJECTIVE STUDIES

John Stonestreet of the Colson Center cites a one-year-old study from researchers at the University of Virginia and Hampton University. The study found,

“that disparities in academic performance between students of different races and ethnicities essentially disappeared when they had fathers in intact homes. The presence of dad also eliminated the racial gap in behavior issues in school, meaning father absence is almost certainly the main driver of such problems. Involved fathers made an especially big difference for girls’ mental health, with 10 times the number of female students being diagnosed with depression and risk of self-harm when they had disengaged or absent fathers. This aligns well with abundant prior research demonstrating that girls with uninvolved dads show far higher rates of promiscuity and risky sexual behavior, including teen pregnancy. In other words, if we want to address these problems, much like behavioral and academic issues among boys, there is no better investment than encouraging fathers to be involved.” 

Jay Fagan and Glen Palm, at the Institute for Family Studies explored how fathers build attachment with their infants through different mechanisms than mothers, typically relying on “rough-and-tumble” play to establish emotional security and a foundation for future learning. 

“The term “activation relationship” describes the emotional bond between fathers and children that enables the child to feel safe to take both physical and social risks and explore their environment . ... When fathers interact with sensitivity and warmth, they provide a secure base for exploration and encourage children to go out into the world and then come back to share with [their] fathers.”

SUMMARY OF WHAT A CHILD NEEDS FROM HIS FATHER OR FATHER FIGURE

Like Father Like Son

May this list provoke gratefulness for the earthly father we had, a challenge for the father we want to be, or thankfulness for the heavenly Father that God is:

1. A welcoming father: I always have time for you.

2. An approval-giving father: I’m proud of you. And what you did honors Christ.

3. An identity-building father: My daughter, I can’t believe how greatly God has gifted you for the work you are doing.

4. A freedom-giving father: What do you think you should do? I’m confident God will lead you.

5. An adventuring father: To follow Jesus is to enlist in the greatest cause in history the overthrow of Satan and sin to establish his kingdom of righteousness.

6. A wisdom-giving father: I saw something exciting I never saw in the Word before

7. A grace-giving father: Son, your failures can never diminish my love for you.

 

For Further Prayerful Thought:

1. Which of the dishonest, fallacious attempts to support egalitarianism most leaps out at you? Why?

2. How has your relationship with your father shaped your life? How does it shape your relationship with God, the Father?

3. How would you argue the biblical case that a child needs both a mother and a father?

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Called to Attack Poverty in Our Cities

Called to Attack Poverty in Our Cities

On 13 June, 2026 By Gary Yagel

What do you think of this statement: If Bible-believing Christians today were as engaged with helping the poor and destitute in our cities as the early church was, far fewer rising young adults would be deconverting from Christianity to embrace ideologies that they think better fight economic injustice? I believe that there is an abundance of research on the deconversion of young adults from the Christian faith to prove this assertion true. But do the ideologies that claim to help the poor, homeless, and destitute that they are sucked into actually benefit the poor?

This episode puts the biblical lens of the cause and alleviation of poverty, that we examined last week, over the poverty of our cities, seeking to examine what the church’s commitment to the poor of our cities should look like. We then identify five serious flaws in the progressive view of social justice, an ideology which is captivating many young adults leading them to abandon Christianity. Finally, we examine how only the church can bring about the restoration required to solve the problems of our urban poor but raise the question, “Will middle class Christians care enough to do it?”  

What young adult do you know who does not want to be a part of a group that Is actively pursuing justice for the poor, financial support for single moms, practical help for the addicted, the homeless, and the victims of heartbreaking gun violence? Could it be that American Christianity is losing young adults because we have lost the true biblical understanding of why Jesus came? Jesus’ earthly ministry began in a synagogue in Nazareth. Let’s examine how Jesus, Himself, understood His mission:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.” …And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing (Luke 4:17-21). Author Brian Fikkert describes the scene:

“A shiver must have gone down the spine of the worshippers that day. Isaiah had prophesied that a King was coming who would usher in a kingdom unlike anything the world had ever seen. Could it be that Isaiah’s prophecies were really about to come true…Was it really possible that justice, peace, and righteousness were about to be established forever? Would this King really bring healing to the parched soil, the feeble hands, the shaky knees, the fearful hearts, the blind, the deaf, the lame, the mute, the broken-hearted, the captives, and sinful souls, and proclaim the year of jubilee for the poor (Isaiah 35:1-6; 53:5; 61:1-2)? Jesus’ answer to all these questions was a resounding ‘yes,’ declaring, ‘Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing’ (When Helping Hurts).

In the same chapter of Luke, Jesus further explained his mission in a way that perfectly parallels these words from Isaiah 61. “I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns as well; for I was sent for this purpose.” As you hear me often say in this blog, the gospel is NOT the gospel of personal private salvation—it is the gospel of the kingdom. The kingdom is the renewal of the whole world through the entrance of supernatural forces. As things are brought back under Christ’s rule and authority, they are restored to wholeness—to health, beauty, freedom, and rightness. There is a “NOW” and a “NOT YET” to the kingdom. The complete manifestation of the kingdom will not occur until there is a new heaven and a new earth. Nevertheless, two thousand years ago, Jesus clearly stated that there is a “now” to the kingdom, stating, “Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” The “nowness” of Jesus’ kingdom was largely forgotten by the Bible-believing American churches in the twentieth century whose imbalanced eschatology led them to see Christ’s kingdom as almost entirely FUTURE--spiritualizing the mission of Jesus. Brain Fikkert identifies this view:

“We have asked thousands of evangelical Christians this most basic question—why did Jesus come to earth? —and fewer than 1 percent of respondents say anything even remotely close to the answer, Jesus, Himself gave. Instead, the vast majority of people say something like, ‘Jesus came to die on the cross to save us from our sins so that we can go to heaven.’ While this answer is true, saving souls is only a subset of the comprehensive healing of the entire cosmos that Jesus’ kingdom brings and that was the centerpiece of his message….God was pleased through him to RECONCILE TO HIMSELF ALL THINGS, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross (Col 1:19-20). Jesus died for our souls, but he also died to reconcile—i.e., to put into right relationship—all that he created. We reflect this bigger truth when we sing the Christmas carol, “He comes to make His blessings known far as the curse is found.” The curse is cosmic in scope, bringing decay, brokenness, and death to every speck of the universe. But as King of kings and Lord of lords, Jesus is making all things new. This is the good news of the kingdom (Ibid).

Jesus proclaimed this news—that the Messianic King has come to make all things new—in both word and deed. When John the Baptist momentarily doubted Jesus’ identity as the Messiah, Jesus said, ‘Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them’ (Luke 7:22). How useless it would have been if Jesus had only used words and not deeds to declare the kingdom. Imagine if the story about Jesus passing by the blind man in Luke 18 read like this. “Hearing the blind man call out, ‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me,’ Jesus said, ‘I am the Messiah of Isaiah 61. I could heal you today of your blindness but I only care about your soul. Believe in Me,’ and then walked away.” Jesus proclaimed the gospel of the kingdom in both word and deed, and so must Christ-followers.

“It is strange indeed to place the poor at the center of a strategy for expanding a kingdom, but history indicates that this unconventional strategy has actually been quite successful. Sociologist Rodney Stark documents that the early church’s engagement with suffering people was crucial to its explosive growth. Cities in the Roman empire were characterized by poor sanitation, contaminated water, high population densities, open sewers, filthy streets, unbelievable stench, rampant crime, collapsing buildings, and frequent illness and plagues. (Ibid).

“Rather than fleeing urban cesspools, the early church found a niche there. Stark explains that the Christian concept of self-sacrificial love for others, emanating from God’s love for them was a revolutionary concept to the pagan mind. As Christianity expanded across the world, the urban poor were on center stage. This rich heritage of Christ’s church has always been to lead the way in ministries of mercy to the cities of the world. Though Christians deserve the black eye we got for refusing to stand up to slavery and Jim Crow, in the American  south, it is also true that Christians like William Wilberforce in Britain and Harriett Beecher Stowe in America were largely responsible for ending chattel slavery. Christians are still leading the way in mercy ministry today. In Africa and Latin America, where explosive growth of Christianity is taking place, mercy ministry to the urban poor is center stage. But, shockingly at the start of the 20th century, Bible-believing Christianity in America temporarily reversed this rich history of proclaiming the good news of the kingdom in both word AND DEED: Corbett and Fikkert explain:

“This all changed at the start of the twentieth century as evangelicals battled theological liberals over the fundamental tenets of Christianity. Evangelicals (those committed to the infallibility of Scripture) interpreted the rising social gospel movement, which seemed to equate all humanitarian efforts with bringing in Christ’s kingdom, as part of the overall theological drift of the nation. As evangelicals tried to distance themselves from the social gospel movement, they ended up in large-scale retreat from the front lines of poverty alleviation. This shift away from the poor was so dramatic that church historians refer to the 1900-1930 era as the “Great Reversal” in the evangelical approach to social problems.

Interestingly, this Great Reversal preceded the welfare state in America. Both FDR’s New Deal policies of the 1930s and Lyndon Johnson’s war on poverty in the 1960s took place after the Bible-believing churches in America retreated from poverty alleviation and began to promote a half gospel that focused on the soul being saved instead of the intrusion of the kingdom of God into earth to begin to restore everything ruined by sin. There is, praise God, among the rising generation of Christians a welcome return to a fuller understanding of the necessity of proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom both in word and in deeds of mercy.

Yet, much damage has been done. When the Gospel Coalition asked Biola Professor Thaddeus Williams to address young adults who were considering rejecting Christianity, he began, “Have you ever felt like many Christian churches today don’t care about injustice the way they should, like they are on the wrong side of history? Maybe you even feel like that has become a deal breaker for you, that your passion for a more just world could be more deeply gratified if you simply cut ties with the church” (Before Your Lose Your Faith, Edited by Ivan Mesa). With the large-scaled abandonment of its calling to the urban poor over the past 100 years in America, the church has opened the door to false ideologies that are taking captive those with an idealistic passion for social justice. But such ideologies have major flaws. Let’s consider five such views.

DESTRUCTIVE APPROACHES TO ALLEVIATING POVERTY

A. “Economic Equality” ideology. We covered this more thoroughly last week, but lets review.  We often hear, “In America, the richest 1% have 40% of all the wealth. This kind of inequality is unjust.” However, this apparent injustice is based upon the FALSE idea that the total amount of wealth in a society is FIXED, like the size of an apple pie. If someone gets a bigger slice, that means someone else will only get a smaller slice. If there is only so much to go around, the richer Tom is the poorer Harry is. No one should have more than his fair share. However, that is NOT how economies work. Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, didn’t make homeless people poorer by stealing their iPhones; he invented them—he created new wealth. This Economic Equality ideology has been used since the time of Karl Marx to deceive the naïve into thinking that giving economic control to the government (namely THEM) would lead to justice, when in fact it has always led to the shrinkage of the economic pie and to oppressive governments like that of Lenin, Stalin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, Castro, and Hugo Chavez.

B. Relying upon government spending for welfare programs. I am not arguing for zero government involvement. The question of how the government should help, I leave to those wiser than I. In Israel, land owners were not permitted to harvest twice or to the very edges of their land. A portion must be left for the poor to gather. So there must be ways to apply this principle. Neverthless, we must recognize the serious limitations and failures of government efforts to alleviate poverty.

  • Over the past 50 years, US taxpayers have invested $22 trillion on anti-poverty programs, yet according to the Census Bureau, there has been no net progress in reducing poverty. The poverty rate has remained the same, fluctuating between 12% in good times and 15% in down times.
  • Black Pastor John Perkins, the son of a sharecropper, points out that many well-intended people have actually done considerable harm to poor people, by trying to help them the wrong way. He writes, “The federal government made this mistake for decades. Well-intentioned welfare programs penalized work, undermined families, and created dependency.” This view seems to be confirmed by a Los Angeles Times survey that asked poor women whether poor women “often” get pregnant to get additional welfare benefits. 64 percent said yes. Reliance upon government created harmful dependency instead of solving the problem.

C. Critical Race Theory Ideology of fomenting class envy There is systemic racial injustice and Christians do need to root out such injustice. But it is caused by the spread of sin into all human hearts. It is not caused by birth into a particular class and is not solved by stoking the fires of class envy as CRT does. One tenet of CRT is especially problematic: Excusing law-breaking instead of punishing it. The plight of the poor is always blamed on the rich. Thus angry antifa vigilantes and Black Lives Matter looters have every right to steal and destroy the property of business owners. The “oppressed” according to Marxism and Cultural Marxism, have the right to overthrow the law. Those deemed part of the oppressed class, immigrants who have come into America illegally, have the right to oppose the enforcement of laws passed by the US Congress, by ICE.  

D. Free-market Capitalism is Demonized. Naïve Christians ignore the historical reality that free markets and political freedom always go together. It is true that free market capitalism allows the rich to get richer. Economic and political freedom enabled Steve Jobs to grow rich; but that same FREEDOM is what led millions of others to get richer. The pie grew. Steve Jobs getting richer didn’t make everyone else poorer. In fact, the wealth he added to the pie provided jobs and economic value to millions of people in the US and around the world. And, we have iPhones.

In sharp contrast to a free market with provisions for the poor are coercive economic systems like socialism and Marxism, which require totalitarian political control to function. Mao persuaded naïve teens to believe in utopian ideals like, “from each according to his ability, and to each according to his need,” gave them machine guns, and sent them to murder business and land owners so their businesses could be collectivized. Not even Jihadist Islam has caused as many atrocities and murders as has the ideology of Marxism.

E. Misrepresenting Socialism. In contrast to the so called “selfish” capitalism of the West, socialism often brings mental pictures of picturesque Scandinavian villages, farmers’ markets, smiling people working together for a common cause, an idyllic Camelot where everyone has his needs met, lives in harmony, and prospers. Doesn’t Acts 4, where the Christians shared everything in common, sold their land and placed the proceeds at the Apostles feet show biblical support for socialism? Actually, NOT AT ALL. Here’s why.

  • The property was voluntarily, freely sold, not forcibly confiscated, which is what socialism does. Socialism is government ownership of the means of production and control of the distribution of goods.
  • The economic sharing of wealth was not done on the basis of class warfare, as socialism is. There is no hint that private ownership is deemed immoral.
  • Acts 4 is an example of voluntary generosity to meet a temporary crisis, not a state-run economy. Jerusalem’s population swelled by 100,000 as Jews returned to Jerusalem to celebrate The Day of Pentecost. Over 5000 were added to the ranks of men alone in a few short days. The only source of teaching about this new life was in Jerusalem. So, thousands decided to extend their stay in Jerusalem—putting an enormous burden on their hometown brothers and sisters in Christ to provide hospitality for them.
  • In short, this is the story of hometown emergency generosity, not a pattern for an economic system. They were able to meet that need because of capitalism’s private ownership component.

BIBLICAL APPROACH TO ALLEVIATING POVERTY IN OUR CITIES—RESTORATION

It begins with understanding the true cause of poverty. Human flourishing in God’s design was to be the result of shalom in the 4 relationships of life: 1) walking in harmony with God and his righteousness, 2) experiencing wholeness--internal peace with themselves—no sense of inferiority, 3) experiencing pre-fall harmony in their relationships with each other; 4) experiencing harmony with the created order—no natural calamity like, earthquakes, floods, or volcanoes erupting. Poverty is caused by Adam and Eve’s rebellion against God. Their relationship with God is broken leading to spiritual poverty. The health of their inner soul is shattered leading to a poverty of being. Sin caused the fracturing of human relationships with each other—a poverty of relationships. And sin caused a curse to fall on the ground causing work to be harder leading to a poverty of stewardship. Let’s examine alleviating poverty by overcoming these four categories of poverty:

A. Overcoming the poverty of being. Only God knows how profoundly slavery and racism have crushed black men and women’s dignity. I wonder how many centuries it may take to undo such evil attacks on the self-esteem of those who bear the image of God. I’m told by those engaged in city ministry that this shattered self-esteem is linked to many outward symptoms of this brokenness:

  • a teen boy’s desire to prove himself a man through his sexual prowess.
  • a teen girl looking for love in the arms of a male who just wants sex.
  • a teen girl who wants to feel needed by getting pregnant and having a baby who needs her and, to some degree, loves her back.
  • a boy committing violence to win the respect of the others in his gang.

The wounds to the self-esteem of those in our cities, especially blacks are so severe and so deeply rooted, it is doubtful their inner confidence and sense of worth can ever be restored apart from the power of Christ’s Spirit indwelling them day by day building confidence that they have enormous value as God’s image bearers, and pouring into them that love of Christ—so that they know how long and deep, and wide and high is the love of God for them. But black fathers can go a long way in helping restore their kid’s sense of worth. In the brutal world of middle school, an English teacher saw just that. She tells her story:

I teach middle school students, and I see many girls literally fight tooth and nail because someone told some lie about them or called them a name. So, I was surprised at the wisdom that one of my little 6th graders shared with me as she worked on her project during lunch. “You know, I don’t need to wear those short skirts and I don’t need to fight with girls because of the lies they say. I know who I am.” I asked her to explain, and she went on to say her daddy had raised her to know she was beautiful and valued by Christ. If she was loved by her daddy and God, then why would she need to prove her worth by fighting or prove her beauty through the clothes she wore? What you wouldn’t know from just reading this story is that her daddy was at the time incarcerated. But though he was not physically present, he was still active in her life, even calling in for parent teacher conferences. The values he instilled in her had an obvious impact on her. 

B. Overcoming a poverty of family relationships. In my view the single most significant cause of poverty in our cities is father absence. Barack Obama says,

  • Children who grow up without fathers are 5X more likely to live in poverty and commit crime,
  • 9X more likely to drop out of school
  • 20X more likely to end up in prison. (Barack Obama)

Larry Elder observes that,

  • 75% of black children are raised without fathers 
  • For blacks, out-of-wedlock births have gone from 25 percent in 1965 to 73% (Black Fathers Matter, Larry Elder).

The middle-classed church needs to get behind city pastors who show men how to pour their love and affirmation into the hearts of their wives and kids.

C. Overcoming spiritual poverty. Poverty’s cause is not a shortage of money. It is the result of complex components to human brokenness that only Christians have the resources to restore. Furthermore, the root cause of poverty, fatherlessness, can’t be addressed apart from confronting the 73% of out- of-wedlock birth rate. This high percentage can’t be separated from the spiritual issue of teen pregnancy and having sex before marriage, which is an issue of sexual morality. Christians alone realize that God did not begin the world with a government or even a church. He started it with a wedding. That is also, how it will end. Until Christians get more serious about taking the gift of marriage before sex to the teens of our cities, it is hard to envision much change taking place among the city poor.

D. Overcoming a poverty of stewardship. Alleviating poverty brings more than just the goal to relieve current suffering; it is to carefully rebuild a person until he is self-sufficient. That is what makes the story of Robert Lavelle, Christian banker and real estate broker in one of America’s most forgotten places, the inner city, so exciting. Here is his story:

“People tell me, ‘You're crazy, man.’ says Lavelle, but I have to do it.” He is referring to his savings and loan and real estate operations in Pittsburgh's Hill District, an area where wrecking ball, drug dealer, and welfare check are a way of life. Many of Lavelle's bank loans go to people who would be unable to obtain credit elsewhere. Though federal regulators and others have urged him to move to a “better” location, Lavelle refuses.

Dwelling House Savings and Loan goes further than providing financial loans, however, for Lavelle takes a personal interest in his clients. If they fall behind in payments, he visits their homes to help them figure out budgets and challenges them to set an example of financial responsibility for their children. This appeal to self-respect and accountability is the key to helping needy people, he says. It is the only way to break the cycle of their poverty. Handouts enslaved people. Teaching them how to manage and extend their resources helps to set them free.

Lavell doesn't have much faith in government programs. “Government is limited in what it can do,” he says. “It primarily just perpetuates itself. But when we provide the means for the poor and minorities, the economics of their neighborhoods change from dope, numbers prostitution, pimping, and loan sharking to home ownership, good city services, police, and garbage collection, quality schools viable businesses and jobs.”

Lavelle, who lives within walking distance of his office, is quick to tell his clients about spiritual freedom as well, but his faith is most evident by what he does, not by what he says. “For me.” he says, “being a Christian is a matter of obedience and that means helping people in need as the Holy Spirit leads. Lavelle explains his little platoon of upside-down banking business in terms of the Good Samaritan: the people in the inner city are lying by the roadside wounded by economic hardship; they don't even know how to help themselves. Meanwhile, he says there are a lot of good church people passing by on the other side. “Someone needs to stop and take a risk,” he says, “and who better to do that than a banker?”

I want to close with just one more thought. Even when it is true that poverty or suffering is self-inflicted, no Christian can shut his heart to the anguish and hardship of being poor. Honest Christians know “I am only where I am by the sheer unmerited mercy of God.” As those who daily drink from a fountain of grace poured out to us by God a life poured out in deeds of mercy for the poor is the only possible fitting response. So, may we each contemplate this question, “What are you doing about the misery of the poor in the cities of our land?”

Questions for Guiding the Rising Generation to think about this material.

  1. What is the biblical case for Christians being very engaged with alleviating the poverty and other suffering in our cities?
  2. What would you say to a church leader who said Jesus’ mission for us is to preach the gospel not feed the hungry?
  3. What flaws of progressive ideology’s approach to poverty most stood out to you?
  4. How would you make the case that the true causes of poverty—the breaking of harmony between us and ourselves, each other, God, and creation can best be achieved by the church?
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Helping the Poor—Myth Vs Reality

Helping the Poor—Myth Vs Reality

On 06 June, 2026 By Gary Yagel

The demand of God upon his covenant people has always been to embody God’s special concern for the poor. God tells the Hebrews before they enter the promised land not to “be hard-hearted or tight-fisted toward your needy neighbor, since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth. I therefore command you, ‘Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land’” (Deut. 15:7,11) consider The Proverbs, which are full of commands that connect our love for God to how well we treat the poor. For example, Proverbs 14:29: “Those who oppress the poor insult their maker but those who are kind to the needy honor God.” The intent of this episode is to strengthen, not weaken, our concern for the plight of the poor. But deeply rooted in our commitment to love the poor must be a commitment to helping the poor and doing so in the right, God-ordained way. This episode seeks to call us to care for the poor, to shun passivity, but to understand the biblical guidance God gives for HOW to help, and not harm, them.

CALL TO HEART COMPASSION & PURSUIT OF JUSTICE FOR THE POOR

Outraged OT prophets like Amos announced God's judgment on Israel “for bringing to ruin the poor of the land God” (8:4-6). God let the Babylonians and Assyrians carry off the Jews into captivity because the Jews worshipped false gods and failed to care for the poor and needy. It's the same story in the NT. God became flesh and was born to a humble woman in a stable filled with animals. Poor shepherds were the first to hear the news and to see God become man. And Luke tells us at the very beginning of his ministry that Jesus entered the synagogue of Nazareth and read from the prophet Isaiah that he had come to bring good news to the poor. Most shockingly, Matthew 25 records Jesus saying that the Son of man will return to establish his Kingdom and on that day, he will separate the sheep from the goats depending on how they have treated people who are hungry, thirsty, strangers, naked, sick, and imprisoned.

THE HISTORIC LOSS OF THIS FOCUS IN 20TH CENTURY AMERICA

In the early 20th century, somewhat in response to Darwinism and Enlightenment humanism and rationalism, many in the church lost confidence in the Bible as the Word of God and its teaching that man is a sinner in need of redemption through the blood sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. Instead, Jesus became to them a good moral example, and the message of these churches became a cry for social justice.

In response, the majority of Bible-believing Christians, seeing that these churches had become corrupted by the thinking of “the world,” withdrew from culture, redefined “the gospel” as “Jesus coming to save individuals who trusted in Christ  to save them from eternity in hell,” and called for escaping from the corruption of  this evil world. They abandoned the true gospel: that Christ did come to save individuals who trusted in him to be justified, declared righteousness, and thus be delivered from punishment in hell. But the gospel has always been so much more, beginning with a positive, not negative, view of the earth God loves and created for humans to develop and enjoy. Jesus is the second Adam who has come to take back Adam’s throne over Kingdom Earth, recover Adam’s original calling, develop earth’s potential and spread Jesus’ kingdom of righteousness over Kingdom Earth.

So, many Bible-believing Christians abandoned the proper concern for the poor and disenfranchised right now on this earth that was always to characterize God’s people. They deemed this concern “the heretical social gospel of liberalism.” But the rising generation is calling the church back to the full gospel—personally redeemed through faith in Jesus but called to go into this world as agents of reconciliation, spreading Jesus’ kingdom righteousness and justice into every corner of the human heart and over every square inch of earth. A refreshing component of this movement is the recognition that sin has not only corrupted our hearts making us indifferent to the suffering of the disenfranchised, but sin has also corrupted the human cultural systems of economics and government: Cornelius Plantiga explains: (Engaging God’s World).

“We are born into a world in which for centuries, sin has damaged the great interactive network of shalom—snapping or twisting the thousands of bonds that give particular beings integrity and that tie them to others. Corruption is thus a dynamic motif in the Christian understanding of sin: it is not so much a particular sin as the multiplying power of all sin to spoil a good creation and to breach its defense against invaders. We might describe corruption as spiritual AIDS—a systemic and progressive devastation of our spiritual immune system that eventually breaks down and opens the way for hordes of opportunistic sins.

This sinful corruption of systems has come to the forefront of guiding our children and churches into a biblical understanding of economic systems. The free market with specific help for the poor, called capitalism, is under assault. The materialism and hard-hearted disregards for the poor in the church is being properly assaulted. Consider the following statistics.  

  • The average America home contains 300,000 items.
  • The average American house has almost tripled in size over the past 50 years.
  • Of the world’s children, 3.1 percent live in America but Americans purchase 40 percent of the toys sold worldwide.
  • On average, American women have 30 outfits (that figure was 9 in 1930).
  • There are more television sets than people in the average American home.
  • Americans spend 11.2% of total consumer spending on non-necessary goods like jewelry, alcohol, recreation, gambling, etc. compared to 4% in 1959.

Americans are far more enslaved to consumerism than we realize. The challenge that has been confronting today’s church is this: To blindly embrace capitalism along with the consumerism that goes with it is wrong—especially in light of the biblical requirement of God’s people to be concerned for the poor. But there is a biblical caveat. Christians are not called to a naïve compassion for the poor, but to a wise compassion for the poor that actually helps them. We are not called just to a naked, concern but equally to support the biblical pathway to help them. Caring feelings, without truth, are never love.  

CALLED TO WISDOM & ACTION THAT ACTUALLY HELPS THE POOR

Ideas, and Policies that Don’t

A. Last week we identified a popular ideology that sounds good but is rooted in the overthrow of God—economic equality. If ECONOMIC INEQULITY is unjust, God is an immoral monster, since by his providence he has caused one child to be born fabulously wealthy into the House of Saud—the royal family that rules Saudi Arabia, and another child into the poverty of a single mom who is a crack addict in Chicago. Rich and poor have this in common: The Lord is the Maker of them all (Prov 22:2). Perhaps worse, it undermines justice by substituting equal OUTCOMES for equal TREATMENT UNDER THE LAW. It is a destructive ideology that seeks to undermine the creation principle that you sow what you reap. For this reason, it has led to more poor being harmed than any ideology in the history of the world. Social media is attracting foolish Christians to embrace the Marxist redefinition of JUSTICE. As Christian thinker, Jay Richards looked back on his college deception. Being a teenager from a conservative Texas town the redefinition of economic justice, “was heady stuff. Professor Clark offered me a rare commodity: a chance to rebel against authority and feel self-righteous doing it” (Jay Richards, Money, Greed, and God).

B. Richards calls attention to many economic ideas and policies championed by misguided advocates for the poor. Consider the idea of “a living wage.” There is an upside to this concept, but the downside is often worse. He writes.

What would happen if the minimum wage were $1000/hr? Wouldn't that be great? Even the gal cleaning the restroom down at the mall would pull in $40,000 a week. The problem is 5 minutes after the law went into effect nobody would be getting paid to clean the restroom at the mall and the poorly educated woman with a good work ethic would be out of a job…To business employee wages are costs. That's why countries with high minimum wages like France tend to have higher unemployment than countries with low minimum wages like the United States. A wage is a price on the commodity labor. The people most likely to suffer from these laws are those at the bottom—the unskilled, young, inarticulate and handicapped workers who need to grab the bottom rung of the economic ladder. Raise it too high and the rung is out of reach in a diverse economy. Remember low paying jobs are entry level jobs. Like it or not, some people need entry level jobs very close to ground floor. Few people stay in these jobs forever. The experience and connections that such jobs provide can be more valuable than the salary itself.   

Fair Trade coffee is another idea that has been promoted among Christians as helping poor coffee growers. But this practice amounts to supplementing a farmer’s profit, which can temporarily help him. But in the long run, it harms producers to interfere with the market. Subsidizing this farmer as he must transition to using his land to make it more profitable may be an act of love. But making him dependent upon Western contributions to stay in business when his market is changing and it would be much wiser for him to adjust to the market and use his land in a more productive manner is not loving.

C. Deception by the Nirvana Myth is widespread even among Christians. This mythology is contrasting capitalism with an UNREALIZABLE IDEAL rather than its actual alternatives. Marxism has always failed, horribly, but it has captured many hearts because of its idealism. Richards explains.

The grand communist experiment is the delusion that we can build a utopia if we try hard enough and that every real society is intolerably wicked because it doesn't measure up to utopia. When we ask whether we can build a “just” society we need to keep the question nailed to the solid ground. Just compared with what? It doesn't do any good to tear down a society that is unjust compared with perfection if that society is more just than any of the ones that will replace. No real society looks good compared with utopia. The differences between them may seem trivial. Nirvana myth dazzles the eyes. The free exchange of wages for work in the marketplace starts to look like slavery. Tough competition for market share between companies is confused with theft and survival of the fittest. Banking is confused with Usery and exploitation. This shouldn't surprise us. Of course, modern capitalist societies like the United States look terrible compared with perfection. The question isn't whether capitalism is perfect. The question is whether there's a better alternative in this life?

Free market capitalism with provisions for the poor has its flaws. But unlike Marxism and socialism, it works. More important for us though is the question, “Is free market capitalism with provisions for the poor biblical?”

BIBLICAL PRINCIPLES OF A JUST ECONOMIC SYSTEM

That system is a free-market system of private ownership, that enables capital investment, is regulated to punish theft and dishonesty, and contains provisions of some form of safety-net for the poor.  

A. As we saw last week, Gensis 1-2 places humans in the garden to cultivate it, i.e. develop its potential to make life better for humans. This process can be expected to take capital investment so that scientists, inventors, and manufacturers are paid before the product is purchased from the retailer. Cultivating the earth for the reward of individual economic benefit is assumed by Paul in establishing the principle that if a man does not work, neither should he eat (2 Thes 3:10).

B. The Ten Commandments affirm a free-market system. Commandment 8, “You shall not steal,” teaches private property. Commandment 9 “You shall not bear false witness” requires the integrity that a free market requires to flourish. Commandment 10, “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house…or anything that is your neighbor’s” clearly teaches a free market that assumes ownership, the right to acquire wealth, and a disparity in wealth.

C. This free market system always had this caveat. Some produce must be left for the poor Leviticus 19:9–10: "When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Do not go over your vineyard a second time or pick up the grapes that have fallen. Leave them for the poor and the foreigner. I am the Lord your God.

Every free-market society must employ policies that are based upon this principle. Several that come to mind are our anti-trust laws which prevent the richest and biggest companies from using their economic strength to drive competitors out of business. Another in a non-agrarian society is a graduated income tax with no income tax for those under a minimum. We shouldn’t necessarily be satisfied with these provisions; there may be better ways to help the poor.

BIBLICAL VIEW OF HELPING THE POOR

Adam and Eve were designed to be God’s image bearers, reflecting his nature as a worker and moral ruler. As moral rulers who had the law of God written on their hearts, they were to exercise dominion in a way that pleased God as culture developed and diversified. Human flourishing was the result of shalom in the four relationships of life: 1) Walking in harmony with God’s righteousness, they would have respected private ownership (theft forbidden by the 8th commandment), honest business practices (lying forbidden by the 9th commandment). 2) Experiencing pre-fall wholeness--internal peace with themselves—no sense of inferiority, insecurity, competitiveness, or envy. Sinful selfishness has not exerted itself—and their call to vocation was the call to use their talents, innovation, and resources to make products to serve others. 3) Experiencing pre-fall harmony in their horizontal relationships with each other; their hearts were not governed by greed, selfishness, cheating each other, or jealousy. 4) There was harmony in the created order. There was no poverty that had resulted from natural calamity like earthquakes, floods, or volcanoes erupting. And work was a joy, not a toil.

A. Overcoming the poverty of being. Only God knows how profoundly slavery and racism have crushed black men and women’s dignity. I wonder how many centuries it may take to undo such evil attacks on the self-esteem of those who bear the image of God. I’m told by those engaged in youth ministry that this shattered self-esteem is linked to many outward symptoms of this brokenness:

  • a teen boy’s desire to prove himself a man through his sexual prowess.
  • a teen girl looking for love in the arms of a male who just wants sex.
  • a teen girl who wants to feel needed by getting pregnant and having a baby who needs her and, to some degree, loves her back.
  • a boy committing violence to win the respect of the others in his gang.

B. Overcoming a poverty of family relationships. In my view the single most significant cause of poverty in our cities is father absence. We will apply this approach to the inner-city next week.

C. Overcoming spiritual poverty. A recent L.A. County Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration study found that of the homeless

  • 38% are alcoholics.
  • 26% are addicted to drugs and other substances.
  • 25% suffer from Mental illness. (Cited by John Dean, Saint Sophia Cathedral)

Poverty’s cause is not a shortage of money, but the result of complex components to human brokenness that only Christians have the resources to restore.

D. Overcoming a poverty of stewardship. The biblical alleviation of poverty requires helping every human discover and develop his or her potential, gifts and talents becoming economically self-sufficient. Several years ago, a small group of Christian Congressional staffers who wanted to do something about the problems they saw with education in Washington, D.C. began to meet each week in the basement of the Capitol building to pray and seek God’s will. They decided to open an academically rigorous, Christian school in the city, in the heart of Southeast Washington, D.C. Cornerstone now has 180 students K-12, 30 teachers and staff. 96% are Black or African American, 2% Hispanic, 2% White.

The above fourfold restoration is exactly what the first century Christians practiced in the Roman empire. Roman cities were characterized by poor sanitation, contaminated water, high population densities, open sewers, filthy streets, unbelievable stench, rampant crime, collapsing buildings, and frequent illness and plagues. Rather than fleeing urban cesspools, the early church found a niche there. The Christian concept of self-sacrificial love for others, emanating from God’s love for them was a revolutionary concept to the pagan mind, which viewed the extension of mercy as an emotional act to be avoided by rational people. Hence paganism provided no ethical foundations to justify caring for the sick and the destitute. Sociologist Rodney Stark notes,

“To cities filled with homeless and impoverished, Christianity offered charity as well as hope. To cities filled with newcomers and strangers, Christianity offered an immediate basis for attachments. To cities filled with orphans and widows, Christianity provided a new and expanded sense of family. To cities torn by violence and ethnic strife, Christianity offered a new basis for social solidarity, and to cities faced with epidemics, fires, and earthquakes, Christianity offered effective nursing services.’”

The rising generation is right in calling the church back to compassionate care for the poor and disenfranchised. That is certainly NOT embracing political movements that embrace “economic equality,” “the Marxist worldview that labels the rich oppressors.” It is not mistakenly calling the idyllic NT example of believers generously looking at none of their possessions as belonging to themselves, socialism. Those generous actions had nothing to do with socialism, which is state ownership of the means of production. Nevertheless, if we would have hearts like Jesus, we can’t just rest upon defending capitalism. We must care enough about the plight of the poor that we notice them and pursue efforts to help them with biblical wisdom.  

For Further Prayerful Thought.

  1. What rationalizations among Christians have you seen for allowing American consumerism to shape us too much to care significantly about sacrificing to help the poor?
  2. Which instances of compassion without biblical wisdom stood out to you.
  3. Why do you think that selling the dream of utopia to the masses by Lenin in the Soviet Union, Mao in China and other communist dictators worked to cause them to overthrow the government allowing them to seize dictatorial control?
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Should Economic Equality Be the Goal of Christians?

Should Economic Equality Be the Goal of Christians?

On 31 May, 2026 By Gary Yagel

Ideas have consequences. Bad ideas have victims. That is why God’s people are called to shed the light of God’s truth on destructive culture-shaping ones, like the idea that the Christan’s call to social justice means rejecting consumer driven capitalism in favor of economic equality. This episode begins by illustrating how quickly an evil, destructive idea can take over a culture and then addresses the falsehood that social justice means pursuing economic equality.

Hugh Whelchel in his book, How Then Should We Work explains how quickly the worldview of a culture can change:

"In the late 1980s a group of about 175 leaders met in Warrenton Virginia to strategically launch several initiatives through various channels of cultural influence to support what they hoped would bring about substantial cultural change. These friends formed the beginnings of the homosexual movement and were responsible for helping it find its stride in the mid-90s as every channel of culture was systematically inundated with the message of equal rights, tolerance, and civility for homosexuals."  

"Their strategy was employed in five important markets of social influence which touch every citizen in America, government, education, organized religion, the media and the workplace. In the business channel vigorous attempts were finally successful for same sex couples to be recognized with benefits equal to married couples. In the education channel books like Heather Has Two Mommies and Daddy's Roommate about same-sex parenting found their way into schools and public libraries. In the media channel “Ellen” and “Will and Grace” became the wedge that broke open wide open wide acceptance of gays as fun, engaging, and talented human beings. Within the cultural channel of the church major denominations like the Episcopal Church and the United Church of Christ opened leadership roles for gays and lesbians."

In 30 years, the idea of being gay moved from being commonly viewed as abnormal and aberrant in society to being an acceptable and normal alternative lifestyle. In my view on the horizon in America today is a worldview of economics that is far more destructive to the fabric of society than accepting sexual perversion as normal for some. And it is a worldview that is causing many young Christians to jettison their Christian faith.

In a recent book published by the Gospel Coalition, Thaddeus Williams of Biola University explains that the church’s lack of concern for economic and social justice is a primary reason that many of those raised in Christian homes are deconstructing their faith. He writes, “The conclusion that Christianity is hardly the beacon of social justice that it should be is a common theme in many deconstruction stories.” “Instead of advocating for the poor by embracing economic equlaity, today’s church,” it is argued, “embraces capitalistic greed, which oppresses the poor.” No teen raised in a Christian home wants to be part of a movement that oppresses the poor. No wonder so many are jettisoning biblical Christianity in favor of joining “social justice” ideologies that they believe support the poor instead of American consumerism. Furthermore, there is little evidence that this worldview about economics is slowing down as more politicians embrace the views of this destructive ideology than ever before in my lifetime.  

Is ECONOMIC EQUALITY something that all justice-loving people should pursue?  How do we answer the accusation our kids hear proclaimed through social media that if Christianity were real, more Christians would pursue social justice by promoting ECONOMIC EQUALITY instead of America’s capitalistic consumerism? That is today’s topic.

At the core of American culture is a belief in equality. Jefferson, Franklin, and Adams had built their case for the Declaration of Independence from Britain upon the famous words, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created EQUAL.” Believing in EQUALITY is as American as apple pie and watching the Superbowl. However, our founding fathers used the term EQUALITY to refer to a specific kind of EQUALITY, equal justice under the law.

Lady Justice is blindfolded because justice is unbiased and must not be based on a person's appearance or other outside influences. She holds scales to represent the impartiality of the courts. The nature of the EQALITY of all men, that they had in view, is apparent as the Declaration of Independence continues, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” EQUALITY referred to equal rights under the law, impartiality in our justice system. Our God-given sense of justice resonates with such equality. “EQUALITY” meant EQUAL JUSTICE for ALL.

But in this decade the concept of EQUALITY has been hijacked. It has been changed by radical ideologues from EQUAL JUSTICE for ALL to EQUAL TREATMENT for ALL. We must help our culture and the rising generation think through the radical implications of this change in the meaning of “EQUALITY.” Let’s consider the difference.

  • Should a lawbreaker and a law-keeper be treated the same way or receive justice?
  • Should a rapist and the woman he abused be treated the same way or should the rapist receive justice?
  • Should a murderer and his victim be treated the same way or should they both receive justice?
  • Should a summer high school worker be treated to the same income as a medical doctor who spent 10 years and $500,000 getting his education, or should the doctor receive just payment for his services?
  • Should a doctor who has become a highly skilled eye surgeon be treated to the same economic rewarded as a Starbucks clerk who is a skilled video game player or should the highly skilled worker whose work is more highly valued be justly paid more?

Radical ideologues have substituted EQUAL TREATMENT i.e. OUTCOMES for EQUAL JUSTICE. But we all realize that justice in the economic world God created is being able to reap what we sow. Coerced equal reaping, in fact, perverts biblical, economic JUSTICE.

ECONOMIC EQUALITY UNMASKED

A. The Origin of the Concept: It is rooted in the thought of Karl Marx. Marx played on the class envy of the poor workers (whom he called the proletariat) convincing them that they were being exploited by the business owners, (the bourgeoisie). He awakened resentment, hatred, and jealousy in the hearts of the unskilled laborers towards the owners of business. He created hatred in the hearts of the proletariat towards the bourgeoisie by arguing that ECONOMIC INEQUALITY WAS UNJUST. Marx demonized a market economy with private ownership, which enabled capital investment to increase productivity as the exploitation of the masses. Marxists come to power based on promising the poor that they would redistribute wealth and set up the utopian ideal where the operating principle would be “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” Marx, however, forgot to mention that the Marxist totalitarian leaders were the ones who would decide what each person needed.  

B. History: The utopian hope of ECONOMIC EQUALITY has been relentlessly used by politicians to exploit the naïve. The twentieth century was one giant lab experiment. Political leaders, Lenin, then Stalin in Russia, Mao Zedong in China, Pol Pot in Cambodia, and Fidel Castro of Cuba, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela played on class envy, the hallmark of Marxism, fomented rage by the poor against the land, business, and factory owners, promised a utopia of justice, and took over government control of the economy. In every case, it was a disaster, leading to enormous slaughter and human suffering—THE KIND OF SUFFERING THAT EVERY CHRISTIAN SHOULD OPPOSE. Here are some of the stunning, brutal facts:

  • Communism did not come to Russia as the result of a popular uprising: it was imposed on her by intellectuals hiding behind slogans of “equality.”
  • Vladimir Lenin led his Bolshevik Party to victory in a three-year civil war. He began to centralize large chunks of the Russian economy.
  • He discovered that bureaucrats in Moscow were neither motivated nor competent to manage distant factories and farms. Disaster ensued.
  • Restrictions on trade created a black market bigger than the economy.
  • His regime dumped banknotes into the market causing catastrophic inflation. In 1923 prices were 1 million times greater than prices before Lenin’s revolution. The starvation that ensued was horrific.
  • After Lenin took over the economy, large-scale industrial production in 1920 was 18% of what it had been in 1913 causing enormous suffering.
  • Lenin slaughtered the wealthy peasants, then tried to force poorer peasants to sell their grain below market prices, ending in massive starvation.
  • Under Stalin, the livelihood of workers was decimated, while millions of peasants died from a forced famine in 1932 and 1933.
  • An unfathomable 20 million Russians perished as a result of Stalin and Lenin’s socialist takeover of the economy.
  • In China, Mao Zedong’s “Great Leap Forward” led to the slaughter of millions of landowners by his brain-washed teenaged Red Guard in the 1950’s.
  • Mao’s utopian promise, “We shall create a new heaven and earth for man” was catastrophic: 20 million Chinese died in the famine that resulted from this “heaven on earth” construction project, alone.
  • An astounding 65 million Chinese died through Mao’s socialist policies.

There are similar statistics about Cambodia, North Korea, Cuba, and other socialist regimes. Frenchman, Stephane Courtois, whose group documented the socialist atrocities of the 20th century wrote, “Between 85 million and 100 million human beings lost their lives to communist experiments in the twentieth century. Never has an idea had such catastrophic consequences” (Money, Greed, and God, Jay Richards). This fact of history is the reason Christians must not remain silent about poisonous hatred for the rich being spewed by adherents of this ideology.

C. Morality: The concept of ECONOMIC EQUALITY is NOT based upon the VIRTUE of JUSTICE, but upon the EVIL of ENVY. It is imperative that we help the culture and rising generation understand that at its very core the ideology that promotes ECONOMIC EQUALITY is morally repugnant to God.

  • The pursuit of the so-called virtue of “economic justice” caused naïve teens in Mao’s Red Guard to slaughter landowners to confiscate their land. This false God of ECONOMIC EQUALITY is seen in Critical Theory, which justified the looting and burning of business in our cities because business owners are part of the “oppressor class.” Economic had become their God empowering them to excuse the evil of murder, imprisonment of the innocent and theft.
  • It embraces the forcible redistribution of wealth. It justifies whoever controls the government stealing money, goods, lands, and the means of production from their rightful owners, violating the 8th commandment, “You shall not steal.” It robs those deemed “too wealthy” to give what is stolen to “the deserving poor” who happen to be the supporters of their political party.
  • ECONOMIC EQUALITY is rooted in a violation of the Tenth Commandment, “You shall not covet.” Proponents of this destructive ideology deceive followers into thinking that their feelings of coveting what the rich have is not the evil of coveting, but the virtue of being offended by injustice. As scholar, Art Lindsley points out (“Does Jubilee Require the Redistribution of Wealth or Land”, tifwe.org) the biblical teaching about the year of Jubilee does not support the redistribution of wealth. To the contrary, it guaranteed that the land given by God to own by specific tribes in Israel could only be leased, the details of the lease requiring it to be paid up by the year of jubilee.
  • Finally, as we’ve seen, EONOMIC EQUALITY, which masquerades as a virtue, is really based on the sin of envy. Notice how the class hatred generated by Marxism, Critical Theory, and the political left right now fit the works of the sinful nature described by Paul in Galatians 5:20: enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions.

D. Replacing the virtue of ECONOMIC JUSTICE with the utopian ideal of ECONOMIC EQUALITY is rooted in human arrogance that sits in judgement upon God. If ECONOMIC INEQULITY is unjust, God is an immoral monster, since by his providence he has caused one child to be born fabulously wealthy into the House of Saud—the royal family that rules Saudi Arabia, and another child into the poverty of a single mom who is a crack addict in Chicago. Rich and poor have this in common: The Lord is the Maker of them all (Prov 22:2). Nowhere does the moral demand of justice require ECONOMIC EQUALITY. The very sense of justice that all humans have results from being created in God’s image. His nature is the source of all true understanding of justice. Yet, God simply does NOT create humans EQUALLY--with the same level of talent, financial resources, or opportunity. Paul teaches that we have gifts that differ according to the grace that is given to us (Rom 12:6) The idea that economic justice requires leveling the economic playing field is a corruption of the human sense of justice.

God’s glory is shown by the breadth of diversity shown in his creation. Humans are arrogant to complain about this diversity. But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” (Rom 9:20-21). “Woe to him who strives with him who formed him. Does the clay say to him who forms it, ‘What are you making?’ or ‘Your work has no handles’? (Isaiah 45:9).

From the standpoint of eternity, it could be argued that it is better to be poor in this life than rich. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God (Matt 19:24). Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God (Lk 6:20). To say that ECONOMIC INEQUALITY is unjust requires believing that the God who placed all men in their economic circumstances is unjust. The chief obstacle to coming to this conclusion is the Bible.

E. In view of the diversity of God’s creation, Scripture reveals what economic justice is. Jesus said, to whom much was given, of him much will be required (Lk 12:48). Jesus reinforces this view of economic justice in his parable of the talents in Matthew 25. In verse 15, we read, to one the master gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Notice that the allotting of resources to each servant was done justly—each “according to his differing ability.” There is nothing inherently unjust about creating servants with different abilities nor entrusting different levels of assets to each one. There is no ECONOMIC EQUALITY going on here. Later in the story (vs 20-23) we read,

And he who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five talents more, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me five talents; here, I have made five talents more.’ His master said to him, ‘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.’ And he also who had the two talents came forward, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me two talents; here, I have made two talents more.’ His master said to him, ‘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.’ 

It is not accidental that the master said exactly the same thing, word for word, to the faithful servants given five talents and given two talents. Justice is NOT EQUALITY of earning potential, athletic ability, physical beauty, or wealth. Justice from our master is qualified by comparing what we have been given to what we have achieved. ECONOMIC EQUALITY is rooted in Marxism, not the Bible.

F. God’s creation command to all humans to develop the potential he built into the earth for the benefit of mankind and his glory supports the economic freedom of capitalism. Examine any scientific discovery like iron ore, petroleum, electricity that is turned into a benefit to mankind like buildings, automobiles, and appliances, and you will see the investment of capital. To accomplish our very calling as humans, discovering and employing the potential God built into earth to benefit humans, it is necessary for someone to invest money to pay for those who figure out how it can benefit mankind and how to multiply that benefit. Despite the distaste with which the political left has filled the term, it is capitalism that provides private ownership and a free market. This economic system incentivizes payment for research and for turning that research into a blessing to humans. As we will see in a moment, it is such investment that makes the economic pie bigger, which is the best way to help the poor.   

TEACHING OUR LOVED ONES TO RECOGNIZE THE MARXIST MYTH

There is a massive failure to understand the nature of economics by those who argue that Christians should support ECONOMIC EQUALITY. Ignorance is revealed in their assumption, rich people having more means poor people have less. You might have heard the argument, “In America, the richest 1% have 40% of all the wealth. This kind of inequality is unjust.” The wealth gap between the upper class and everyone else is almost always framed in terms of inequality and fairness. However, this apparent injustice is based upon the FALSE idea that the total amount of wealth in a society is FIXED, like the size of an apple pie. If someone gets a bigger slice, that means someone else will only get a smaller slice. If there is only so much to go around, the richer Tom is the poorer Harry is. No one should have more than his fair share.

However, any knowledgeable person knows that is NOT how economies work. What if there is a way to make the pie double or triple or quadruple in size? That is what God originally wanted to happen as Adam and Eve multiplied and the resources God placed into earth were discovered and utilized.

God’s design for cultivating the garden so that humans flourish is for mankind to have the economic and political freedom so that humans can work with 1) material resources, 2) an understanding of human needs, 3) creativity, 4) legal protections (private ownership, patents), 5) information, and 6) technology—to transform natural resources into products that make life better for everyone. God has gifted and called humans to develop the potential of creation. Often humans do this by transforming things that have little economic value into resources and technologies that have great economic value. Light, for instance, has been turned into lasers. Wind turned into electricity. And sand is transformed into fiber optic cables and computer chips. Humans innovate. The late Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, didn’t steal iPhones from homeless people. He invented them, and by being free to create and sell them, Steve Jobs created new wealth. Economic and political freedom enabled Steve Jobs to grow rich; but that same FREEDOM is what led millions of others to get richer. The pie grew. Steve Jobs getting richer didn’t make everyone else poorer. In fact, the wealth he added to the pie provided jobs and economic value to millions of people in the US and around the world.

In fact, economic INEQUALITY is the mark of a TRULY FREE society, one that respects the right of every individual to make his own decisions about his gifts, and the career he will follow. Because everyone is created in God’s image, everyone should be treated equally before the law. But that doesn’t mean that our efforts produce identical outcomes. Some choose jobs they love that barely pay the bills. Others choose careers that are risky or boring but lucrative. Others prefer regular work hours that pay less but are stable. A free society allows us to make these choices. Having the economic and political freedom to choose the career that you WANT to choose gives a greater sense of purpose and satisfaction, and even makes life more enjoyable. The only way to level economic outcomes would be to deprive people of this freedom. And whenever that’s been tried it has failed. Rather than making everyone equally prosperous, governments who try to force economic equality only succeed in making everyone more equal in their poverty and misery. When Christians thoughtlessly jump on the bandwagon of supporting ECONOMIC EQUALITY, they harm the poor. Next week we’ll look at what Scripture teaches about how to actually help the poor, as all true Christians must do.

For Further Prayerful Thought.

  1. How would you respond to the average Christian dad who says, “understanding economics is not part of my calling. I can’t answer my kid’s accusations that Christianity is hypocritical and that they can’t embrace a religion that favors American consumerism instead of ECONOMIC EQUALITY as Jesus would have?”
  2. What most stood out to you about current ideologues who have replace the content of the word EQUALITY as equal justice under the law with the concept of the same treatment?
  3. Why does the biblical view that justice is not everyone having the same abilities, assets, and opportunities but that from those who are given much, much is required better match reality than the concept that everyone God creates should be EQUAL in every opportunity, ability, and asset?
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America 250—Accurately Defending Its Spiritual Heritage

America 250—Accurately Defending Its Spiritual Heritage

On 23 May, 2026 By Gary Yagel

Let me begin on this Memorial Day weekend to say to the many veterans who listen to the podcast, “Thank you for putting your life at risk for us—thank you for our service.”

This past Sunday, May 17th, Freedom 250, a White House-backed public-private partnership launched Rededicate 250 with “A National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise & Thanksgiving” on the National Mall. Naturally, this prayer meeting provoked the outcry, “This violates the separation of church and state” from the political left.  In the coming months, secularists and progressives will be seeking to undermine the celebration of America’s spiritual and biblical roots. For us and our families to respond winsomely and persuasively, we must know the facts and not just react with Christian spin, that we are a Christian nation. This episode seeks to equip us to think truthfully, i.e. with historic accuracy and the perspective of God’s Word as we examine the complex issue: Is America a Christian nation?

From the portion of Rededicate 250 that I was able to see broadcast Sunday from the mall, I was most impressed with the prayer of dedication by the United States Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson. Here are excerpts from his prayer:

Our Heavenly Father,

     Thank you so much for this great day that you've given us here, as we remember that your mighty hand has been upon our nation since the very beginning…. Since the settlers at Jamestown planted the cross at Cape Henry, and since the pilgrims at Plymouth made a covenant to give you the glory, in all that time, you guided us at every pivotal moment.

     And when our forefathers took up the great cause of American independence, they turned to you in steadfast prayer. On this very day, two and a half centuries ago, the Second Continental Congress gathered in Philadelphia. Facing imminent battle and almost certain death, our Founders held a decisive day of what they called ‘humiliation, fasting and prayer.’ They did that to humble themselves and to seek your guidance at the dawn of their fight for freedom.

     Just weeks later, Lord, on July 4th, 1776, you gave 56 patriots the courage and the conviction to sign their names to the Declaration of Independence, forming 13 distant and disparate colonies into a new nation, which would become, by your mercy and grace, the freest, most successful, most benevolent nation in the history of the world…. And you gave our fathers the wisdom and faith to establish this new nation premised on the biblical and foundational principle that all men are created equal and free before you. Through your divine providence, our Founders acknowledged and boldly proclaimed the self-evident truth that every single person is created in your image, and that we are endowed by you, our Creator, with our inalienable rights to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness…

     Lord, today, our people gather once again in your name. We have humbled ourselves before you. We acknowledge that the miracle of our founding, and the countless miracles that have followed, are your doing. We remember that our nation owes – every victory, every hero, every good deed she has brought forth – to you, Almighty God. Amid a bloody civil war, you gave Abraham Lincoln the vision and the fortitude to ignite a ‘new birth of freedom….You filled the sojourners of the civil rights movement with your spirit as they challenged their generation to live up to the promises enshrined in the Declaration.

      Now as we approach the 250th anniversary of American Independence…we've seen sinister ideologies sow confusion and discord among our people. We've witnessed attacks on our history, on our heroes, and on the cherished moral and spiritual identity of this great nation…Those voices have sought to distort the self-evident truth that we know so well, and that our founders boldly proclaim in the Declaration: that our rights do not derive from the government, they come from you, our Creator and Heavenly Father.

     Lord, just as we humbly sought out your guidance in past trials, we are doing it here again today. We turn to you once again to save us from these afflictions, to deliver us from the forces of evil oppression and justice and tyranny – both within our borders and beyond our shores – and Lord, never let us be separated from your mercy and your love…

     Father, we pray for mercy upon our land, mercy upon us for our mistakes. Forgive us of our sins individually and collectively and help us devote ourselves with renewed piety and patriotism to the eternal truths of your Word and to the enduring principles of the Declaration you blessed us with.

     Here Lord, in this 250th year of American Independence, we hereby rededicate the United States of America as ‘One Nation, Under God.’ Look upon us with favor upon your country as we celebrate this momentous anniversary and let your Holy Spirit descend upon this land so that future generations will look back at this day, in this present age, and once again, see your providential hand at work. I ask this today, Lord, I pray it and I believe it, in your holy name, in Jesus’ name, Amen.”

As we travel through the upcoming months of celebrating our 250th anniversary we are going to encounter a fierce firestorm of opposing arguments about America’s spiritual identity and history. On the one side are secularists 1) who argue that events like Freedom 250 on the mall violate the separation of church and state, 2) who accuse Mike Johnson and those of us like him of Christian nationalism, and 3) who want to strip the public sphere of debate over government and corporate policy from any spiritual, moral, or religious influence. This side also has the weighty argument, that if you say that America was founded as a Christian nation you must also say that Christianity is racist, since it is the epitome of hypocrisy to claim belief in a divine principle that all humans are created equal and own black slaves. On the other side are those who want to celebrate the influence of Christianity, the Bible, and the Great Awakening upon the founding fathers and who oppose the privatization of Christianity into our closet of personal piety, and who believe God has blessed our nation in part because we, as a nation, have sought though imperfectly to honored him. To accurately defend America’s spiritual heritage, let’s begin with historical facts.

HISTORICAL FACTS

A. The significant impact of the Great Awakening (1730s-1740s) In the early 1700s in New England none but church members could hold any office or vote in elections. The motivation for admission to the Lord’s table was not a commitment to Christ; it was getting a job. Christianity became a civil religion. But true Christianity is not an inherited one—inherited from your parents or from your culture. It is a chosen one. George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, and other preachers of the Great Awakening confronted their hearers with that choice. Repent. Believe. Surrender to Christ’s Kingship. We know that The Great Awakening brought new birth into the hearts of many nominal Christian church members and brought at least 25,000 new members into churches in New England alone. And even though the evidence shows that Ben Franklin was not a Christian, God only knows how much George Whitfield influenced Franklin’s beliefs.

B. The Beliefs of the Authors of the Declaration of Independence. On June 11, 1776, the Continental Congress appointed a committee of five to explain their decision to declare their independence: John Adams of Massachusetts, Ben Franklin of Pennsylvania, Thomas Jefferson of Virginia, Robert Livingston of New York, and Roger Sharman of Connecticut. The committee asked Jefferson to write the original draft, who did so in Philadelphia between June 11 and June 28, 1776. It was modified by the full committee and the full assembly. Here are the beliefs of the committee members who shaped Jefferson’s words.

  • John Adams was a Unitarian who shifted away from his strict Calvinist upbringing toward Enlightenment rationalism. While he deeply valued the Bible, he rejected central orthodox Christian doctrines, including the Trinity and the absolute divinity of Jesus Christ.
  • Ben Franklin was a theist. He believed in a sovereign God who ruled over the affairs of men and intervened in them. He believed in seeking God’s intervention on behalf of America’s cause. It was he who proposed the practice of beginning Congress with prayer, (which was adopted).
  • Thomas Jefferson was also a theist. He believed in in a benevolent Creator who designed the universe, but he rejected orthodox Christian doctrines such as the Trinity, divinity of Jesus, and biblical miracles.
  • Robert Livingston’s beliefs were deeply rooted in the Protestant tradition. His family origins included a heritage from the Reformed Church in Scotland (his great-grandfather was a Scottish Presbyterian minister) and his upbringing in the Hudson Valley, (NY) steeped him in Christian principles.
  • Roger Sherman was a devout orthodox Calvinist. Revered by peers like John Adams as an "old Puritan," his strict Christian faith heavily influenced his political philosophy, deeply shaping his approach to morality, human governance, and the rule of law.

So, history reveals that America was not formed only by Christians; it was formed by a combination of Christians and theists, whose world views overlapped with regards to God’s sovereignty, God’s willingness to intervene in the affairs of men to bless the pursuit of justice, and the value of the Bible. At the same time—it was never a secular, non-religious state, ever.

C. The Wording of the Declaration bears out this sense of accountability to God and belief in his providence:

  • “When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitled them…”
  • “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and that they are endowed by their creator with certain Illini unalienable rights that among these are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness…”
  • “We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America in general Congress assembled appealing to the supreme judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions…”
  • “And for the support of this declaration with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence we mutually pledge to each other our lives our fortunes and our sacred honor.”

There is zero evidence that America ever existed apart from a strong sense of accountability to God and dependence upon God’s providence as a nation. This is an indisputable fact of history.

D. The First Amendment (aka Establishment Clause) of the Bill of Rights was adopted to prevent a state church, not a religious people: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” Escaping religious persecution in countries where church and state had unbiblically married, many colonists viewed the freedom to worship (or not to worship) according to one's own conscience as a divine imperative. Protestants dissenting from state churches emphasized a personal relationship with God that no earthly institution, especially a state church, should mandate. The “establishment clause” was never intended to exclude religious values from shaping the state, but the opposite. It was adopted to protect individuals from the state coercing, rewarding, or impeding religious practices, not to protect the state from religious individuals influencing its policies.

E. Thomas Jefferson’s meaning in his phrase “wall of separation between church and state” was never to prevent religious values from entering the public arena. Daniel Dreisbach of the Heritage Foundation explains how this term has been taken out of its historic context: He writes:

No metaphor in American letters has had a more profound influence on law and policy than Thomas Jefferson's wall of separation between church and state today, This figure of speech is accepted by many Americans as a pithy description of the constitutionally prescribed church state arrangement and it has become the sacred icon of a strict separationist dogma that champions a secular form of government in which religious influences are systematically and coercively stripped from public life.

Jefferson coined the term “wall of separation between church and state” in an 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist association in Connecticut. The Baptists, a religious minority in their state, feared that the government could infringe upon their religious rights. Jefferson replied assuring them that the First Amendment built a wall of separation between church and state. He meant that the national government was prohibited from establishing a state religion or interfering with the free exercise of religion. Progressive Supreme Court Justices have either mistakenly or dishonestly taken Jefferson’s phrase out of its historic context. Jefferson didn’t want to separate religion from the state: he wrote the Declaration of Independence saying the state’s legitimacy is based upon religion—endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights.

F. Secularism’s claim that religion is the primary cause of intolerance and violence has been debunked. Many secularists have argued that one of the main barriers to world peace is religion, with various exclusive claims to superiority and the belief that they are favored by God. Progressives rightly point out that history shows that secular rulers almost always try to argue that “God is on their side,” using it as justification to kill their enemies. Furthermore, the fact that religion can cause war is being proved right this second. Any normal government negotiating with the U. S. to give up its nuclear weapons-grade uranium, would give it up to prevent the enormous suffering of its people caused by the U. S. blockade. But the Shia Islamic Jihadi regime in Iran is refusing to give up its pursuit of a nuclear weapon, at least in part it would seem, because they believe that some catastrophic event will take place before the final, Twelfth Iman returns, and that destroying the Great Satan (U. S.) and Little Satan (Israel) may precipitate that event. The mullahs and IRGC have demonstrated for 47 years how religious extremism causes violence.

However, the history of the 2Oth century proves that “religion-less,” i.e. “secular” regimes are no less violent than religious ones. Soviet Russia, Communist China, and the Khmer Rouge were atheistic states. But their attempts to eradicate religion led not to more peace and harmony but to more oppression. This tragic reality was observed by Alistair McGrath in his History of Atheism: “The 20th century gave rise to one of the greatest and most distressing paradoxes of human history: that the greatest intolerance and violence of that century were practiced by those who believed that religion caused intolerance and violence.”   

History reveals that both totalitarian theocracies and godless dictatorships have slaughtered millions of their opponents. We can only conclude that there is a sinful impulse in the heart of all humans to do so.   

BIBLICAL TEACHING ABOUT THE CHURCH & STATE

Jesus stated clearly that the conquest of his kingdom is not by force. When he stood before Pilate, accused by the chief priests of being a rival king to Caesar, Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.” Jesus contrasts two kingdoms. One is fought for by its followers. Conquest is by the sword. This kingdom might have a spiritual component, as a theocracy, like an Islamic Caliphate. But its spread is by military conquest, and its religious values are then imposed from the top down by coercion. The rapid expansion of Islam across North Africa and into Spain in the seventh century, by its founder, Muhammad, and his followers, was accomplished by the power of the sword. Military defeat brought Islamic government, and Sharia Law was forced on the conquered people. 3200 churches were destroyed or converted to mosques. Muhammad’s and his followers’ method of spreading Islam was clear: defeat nations militarily and force Islamic theocracy upon them.

In contrast, the NT prohibits the building of a Christian theocracy. The power of the sword is given to the state, never to the church. The state uses its political and legal power to punish evil behavior and reward good behavior. In other words, the NT teaches the separation of church and state. The power of the church is spiritual, affirming the legitimacy of a profession of faith, conducting the government of the church, and exercising church discipline. Most importantly, Christ’s kingdom of righteousness spreads in two ways: 1) Christ-followers implementing Christ’s agenda in each sphere of their own lives, 2) through their influence as salt, light, and leaven, never by military conquest. The establishing of God’s covenant people at one time in history in one nation as a theocracy, Israel, has given way to the Day of Pentecost and the sending of the gospel into every nation of the world. Christ’s kingdom does not spread by tearing down the political structure of a nation and replacing it with Christian theocracy. The kingdom of Christ permeates Kingdom Earth, its members living side by side with the lost.

The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?’ He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ So the servants said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ But he said, ‘No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest (Mt 13:24-30a).

The kingdom has come into history but in such a way that political structures are not overthrown. The sons and daughters of the kingdom have surrendered to God’s rule and entered into his blessings. They live as redeemed people putting on display restored humanity through obedience to Christ’s agenda for them—in their heart loyalties, their attitudes, and their behavior. Yet, they continue to live in this age intermingled with the lost in a mixed society because the way Christ’s kingdom of righteousness grows is through our example and our influence.

In short, as Christians we are called to stand against secularist progressive ideology, which seeks to strip our history of its spiritual roots, including intentional dependency upon God for his blessing. Christians have every right to link our founding to Judeo-Christian values and to influence every aspect of American culture as salt, light, and leaven, standing for righteousness.

But a respect for historical truth compels us to say, we were not founded primarily by Christians nor as a Christian nation. Jesus repudiated the linking of his church to any civil government. Furthermore, in my view it is also unwise to over-stress the influence of Christianity upon our founding fathers because of the inherent hypocrisy of binding themselves to a Declaration of Independence that says, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,” while owning black slaves. To say that we were founded as a Christian country is to say that Christianity excuses, if not embraces, slavery. Accurate history shows God graciously blessing our nation by later correcting this blatant hypocrisy, using many Christians who did believe that all men are created equal, like Harriet Beecher Stowe and Abraham Lincoln.  

For Further Prayerful Thought.

1. Why might a black Christian who loves America find it difficult to hear a brother in Christ argue that America was founded as a Christian nation?

2. What did you find most helpful about the religious beliefs of the five men who wrote the Declaration of Independence?

3. If America was not founded by Christians as a Christian nation, why does it matter that we are rooted in a belief in God, recognition that human rights derive from God, and dependence upon him?

4. How would you respond to a progressive friend who says that Christians who want to stop abortion are guilty of violating the constitutional principle of “the separation of church and state.”

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Goals Worthy of Achieving Require Perseverance

Goals Worthy of Achieving Require Perseverance

On 16 May, 2026 By Gary Yagel

In the eyes of Americans, the greatest president we have ever had was Abraham Lincoln. He was a model of perseverance. At age 23, he suffered major defeats in losing his job and losing his first political race, a bid for the state legislature. The next year, 1833, he failed in business. In 1835, his childhood sweetheart died. In 1836 he had a nervous breakdown. In 1843 he was defeated in the bid for the United States Congress. In 1848, he tried again and was again defeated. In 1849 he decided to become a land officer but was rejected. In 1854, he was defeated in a race for the United States Senate. In 1856, he lost a nomination for the vice presidency. In 1858 he was again defeated in a race for the Senate. In 1861 Abraham Lincoln became the 16th president of the United States.

Perseverance is a requirement for reaching any worthwhile goal and a quality that God constantly seeks to build into his children. As we come to the closing chapter in our study of Nehemiah, we continue to see an inspiring leader at work, in this case a leader who persevered, and a godly man who finished his race well.

Our study of Nehemiah 12 last week ended with the citizens of Jerusalem experiencing a great spiritual high as with joy they renewed their covenant obligations, and with euphoric hearts gave thanks and sang praises to their God, who had enabled them to rebuild the wall around Jerusalem. That wall had been in shambles for over 100 years but rebuilt in 52 days. Their spiritual passion was at an all-time high:

  • Ezra had been reading and teaching the Word of God every day.
  • The whole community had been gathering to worship several times a week.
  • A national holiday was declared—a week long Feast of Booths in which the families built lean-tos and camped out as a family.
  • Compelling music had penetrated their souls as the professional musicians and singers paraded across the top of the wall.
  • Their eyes were focused on the concrete proof of Yahweh’s reality and blessing—the wall, he had sent Nehemiah with materials from the Persian King Artaxerxes to re-build.

It was the perfect formula to ignite spiritual passion.

But then the celebration was over, the month of Tishri ended and life returned to normal. Nehemiah remained as Governor for 12 years but then returned to serve again in Artaxerxes’ court. Years passed before Nehemiah, who was probably in his mid-sixties by then, appears again to have heard an alarming report about Jerusalem. But this time it is not about Jerusalem’s broken walls; it’s about the broken covenant vows of Jerusalem’s citizens. Nehemiah could have easily said, “That’s not my problem,” but instead showed remarkable perseverance in putting up with the rebellion of the Jews of Judah. So, in chapter 13, Nehemiah goes back to Jerusalem and tells us what he discovers—that the specific vows the people made to Yahweh in chapter 10 were being broken.

CHAPTER 13 REVEALS JERUSALEM’S PEOPLE BREAKINGTHE COVENANT VOWS THEY MADE IN CHAPTER 10

A. Vow not to intermarry with unbelievers.

Nehemiah 10:30: We will not give our daughters to the peoples of the land or take their daughters for our sons.

Nehemiah 13:23-24: In those days also I saw the Jews who had married women of Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab. And half of their children spoke the language of Ashdod, and they could not speak the language of Judah, but only the language of each people.

B. Vow to keep the Lord’s Day holy.

Nehemiah 10:31: And if the peoples of the land bring in goods or any grain on the Sabbath day to sell, we will not buy from them on the Sabbath or on a holy day.

Nehemiah 13:16:  Tyrians also, who lived in the city, brought in fish and all kinds of goods and sold them on the Sabbath to the people of Judah, in Jerusalem itself!

C. Vow to tithe:

Nehemiah 10:37:  and to bring the first of our dough, and our contributions, the fruit of every tree, the wine and the oil, to the priests, to the chambers of the house of our God; and to bring to the Levites the tithes from our ground, for it is the Levites who collect the tithes in all our towns where we labor.

Nehemiah 13:10: I also found out that the portions of the Levites had not been given to them, so that the Levites and the singers, who did the work, had fled each to his field.

Nehemiah’s NO-NONSENSE Leadership

Author John White is correct in my view when he criticizes the unwillingness of many spiritual leaders to confront sin. He writes, "In Christian work our cowardice in avoiding unpleasantness is currently doing more damage than any damage from irascibility on the part of Christian leaders…. The church has become flabby, old womanish, inept, unwilling to act. Discipline should be reconciliatory and loving, but it should take place," (Cited in Boice Commentary on Nehemiah). Nehemiah could easily have given up on the people of Judah. But he did not. Instead, in response to Nehemiah’s discovery of the intermarriage of his people with unbelievers (vs 23-24) we read (25-27).

And I confronted them and cursed them and beat some of them and pulled out their hair. And I made them take an oath in the name of God, saying, “You shall not give your daughters to their sons, or take their daughters for your sons or for yourselves. Did not Solomon king of Israel sin on account of such women? Among the many nations there was no king like him, and he was beloved by his God, and God made him king over all Israel. Nevertheless, foreign women made even him to sin. Shall we then listen to you and do all this great evil and act treacherously against our God by marrying foreign women?

In response to Nehemiah’s discovery that they were profaning the Sabbath (vs 16), we read (vs 17-18). Then I confronted the nobles of Judah and said to them, “What is this evil thing that you are doing, profaning the Sabbath day? Did not your fathers act in this way, and did not our God bring all this disaster  on us and on this city? Now you are bringing more wrath on Israel by profaning the Sabbath.

In response to the discovery that the people weren’t tithing (vs 10), we read, (vs 11-13), So, I confronted the officials and said, “Why is the house of God forsaken?” And I gathered them together and set them in their stations. Then all Judah brought the tithe of the grain, wine, and oil into the storehouses. And I appointed as treasurers over the storehouses Shelemiah the priest…”

Apart from being challenged by Nehemiah’s willingness to persevere with Judah’s hard-hearted people and willingness to confront them, there are further lessons for us to consider as we examine why they broke their vows.

4 REASONS JUDAH’S RESIDENTS BROKE THEIR COVENANT VOWS

A. They neglected to follow one of the most profound verses in Scripture: Proverbs 4:23: Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life. Their vows to Yahweh were made during the honeymoon phase of their return to him. During this euphoric month of covenant renewal, it was easy for emotions to flood in the direction of full devotion to the LORD. But emotions are short lived. They are easily replaced by other emotions. That is why God says to be alert to inbound things that trigger our desires. We are to stand on the watchtower in the citadel of our hearts and observe what is coming across the plain to knock upon, or batter down the door to our affections and capture our hearts.

On the positive side, weekly worship is designed to reenergize our passion for God, as is time alone with him. In Psalm 63:5-6 David reveals this practice: My soul will be  satisfied as with fat and rich food, and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips, when I remember you upon my bed, and meditate on you in the watches of the night. One of the most profound truths of life is this: If you tell me what has captured a man’s heart, I will tell you the direction of his destiny. We need not only to keep God our first love but cultivate that passion, lest it be overtaken by a greater passion.

B. They lost confidence that obedience to God mattered. Remember, Malachi, the last of the Old Testament prophets, was sent by God to Judah probably while Nehemiah was back at Susa in Artaxerxes court to confront the same abuses in Judah that Nehemiah confronted. For example, Malachi 2:11 condemns the practice of marrying pagan women. Malachi 3:8-10 confronts them with robbing God by their failure to tithe. Malachi, when confronting this same group of people, puts his finger on the reason their disobedience. You have said, “It is vain to serve God. What is the profit of our keeping his charge or of walking as in mourning before the Lord of hosts?  And now we call the arrogant blessed. Evildoers not only prosper but they put God to the test and they escape.”

Malachi was saying, “You people are saying, 'It's not worth it to obey the law. Here, I am tithing the best four sheep I have out of my flock of forty. It's true that my flock continues to grow and flourish. But my next door neighbor—he didn’t tithe his best sheep. He only gave one, and it was the scrawniest, sickest lamb you ever saw for the temple sacrifice and his flock is growing much faster than mine!'” The people of Judah wanted immediate blessing for their obedience. They wanted to walk by sight not by faith. After all, their great euphoric celebration of the wall completion had been with their eyes fixed on the wall right in front of them—proof that God had provided and could be trusted to keep his promises. But God calls us to walk by faith not by sight—a quality that is especially pleasing to him. God promises that obedience, though perhaps painful in the short run, will always bring blessing in the long run; but they wanted blessing now. And when they didn't get it, their conclusion was, “it's not worth it to obey God.”

It should not surprise us that we have so many messages coming our way saying it's not worth it to follow God. Think for a moment about God's most powerful enemy, Satan, and his strategy to cause Eve to sin. Remember his opening question? “Did God actually say you can't eat any of this luscious fruit?” Of course, God said nothing like that. He said they could eat fruit from all of the trees except one. But by Satan’s question to Eve he inferred that God is the kind of mean-spirited being who just might have created all this luscious fruit, put it right in front of you, just so he could deny you from eating ANY of it? That is preposterous, but it planted the seed of doubt about God’s goodness in Eve's heart. And trusting God’s goodness matters enormously to God. In fact, Peter compares such trust to pure gold in the eyes of God. And Paul reasons that is illogical, if not irrational, to not trust God, since he gave his precious Son for us. He proved his desire for our best, once and for all.

C. The third reason the people returned to their sinful ways was the failure of their leaders to keep their vows to God. Nehemiah begins Chapter 13 by making clear that all the priests and all the people knew that God specifically forbid Ammonites or Moabites from even entering the temple: Vs:1-3.

On that day they read from the Book of Moses in the hearing of the people. And in it was found written that no Ammonite or Moabite should ever enter the assembly of God, for they did not meet the people of Israel with bread and water, but hired Balaam against them to curse them—yet our God turned the curse into a blessing. As soon as the people heard the law, they separated from Israel all those of foreign descent.

But while Nehemiah was back in Susa this command of Yahweh had been grievously violated by Eliashib the priest by not only allowing Tobiah the Ammonite to enter the temple but by renting him a room there! Vs. 4:

Eliashib the priest, who was appointed over the chambers of the house of our God, and who was related to Tobiah, prepared for Tobiah a large chamber where they had previously put the grain offering, the frankincense, the vessels, and the tithes of grain, wine, and oil, which were given by commandment to the Levites, singers, and gatekeepers, and the contributions for the priests.  While this was taking place, I was not in Jerusalem, for in the thirty-second year of Artaxerxes king of Babylon I went to the king. And after some time I asked leave of the king and came to Jerusalem, and I then discovered the evil that Eliashib had done for Tobiah preparing for him a chamber in the courts of the house of God. And I was very angry, and I threw all the household furniture of Tobiah out of the chamber. Then I gave orders, and they cleansed the chambers, and I brought back there the vessels of the house of God, with the grain offering and the frankincense.

This disregard for the Law happened in front of ALL people and worse ALL THE PRIESTS who DID NOTHING. The failure of the priests is also seen in Malachi’s rebuke of Judah’s spiritual leaders. Malachi 1:6-9 says:  

A son honors his father, and a servant his master. If then I am a father, where is my honor? And if I am a master, where is my fear? says the Lord of hosts to you, O priests, who despise my name. But you say, ‘How have we despised your name?’ By offering polluted food upon my altar. But you say, ‘How have we polluted you?’ By saying that the Lord's table may be despised. When you offer blind animals in sacrifice, is that not evil? And when you offer those that are lame or sick, is that not evil? Present that to your governor; will he accept you or show you favor? says the Lord of hosts. 

Notice Malachi’s further criticism of the leaders in chapter 2:7-8. For the lips of a priest should guard knowledge, and people should seek instruction from his mouth, for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts. But you have turned aside from the way. This rebuke of Judah’s spiritual leaders is a sobering reminder that God takes seriously his assignment of spiritual leadership to a man, whether as head of his wife, father of his children, officer in the church, or holder of another position of influence. I suspect that 100% of these leaders that Nehemiah had to confront had been all-in, while celebrating the completion of the wall and passion for Yahweh was flowing hot. But sober leaders watch over their hearts with all diligence.

D. The fourth reason they failed to keep their covenant promises is revealed to us by Paul in the NT. This final chapter of Nehemiah is significant. It shows that after the mighty restoration of the wall (torn down by Judah’s enemies as the result of covenant sanctions for rebellion against Yahweh) and the euphoric renewal of commitment promises made to God, in only a few short years, God’s people rebelled again. Nehemiah writes chapter 13, so we see that the promises to keep the covenant in chapter 10 have given way to breaking every vow. This final historical description of God’s OT people leaves us with a final, mini portrait of the entire experience of God’s people in the OT. The Law, alone, cannot produce righteousness. Our sinful nature is too strong. In Roman’s 8:3-4 Paul writes, “The Law never succeeded in producing righteousness—the failure was always the weakness of human nature. But God has met this by sending his own Son Jesus Christ to live in that human nature which causes the trouble.”

Not only does OT history end with a portrait of God’s covenant people failing to keep the covenant, OT prophecy also ends on a similar note of Old Covenant failure. God had long ago set the pattern in Abraham, for fathers to be the guardians and teachers of the ways of God. “For I have chosen him, that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice, so that the Lord may bring to Abraham what he has promised him,” (Gen 18:19). But the fathers regularly failed to turn their hearts to their kids and turn the hearts of their kids back towards them and God’s Word. So, just as Nehemiah’s final assessment of the problem of the entire Old Testament is the failure of human, sinful nature, so Malachi the final OT prophet ends with the failure of human, sinful nature and the need for further help. Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction (Mal 4:5-6).

John the Baptist was the second Elijah, whose wilderness voice ushered in the new era. Jesus would bring the New Covenant. Like the Old Covenant, the New Covenant is a Covenant of Grace; membership is by faith alone, through grace alone. And yet the power to love God by obeying his Word has been poured out through the Holy Spirit to indwell the hearts of Christ-followers, to apply God’s Word and create a sense of Christ's presence in our hearts. God’s people need a New Covenant—the one described in Jeremiah 31:31-34 and declared by God in Hebrews 8 to now be fulfilled in Christ.

Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

Unlike OT dads and leaders, we have the Holy Spirit’s help to persevere as we lead the way for our loved ones in our commitment to Christ.

For Further Prayerful Thought.

  1. What is your reaction to the direct match in chapter 10 (what the inhabitants of Judah vowed), with chapter 13, (the vows they had broken)?
  2. What have you discovered to be the hardest part of confrontation?
  3. Have you made commitments during a spiritual high that you found tough to keep when you were spiritually low? What have you discovered about keeping your spiritual passion high? What have you discovered about watching over your heart?
  4. What do you find most encouraging about Jeremiah’s prophecy of the New Covenant that Hebrews 8 tells us has come to pass in Christ?
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Celebrating God is Good for the Heart

Celebrating God is Good for the Heart

On 09 May, 2026 By Gary Yagel

When it comes to seeking heart satisfaction and fulfillment, C. S. Lewis famously said,

“If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are halfhearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased” ("The Weight of Glory").

Our hearts were designed to find satisfaction by delighting in God. In fact, satisfying our heart in this way is the foundational starting point for our mission God has designed life so that our heart loves must be ordered properly. The first commandment and Great Commandment are about giving God first place in our affections. “Have no gods before me.” “Love me with all of your heart, mind, soul, and strength.” We were created to be worshippers, to delight ourselves in the Lord—to find pleasure in praising God’s moral beauty.

In fact, Peter tells us that the purpose of our redemption is to fulfill our created role as worshippers. Peter writes, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Pet 2:9). Nehemiah 12 is the story of God’s people celebrating God and proclaiming his excellencies. From it we remember again how to keep our heart properly aligned by filling our heart with the joy of praising him. But before turning to that text, let's set the stage by remembering an incident from the life of our Lord, recorded in Luke 17:11-19:.

On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was passing along between Samaria and Galilee. And as he entered a village, he was met by ten lepers, who stood at a distance and lifted up their voices, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” When he saw them he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went they were cleansed. Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice; and he fell on his face at Jesus' feet, giving him thanks. Now he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus answered, “Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?”

In this familiar story in the life of Jesus, the penetrating question that comes from Jesus’ lips is, “Where are the nine?” "I just performed a life transforming miracle for ten men and only one returns. Only one gives God the praise he deserves. How rude can people be? How ungrateful can people be?" Somewhere there are nine former lepers starting life all over again, undoubtedly caught up in the exhilaration of being whole once more, so caught up in the blessing of their new life that they just never got got around to tracking Jesus down to convey their gratitude to him. Jesus almost in disbelief says, “Were there not ten where are the other 9?”

In this episode in Nehemiah 12 we see a nation gathered to express its gratitude to God.

And at the dedication of the wall of Jerusalem they sought the Levites in all their places, to bring them to Jerusalem to celebrate the dedication with gladness, with thanksgivings and with singing, with cymbals, harps, and lyres. And the sons of the singers gathered together from…. (many districts surrounding Jerusalem.) And the priests and the Levites purified themselves, and they purified the people and the gates and the wall.

Then I brought the leaders of Judah up onto the wall and appointed two great choirs that gave thanks. One went to the south on the wall to the Dung Gate. And after them (one group of leaders and priests). And Ezra the scribe went before them. At the Fountain Gate they went up straight before them by the stairs of the city of David, at the ascent of the wall, above the house of David, to the Water Gate on the east.

The other choir of those who gave thanks went to the north, and I followed them with half of the people, on the wall, above the Tower of the Ovens, to the Broad Wall, …. and they came to a halt at the Gate of the Guard. So both choirs of those who gave thanks stood in the house of God, and I and half of the officials with me; and the priests, with trumpets; And the singers sang with Jezrahiah as their leader. And they offered great sacrifices that day and rejoiced, for God had made them rejoice with great joy; the women and children also rejoiced. And the joy of Jerusalem was heard far away (Nehemiah 12:27-43).

WHAT MADE THIS WORSHIP EXPERIENCE SO MEANINGFUL?

A. Nehemiah went out of his way to prepare for worship. Vs. 27: they sought the Levites in all their places, to bring them to Jerusalem to celebrate the dedication with gladness, with thanksgivings and with singing, with cymbals, harps, and lyres. And the sons of the singers gathered together.

The tribe of Levi's responsibility was caring for the temple, offering sacrifices, and leading worship. There were divisions within the tribe of professional musicians and a professional choir who were supported by the tithes of the people. Nehemiah had to recruit a large group. This was no easy task of making a few phone calls. We know that there were several hundred in Jerusalem besides all those who still lived outside the city to be recruited.

It is instructive to me that Nehemiah didn't just expect worship to happen spontaneously, when the final stone was placed into the wall. Normally great worship takes a lot of preparation. Here it is led by trained musicians who, you can be sure, did a lot of practicing ahead of time. When I was a young, immature Christian who didn't know much, I thought we should cancel choir practice and send choir members out to share the gospel on choir night. That shows how little I understood about the centrality of worship in setting our hearts on the Lord as a regular part of our schedule. If you are a regular part of a worship team in your church, “Thank you for your service.” We need to be grateful for those who serve the Lord as part of the worship teams in our churches.

B. Before celebrating, there was purification. A second part of what made this worship meaningful is seen in verse 30: And the priests and the Levites purified themselves, and they purified the people and the gates and the wall. Before there was one moment of celebration there was purification. What did this ceremonial purification involve? We're not told here. But from the rest of the law we know it included taking a bath, putting on clean clothes, fasting, abstinence from sexual relations, and giving sin offerings. Ezra and Nehemiah had grasped one of the most profound truths taught by the ceremonial law: that no person contaminated by his own sin can draw near to God to worship him. Our sin always blocks our relationship with a holy God. The person who does not belong to Christ can't worship the true God; his guilt has not been removed from him. He has not been justified. He is still in his sins.

But the person who does belong to Christ can also have his worship interfered with if he's ignoring some sin in his own life. True worship by God's people is stymied by sin. Do you remember Jesus’ teaching in the sermon on the mount? “If therefore you are presenting a gift at the altar and you remember that your brother has something against you what should you do? Say, “I'll take care of it soon.” No. Jesus said, “Leave your gift there before the altar. First go and reconcile with your brother. Then come and offer your gift. Don't try to worship if there is sin in your heart that has not been dealt with,” says Jesus. If you and I have been ignoring God's promptings in some area of our lives, our worship will be hollow and superficial because only those with a pure heart who’ve genuinely confessed and repented of their sin can draw near to God. That's what Psalm 24 tells us: “Who shall ascend to the hill of the Lord? Who shall stand in his holy place?” That is, who can draw near to God to worship him? Psalm 24 answers, “He who has clean hands and a pure heart.”

C. Nehemiah fixed the focus of the people on what God had done for them. He planned a great parade to walk around the entire wall. What we see in verses 31-39 is Nehemiah creating two huge choirs, each complete with priests, Levites, musicians, instrumentalists, harpists, cymbals, stringed instruments, and vocalists. What were they going to do? Verse 31 says one was to proceed on top of the walls to the right toward the dung gate. In verse 38 the second choir proceeds in the opposite direction. So, Nehemiah organizes these two marching bands going opposite directions on top of the wall, which, by the way, was very wide. These two groups will then meet at the temple where they'd come down from the wall and conclude the service of praise. What an idea! So, everything is in order. Ezra's leading the one group. Nehemiah is with the other group bringing up the rear. They'll meet all the way around the other side.

Think about this scene. As the music begins, I wonder what's going on in Nehemiah's mind. The last recorded account of Nehemiah touring the wall was back in Nehemiah 2, his midnight walk. The wall was in such a bad state that he had to stumble through the ruins. But now, through the power of God, it had been rebuilt. The very wall that Tobias said was so dinky that it could be knocked over by a fox, had been strengthened and rebuilt by the power of God. I wonder if Nehemiah was thinking to himself, “Play these symbols a little louder—loud enough for Tobias and his friends to hear us!”  Nehemiah had been tested by God but now he was expressing the exhilaration of seeing God triumph and of being used by him. There is nothing to compare to that joy.

Think also about what the people were feeling, especially as the families walked by the portion of the wall that they had built. They'd be saying, “This is where God used me. I had a part in what God has brought to pass.” I imagine the closer they got to the temple the more they poured out their praise to God. This parade around the city was instrumental as a catalyst to worship because the people's focus was fixed on what God had done. Like the Samaritan leper who looked down and saw a restored body and then fell down and worshipped Jesus, these Israelites looked down and saw a restored wall and worshipped the God who brought it all about. The beginning of worship is taking my focus off myself, my needs, my problems, my hurts, my concerns, and fixing it on God—his greatness, his glory, his goals, his purposes. In fact, a good definition of worship is a preoccupation with the Lord--fixing your mind on his character, majesty, holiness, wisdom, and greatness. Nehemiah's walk on the wall fixed the people's focus on who God is and upon what God had done. That is the prerequisite for meaningful worship.

D. Now in verses 40-43 we see some of the component parts to a meaningful experience of worship at the temple.

1. The first is giving thanks. Verse 40: “So both choirs of those who gave thanks” In verse 31 we read “I also assigned two choirs to give thanks.”  Have you ever sat down to pray and said, “Now Lord I know this is a really unusual but I'm not here for me today. This prayer is for you. All I'm going to do for these next moments is thank you for your blessings and for being you.  Father, thank you for who you are and the enormous blessings you've bestowed upon me.” Heart alignment begins with cultivating a greatful heart. 

2. The second element we see is the beautiful melodious singing of a choir accompanied by instruments and probably the voices of the people as well. What did the people sing? They sang psalms like Psalm 48:

Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised in the city of our God! His holy mountain, beautiful in elevation, is the joy of all the earth. Mount Zion, in the far north, the city of the great King. Within her citadels God has made himself known as a fortress…. We have thought on your steadfast love, O God in the midst of your temple. As your name, O God, so your praise reaches to the ends of the earth. Your right hand is filled with righteousness.

Let Mount Zion be glad! Let the daughters of Judah rejoice because of your judgments! Walk about Zion, go around her, number her towers, consider well her ramparts, go through her citadels, that you may tell the next generation that this is God, our God forever and ever. He will guide us forever.

Music has the ability to draw our hearts to the Lord as nothing else can. That's true when we want to celebrate; it's also true in difficult times. In Acts 16, Paul and Silas are severely flogged. Right after that we read that they were praying and singing hymns to God. They weren’t singing because they were so happy to be flogged! To the contrary, they found comfort and assurance in their hymns, which helped them lift their focus to the Lord.

3. The third element of meaningful worship was offering sacrifices.  Verse 43: and on that day they offered great sacrifices. True worship costs you something. David said, “I will not offer to the Lord that which costs me nothing.” The animals and crops offered to God were the best they had. They did not offer the Lord some old, skinny, sick lamb. As followers of Christ, we offer ourselves to God as a living sacrifice. We need to ask ourselves, “Are we giving God the best of our time, the best of our energy, the best of our talent, the best of our treasure? Or is he getting the leftovers?”

4. The fourth component of meaningful worship is joy. Verse 43 They offered great sacrifices that day and rejoiced, for God had made them rejoice with great joy; the women and children also rejoiced. And the joy of Jerusalem was heard far away. Does it seem to you that Scripture talks so much more about joy than we experience it?  Why is our joy so easily extinguished? Here is one reason:

The true sources of joy are major league matters and internal. (e.g. God has proved his love for us, God delights in us, our eternal destiny is so wonderful that Paul said no human has ever conceived of it, every effort we make to please Jesus will honor him eternally, God working in the hearts of our loved ones is the deepest of our longings and he has done that in many of those we care most about, we live at the highest standard of health and wealth the world has ever known.)

Frustrations and irritations are minor league matters and external. (e.g. heavy traffic, a flat tire, sickness, not being appreciated, being passed over for promotion, making costly mistakes, unexpected expenses).

Why don’t we experience joy more? Because minor league concerns so fill our minds that they crowd out the major league realities that ought to be the source of our joy.

Have you ever had an experience like this? It’s your day off and you spend almost the entire day doing things with your 5-year-old daughter that she loves. You play games in the morning. You go on a bike ride in the afternoon. You take her out to McDonald's for dinner and watch a movie together after dinner. You send her off to bed with lots of hugs and kisses. It’s been a perfect day of loving on her. But a few moments later she comes stomping out of the room crying and mad. You ask what's wrong. She answers, “My favorite purple pajamas are still in the wash, and I hate wearing these grungy old, pink ones. That little frustration overshadows the delight of the entire day. Aren’t we just like that little girl?

THREE LESSONS ABOUT JOYFUL DELIGHT IN GOD

1. Joyful delight will happen when we take time away from our everyday schedule to review what God has done (taking that walk on the wall) and fix our focus on the way God has blessed us.

2. Joyful delight will happen when we begin our prayers by saying. "I'm not here to give you my Christmas widh list; this prayer is just for you--to give you the thanks and praise that you deserve.

3. Joyful delight will happen when we stop letting minor league concerns crowd out our major league joys.

For Further Prayerful Thought.

  1. Why do we not devote ourselves more to delighting ourselves in him?
  2. Nehemiah inspired thankfulness to God in his people’s hearts for what God had done (enabling them to complete the wall in 53 days) by having them physically walking on the wall they built. How can we, as Christians, do a better job of setting our focus on what God has done for us?
  3. What else stood out to you about this joyful worship celebration planned by Nehemiah?
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Crocodile Tears or True Repentance

Crocodile Tears or True Repentance

On 02 May, 2026 By Gary Yagel

In this episode we examine Nehemiah 10 to see what it can teach us about false and true repentance. To help us see the relevance of Nehemiah 10, I want to ask you to use your imagination a bit. Suppose that my wife, Sandy, and I had decided to adopt a very disciplined budget and had agreed together that we would both live within its parameters. Then suppose one night when she wasn't around, I went on an unauthorized shopping spree and bought myself an EGO cordless blower for 200 bucks. I tried to keep it hidden and just use it when she was not around; but eventually I got caught. She demanded an explanation: “We agreed we were going to stay within this monthly budget.” Let's suppose I was really convicted and restated my commitment to the budget and asked for her forgiveness. Should she grant me forgiveness? Certainly.

Suppose she does. Then two months later I spot a Weber Genesis 435 grill for $350.00 off, down to $1250. “Our grill is starting to rust, and I’ll never see this good a grill at this price again,” I rationalize. I bring it home when she’s not around, get rid of our cheap grill and squeeze the old cover down over the Weber and wait for a day when she is really in a good mood to explain it. But she notices it and is NOT in a good mood. She begins to cry and says, “Are we a team or not?” When my wife cries, I know I really screwed up. I realized that I was disrespecting her by doing this on my own, how much that hurts her and promise not to do it again.

But then, in late fall, I spot a top-end snow blower on sale at Home Depot for $500.00 off and talk my neighbor into buying it with me and storing it at his garage. But she finds out about it from my neighbor's wife and comes after me with a frying pan. I'm really contrite this time. I realize my marriage is in trouble. “I’m really, really, really sorry honey. I’m so stupid for getting drawn into this. Please, please, please forgive me.” How many times do we have to go through this before my wife begins to question the sincerity of my repentance? After all, what is the proof of repentance? Are tears the ultimate proof? Is self-denigration the ultimate proof? Is pleading for forgiveness the ultimate proof? No.

As we all know, the proof of sincere repentance is changed behavior. What Sandy would have had the right to say was, “Gary I'll believe you are genuinely sorry for what you've been doing—that you have genuinely repented—when you stop doing it.  Don't look at me with those sad blue eyes and say you're sorry, you're sorry, you're sorry, because evidently, you're not sorry enough to stop. If you were repentant, you'd prove it by a change in your behavior.” And Sandy would be right. The word repentance itself means a change in direction. It's METANOIA, literally a change of mind about your direction and choosing to go the opposite way.

When I worked for the Labor Department I'd talk to many employers to see whether they'd hired a person we sent them. Often I'd hear an employer say something like this, “Bill? Yeah, he told us he wanted the job loading our trucks real bad. We told him he had to be at work at 6:00 AM, so the trucks can get on the road. He said he understood that; so, we gave him the job. A week later Bill starts coming to work at 6:15, then 6:20, then 6:30. We tell him again, “Work starts at 6:00 AM sharp; that's a requirement.” Bill pleads “Sorry, I just overslept.”

The employer continued “That's warning #1.” A few days later Bill is late again. He pleads, “I want to keep this job. I need this job.” The employer says, “If you really need this job, show up on time.” But a couple weeks later, the boss has to meet with Bill to fire him. Bill argues, “How can you do this to me? You don't know how much I need this job.” But evidently Bill didn't need it badly enough to show up on time. Is that so difficult? The adage is true; actions speak louder than words.

In Nehemiah chapters 8 through 10 we have been studying the tremendous national revival that took place in Israel among those living around Jerusalem under the preaching of Ezra and leadership of Nehemiah. As we've seen, there were three stages to it:

  1. The reading, teaching, and understanding of God's Word in chapter 8. To an unprecedented degree during the month of Tishri the Israelites had gathered to listen to the reading of the Law,
  2. The second stage, which we covered last week in chapter 9 was the brokenness of the people over their sin. We saw in their confession the contrition of the people as they acknowledged their stiff-necked rebellion and that of their fathers to God. But Nehemiah and the other leaders realized that tears and pleadings, self-degradation, and other dramatic rhetoric is not really ultimate proof that they were sincerely repentant. It's just too easy to say, “I'm sorry.”
  3. So, a fascinating thing happens after the prayer of confession. In Nehemiah 9:38 we read, “In view of this we are making a binding agreement putting it in writing and our leaders, our Levites and our priests are affixing their seal to it.” The third stage of revival, where the rubber meets the road, is a commitment to change behavior. This word for binding agreement was a renewal of Israel’s covenant with Moses, although the actual word is not the normal word for covenant, berit. It is amanah, a rare word, which carries with it an even stronger heart-felt intentionality to keep their vows.

The Bible argues forcefully that when it comes to God’s chosen people’s standing with God, that standing is by God’s grace, never by works. God’s love for us is unconditional. “It was while we were yet sinners that Christ died for us.” However, when God regenerates us and draws us to come to himself by faith, with that grace to believe comes repentance. As the Apostle John made clear,

And by this we know that we have come to know him (Christ), if we keep his commandments. Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked. (1 Jn 2:3-6.)

Through the same Holy Spirit who brings repentance to those who come to faith in Christ, the Holy Spirit brought repentance to his people living around Jerusalem in the time of Nehemiah. The people committed to obey the moral law of God.

The People’s Pledge

Nehemiah 10:28-29. The rest of the people, the priests, the Levites, the gatekeepers, the singers, the temple servants, and all who have separated themselves from the peoples of the lands to the Law of God, their wives, their sons, their daughters, all who have knowledge and understanding, join with their brothers, their nobles, and enter into a curse and an oath to walk in God's Law that was given by Moses the servant of God, and to observe and do all the commandments of the LORD our Lord and his rules and his statutes. 

Before we can understand how the specifics of this commitment of God’s people to obey God’s Word apply to us, we must remember the difference between God’s people, Israel, who were a theocracy, and the radical change that took place after the resurrection and Day of Pentecost for God’s people the NT church. Because Israel was a theocracy, God gave Israel as a nation, three categories of law, the moral law summarized in the Ten Commandments, ceremonial Law, which included the death penalty for worshipping a false God or practicing witchcraft, but had mostly to do with sacrifices and the temple, and civil law, which had to do with controlling contagious diseases, civil disputes, and caring for the poor by limiting the land owners from harvesting more than once, requiring them to leave what was left the first time for the poor.

When the true Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world died as the atoning sacrifice for his people’s sin, (and the temple later destroyed in 70 AD) the ceremonial law was fulfilled in Christ, which the book of Hebrews explains. When Israel was destroyed in 70 AD, Israel’s theocracy was destroyed. Thus, the civil law and ceremonial law being enforced by the government came to an end. Jesus was clear in repudiating the spread of his kingdom through the state: To the political ruler, Pilate, he stated, “My kingdom is not of this world.” Then Jesus went on to explicitly repudiate the use of political or military coercion to spread his kingdom. “If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world,” (Jn 18:36). Both Paul and Peter made clear that civil government, not the church, was given the power of the sword to restrain evil. Thus, the civil laws of Israel are not binding upon the church. However, Orthodox Christianity has always maintained that they do “provide general equity” i.e. guidance for governments to follow. There is currently a hot topic that requires such “general equity guidance.” It is social justice.

Many caring Christians have been hood-winked into supporting the evil ideology of cultural Marxism aka critical theory because they rightly want Christians to care for the disenfranchised and marginalized, as Jesus would. But the way to express that concern is not to ignore the anti-biblical components of cultural Marxism. Karl Marx fomented cultural unrest by dividing all society members into two economic groups, the oppressor land and factory owners and the oppressed proletariat “workers.” This ideology was used to justify the brutal overthrow and slaughter of landowners that took pace under Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, etc.

Cultural Marxism applies the same oppressor/oppressed lens not to economic power but to cultural power. Today’s cultural oppressors are: whites, males, westerners, born US citizens, the founding fathers, the Constitution, America, cisgender people, Israel, business owners and Christian patriarchy. This ideology justifies violence against these “oppressive” institutions, which ultimately must be torn down. Thus, violent riots against ICE, the burning of cities by Black Lives Matter and Antifa, assassinations like that by Luigi Mangione of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan, are celebrated by those embracing this evil worldview. Such anti-biblical ideological blindness blames the massacre of 1200 Jews by Hamas on Israel. It refuses to condemn the IRG’s slaughter of 42,000 dissenting citizens. It refuses to admit the intentions of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s leadership to get a nuclear weapon and use it to bring in the world devastation that will serve as a precursor to the return of the hidden 12th Imam who they believe will return to force Islam on the world.

The evils of cultural Marxism are legion. Scripture clearly refutes defining justice as “equal outcomes,” but defines it as “equal opportunity.” At the very least, we know that God’s concern for the widow, the orphan, the poor, and the sojourner never means being partial to the “oppressed” group.

  • Leviticus 19:15: “You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor.
  • Exodus 23:3: "Nor shall you be partial to a poor man in his lawsuit."
  • Deuteronomy 1:17: "You shall not be partial in judgment. You shall hear the small and the great alike.

Back in Nehemiah 10, we see Israel repenting over three failures to keep the moral law. Let’s examine these and see how they apply or don’t to us as Christians.

A. Separation from unbelievers. Nehemiah 10:30: “We will not give our daughters to the peoples of the land or take their daughters for our sons.” This promise not to intermarry with the peoples of the lands around them was not racial prejudice. Moses had married an Egyptian. Rahab of Jericho and Ruth the Moabitess were in the line of the Messiahs descent. Rather, the Israelites were affirming obedience to the command given in Exodus 34:16 not to intermarry with pagan peoples lest they turned the Israelites to worship pagan gods. Of course that's exactly what happened to Solomon. Paul picks up on this principle and commands Christians not to be unequally yoked together with non-believers in marriage (2 Cor 10:14)  If you sat on the session of the church as I do and got to hear the sad stories of adults who grew up in Christian homes, ignored this command and married non-believers you would understand why this principle is so important to God and was so important to the apostle Paul.

But having said that we need to be absolutely clear that the Bible does not command God's people to separate from the lost. Quite to the contrary, there was a radical reversal of this OT principle for Israel of separation from the nations around it that was hinted at in God’s original call to Abraham, “that in him all the nations of the earth would be blessed.” Jesus’ final words to his followers were to “go and make disciples of all nations.” This reversal was reinforced 50 days later on the Day of Pentecost, when the Apostles were empowered to supernaturally speak the tongues of other nations. Jesus’ three metaphors for Christians to impact their world through their influence all require close proximity to lost folks and the lost culture, salt, light, and leaven.

B. Keeping the Sabbath. “And if the peoples of the land bring in goods or any grain on the Sabbath day to sell, we will not buy from them on the Sabbath or on a holy day. And we will forgo the crops of the seventh year and the exaction of every debt.” This was a costly commitment to allow themselves economic harm by not participating with the rest of the world in Sabbath commerce. This text reminds us of Chick-fil-A founder S. Truett Cathy, who made this decision about Sundays. There is, however, great complexity in understanding how our Lord would like his people to celebrate the fourth commandment for at least five reasons:

  1. The fourth commandment is listed among the Ten Commandments, which is God’s summary of the moral law, the rest of which comes into the NT.
  2. It is also part of the ceremonial law which is fulfilled in Christ and part of the civil law which only applied to Israel as a theocracy. Violating the Sabbath in Israel’s theocracy was a capital offense.
  3. The reasons given for keeping the fourth commandment are different in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5.
  4. The early church stopped keeping the Sabbath.
  5. They instead met before and after work on the first day of the workweek, the Day of the Resurrection. Sunday did not become a day off until the 4th century under Constantine.

I have been practicing a NT view of “sabbath keeping” that is anything but legalistic and a rich blessing in my life for over 45 years. Indeed, my life is proof that the Sabbath was made for us, to enrich, restore, and revitalize us and to enable us to stay focused on our mission. I have discovered that God has revealed principles of rest and renewal in each of the Sabbaths we see revealed in Scripture. The origin of this idea is Bruce Ray, in Celebrating the Sabbath, where he explains,

“Just as an acorn grows and develops into a mature oak tree so concepts that are introduced in seed form and early revelation grow and develop progressively throughout the Old Testament scripture until they come to full flower and fruit in the New Testament, we can distinguish in scripture 4 distinct stages of Sabbath revelation.”

I believe these four can be called the CREATION Sabbath, REDEMPTION Sabbath, RESURRECTION Sabbath, and FINAL Sabbath. The Final Sabbath does not occur until Christ returns but for Christians there is great wisdom for is in carefully studying the other three. In a new book that we hope to publish in August, Extreme Allegiance, I have written an entire chapter, entitled, “Recovering a Lost Treasure” that addresses what these 3 Sabbaths reveal.  

C. Tithing. The third sphere of life marked out for special attention by the Jerusalem Jews, who were renewing their covenant vows, was financial giving for the ministry. Nehemiah 10:32-39 illustrate their commitment to the temple ministry:

  • Verse 32 is the temple tax.
  • Verse 33 is food for offerings at the temple.
  • Verse 34 is firewood to keep the altar fires going.
  • Verse 35-36 is the pledge to give God the first fruits.
  • Verse 37 covers the tithe to support those in ministry.
  • Verse 39 is the summary: “We will not neglect the House of our God.”

The law commanded that every Israelite give 10% of everything he received to the Lord—wages, tips, and gifts and inheritance. It was for everybody, young and old, poor and rich. 10% was the minimum. In this Nehemiah 10 text, the Israelites are saying, “Not only do we promise to give you our 10% but if that's not enough we'll give the extra that is needed to take care of the House of God and keep its ministry going.”

In the New Testament the percentage changes from 10% to 100%. We are to seek first the Kingdom of God and pile up treasure in heaven rather than on earth. But of course, the question for us all as Christians is where I should start with my giving. The answer actually is quite clear because it is a pattern established by Abraham the father of our faith, not by Moses in the Old Testament Law. In Genesis 14, Abram is returning from a great victory over kings who had taken captive his nephew, Lot. A mysterious priest/king, Melchizedek, (who the NT says prefigures Jesus) meets him. We read, “He was priest of God Most High. And he blessed him (Abram) and said, ‘Blessed be Abram by God Most High, Possessor of heaven and earth; and blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand!’ And Abram gave him a tenth of everything.” This ten percent was a gift to God out of gratefulness for Abram’s victory. Only later did Moses spell out the requirement of the Law to tithe.

   God reinforces this practice for his people in Proverbs 3 when he says, “Honor the Lord with your wealth and with the firstfruits of all your produce; then your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will be bursting with wine.” A wise man knows he can’t outgive God. Giving God the firstfruits of our labor is a way of fulfilling the first commandment, keeping him first in our affections and allegiance. Tithing sets our hearts on the kingdom of God. This was the reason Jesus said not to invest in earthly treasure, “For where your treasure is, there will be your heart also.”

Final Note

Although we see in this historical account that true repentance leads to a fervent commitment to express our love for our Redeemer by obedience to him, it is sobering to realize that the story of the OT is that even being broken by their sin, seeing that obedience to God always leads to life, and signing a contract with God promising to obey him are not enough to overcome their sinful nature. At the time of Jesus’ birth, they were again politically oppressed because they had forsaken God and the religion practiced in Jerusalem was so utterly corrupt that its leaders put the Messiah to death.

But remember the blessing of the New Covenant. We have far more power to obey God and spread righteousness over the land. Jeramiah reflecting on the failure of the Old Covenant, wrote;

Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah,  not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

As always in the Covenant of Grace we are loved unconditionally regardless of our sin. But this reference is to the powerful help of the Holy Spirit who now indwells us. So, let’s set the bar of obedience high, because we have the Spirit to help us.

For Further Prayerful Thought.

  1. Why is saying “I’m sorry” easier than true repentance?
  2. How would you summarize these words of John? And by this we know that we have come to know him (Christ), if we keep his commandments. Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked (1 Jn 2:3-6.)
  3. Although we no longer live in a theocracy as God’s people did before Jesus came, why might Israel’s law that warned that oppression of the poor was not to be compensated for by partiality towards them in court help inform our thinking about how best to show mercy to the poor.
  4. How does the example of God’s repentant Old Covenant people stepping up to fully fund ministry challenge you?
  5. What have you learned about walking in the Spirit, i.e. experiencing his power in your everyday life?
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Spiritual Fruitfulness Comes Through Brokenness

Spiritual Fruitfulness Comes Through Brokenness

On 25 April, 2026 By Gary Yagel

One of the great paradoxes of the Christian faith is that fruitfulness comes not from strength but from brokenness. Jesus said, “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies it remains by itself alone. But if it dies it bears much fruit” (Jn 12:24).

Peter was the arrogant leader of the disciples who boasted “Lord even if all the other disciples forsake you, I never will.”  Before the next morning, he denied knowing Jesus three times and when the cock crowed, he went out and wept bitterly, a broken man. Never again in Scripture do we see that arrogance in Peter. Instead, he passes on to others a lesson that he learned through his brokenness “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” (I Pt 5). Can you imagine God pulling out his big guns AGAINST YOU? The fastest way to see that happen is pride. And one of pride’s most subtle manifestations is taking our sins lightly rather than weeping over them. Today’s episode from Nehemiah is a great picture of a nation, broken by its sin.  

Since sin blocks our relationship with God, superficial sadness instead of heartfelt repentance is like removing only part of a blood clot. It still blocks the flow of intimacy with God. In contrast is the brokenness over sin that the citizens of Jerusalem express in Nehemiah 9.

5 Characteristics of Brokenness of True Repentance Over Sin

A. Brokenness over sin is provoked by hearing God’s Law. The Israelites under Nehemiah and Ezra’s leadership are in the 7th month of the year known as Tishri. They’ve just completed the 8-day Feast of Booths.

Nehemiah 9:1-4. Now on the twenty-fourth day of this month the people of Israel were assembled with fasting and in sackcloth, and with earth on their heads. And the Israelites separated themselves from all foreigners and stood and confessed their sins and the iniquities of their fathers. And they stood up in their place and read from the Book of the Law of the Lord their God for a quarter of the day; for another quarter of it they made confession and worshiped the Lord their God.

I'm not aware of any period in the history of Israel when as much attention was given to the law of God in such a concentrated period of time. Back in chapter 8 when the month of Tishri began on the 1st, we read that the Word of God was read for dawn until noon. On Tishri the second “the heads of fathers’ houses with the Levites and the Priests came together to Ezra the scribe in order to study the words of the Law.” On the 15th of the month, they began the seven-day Feast of Tabernacles during which “day by day, from the first day to the last day Ezra read from the Book of the Law of God. In Chapter 9 two days later, we are told that they read from the book of the law 1/4 of the day followed by the response is to confess their sins and the wickedness of their forefathers. I am reminded of a verse we mentioned last week: Hebrews 4:12-13.

The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

B. Brokenness over sin contains a deep sense that we OWE God obedience. We see this implied as this prayer of repentance begins.

Nehemiah 9:5-6.  Then the Levites, Jeshua, Kadmiel, Bani, Hashabneiah, Sherebiah, Hodiah, Shebaniah, and Pethahiah, said, “Stand up and bless the LORD your God from everlasting to everlasting. Blessed be your glorious name, which is exalted above all blessing and praise, “You are the LORD, you alone. You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them; and you preserve all of them; and the host of heaven worships you.”

Brokenness begins by remembering who we are and who God is. We are creature. He is creator. We are here for HIS purpose and GLORIFY. He is not a genie in a bottle there to bring about our pleasure. Since he created us, we are his possession. We belong to him, not to ourselves. He has the innate right to do with us whatever he wants.

The reality is that we are his treasured possession, that he loves us, and in his pure goodness is more committed to what is best for us than we are. These attributes of God make rebellion against him even more heinous. But repentance begins with acknowledging that we are God’s creation. He sustains us every second and as creatures we owe God obedience.

C. Brokenness confesses a pattern that reveals the sharp, consistent contrast God’s character and theirs, i.e. between THE GOD FULL OF GOODNESS AND MERCY and the PERSISTENT REBELLION of his people bringing punishment for sinful violations of God’s covenant upon themselves. The next 31 verses rehearse this same theme: God’s goodness and mercy contrasted to his people’s rebelliousness.

Nehemiah 9:7-8: The context of Israel’s unfaithfulness. The call of Abram and promise of the promised land.

 You are the Lord, the God who chose Abram and brought him out of Ur of the Chaldeans and gave him the name Abraham. You found his heart faithful before you, and made with him the covenant to give to his offspring the land of the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Amorite, the Perizzite, the Jebusite, and the Girgashite. And you have kept your promise, for you are righteous.

Nehemiah 9:9-17: This pattern in Israel’s deliverance from Egypt.

“And you saw the affliction of our fathers in Egypt and heard their cry at the Red Sea, and performed signs and wonders against Pharaoh and all his servants and all the people of his land, for you knew that they acted arrogantly against our fathers. And you made a name for yourself, as it is to this day. And you divided the sea before them, so that they went through the midst of the sea on dry land, and you cast their pursuers into the depths, as a stone into mighty waters. By a pillar of cloud you led them in the day, and by a pillar of fire in the night to light for them the way in which they should go. You came down on Mount Sinai and spoke with them from heaven and gave them right rules and true laws, good statutes and commandments, and you made known to them your holy Sabbath and commanded them commandments and statutes and a law by Moses your servant. You gave them bread from heaven for their hunger and brought water for them out of the rock for their thirst, and you told them to go in to possess the land that you had sworn to give them. But they and our fathers acted presumptuously and stiffened their neck and did not obey your commandments. They refused to obey and were not mindful of the wonders that you performed among them, but they stiffened their neck and appointed a leader to return to their slavery in Egypt. But you are a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and did not forsake them.

Nehemiah 9:18-21: This pattern during the 40 years in the wilderness:

 Even when they had made for themselves a golden calf and said, ‘This is your God who brought you up out of Egypt,’ and had committed great blasphemies, you in your great mercies did not forsake them in the wilderness. The pillar of cloud to lead them in the way did not depart from them by day, nor the pillar of fire by night to light for them the way by which they should go. You gave your good Spirit to instruct them and did not withhold your manna from their mouth and gave them water for their thirst. Forty years you sustained them in the wilderness, and they lacked nothing. Their clothes did not wear out and their feet did not swell.

Nehemiah 9:22-27: This pattern during the occupation of the promised land.

And you gave them kingdoms and peoples and allotted to them every corner. So they took possession of the land of Sihon king of Heshbon and the land of Og king of Bashan. You multiplied their children as the stars of heaven, and you brought them into the land that you had told their fathers to enter and possess. So the descendants went in and possessed the land, and you subdued before them the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, and gave them into their hand, with their kings and the peoples of the land, that they might do with them as they would.  And they captured fortified cities and a rich land, and took possession of houses full of all good things, cisterns already hewn, vineyards, olive orchards and fruit trees in abundance. So they ate and were filled and became fat and delighted themselves in your great goodness. Nevertheless, they were disobedient and rebelled against you and cast your law behind their back and killed your prophets, who had warned them in order to turn them back to you, and they committed great blasphemies. Therefore you gave them into the hand of their enemies, who made them suffer. 

Nehemiah 9:28-31: This recurring pattern throughout Israel’s history to present.

And in the time of their suffering they cried out to you and you heard them from heaven, and according to your great mercies you gave them saviors who saved them from the hand of their enemies.  But after they had rest they did evil again before you, and you abandoned them to the hand of their enemies, so that they had dominion over them. Yet when they turned and cried to you, you heard from heaven, and many times you delivered them according to your mercies.  And you warned them in order to turn them back to your law. Yet they acted presumptuously and did not obey your commandments, but sinned against your rules, which if a person does them, he shall live by them, and they turned a stubborn shoulder and stiffened their neck and would not obey. Many years you bore with them and warned them by your Spirit through your prophets. Yet they would not give ear. Therefore you gave them into the hand of the peoples of the lands. Nevertheless, in your great mercies you did not make an end of them or forsake them, for you are a gracious and merciful God.

D. Brokenness appeals to God’s kindness and mercy, only, for deliverance from the suffering their sin brings. Verse 32 says Now, therefore, our God, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who keeps covenant and steadfast love, let not all the hardship seem little to you that has come upon us, upon our kings, our princes, our priests, our prophets, our fathers, and all your people, since the time of the kings of Assyria until this day.

King David began Psalm 51, the great biblical individual portrait of the brokenness of true repentance with the words, Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions.

David did not say, “God you know how hard I’ve tried to get my sex drive under control. I just failed this time.” To the contrary he said, “In sin my mother conceived me” (vs 5) not implying that his parent’s love-making was sinful but saying, “From the moment of birth I’ve been a rebel, from the first breath I took, I’ve had an evil heart.”

A distraught mother once approached Napoleon seeking a pardon for her son. The emperor responded, “This is his second offense; justice demands death.”

    She responded, “I don't ask for justice; I plead for mercy.

    Napoleon answered, “But he does not deserve mercy.”

    The mom answered, “It would not be mercy if he deserved it. Mercy is what I ask for.”

    Napoleon answered, “Well then I will have mercy.”

The priests leading the prayer fully realized that they like their ancestors had broken the covenant sanctions. That is why though God enabled them to return to Jerusalem they were still occupied by the Persians. They did not plead their good works as the pharisees would do 500 years later. They pled for mercy.

E. Brokenness recognizes that God is fair in bringing his punishment for sin. (covenant sanctions). Vs. 34-37

Yet you have been righteous in all that has come upon us, for you have dealt faithfully and we have acted wickedly. Our kings, our princes, our priests, and our fathers have not kept your law or paid attention to your commandments and your warnings that you gave them. Even in their own kingdom, and amid your great goodness that you gave them, and in the large and rich land that you set before them, they did not serve you or turn from their wicked works. Behold, we are slaves this day; in the land that you gave to our fathers to enjoy its fruit and its good gifts, behold, we are slaves. And its rich yield goes to the kings whom you have set over us because of our sins. They rule over our bodies and over our livestock as they please, and we are in great distress.

The prodigal son revealed this brokenness when he said to his father, “I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son” (Lk 15:21). After Nathan brought conviction to David's heart over his adultery with Bathsheba and murder of Uriah he wrote Psalm 51 a Psalm that reflects his brokenness saying, “Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment” (vs 4).

Why Brokenness Matters

A. It is foundational for staying close to God. James, the brother of Jesus reveals profound wisdom about closeness to God. He writes: Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you (Jm 4:8-10).

B. Grieving over sin is so important that Jesus listed it as the second highest kingdom value after humility. “Blessed are those who mourn.” Christ-like hearts weep over sin and its awful consequences. When Jesus wept outside Lazarus’ grave, I do not believe it was grief over the death of Lazarus. Jesus knew he was going to raise Lazarus from the dead. I believe the sound of weeping and mourning in his ears, caused him to look back down to corridors of time to all the suffering and tears shed at human funerals because of death. And grief overcame him. When on Palm Sunday, Jesus rounded the bend and first saw Jerusalem, his heart was flooded with grief and he said.

“Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation (Lk 19:42-44).

We cannot be like Jesus without grieving over sin, our own and that of others. Perhaps that is why Paul commanded us to hate it. “Abhor what is evil. Cling to what is good (Rom 12:9).

For Further Prayerful Thought:

  1. What stood out to you most as the priests recounted the cycle of Israel’s history—God’s goodness and mercy, Israel’s rebellion against him, the punishment for their sins (covenant sanctions)?
  2. Why do you think James is so insistent that to draw near to God we must feel broken over our own sin?
  3. In the Beatitudes, Jesus ranked mourning over sin second on the list of kingdom attitudes ahead of meekness, purity of heart, etc. How would grieving over our own sins, and grieving over the suffering of those who are still enslaved to sin because they do not know Jesus impact our heart attitudes towards the lost?
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A Great Awakening in Israel and America

A Great Awakening in Israel and America

On 18 April, 2026 By Gary Yagel

One of the films making its rounds the past two weeks in movie theaters is “A Great Awakening” produced by Sight and Sound. The film tells the story of the First Great Awakening in America through the lens of Benjamin Franklin, the friend of George Whitefield, the great preacher who was largely responsible, along with Jonathan Edwards, for the awakening, which historians say had a tremendous impact on the founding of America thirty years later. If you can still catch it at your theater, it is well worth seeing.

One of the primary responsibilities of Christians is to impact their culture, retarding the decay brought about by sin by functioning as salt and shining the light of God's truth into spheres of our own culture where the darkness of sin prevails. In other words, Christ wants us not only to be individual disciples of his but to make disciples of all nations. In this episode we find insight about this process as we look at how God discipled nations in the past by bringing about a great awakening and spiritual renewal in Israel (recounted in Nehemiah 8) and inspiring The Great Awakening in America.

Nehemiah 8:1-18

Context. Chapter seven describes the return to Jerusalem of many Jews, causing Jerusalem’s population to rise to over 40,000.00. One of the priests, perhaps Ezra, seems to have noticed that according to Leviticus 23, God had spelled out some celebrations that were to take place in the seventh month of the year. One of these, called the Feast of Trumpets, was to take place on the first day of the month. Leviticus 23:23 said, And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the people of Israel, saying, In the seventh month, on the first day of the month, you shall observe a day of solemn rest, a memorial proclaimed with blast of trumpets, a holy convocation. You shall not do any ordinary work, and you shall present a food offering to the Lord.”

As we come to Nehemiah 8, the Jews of Jerusalem had just turned over their calendar from the Elul the sixth month of their calendar to Tishri, the seventh month. The last verse of chapter 7 says, And when the seventh month had come, the people of Israel were in their towns.

Nehemiah 8:1-12. All the people came together as one in the square before the Water Gate. They told Ezra the teacher of the Law to bring out the Book of the Law of Moses, which the LORD had commanded for Israel. So on the first day of the seventh month Ezra the priest brought the Law before the assembly, which was made up of men and women and all who were able to understand. He read it aloud from daybreak till noon as he faced the square before the Water Gate in the presence of the men, women and others who could understand. And all the people listened attentively to the Book of the Law.

 Ezra the teacher of the Law stood on a high wooden platform built for the occasion. Beside him on his right stood… Ezra opened the book. All the people could see him because he was standing above them; and as he opened it, the people all stood up. Ezra praised the LORD, the great God; and all the people lifted their hands and responded, “Amen! Amen!” Then they bowed down and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground.  The Levites (13 are listed)—instructed the people in the Law while the people were standing there. They read from the Book of the Law of God, making it clear and giving the meaning so that the people understood what was being read.

Then Nehemiah the governor, Ezra the priest and teacher of the Law, and the Levites who were instructing the people said to them all, “This day is holy to the Lord your God. Do not mourn or weep.” For all the people had been weeping as they listened to the words of the Law.  Nehemiah said, “Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is holy to our LORD. Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.” The Levites calmed all the people, saying, “Be still, for this is a holy day. Do not grieve.” Then all the people went away to eat and drink, to send portions of food and to celebrate with great joy, because they now understood the words that had been made known to them.

In the next part of the Nehemiah text, the leaders discover a second feast that was to be observed in the seventh month, the Feast of Booths. Leviticus 23:33 ff explains it. And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the people of Israel, saying, On the fifteenth day of this seventh month and for seven days is the Feast of Booths to the Lord.”  

Nehemiah 8:13-18. On the second day of the month, the heads of all the families, along with the priests and the Levites, gathered around Ezra the teacher to give attention to the words of the Law. They found written in the Law, which the LORD had commanded through Moses, that the Israelites were to live in temporary shelters during the festival of the seventh month and that they should proclaim this word and spread it throughout their towns and in Jerusalem: “Go out into the hill country and bring back branches from olive and wild olive trees, and from myrtles, palms and shade trees, to make temporary shelters”—as it is written.  

 So the people went out and brought back branches and built themselves temporary shelters on their own roofs, in their courtyards, in the courts of the house of God and in the square by the Water Gate and the one by the Gate of Ephraim. The whole company that had returned from exile built temporary shelters and lived in them. From the days of Joshua, son of Nun, until that day, the Israelites had not celebrated it like this. And their joy was very great. Day after day, from the first day to the last, Ezra read from the Book of the Law of God. They celebrated the festival for seven days, and on the eighth day, in accordance with the regulation, there was an assembly.

There is a certain aura of dignity about the scene in Jerusalem. Ezra comes out carrying the scrolls. He mounts the stairs of the platform. He takes his position facing the people flanked by six church officials on his right and seven on his left. As he opened the book of the law, the people stood up out of reverence for the Word of God. Ezra led the people in praise given to Yahweh, their awesome God who had brought his people back from captivity and enabled them to rebuild the temple and wall around Jerusalem. The people knelt down and worshipped with their faces to the ground. Then Ezra and the Levites taught the Word of God to the people for six straight hours from sunup at 6:00 AM till 12 noon. And the people, we're told in verse 3, listened attentively. Many of them had not heard the Word of God for many years. Some had probably not heard it at all. It was a spiritual feast for their famished souls as they sat in rapt attention. I can't help but think of Jesus' words, “Man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”

I'm reminded of a Christian couple who were touring Russia. They'd left a copy of the Gospel of John in Russian by their bedside table in their motel. When their maid saw it she begged them to give it to her, explaining that she was a believer, that her Bible had been destroyed in the German siege of Leningrad, and that she'd been praying for a Bible for 30 years. The couple gladly gave the maid a small copy of the whole Russian Bible. The next morning the maid met the couple in the hall and said, “I had to see you. I must thank you again for the precious gift. For 30 years I've been praying for a Bible. I have regularly prayed and life is good when I pray. But now I have a Bible! Last night I stayed up most of the night to read it.”

Her soul was so starved for the nutritious milk and meat of God's Word that exhaustion could not keep her from it. What a challenge to our attitude about the priceless Word of God.

How a Nation is Transformed

Verse eight reveals the way a nation is transformed, because ideas have consequences. The verse says, “They read from the Book of the Law of God, making it clear and giving the meaning so that the people understood what was being read.” The primary instrument for restoring fallen broken sinners to wholeness is the Word of God. David understood this transforming power. Notice the “impact” words of Psalm 19:7-11.  

The law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple; the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes; the fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever; the statutes of the Lord are true, and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb. Moreover, by them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward.

Notice back in Nehemiah three steps in the transformational process of presenting the Word of God. They read from the Book of the Law of God, making it clear and giving the meaning so that the people understood what was being read.  

A. It began with Scripture being read. This common characteristic of nation-wide spiritual renewal was at the core of the Protestant Reformation. The Reformers translated the Bible into the people’s common languages so that ordinary people, not just clergymen, could read and understand it. Further, with the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in Germany around 1440 just prior to the Reformation, Bibles could be affordably mass printed. John Wycliffe, known as the “morning star of the Reformation,” wrote the first English translation of the Bible in 1384. Following Wycliffe and influenced by reformer Martin Luther who translated the Bible into German, William Tyndale wrote the first modern English translation of the New Testament in 1526. All of that was preparation for the Reformation, Luther posting his 95 Theses in 1517. The Word of God transforms nations.

B. The teachers made the Word of God clear. This happens through understanding the cultural background, background of the word, context of the biblical text, and what kind of literary genre is being used in the text e.g. poetry verses historical narrative. The most important principle for interpretation, known as the Reformed hermeneutic, is that Scripture interprets Scripture. A text that could be taken several ways is to be taken in the way that is consistent with the rest of Scripture. Didactic passages are given higher value than historical narratives. David, who is a great example of a man after God’s own heart had multiple wives. But Deuteronomy 17:17 says of Israel’s king, He shall not acquire many wives for himself. David’s example here contradicted didactic teaching, so his example of taking more than one wife is not normative.

It is sometimes claimed that Acts 4:32 teaches communal property ownership and socialism as the biblical economic system. Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common. But the truth of the Bible can only be discovered through sound interpretive principles. To come to the truth we first look at the background. Thousands of Jews from across the Mediterranean world had traveled to Jerusalem to celebrate the Day of Pentecost, with the funds to travel, stay there just for Pentecost, then return home. But through Peter’s preaching thousands had come to faith in Christ. There was no Christian community, no preaching of the Word, no apostles to go home to. So, these baby Christians overstayed their funds in Jerusalem. There was such a spirit of love in the Body of Christ that the local believers not only took them in (the expected hospitality towards strangers) many sold propriety to pay for food while they awaited the leading of the Lord. Does such generosity support socialism?

Not at all. Socialism is not Christians being generous; it is state owned means of production, in contrast to private ownership. The fact is that these generous Christians in Acts 4:32 had to first own their property, before they could sell it to meet this urgent need. If the Bible taught socialism, the state would have owned that land. Didactic texts interpret historical texts. The didactic teaching of the Bible is that a free market system with protections for the poor is the economic system God wants. Two of the Ten Commandments teach private ownership, the 8th, You shall not steal, and 10th You shall not covet. The underlying biblical principle for economic flourishing is stewardship. It is developing the resources I have been given to reach their potential to make life better for the human community, and so provide for my own material needs and those of my family.

Satan, himself, quotes Scripture out of context. So, if we sincerely want God’s truth and not just a proof text to support our own desires, we must follow sound principles for interpreting Scripture. When rightly taught and interpreted, the Word of God is without equal in its power. The author to the Hebrews writes: “The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Heb 4:12).

C. The teachers gave it meaning so that the people understood what was read.   

Jesus’ brother, James, was apparently very familiar with religious people who could tell you what Scripture taught but did not obey it in their own lives. He wrote, Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves (Ja 1:2). As Nehemiah 8 continues, the people immediately applied what they read in Leviticus 23. They discovered the command to celebrate the Feast of Booths from the 15th to the 22nd of the seventh month—that was Tishri, the month they were in. So, they got to work preparing to celebrate this feast on the 15th.   

The Feast of Booths must have been the kids’ favorite holiday. What kid do you know who doesn’t get excited about camping out in the backyard? Every family spent two weeks outside finding wood, like families who go out to cut a Christmas tree. Next, they built their own lean-to with the wood. Then they celebrated a whole week while their family slept in the lean-tos each night. The reason they cancelled work, it is rumored, is because the dads and moms got so little sleep that they would have been totally worthless on the job! For seven days they were to feast and rejoice over their redemption from Egypt, Leviticus 23:42 You shall dwell in booths for seven days that your generations may know that I made the people of Israel dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt. I am Yahweh your God. The bottom line was that God’s command to them was to stop working and take time to celebrate his blessings with their family. Nehemiah saw that at the heart of this revival was enjoying God. Back in verse 10, he had said to stop weeping and celebrate, “for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”

Listen to these commands from Paul, “Rejoice in the Lord always again I say rejoice.” “Delight yourself in the Lord.” The Israelites obeyed God’s command to celebrate the Feast of Booths and we read in verse 17, From the days of Joshua, son of Nun, until that day, the Israelites had not celebrated it like this. And their joy was very great.

The First Great Awakening in America

The First Great Awakening (1730s–1740s) was a massive religious revival that transformed the American colonies by shifting religious focus from formal church doctrine and structure to personal, experiences of faith. It emerged as a reaction against the growing secularism of the Enlightenment and a perceived spiritual “dryness” in established churches.

  • Early Roots (1720s): The movement began locally in the Middle Colonies. Leaders like Theodorus Frelinghuysen (Dutch Reformed) and William Tennent (Presbyterian) emphasized heartfelt conversion over mere ritual performance.
  • Regional Stirrings (1734–1735): The revival gained momentum in New England under Jonathan Edwards. His famous sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” described the terrifying consequences of sin and the urgent need for divine forgiveness, sparking hundreds of conversions. His preaching shook church goers out of their lethargy.
  • The Intercolonial Peak (1739–1744): English preacher George Whitefield turned the local revivals into a national phenomenon. A master orator, Whitefield toured the colonies extensively, preaching to massive outdoor crowds that reached up to 30,000 people in places like the Boston Common. Here is Whitefield’s explanation from his own journal of what was happening: “The doctrine of the new birth made its way like lightening into the hearer’s consciences.”  

Analysis: In 1840, ninety, years after The Great Awakening, a Vermont Bible-believing pastor, Joseph Tracy, conducted a thorough study of it. In his book, The Great Awakening, he gives some glimpses of the condition of the church in New England in the 1700’s. Remember the Declaration of Independence wasn’t written until 1776. The marriage of church and state governments had come over from Europe in the early days of the American colonies. Tracy explains, “In the early days of New England none but church members could hold any office or vote in elections. It always had been so throughout the Christian world, except that in most European cases the rulers were hereditary, so no church officer ever voted to approve their church membership.” Therefore, the motivation for admission to the Lord’s table was not a commitment to Christ: it was getting a job. Tracey continues,

“Throughout Christian Europe, the practice was to baptize all in infancy and to consider them as members of the church unless excommunicated in childhood. They were to be taught certain forms of faith and worship after which they were admitted to the Lord’s supper receiving confirmation from the Bishop (where there were bishops) and passing through an examination in the creeds and catechisms.” Tracy goes on to explain that this examination almost never sought to determine if the person had personally trusted Christ as his savior, come into a personal relationship with Christ, and chosen to follow him as Lord. BTW this neglect explains why many pastors, like John Wesley, were ordained and preaching before their conversion.  Tracy continued,

“Exclusion from the Lord’s table was attended with the loss of certain civil rights and his excommunication would be followed by the infliction of punishment by the civil government. In England a man appointed to any civil or military office must qualify by receiving the Lord’s supper in the established church and many received it to qualify themselves for office who neglected it all the rest of their lives.” In short because of the marriage of church and state in a form somewhat like a theocracy, Christianity became a civil religion. But true Christianity is not an inherited one—inherited from your parents or from your culture. It is a chosen one. George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, and other preachers of the Great Awakening confronted their hearers with that choice. Repent. Believe. Surrender to Christ’s Kingship. We know that The Great Awakening brought new birth into the hearts of many nominal Christian church members. But the presentation of the true gospel also brought at least 25,000 new members into churches in New England alone.

Take Aways

  1. The Word of God transforms lives at the individual and national level.
  2. Christianity is not mental assent; it is an intentional choice of the will to follow Jesus and to seek first his kingdom and his righteousness.

For Further Prayerful Thought:

  1. Why do you think Jesus told us our mission is to “make disciples OF the nations” instead of “make disciples IN the nations”? What is the difference? What does this command say to Christians who want to give up on our culture because “the culture is so evil it is going to hell in a hand basket”?
  2. What stood out to you about how God discipled his nation, Israel, through Ezra and the Levites during the month of Tishri? What parts of this process seem applicable to America? Which parts don’t?
  3. What stood out to you about God discipling America through The Great Awakening? What lessons, if any, can you draw from it about how God might “disciple” America through us.
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Israel, America, Iran, & War

Israel, America, Iran, & War

On 11 April, 2026 By Gary Yagel

As we pick up our study of the Book of Nehemiah, we come to the eighth chapter where a national revival takes place in Judah. Before studying this next week, we need to think carefully about some issues—issues that happen to be very much in the news today, which surround America’s war with Iran, Israel our ally, and the war itself. Is God on our side? Is this a just war? Are Christians right who seem to say we should blindly support Israel in its conflict with Islamic Jihadists? Is America a Christian nation? Let’s try to find clarity in Scripture about these issues.

BIBILICAL LENS OVER THE ANCIENT NATION OF ISRAEL

Israel began in Genesis 12:1-3. Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

Abraham is the father of both ethnic Israel and spiritual Israel. Romans 9-11 make clear that God’s covenant was made with the faithful remnant of Israel who trusted God’s provision for their sin, foreseen in the temple sacrifices, but ultimately accomplished by Christ. “For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world,” writes Paul, “did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith” (Rom 4:13). God’s covenant, by which He promised to save Abraham, always belonged to the descendants of Abraham who had faith, the faithful remnant within ethnic Israel (which later included God-fearers in the Mediterranean World). That remnant and the promises of the Covenant of Grace come into the NT era as the church. Abraham is both the father of those in the new and old covenants who are saved by faith and the father of ethnic Israel. Paul’s explanation that Abraham’s children, who were part of spiritual Israel are those who lived by faith, is reinforced by Hebrews 11, which catalogues some of spiritual Israel’s greats. During Jesus' lifetime, he said that true members of spiritual Israel, i.e. those who knew the Father, would recognize the Father’s voice in Jesus, who said things like "I and the Father are one.”

Because of Israel’s covenant relationship with God, blessings for spiritual Israel and ethnic Israel always came through keeping the covenant sanctions—obedience to the law. God said, If you faithfully obey the voice of the Lord your God, being careful to do all his commandments that I command you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you obey the voice of the Lord your God… (Deut 28:1-2) But disobedience would bring the curse. If you will not obey the voice of the Lord your God or be careful to do all his commandments and his statutes that I command you today, then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you. (Deut 28:15-16).

It is important to note that Israel was a theocracy. God’s Law had three categories, moral law (summarized by the Ten Commandments), ceremonial law, which dealt with cleansing and temple rituals, and civil law, which promoted justice by explaining what was to happen when your ox gored someone else’s. This overlap of law categories, which happens only in a theocracy, led to 36 different capital offenses in the Torah. These ranged from severe crimes like murder and kidnapping to religious infractions such as idolatry and Sabbath breaking.

One of the covenant curses for worshipping a false God was drought. Elijah announced this covenant sanction coming upon Israel to King Ahab, which led to Elijah’s showdown with the prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel. God’s common grace led the people to turn back to Yahweh, in a national revival. God then sent rain. Another of the curses for idolatry was being conquered by foreign military powers. This sanction led to Judah’s Babylonian captivity, which lasted for 70 years. After some Jews returned to Jerusalem and subsequently helped Nehemiah rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, God sent a national revival. If they had not turned back to Yahweh, those walls might have been torn down by another conquering power! This repentance would have included both spiritual Israel and ethnic Israel through God’s saving and common grace.

The arrival of the Messiah brings an end to Israel as a theocracy. Its unrepentant religious leaders suffer horrible judgement in 70 AD when Jerusalem is destroyed, surviving ethnic Israel scattered, and the temple sacrifices end forever, since the Lamb of God has come. Spiritual Israel continues as the church. The New Testament prohibits a Christian theocracy from ever being established. Paul tells us that the power of the sword is given to the state and not the church. Jesus, before Pilate, forbid his followers from building a theocracy when he said, “My kingdom is not of this world.” Then to make clear what he meant. Jesus continued, “If my kingdom were of this world my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world.” Jesus here specifically repudiated the use of the sword to spread his kingdom.

Christ’s kingdom of righteousness spreads in two ways: 1) Christ-followers implementing Christ’s agenda in each sphere of their own lives, 2) through influence, never military conquest. The establishing of God’s covenant people at one time in history in one nation as theocratic Israel, has given way to the Day of Pentecost and the sending of the gospel into every nation of the world. Christ’s kingdom does not spread by tearing down the political structure of a nation and replacing it with Christian theocracy. The kingdom of Christ permeates Kingdom Earth, its members living side by side with the lost. Jesus explained this process.

The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?’ He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ So the servants said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ But he said, ‘No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest (Mt 13:24-30).

The kingdom has come into history but in such a way that political structures are not overthrown. The sons and daughters of the kingdom have surrendered to God’s rule and entered into his blessings. They live as redeemed people putting on display restored humanity through obedience to Christ’s agenda for them in their loyalties, their attitudes, their behavior. Yet, they continue to live in this age intermingled with the lost in a mixed society because the way Christ’s kingdom of righteousness grows is through our example and our influence. Jesus used the metaphor of salt, light, and yeast, to describe the Christian influence upon a culture.

BIBLICAL LENS OVER AMERICA

Is America a Christian nation? Yes, and no. The founding of the United States and formulation of its constitution were shaped by two groups, Christians like Sam Adams and Deists like Thomas Jefferson. What made this marriage exceptional were three, world-view assumptions shared by both groups:

  • Natural law. Deists believed there was a creator god whose creation operated according to fixed, logical natural laws, which Christians believe is the moral order God established within creation that humans can discern through reason and conscience. Since there was agreement on the supernatural origin of moral law, society should be governed by the rule of this moral law.
  • High regard for the Bible. Thomas Jefferson, though a Deist, said, “The Bible is the cornerstone of liberty.” American law inherited foundations from English Common Law, which was heavily shaped by Scripture, from legal philosophers like Christian William Blackstone, and from biblical concepts of justice. Many specific constitutional features have biblical roots, such as the requirement of two witnesses for a conviction of treason (Deuteronomy 19:15).
  • Opposition to a state religion. To guarantee religious liberty, prevent political tyranny, and avoid the sectarian violence observed in European history, the founders believed a "wall of separation" should exist between church and state. By this phrase of Thomas Jefferson, they never intended to strip the public sphere of spiritual, Christian, or biblical influence; both groups believed natural law originates in a spiritual, moral being, which should shape culture through discourse. But they wanted no state church.

The confluence of these shared worldviews and God’s goodness has resulted in America being an exceptional nation. But Christians cannot embrace American nationalism. Patriotism is a virtue, but Americans are no more special to God than the Chinese, North Koreans or Iranians. Our citizenship is in Christ’s kingdom made up of those from every tribe, and tongue, and nation. Furthermore, to call America a Christian nation is to imply the existence of a theocracy, which Scripture repudiates. However, resisting theonomy and nationalism does not mean withdrawal from the culture. Christians must engage the public arena to exert our influence as salt, light, and leaven.

BIBLICAL LENS OVER IRAN

Iran is the largest state sponsor of jihadists (those who fight “holy war”) in the world. Iranian jihadists, particularly those within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its proxy network, are driven by Shia Islamist ideology designed to extend the sovereignty of Allah’s law (Sharia) worldwide. The IRGC is mandated by Iran's constitution to pursue a "jihad in God's way," which they interpret as fighting against "oppressive governments,” especially Little Satan (Isreal) and Big Satan (America). The October 7th massacre by the Iranian-backed Hamas terrorists in southern Israel that killed over 1,200 Israelis and other foreign nationals and took over 250 hostages, was a clear picture of the savagery that Iran promotes.

It is, however, important for Christians to distinguish between Islamic Jihadists, and Muslims, the vast majority of whom are peaceful, despite their founder’s violence. Muslin countries surrounding Iran have shown this by becoming US allies and remaining allies after the US attacked Iran during Operation Epic Fury. Both branches of Islam, the Sunnis and Shia have Jihadist components. Iran is 95% Shia, and sponsors Shia Jihadi groups, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, besides Sunni Jihadists, Hamas. Sunni Jihadists also include ISIS, Al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, and Palestine Islamic Jihad.

BIBLICAL LENS OVER WAR IN THE MIDDL EAST

A. The claim that Israel stole Arab land to form its country. This is false. Here are the facts. Jews were dispersed across the world after 70 AD, when Jerusalem was pillaged. In 1917, Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire with less than 10% of the population Jewish. During WWI, Britain passed the Balfour Declaration, in 1917, to establish a "national home for the Jewish people in Palestine.” The declaration called for “safeguarding the civil and religious rights for the Palestinian Arabs” who composed the vast majority of the population. After Britain’s army drove the Ottoman Turks out of the Middle East (WW1) the Britts set up a political entity called Mandatory Palestine under its rule.

Meanwhile, in Europe, the Jewish Zionist movement called for Jews to migrate to Palestine to repatriate Israel. Arab nationalists naturally opposed this effort, claiming Arab rights over the former Ottoman territories and seeking to prevent Jewish migration. But the Ottoman Turks had lost the war to Britain. Mandatory Palestine belonged to the Britts. It was their decision what to do with it.   

After World War II, in 1945, the United States took up the Zionist cause. Britain, unable to find a practical solution for the rule of Palestine, referred the problem to the United Nations, which in 1947 approved a plan for 1) an independent Arab State, 2) an independent Jewish State, and 3) the city of Jerusalem to be under an international trusteeship system. But the Arab coalition spurned this attempt at a just division of the land. The very next day, the Arab League members, Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq attacked Israel. After an initial loss of territory by the Jewish state, the tide turned in the Israelis' favor, and they pushed the Arab armies back beyond the borders of the proposed Arab state. The departure of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs from Israel during the war that the Arab League started left the country with a substantial Jewish majority.

Unjustified hostility towards Israel among the Arabs smoldered for twenty years leading the Arab league in 1967 to plan another attack. Israeli intelligence learned of it and the Israeli air force launched pre-emptive strikes destroying the Egyptian, Jordanian, and Syrian air forces on the same day. It then defeated Egypt, Jordan and Syria in this Six-Day War. Israel captured the Old City of Jerusalem, the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and the Golan Heights. 

In 2005, Israel gave up its occupation of the Gaza Strip. All Jewish settlers were evacuated from Gaza and Israel set up free elections there. Hamas won the free 2006 Palestinian election with 75% of the vote. Hamas then staged a bloody coup against the Palestinian Authority which had won the other 25%, seized control of Gaza, and turned it into a base for attacking Israel with rockets, tunnel infiltrations, and incendiary balloons.

As recently as 2020, Hamas rejected the Trump Middle East peace plan that was embraced by the Arab states, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, and Morocco. The plan provided for Israeli security needs and cleared the way for U.S. recognition of Israeli sovereignty over many settlements and Jewish holy sites in the territory of the West Bank. It also included important benefits for Palestinians, who were offered the opportunity to build a state of their own, supported by a $50 billion regional development plan for the Palestinian territories and nearby Arab states. Despite the economic benefits and the diplomatic pathway to a Palestinian state the Islamic extremists Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran rejected the plan. Today’s Christian’s must realize that the cry, “From the river to the sea” (which refers to the land west of the Jordan River to the Mediterranean coast—the land Israel occupies) is not a cry for justice. It is rooted in Islamic Jihad hatred of Jews and belief that Allah wants them exterminated.

B. Who is committing war crimes? In the 13th century, theologian Thomas Aquinas synthesized biblical teachings on peace and war, proposing what was called Just War Theory. His thinking had a lasting impact on later generations and became the basis for the humane treatment of civilians and prisoners required by the Geneva Conventions. Here is a summary of Iran and its proxy’s severe violations: (Remembering the on-screen atrocities of October 7 will help).

  • Specifically, those captured must be “treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, color, religion or faith, sex.”
  • The killing of all civilians is prohibited.
  • Beating, rape, cruel treatment of any soldier or civilian is prohibited.
  • Mutilation, torture, outrages upon dignity…humiliating and degrading treatment are forbidden.
  • Taking civilian hostages of any kind is forbidden.

Iran and its Jihadi proxies violated every last one of these. They have been for the past 47 years. Jihadis break all international laws by hiding among civilians and firing their weapons next to hospitals, schools and mosques. Iran has fired thousands of indiscriminate missiles in order to maximize civilian casualties not only in Israel but its surrounding Muslim countries! These are war crimes.

This contrasts in the greatest possible way with US and Israeli actions. The IDF has hamstrung itself because of Israel’s adherence to the Geneva Conventions. In response to Hamas atrocities against its children, Israel did what every country in the world would justly do; it took military action to secure its territory and entered Gaza to rescue its hostages and eliminate the threat on its border. The former Supreme Commander of British forces in Afghanistan, Richard Kemp, has testified that, in this fighting, “The Israel Defense Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.”

C. Is the US preemptive attack against Iran justified by Just War Theory? Yes. Both the 47-year history of Iranian attacks against America leading to nearly 1000 deaths, and preemptive action to prevent the evil attack of an enemy are justified by Just War theory.

BIBLICAL LENS OVER GOD’S COMMITMENT TO ETHNIC ISRAEL

The re-formation of Israel in 1948, after Jews were dispersed over all the earth for 2000 years is without precedent in history. So is the antisemitism that accompanied them everywhere, which I can’t help but see as Satan’s hatred of the ethnic group God chose. Admittedly the rebirth of Israel has led to wild eschatological views with which I strongly disagree. Nevertheless, I believe that this historic fact—the reconstitution of Israel in Palestine with its capital in Jerusalem—is consistent with what Paul teaches and the Book of Revelation. This commitment of God to give ethnic Israel the promised land does not mean God has reinstituted his theocracy of Israel; it means God is faithful to his promises. Israel is not God’s reconstituted theocracy; it is a secular state. On the other hand, we would do well to take God’s promise to Abraham seriously, I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse.   

Furthermore, in Romans 11, Paul uses the analogy of the olive tree to say that God has grafted the Gentiles into God’s covenant community. Then he writes, “a partial hardening has come upon Israel, UNTIL the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And in this way ALL ISRAEL WILL BE SAVED, as it is written, ‘The Deliverer will come from Zion, he will banish ungodliness from Jacob; and this will be my covenant with them when I take away their sins (vs 25-27). I agree with the ESV Study Bible footnotes that argue that the best interpretation of Paul’s phrase “all of Israel will be saved” in context is that after the ingrafting of the Gentiles, before Christ returns there will be a great outpouring of the Spirit in the nation of Israel, leading to millions of Jews coming to faith in Christ. Isreal has ben reconsituted. If you see millions of Israelis coming to faith in Christ, get ready!

For Further Prayerful Thought:

  1. How would you describe the difference between ethnic Israel and spiritual Israel. How does this difference make sense? Why is it important?
  2. Why is it important to recognize that God’s covenant with spiritual Israel is continued in the church?
  3. Contrast Israel’s theocracy with America’s democracy.
  4. What is the difference between recognizing the influence of Christians in America’s founding and constitution and saying America is a Christian nation?
  5. What is your opinion of the Islamic Jihadi cry, “From the river to the sea.”
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What the Resurrection Means for Our Everyday Mission

What the Resurrection Means for Our Everyday Mission

On 03 April, 2026 By Gary Yagel

Hi Men,

This is Gary Yagel. Like you, celebrating Easter makes me think of loved ones who are with Jesus, and as I grow older Jesus’ defeat of death is more and more important to me. But the gospel writers saw the resurrection as more than a guaranteed for believers of eternal life; they saw is as proof that Jesus have come to overthrow the usurpers of Adam’s kingdom, Satan, sin, and death and the beginning of the process by which Jesus, fixes everything on earth broken by sin. This past episode explains how this fuller understanding of the gospel, sometimes called the four-chapter gospel, has been lost by some of the Christianity we have inherited and why its recovery is so important for understanding our everyday mission from Christ.

Effective leaders understand the big-picture perspective of their mission, so that they can lead the way and stay motivated to fulfill their mission. As we understand that big picture for Christian men, sometimes called the meta-narrative of Scripture, it fuels our passion to fulfill our part in God’s story. The resurrection is more than a guarantee that death is not final for Christians; it reveals to us, just as Palm Sunday did, a lot about the greatness of our mission as Christ-followers. I’m praying that digging into what Jesus’ bodily resurrection means for our everyday lives will breathe fresh inspiration into each one of us.

As you know our goal for the blog and podcast is to apply biblical truth to the lives of men. The resurrection of Christ’s physical body speaks volumes about the meta story of God’s plan for creation and our part in it. Understanding that story has very practical consequences for our everyday lives. It answers significant questions that most humans have:  Why am I here? What is God’s purpose for my life? Why is the world so broken?

The fact that Jesus’ resurrection was not just a spiritual resurrection but the resurrection of Jesus’ physical body is so important that when the Council of Nicea convened in the 4th century, it intentionally refuted this belief (decetism) in the creed it wrote to insure that believers understood that Jesus’ incarnation and resurrection took place in real, physical flesh. The importance of this truth is still recognized today, in the Apostles’ Creed, “I believe in the resurrection of the body and in the life everlasting.”

One of the reasons that belief in the bodily resurrection of Christ is so important is that it tells us that God has begun to redeem his whole CREATION from the decay of sin. Although today’s Christians do affirm the resurrection of the physical body, many have lost the understanding of its significance. God’s original intent to have man rule over and develop the potential of CREATION, and the biblical teaching that the second Adam will ultimately restore all of CREATION are inadvertently left out of the gospel story by many Christians today. They would define the gospel as these two fundamental truths:

  • I must recognize that I am sinful and broken.
  • I cannot fix my own brokenness, so I need a savior, Jesus, to redeem me.

While sin and personal salvation are undeniable realities, they are not the complete gospel. They are not the gospel of the kingdom, which, as we saw last week, is the only gospel that Jesus proclaimed. Our sin and Jesus’ death to atone for those sins are two chapters of the gospel. If that is all that is important to Christians, we have settled for a two-chapter gospel: 1) the fall, 2) redemption.

If you think about it, this gospel doesn’t require Jesus’ physical, bodily resurrection. He could have just risen spiritually and ascended to heaven, where he stands at the gates of heaven and admits into the holy presence of God those who have trusted in his atoning work at the cross and turn away those who trust in their own works for salvation. However, the resurrection of Christ’s physical, material body tells us that God’s story from Genesis to Revelation is a four-chapter gospel about his creation:  Here is a summary of the whole gospel:

1. CREATION (the way things were, along with God’s intention for Adam & Eve to develop its potential, rule it for God, developing culture that reflects God’s image)

2.  FALL (the reason the world is so broken—Adam’s kingdom rule usurped by Satan, sin, and death)

3.  REDEMPTION (God’s people set free by King Jesus from slavery to Satan, sin, and death—tasting and showing the world the way things could be)

4.  RESTORATION (the way things will be—creation renewed with no more sin, sorrow, coronavirus, or pain.)

The four-chapter gospel answers the questions of meaning, origin, and ultimate purpose. It restores to Christians raised on the two-chapter gospel the importance of creation. Tim Keller writes:

Some conservative Christians think of salvation as the fall, redemption, heaven. In this narrative, the purpose of redemption is escape from this world; only saved people have anything of value, while unbelieving people in the world are seen as blind and bad. If, however, the story of salvation is Creation, Fall, Redemption, Restoration, then things look different. In this narrative, non-Christians are seen as created in the image of God and given much wisdom and greatness in them (cf Ps. 8) even though the image is defaced and fallen. Moreover, the purpose of redemption is not to escape the world, but to renew it…It is about the coming of God’s kingdom to renew all things. (cited in All Things New, by Hugh Whelchel.)

Much of the Bible-believing church today has its historic roots in a form of Christianity that held a two-chapter view of the gospel. Here is what results from that devaluing creation. You might recognize some of these strains.

A.  The two-chapter gospel doesn’t give a clear picture of our true destiny. Instead, it puts the emphasis on “going to heaven” when the complete story is that heaven comes down to renew the earth. King Jesus comes down from heaven to overthrow the tyrants ruining Adam’s kingdom, Satan, sin, and death. Those who have died before Christ’s final return will be united with their physical bodies and we will dwell eternally with God himself on a renewed earth where there is no more sin or decay.

B.  The two-chapter gospel doesn’t give a full picture of what we were created FOR—our mission.  Christian discipleship often completely ignores God’s creation mission for Adam and Eve. A true understanding of redemption is that Christians recover their creation calling to “secular” vocation—to develop the potential of God’s creation. God created humans in his image to be workers, just as he is. Sin corrupted our work ensuring that humans toil and sweat in their labor. Our redemption in Christ means recovering our original calling to our vocation—knowing that salvation is not escaping from this earth but being a part of God’s four-chapter plan to renew creation. T. M Moore describes the four-chapter gospel view of work:

So the creation has been “subjected to futility,” Paul says, and we who have become the sons and daughters of God, who understand his purpose for his work, have been called in our work to repair, renew, and restore the original beauty, goodness and truth of God….Our work only takes on full significance when we see it in this light, as part of God’s ongoing work to bring everything to a higher state of goodness (Rom 8:28). So, no matter what our job, or whatever your work may be, God intends that you should devote your labors to something greater than personal interest, economic prosperity, or social good, alone. God intends your work to contribute to the restoration of the creation, and the people in it, to raising life on this planet to higher states of beauty, goodness, and truth, reflecting the glory of God in our midst. (TM Moore, “Work, Beauty and Meaning: A Biblical Perspective on the Daily Grind.”)

C. The two-chapter gospel creates a false sacred/secular divide. By ignoring the significance of creation, the two-chapter gospel creates a divide between what is spiritual and what is secular. Hugh Whelchel, in his booklet, All Things New, writes, This divide is responsible for the popular mindset that our relationship with God is compartmentalized to church-related events and activities. Quite the contrary, our response to God should reverberate into every facet of life: at home, at work, in our families, in our communities and at church. Christ claims every part of our lives and every square inch of creation as his and wants us to pursue his righteous rule there. That is what seeking first the Kingdom of God means.

D. The two-chapter gospel leads to an escapist view of redemption.  The two-chapter gospel views salvation as private, personal salvation only. It is a bus ticket to heaven. Christians are left without a very clear understanding of what they are supposed to do while they wait for the bus. But they do know that they are to love not the world, neither the things of the world. This mistakenly translates into a negative attitude towards non-Christians and towards the culture. Understanding creation (chapter 1) and the restoration of creation (chapter 4) confronts believers with the value of God’s creation, including unbelievers who bear the image of God. Understanding the mandate to develop culture causes us to partner with non-believers who, through common grace, have much to contribute in God’s work to repair, restore, renew, and develop the glory of his creation. Our help is vital because sin damages all relationships, the fabric that holds culture together.  Corbett and Fikkert describe the devastation brought about by Adam and Eve’s sin.

Their relationship with God was damaged, as their intimacy with him was replaced with fear; their relationship with self was marred as Adam and Eve developed a sense of shame; their relationship with others was broken, as Adam quickly blamed Eve for their sin; and their relationship to the rest of creation became distorted, as God cursed the ground and the child-bearing process…because the four relationships are the building blocks for all human activity, the effects of the Fall are manifested in the economic, social religious, and political systems that humans have created throughout history (When Helping Hurts). 

Jesus’ mission was to overthrow sin’s reign everywhere in culture, not just in the personal lives of believers. That is what it means to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. That is what it means to be salt and light in the culture—as salt, to retard decay, as light to expose injustice and show the kingdom of righteousness to the world. It is to join in God’s redemption of his glorious creation right now. God has strategically placed each of us in our specific family, job, church, neighborhood and community so that we can repair, restore, renew, and develop the glory of his creation right there.

E.  The two-chapter gospel reduces our mission as Christian men to sin management. If your vision of Christianity is sin management, how much does it capture your heart?  Although fighting for righteousness in our own lives is a high calling and central to our mission, battling personal sin is not a big enough vision to capture the hearts of men in the same way that the four-chapter gospel does. Dave Murrow, in his book, Why Men Hate Going to Church points out, “Every man wants to be a hero, to become a great man. Boys do not dream of sitting in a cubicle; they dream of slaying the dragon, rescuing the princess, and absconding with the treasure.“ Males want to be engaged in a mission that is worthy of the best they have to give. Buried in men’s hearts is a willingness to make great sacrifices for a mission that is worthy of their full devotion; but too often in our churches the remnants of the two-chapter gospel are producing a vision of discipleship that fails to engage that capacity. If discipleship is primarily about our personal struggle with sin, it will not capture their hearts.

In contrast, the four-chapter gospel has the power to connect the dots between men’s willingness to fully devote themselves to a great cause and the great cause for which Jesus came to planet earth—the overthrow of Satan, sin, and death—and the establishment of his righteous kingdom over the planet. Jesus began his ministry by calling attention to the cataclysmic intrusion of the kingdom of God into time. “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand” (Mk 1:15). Jesus came into the world to recover Adam’s kingdom from the usurpers of Adam’s throne—Satan, sin, and death— and reverse the curse brought upon the cosmos because of sin. In the same way that the curse spread decay, brokenness, and death throughout Adam’s entire kingdom, so Jesus’ mission to bring healing and restoration is cosmic in its scope.

As Christ-followers, we enlist in the great cause of our master, seeking the reign of Christ’s kingdom of righteousness over every square inch of life. King Jesus has come to reconcile to himself all things (Col 1:20). He is putting into right relationship everything he has created. He is using his power to fix everything in the universe that was broken by sin. Tim Keller writes, “The kingdom of God is the renewal of the whole world through the entrance of supernatural forces. As things are restored under Christ’s rule and authority, they are restored to health, beauty, and freedom.” (Ministries of Mercy: The Call of the Jericho Road). The four-chapter gospel is the reason that this ministry, Mission Focused Men for Christ, defines our threefold mission as Called TO Christ—to whole-hearted loyalty to our king’s rule in our lives, Called TO BE LIKE Christ—to surrender to Christ’ righteousness in our heart attitudes, and Called TO EXERCISE DOMINION FOR CHRIST—to seek, in every sphere of our lives, to bring about kingdom righteousness and kingdom flourishing. Our mission is a little bigger than overcoming our personal sin.

Christopher Wright, in his book, God’s Mission: The Key to Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative, summarizes the four-chapter understanding of our mission as:

Our committed participation as God’s people, at God’s invitation and command, in God’s own mission within the history of God’s world for the redemption of God’s creation…This is The Story that tells us where we have come from, how we got to be here, who we are, why the world is in the mess it is, how it can be (and has been) changed, and where we are ultimately going.

The resurrection of Christ’s physical body calls us not just to a private, spiritual relationship with Christ, but to do our part in Christ’s cosmic mission to fix everything in creation broken by sin.

For Further Prayerful Thought:

1. Celebrate the fact that your calling from Christ is to part of the biggest enterprise in the history of the world—Christ’s overthrow of Satan, sin, and death and establishment of his kingdom of righteousness over nook and cranny of earth.

2.  Meditate on what you might do to stay better focused on living out this mission in your own life and relationships.

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Better Understanding The Kingdom We Are to Seek

Better Understanding The Kingdom We Are to Seek

On 28 March, 2026 By Gary Yagel

Hi Men,

As this episode comes out most of you will have just celebrated Palm Sunday the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem fulfilling Zechariah's prophecy of the arrival of the Messiah. So, I decided to take a break from our study of Nehemiah. The triumphal entry always feels to me like what happened on the Mount of Transfiguration when the veil of human flesh was momentarily lifted, enabling us to get a glimpse of Jesus true identity as the Son of God. In the events of Palm Sunday we get a second, momentary glimpse of Jesus’ true identity—the Messianic king promised to come to free God’s oppressed people. But there was confusion among the Jewish people about the nature of their oppression and the nature of the Kingdom he would bring.

To this day there is still confusion about what Jesus’ Kingdom looks like. Today’s past episode seeks to clarify the concept of kingdom so that we can better grasp what Jesus said is to be our highest priority, to seek first that Kingdom of God and his righteousness.

Jesus commanded us not to be preoccupied with what we will eat or drink or distracted by what we are going to wear. Rather, we are to seek first the kingdom of God. But how do you seek something you can’t describe and don’t know how to define? Modern Christians are not the only ones confused about what this means. Dr. Luke tells us that Jesus spent his last forty days on earth explaining this concept to his disciples, and they still got it wrong, asking “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6) But Jesus’ teachings about the kingdom of God are puzzle pieces that do fit together and can make a huge difference in understanding our mission. This episode puts some of those pieces together and illustrates how Christ-followers have sought and prayed for the kingdom of God to advance over the earth.

Just before Jesus’ ascension, when the disciples mistakenly expected him to be about to usher in an earthly, political kingdom, Jesus took their focus off his future, final return to set up that eternal kingdom and turned it to their mission to spread Jesus’ present spiritual kingdom through the power of the Holy Spirit. “It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth (Acts 1:7-8). Sadly, a lot of Bible-believing Christians in the twentieth century focused primarily on the future kingdom of Christ, and withdrew from culture, waiting at the bus stop for the bus to take them up to heaven. But Jesus turned his disciples’ attention away from his final return and future political reign and placed it on the spiritual presence of the kingdom of God right now.  

Understanding how Christ’s ascension and outpouring of the Holy Spirit relate to our everyday lives requires a quick overview of the biblical concept of kingdom.

The idea of kingdom begins in the very first chapter of Genesis, where Adam and Eve are created king and queen over kingdom earth and continues to the last chapter of Revelation where the second Adam, the Lamb is seated on earth’s throne. To adequately represent God as his image bearers, Adam and Eve are created moral beings. As humans multiply and develop the potential of their kingdom, the culture that emerges is to be shaped by the moral law of the High King written on their heart. But no sooner had God finished creating earth’s king and queen in Genesis 1 and 2 than another character enters the story. Satan succeeds at convincing Adam and Eve to join his rebellion. The moment earth’s king and queen eat the forbidden fruit, they align their kingdom with Satan, sin, and death. Now their kingdom, earth, is under the tyranny of these three powers.

But God so loves his image bearers and the kingdom he has created for them, that he himself invades human flesh and comes as a second Adam to overthrow Satan, sin, and death. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive (1 Cor 15:22). Scripture had always taught that Israel’s military subjugation by other nations was a consequence of their sin. When the disciples expected the Messiah to overthrow Rome, Jesus’ response was, “My kingdom is not a military one. I did not come to overthrow Rome. I came to overthrow a much more sinister, destructive, wicked enemy, the triumvirate, Satan, sin, and death. My kingdom is a spiritual one that will spread over the earth. My resurrection proves the curse upon man and his kingdom for mankind’s rebellion is broken. I have triumphed over Satan at the cross and I am ascending to the right hand of God and will send the Holy Spirit to empower the spreading of my kingdom.”

The kingdom of God is used synonymously in Matthew 6:33 for the kingdom of righteousness. Jesus brings the kingdom of righteousness from heaven, where there is no sin, down to earth, which has been corrupted by the rule of Satan, sin, and death. Jesus actually explains what the term, kingdom of God means when he teaches us to pray, “Father, may your kingdom come—may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Much clarity about the meaning of the term kingdom of God comes from realizing (as Jesus’ disciples did not, at first) that Christ brings the kingdom of God to earth to restore Adam’s fallen kingdom, earth, into a kingdom of righteousness in two stages. Stage one, the defeat of Satan, sin, and death has ALREADY taken place at the cross and the proof is the bodily resurrection of Christ. The kingdom of Christ has been inaugurated. Satan sin and death have been defeated but NOT YET destroyed. Christ will return and set up his eternal kingdom of righteousness. The kingdom of Christ will be consummated.

1. Stage One: The Defeat of Satan, Sin and Death. The second Adam resists Satan’s temptation to sinfully turn stones into bread, while all alone, in a stark wilderness, at the point of starvation, in contrast to the first Adam, who ate the fruit in a lush garden, on a full stomach, with his wife next to him. Our Lord’s full obedience is accomplished as he surrenders to the Father’s will in going to the cross. Jesus’ miracles did more than just prove that he is God’s messenger. They prefigured this overthrow in casting out demons, teaching what true righteousness looked like in the Sermon on the Mount, overcoming the curse of the ground because of Adam’s sin in calming the storm, restoring broken bodies, and raising the dead. The ALREADY aspect of the kingdom is proved by verses like these:

  • He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him. (Col 2:15)
  • Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him (1 Pet 3:22)
  • If it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you (Matt 12:28).

2. Stage Two: The final Return of Christ. Yet, Jesus’ kingdom of righteousness has  NOT YET been fully realized and will not fully come until Jesus returns. Here are verses that point to the final consummation of Christ’s kingdom.

  • Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death” (1 Cor 15:24-26).
  • For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility… in hope (anticipation) that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Rom 8:19-21).
  • Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more….He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new (Rev 21:1-5).

But we live in this in-between period. How are we to understand our times in view of the two stages of kingdom arrival? Theologian Oscar Cullmann explains the ALREADY/NOT YET aspects of the kingdom. Christ has accomplished a decisive victory at the cross much as the Allies did on the beaches of Normandy in World War II. Once they succeeded in the D-Day invasion, their victory was sure; it was only a matter of time until Victory Europe Day.

The decisive battle in a war may already have occurred in a relatively early stage of the war, and yet the war still continues. Although the decisive effect of that battle is perhaps not recognized by all, it nevertheless means victory. But the war must still be carried on for an undefined time until ‘Victory Day.’ This is the situation of which the New Testament is conscious…that that event on the cross, together with the resurrection which followed, was the already concluded decisive battle.”

D-Day has happened. The decisive battle for Adam’s kingdom has already taken place at the cross. Jesus won! But the enemies remain to conduct guerilla warfare against Christ and his followers. Satan has been disarmed, but not destroyed. Slavery to sin has been broken for those who are in Christ, but not its reality in our hearts. Death’s permanence has been vanquished giving us hope that will not disappoint but still bringing us heartbreak. How do we understand this in between period, between the ALREADY and the NOT YET?

The great commission is not just a call to make personal disciples of Jesus who live in all the nations of the world. Jesus’ words are, “Make disciples of ALL NATIONS.” The great commission is the renewal of Adam and Eve’s cultural mandate, “Exercise dominion over your kingdom” (Gen 1:28). The coming of the kingdom of God brings restoration to earth. Jesus has begun to fix everything broken by sin and establish righteousness over the earth. The impact of Christ’s kingdom in the present age seems to be the focus of Jesus in several parables from Matt 13.

He put another parable before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.” He told them another parable. “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened” (vs 31-33)

Kingdom Discipleship in the Current Age

1) Kingdom disciples DISPLAY his kingdom. Christ’s kingdom is the world we all long for—where there is love, harmony, world peace, and justice—where there is no toxic manhood or neighborhoods full of crime and drugs. The great calling of believers today is to point others to this kingdom and by God’s grace, give the world an appetizer of the restored life to come in Christ’s eternal kingdom. Today’s believers are the firstfruits of God’s recreation of man and his kingdom. The apostle John describes the church: “It is these who follow the Lamb wherever he goes. These have been redeemed from mankind as firstfruits for God and the Lamb…” (Rev 14:4). This high privilege is the reason for marinating our souls in the kingdom values Jesus taught, notably in the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5-7) and the Sermon on the Plain (Luke 6:17-49). Here are some inspiring examples of Christians being Christ to their communities.

In South Central Los Angeles FCM Baptist Church began training volunteers to work in the neonatal intensive care unit of the overburdened and underfunded Martin Luther King Hospital. After completing their training, these “Rock n’ Hold” volunteers began to spend hours in the hospital nursery, holding the twitching, afflicted babies who had been born addicted to the crack that their mothers consumed. Rocking and holding the babies, some of whom were born with AIDS, they love them, sing them lullabies, and show the hospital staff Jesus.

East Foursquare Church in Kirkland Washing started centering its small groups around joint skills that could be used for outreach, visiting a nursing home, forming a medical needs group, and building a team of mechanics to repair cars for needy families.

Tenth Presbyterian Church located in a part of downtown Philadelphia with numerous gay bars and homosexual meeting areas began running a two-line advertisement in the Philadelphia Inquirer, “Homosexuals and Lesbians can change,” followed by a phone number to this outreach ministry arm, Harvest. Besides some crank calls, hundreds of people called Harvest, where they have received tender love, and real hope, some coming to faith in Christ. Kingdom disciples display Christ’s kingdom.

2) Kingdom disciples SPREAD his kingdom. We are called to take Christ’s kingdom geographically to the ends of the earth, and spiritually to the very gates of hell. Just as the first Adam was called to be fruitful, multiply, and exercise dominion over earth for The High King, so the followers of the second Adam are called to go into the world exercising dominion for The High King—spreading Christ’s kingdom of righteousness. Jesus taught his disciples to seek first his kingdom (Mt 6:33), i.e., seek to bring about the redemptive reign of Christ in every sphere of life, because, as Abraham Kuyper has reminded us, there is not one square inch of planet earth over which King Jesus does not say “Mine.”

When the Fairfax County, VA County School Board proposed a study program called, “Family Life Education,” parents at McLean Presbyterian Church examined the curriculum. What they found was a serious undermining of family and moral values in what claimed to be a “value-free” curriculum. So MPC laypeople organized an information night at which members could be alerted, then helped organize parent groups to attend school board meetings. While they did not get the curriculum changed, Christian parents did wring some concessions from the school board. Praise God for Christians teaching in today’s public schools. But Christ followers are needed to support Christian teachers and speak up about what public schools are teaching in our communities. The ongoing battle to take the kingdom of Christ into the public schools needs all hands-on deck right now!

Taking the kingdom of Christ into prisons was the calling of Chuck Colson, after he completed his prison term. Prison Fellowship has had an immeasurable impact on prison conditions, prisoners themselves, and the recidivism rate, (the frequency of prisoners returning to crime). In the first twenty years alone, PF trained over forty thousand volunteers on how to communicate, care, and serve in prisons, and how to help inmates and their families take responsibility for their own lives through the power of the Holy Spirit and the help of the local church.

In Fullerton, CA, the kingdom invaded another world. Pastor Gary Richmond was talking to eight-year-old Brandy and her brother, Stephen. He said, “It’s really hard to go through a divorce, isn’t it, kids?”

“Man, it’s the pits!” responded Stephen right away. “I hated it.”

Brandy looked up, a bored expression on her face. “Oh, I didn’t think it was so bad,” she said. “You just get more moms and dads. No big deal.”

Stephen glared at his sister. “You’re lying to a pastor, Brandy!”

“Yes,” she said, “but I don’t like to talk about it….I just take the sad thoughts to my secret place and then I lock them up.”

What a thing for an eight-year-old child to say! Gary thought.

“Brandy,” he asked, “is your secret place getting full?”

“Yes,” she said, tears welling into her eyes.

“What happens when you can’t fit any more into it?”

“I don’t know,” she said. She paused for a moment then said suddenly, “I don’t say the F-word anymore.”

Now what? Thought Gary. “What word is that?” he asked.

“F-a-m-i-l-y,” she said. I don’t say it because it hurts too much.

Over 50 broken-hearted kids were reached in the first wave by volunteers who taught them how to express their feelings and work through their emotions and a series of Bible verses to help strengthen and comfort them in times of need.

3) Kingdom disciples draw upon Christ for kingdom power. The apostle Paul urgently prays that the church at Ephesus would grasp what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places. The ascension of the second Adam to the right hand of the Father matters. The breaking of the backs of Satan, sin, and death, the reclaiming of Adam’s throne from them leads to the Holy Spirit being poured out. Kingdom disciples know therefore, that the spread of kingdom righteousness into their own heart attitudes comes only by abiding in Christ the Vine. Only Christ’s Spirit in us empowers spiritual fruit. And we know that the kingdom of Christ advances in this age primarily by prayer.

August 27, 1727, the Moravian Community of Christians in Herrnhut, Germany commenced a round-the-clock “prayer watch” that continued nonstop for over a hundred years. Twenty-four men and twenty-four women covenanted to spend one hour each day in scheduled prayer. Some others enlisted in the “hourly intercession. “For over a hundred years the members of the Moravian Church all shared in the ‘hourly intercession.’ At home and abroad, on land and sea, this prayer watch ascended unceasingly to the Lord,” stated historian A. J. Lewis. Here are the astounding historical events that followed.

  • In the 1730’s and 1740’s the Great Awakening took place in America, having an immeasurable impact on the shaping of America.
  • John Wesley, after two years of fruitless ministry in Georgia as an unconverted minister met a group of Moravians on the ship as he returned to England. In England he joined a Moravian group leading to his famous conversion, May 24, 1738, when he felt his "heart strangely warmed". He went on to immeasurable impact upon England as a circuit rider, founder of small group ministry, and founder of the Methodist church.
  • In November 1734, Jonathan Edwards delivered a series of sermons on “Justification by Faith Alone.” The result was a great revival in Northampton and along the Connecticut River Valley in the winter and spring of 1734–35, during which period more than 300 made professions of faith in 18 months.
  • In 1741, Englishman, George Whitefield traveled to North America, where he eventually traveled 5000 miles and preacher over 18,000 times to ten million listeners in Great Britain and her colonies.

In Psalm 2, God the Father promises Jesus and his team of intercessors, “Ask of me and I will make the nations your heritage and the ends of the earth your possession” (vs 8). IF YOU WILL JUST ASK—YOU WILL BE AMAZED BY WHAT I DO!

For Further Prayerful Thought:

1. What is the most helpful thing you have ever learned about the term kingdom of God?

2. Do you agree or disagree with the argument that Christians fail to understand what it means to seek first the kingdom of God because they don’t go back to Adam and Eve’s original creation as rulers of kingdom earth and calling to spread shape culture FOR the High King?

3. How does understanding the ALREADY/NOT YET aspects of the kingdom help you understand it. What is still confusing to you?

4. What examples of kingdom discipleship stood out most to you?

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Pushing Through Discouragement-Producing Opposition

Pushing Through Discouragement-Producing Opposition

On 21 March, 2026 By Gary Yagel

Have you ever wondered:

  • Why is life so difficult?
  • Why is life such a struggle?
  • Why am I tired all the time?
  • Why do so many things go wrong?
  • Why is it that when I try to accomplish something for God it's never easy?

This episode is for those who are finding that pleasing Jesus with your life is hard, full of resistance, and sometimes generates so much discouragement that you feel like not even trying.

 In 2 Kings 13:14-19 Joash the king of Israel went down to visit the dying prophet Elisha to seek his blessing against his enemy Syria. We read:

Elisha said to him, “Take a bow and arrows.” So he took a bow and arrows. Then he said to the king of Israel, “Draw the bow,” and he drew it. And Elisha laid his hands on the king's hands. And he said, “Open the window eastward,” and he opened it. Then Elisha said, “Shoot,” and he shot. And he said, “The Lord's arrow of victory, the arrow of victory over Syria! For you shall fight the Syrians in Aphek until you have made an end of them.” And he said, “Take the arrows,” and he took them And he said to the king of Israel, “Strike the ground with them.” And he struck three times and stopped. Then the man of God was angry with him and said, “You should have struck five or six times; then you would have struck down Syria until you had made an end of it, but now you will strike down Syria only three times.”

This text is always a reminder to me that whenever we set out to please God by seeking to implement his agenda, we can expect opposition that will not be defeated easily through one or two victories. We must realize that success only comes through perseverance. Observing this reality, Anne and Ray Ortland, in their book, You Don’t Have to Quit, write:

Is there a secret that could help you stick it out through your darkest most trying situations until you emerge truly victorious? How do you get the staying power? When you think about it, everybody's had those periods. And the people who have succeeded have come through a time sequence—a time sequence that could be the clue to your making it too. A) They began in some new situation or effort. B) They hit problems and somehow worked their way through them. C) They came out on top. For instance, there was Noah: A) Noah walked with God. B) Then came the threat of an impending flood. But Noah trusted God and obeyed him. C) Noah emerged with his family intact, to start life again. You see the pattern: Begin, persevere, win. Or look at the whole nation of Israel. A) God promised them the land of Canaan. B) In a few generations they were in a completely different country in deep trouble. But they trusted and obeyed….C) And eventually into the land of Canaan they went. Begin, persevere, win.

That is the pattern we also see in the book of Nehemiah as Nehemiah sought to fulfill the task God had assigned to him of rebuilding the wall around Jerusalem. We've already seen Nehemiah face two kinds of external threat: the ridicule of Sanballat and Tobiah intended to discourage the workers and the threat of violence, which required posting a guard. He also had to face and overcome the internal threat of dissension within the body. The nobles and officials were exploiting the poor farmers. As we come to chapter 6, Nehemiah again faces opposition as he has almost finished the wall.

When word came to Sanballat, Tobiah, Geshem the Arab and the rest of our enemies that I had rebuilt the wall and not a gap was left in it—though up to that time I had not set the doors in the gates— Sanballat and Geshem sent me this message: “Come, let us meet together in one of the villages on the plain of Ono.” But they were scheming to harm me; so I sent messengers to them with this reply: “I am carrying on a great project and cannot go down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and go down to you?” Four times they sent me the same message, and each time I gave them the same answer. Then, the fifth time, Sanballat sent his aide to me with the same message, and in his hand was an unsealed letter in which was written:

“It is reported among the nations—and Geshem says it is true—that you and the Jews are plotting to revolt, and therefore you are building the wall. Moreover, according to these reports you are about to become their king  and have even appointed prophets to make this proclamation about you in Jerusalem: ‘There is a king in Judah!’ Now this report will get back to the king; so come, let us meet together.” I sent him this reply: “Nothing like what you are saying is happening; you are just making it up out of your head.” They were all trying to frighten us, thinking, “Their hands will get too weak for the work, and it will not be completed.”  

But I prayed, “Now strengthen my hands.” 

One day I went to the house of Shemaiah son of Delaiah, the son of Mehetabel, who was shut in at his home. He said, “Let us meet in the house of God, inside the temple, and let us close the temple doors, because men are coming to kill you—by night they are coming to kill you.”

But I said, “Should a man like me run away? Or should someone like me go into the temple to save his life? I will not go!” I realized that God had not sent him, but that he had prophesied against me because Tobiah and Sanballat had hired him. He had been hired to intimidate me so that I would commit a sin by doing this, and then they would give me a bad name to discredit me.

   Remember Tobiah and Sanballat, my God, because of what they have done; remember also the prophet Noadiah and how he and the rest of the prophets have been trying to intimidate me.

With internal dissension behind him, Nehemiah once again returned to the task of rebuilding the walls. They made such rapid progress that before long the entire wall was complete; only the gates remained to be hung. But just as they came within sight of the finish line their enemies renewed their attacks. These differed from the earlier opposition in two ways: 1) These attacks were subtle as we'll see in a moment. 2) These attacks were all aimed personally at Nehemiah. He is now the target of three deceptive plots. Let's look at each one of them.

Plot # 1. The first plot involves an invitation to the peace table. Verse 2: Come let us meet together in one of the villages on the plain of Ono. The reason this communication was subtle and therefore dangerous was that on the surface it sounded quite plausible. James Boyce in his commentary on Nehemiah explains the invitation:

It seemed to be a concession speech by a person who had just lost a political campaign. “Nehemiah, it's no use pretending that we have not been opposed to your project; we have been. It's not been in our best interests. We have had our differences over it, but you have succeeded in spite of us, and now there is no use carrying on our opposition. For better or worse we are going to have to live together—you as the governor of Jerusalem and ourselves as governors of our own province. So, let's be friends. What we need is a summit conference. Why don't we meet on the plain of Ono? It is a neutral site about equidistance from each of our provinces. You pick a village in Ono and we'll meet you there.” Since Nehemiah was already looking past the completion of the wall to further reforms, as the remainder of this book shows, an approach like this must have seemed both reasonable and attractive.

But Nehemiah smelled a rat. There was also another problem. The job was not done. True, it was almost done. The walls were completed to their full height. Only the gates remained. But the gates remained. And until they were completed, the entire, great project was in jeopardy.

This deceptive tactic of Sanballat and Tobiah and Geshem is one that has been used many times to capture an enemy. In fact, it took place regarding persecution of Christians. John Huss, a Bohemian reformer and William Tyndale, an English reformer both had experiences similar to those of Nehemiah, but with tragic ends. Huss was invited to the council of Constance in 1414 to answer charges against him and was promised safe conduct both ways by the emperor.  But he was seized, thrown in prison, and later burned at the stake. William Tyndale, the translator of the English Bible, was living in exile in Belgium when he was invited to have lunch with a supposed friend. It was a trap; he was arrested and several months later he was strangled and burned.

Nehemiah, however, was wiser. He recognized that this proposed “peace summit” was a trap and declined to attend. But notice that Nehemiah’s enemies tried to wear down his suspicions. “Four times they sent me the same message, and each time I gave them the same answer.” Nehemiah persevered in his judgement. So, Sanballat changed his tactics.

Plot # 2. Sanballat deliberately left open the fifth letter so the public would read his words and pressure Nehemiah to act.

I reported among the nations—and Geshem says it is true—that you and the Jews are plotting to revolt, and therefore you are building the wall. Moreover, according to these reports you are about to become their king  and have even appointed prophets to make this proclamation about you in Jerusalem: ‘There is a king in Judah!’ Now this report will get back to the king; so come, let us meet together” (vs-6-7).

Three false accusations were made-up: 1) that Nehemiah and the Jews were plotting treason, i.e. that the work of rebuilding the wall was being carried out with the goal of rebelling against the Persian government, 2) that Nehemiah had pretensions to the throne. Look at the end of verse 6. “According to these reports you are about to become their king” and 3) that Nehemiah was bribing some enthusiastic prophets to support him in his quest to be king by declaring “There is a king in Judah.”

Of course, the most significant word in these three verses is the word, unsealed.

Sanballat was spreading lies and gossip to undermine Nehemiah’s leadership. Parenthetically, if these allegations had arrived in a sealed letter, it could have been a righteous attempt to alleviate misunderstanding. If you have questions about another person's intentions or motives it is entirely appropriate to go to that person with these questions, especially if he's in a leadership position. If you see some serious blind spot or what appears to be sin in your leaders, the right response is a sealed letter. The wrong response is an unsealed one. An important reason for going to the person you think has done something wrong is to understand the facts. I think this rumor that Sanballat spread was very plausible from the outside. Nehemiah had appealed to Jewish nationalism as motivation to rebuild the wall. He probably had already become their ruler, assigned by King Artaxerxes to be their governor and perhaps he was seen coming or going to the prophet's home. From a distance, we can draw many wrong conclusions. In verses 8-9, Nehemiah responds to these accusations.

I sent him this reply, “Nothing like what you were saying is happening. You are just making it out of your head.” They were all trying to frighten us thinking, Their hands we'll get too weak for the work and it will be it will not be completed. But I prayed now, “Strengthen my hands.”

As leaders, we can err in the face of an accusation two ways. We can be overly “spiritual” and not defend ourselves, just pray, quote the verses that talk about Jesus silently being led like a lamb to the slaughter, and say nothing. That is not what Nehemiah did. Or accusations can cause us to get completely defensive and take it upon ourselves to beat down the accusation. That is equally unwise. The better approach is to do both: trust God to protect our reputation but also defend ourselves as Nehemiah does here and as the apostle Paul often did.

Plot # 3. In verses 10-14 we see unfold the third plot to try to get Nehemiah and it is insidious. His enemies couldn't get Nehemiah outside the city; so, the plan was to try to discredit him by getting him to commit a grievous, flagrant sin. Shamaya was the tool used. He was a prophet and priest who apparently invited Nehemiah to visit him in his home. As a supposed friend of Nehemiah, he seems to have pretended to be in great personal danger and kept himself in seclusion. He also pretended to fear for Nehemiah's life, claiming to have the details of a plot to kill him. This priest suggests meeting secretly in the Holy Place of the temple. Verse 10. One day I went to the house of Shemaiah son of Delaiah, the son of Mehetabel, who was shut in at his home. He said, “Let us meet in the house of God, inside the temple, and let us close the temple doors, because men are coming to kill you—by night they are coming to kill you.” The word translated temple was a very specific Hebrew word which meant Holy Place.

The Law of God specifically prohibited all Jews but priests from entering the Holy Place. King Uzziah, for example, had violated this prohibition and had been struck by God with leprosy. King Saul similarly had taken to himself the prerogatives of the priesthood. He impatiently offered sacrifices because Samuel had not come on Saul's timetable. The result was that God took Saul's dynasty away from him. Sanballat and the boys hoped to scare Nehemiah into entering the Holy Place, a flagrant, obvious, violation of Old Testament Law. But Nehemiah was more than a match for them. Verse 11.

But I said, “Should a man like me run away? Or should someone like me go into the temple to save his life? I will not go!” I realized that God had not sent him, but that he had prophesied against me because Tobiah and Sanballat had hired him. He had been hired to intimidate me so that I would commit a sin by doing this, and then they would give me a bad name to discredit me.

Remember Tobiah and Sanballat, my God, because of what they have done; remember also the prophet Noadiah and how he and the rest of the prophets have been trying to intimidate me.

Notice the source of Nehemiah’s consistency. By now, perhaps you’ve noticed a pattern in the way Nehemiah described these plots. He ended plots one and two, which ran together, with the words, But I prayed, “Now strengthen my hands.” After Nehemiah described plot three, we again see him, looking to the Lord, in this case, leaving it to God to judge their evil done to him. Nehemiah had great leadership ability, but his success was because he leaned on the Lord.

THREE TAKE-AWAY CHALLENGES

Challenge # 1: Remember opposition can arise at any time even when you're in the home stretch. We must always be alert, but especially in the final laps, knowing that the lion may be ready to pounce at any time.

Challenge # 2: Don't be an “unsealed letter” sender. Don't take your negative impressions of someone to a third party. Go to that person, especially if he or she is a leader. Don't carelessly become a tool of Satan sowing dissension in the Body.

Challenge # 3: Grasp the importance of perseverance to God. James, the brother of Jesus, understood how important perseverance is, writing, Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything (Ja 1:2-4).

God wants to gaze into our heart attitudes and see Jesus. This maturity of character comes only through perseverance. In fact, nearly any effort to seek the spread of Christ’s kingdom requires overcoming resistance. Here are some parting truths about this treasure of perseverance, from You Don’t Have to Quit.

  • “The most meaningless statistic in a ball game is the score at halftime.”
  • “By perseverance the snail reached the ark.” (Charles Spurgeon)
  • “You will only discover excellence on the other side of work.”
  • “A diamond is a piece of coal that remained on the job.”
  • “Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after another.”
  • “Press on. Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.” (Vince Lombardi.)
  • “If life hands you lemons, make lemon chiffon pie.”
  • “My men are not braver than other troops—they are just brave five minutes longer.” General Wellington.
  • “Success is never final. Failure is never fatal. It is courage that counts.” Sir Winston Churchill.
  • “If your ole truck is gonna make it up hills, get your speed up when you are in the valley.”
  • “Of all the sad words on the loose, the saddest are these: “Oh, what’s the use?”
  • “Tough times don’t last. Tough people do.”
  • “Lord, help us remember that we are only limited by all that you are.”
  • “The greatest use of a life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.”

For Further Prayerful Thought:

  1. What are the things that you find most discouraging about trying to please and follow Jesus?
  2. How would you explain the importance of perseverance?
  3. What insights stood out about Nehemiah persevering through three plots to murder him?
  4. Which phrases from the Ortlands’ book, You Don’t Have to Quit, did you find most motivating?
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A Characteristic of Nehemiah that Won Followers

A Characteristic of Nehemiah that Won Followers

On 14 March, 2026 By Gary Yagel

Leadership is the ability to get others to want to follow you. Today’s text in Nehemiah lifts the window shade on Nehemiah’s soul, letting us see his heart and observe a quality of character that is irresistible in leaders.

There are few men portrayed in Scripture who had more lasting success leading than Nehemiah. In fact, the success of some, like Saul and Solomon, led to their demise, as power often does. In fact, a case could be made that the adversity Nehemiah had just come through in the last chapter is less of a threat to many leaders than success. As Scottish essayist and historian, Thomas Carlyle, once declared, “Adversity is hard on a man; but for every one man who can withstand prosperity there are a hundred that will withstand adversity.” In Nehemiah 5:14-19 we see a quality that allowed him to win a following in both adversity and prosperity.  

Moreover, from the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, when I was appointed to be their governor in the land of Judah, until his thirty-second year—twelve years—neither I nor my brothers ate the food allotted to the governor. But the earlier governors—those preceding me—placed a heavy burden on the people and took forty shekels of silver from them in addition to food and wine. Their assistants also lorded it over the people. But out of reverence for God I did not act like that. Instead, I devoted myself to the work on this wall. All my men were assembled there for the work; we did not acquire any land. Furthermore, a hundred and fifty Jews and officials ate at my table, as well as those who came to us from the surrounding nations. Each day one ox, six choice sheep and some poultry were prepared for me, and every ten days an abundant supply of wine of all kinds. In spite of all this, I never demanded the food allotted to the governor, because the demands were heavy on these people. Remember me with favor, my God, for all I have done for these people.

Here we see revealed the bedrock foundation on which Nehemiah's phenomenal success rested: his character. If we were to choose one word to describe his character—to summarize the habitual attitude that we see in Nehemiah—that goes a long way to explaining why others followed his leadership, it would be giver. Nehemiah chose to walk through life as a giver instead of a taker.  It's fair to say there are two kinds of people in this world: 1) those who walk into every situation with their eyes focused on others' needs and their minds searching for ways to give, and 2) those who walk through life with their eyes focused on themselves—concerned about their needs, their rights, their happiness, and their success.

When Jesus takes a hold of a person's life, he increasingly turns that person from being a taker to being a giver. After all, Jesus said, “I did not come to be served but to serve and to give my life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). Those who follow him are givers of their affection, energy, attention, time, and money. In four different places in these verses from Nehemiah, we see Nehemiah being a giver.

NEHEMIAH’S ACTIONS

A. Verses 14-15: Moreover, from the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, when I was appointed to be their governor in the land of Judah, until his thirty-second year—twelve years—neither I nor my brothers ate the food allotted to the governor. But the earlier governors—those preceding me—placed a heavy burden on the people and took forty shekels of silver from them in addition to food and wine. Their assistants also lorded it over the people. But out of reverence for God, I did not act like that. Nehemiah makes it clear that during his administration’s entire, 12-year-tenure, neither he nor his household demanded their rightful salaries from the impoverished people. Nehemiah provided for the expenses of his official position out of his own funds, this despite the fact that his predecessors in office had depended on the usual taxation to support their bureaucracy. And the implications of the word, high, were that the taxes were unreasonably heavy.

Nehemiah waived his right to be supported by the taxes of the people. In this action he reminds us of the apostle Paul who in 1 Corinthians 9 argues vigorously for his rights as an apostle and then declares, “Nevertheless we did not use this right but we endured all things that we may cause no hindrance to the gospel of Christ.” Paul and Nehemiah were givers instead of takers.

B. We see Nehemiah's spirit of generosity permeating his administration in a second way. In contrast to previous administrations, Nehemiah's associates do not abuse their positions of power. Verse 15 Their assistants also lorded it over the people but out of reverence for God I did not act like that. The proof that Nehemiah's focus was genuinely fixed on serving other people was that his closest followers respected him enough to follow his example. He led his administration to NOT use its power selfishly, being takers by lording it over the people, but givers, serving the people’s interests.

C. We see Nehemiah’s unselfish attitude further revealed In verse 16. Nehemiah tells us that during his administration neither he nor his household engaged in land speculation. We did not acquire any land. Remember, we saw last week that the famine was causing economic hardship in Judea. Farmers were mortgaging their farms for money to feed their children and to pay their taxes. Many defaulted on their loans and the money lenders foreclosed on them. Much land would have been available at auction prices. How easily Nehemiah could have taken his governor's salary to pay for his living expenses and invested his resources in land at bargain-basement prices that was sure to go up in value after the wall was rebuilt, people felt secure, and much of the trade that they had lost was restored. And who could fault him for making wise investments? But he was not a taker but a giver.  Furthermore, his refusal to take advantage of the hardships of others was an example followed by his team. Notice the plural WE. “We did not acquire land.” He was far more concerned about the hardship on his countrymen than increasing his net worth.

D. Nehemiah gave another proof of his generosity as governor; he not only refused to draw his salary as governor he regularly entertained over 150 officials plus diplomatic visitors at his own expense. Verse 17.

Furthermore, a hundred and fifty Jews and officials ate at my table, as well as those who came to us from the surrounding nations. Each day one ox, six choice sheep and some poultry were prepared for me, and every ten days an abundant supply of wine of all kinds. In spite of all this, I never demanded the food allotted to the governor

Why? Because he was a giver not a taker. Verse 18 explains, because the demands were heavy on the people.

NEHEMIAH’S MOTIVATION

Let’s examine some clues revealed in this text about the inner motivations of Nehemiah that made him a giver.

A. Verse 15. But out of reverence for God I did not act like that. The Hebrew word translated reverence here is the fear of the Lord. Nehemiah had a healthy fear about ever using his leadership position to be a taker and for good reason. Abusing the leadership God has given you is risky business. God doesn't mess around with leaders. If you're a leader, you are held more accountable than others. James points out that the teachers of the Word are judged by a higher standard. In Hebrews, God reveals that elders will give an account for those under their care to God. If you or I use our position of leadership to be a taker we can count on it: we will be punished by God. He will ensure that we lose more than we gain. Consider a few biblical examples

  • King Saul, from his position of leadership, God’s victor over the Amalekites was a taker of the best of the sheep and of the oxen and of the fattened calves and the lambs, which God commanded him to destroy which caused God to take away his kingdom.
  • King David from his position of leadership was a taker: he took the wife of Uriah and it cost his the life of his first born son and the rebellion of his son Absalom.
  • King Nebuchadnezzar was a taker. He took glory that belonged to God and God took his sanity from him.

Nehemiah had good reason to fear using his position to be a taker.

B. Nehemiah was also motivated by his compassion for the people. Verse 18. I never demanded the food allotted to the governor, because the demands were heavy on these people. What is the first evidence that God's spirit has come into your life as you've come to Christ? Your focus is fixed on the needs of others. The fruit of the spirit is love. In response to his disciples arguing about who would be the greatest in his kingdom, Jesus stripped to his underwear, picked up a towel and basin and washed each of his disciple’s feet. Then Jesus said, “If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you (Jn 13:14-15). A few verses later he said, A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another (Jn 13:33-34). Jesus' business is making givers out of takers.

C. Nehemiah's motivation is further revealed in verse 19. Remember me with favor, my God, for all I have done for these people. Nehemiah knew that the people would soon forget his sacrificial service and prayed that the Lord would not. Here, he reveals a great secret about becoming givers. Our own needs matter. So, the key to abandoning our preoccupation with self (being therefore takers) to set our focus on others as givers is realizing a wonderful truth about God’s nature. YOU CANNOT OUT-GIVE HIM. Jesus taught this truth when he said, “Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap” (Lk 6:38).

May I ask, “How much progress has God made changing you from a taker to a giver?” Here is a bit of a mirror, which is rather convicting to me.

  • When a taker hears about some need his first response is “That's not my responsibility.” When a giver hears about some need he wonders what he can do to meet that need.
  • When a taker comes home from work, he expects to kick off his shoes, sit in his easy chair, and relax because he's worked hard. When a giver comes home, he is expecting to share the load of home responsibilities.
  • When a taker looks at his pay-raise or tax refund he thinks of the things he'd like to have that he is now able to afford. When a giver gets a pay-raise, he asks, “How can I give some of this increase to your kingdom support?”
  • When a taker formulates his weekend schedule, he defaults to his to-do list. When a giver schedules his time at home, he considers both his own and his wife’s honey-do list.
  • When a taker considers his tasks for the day, praying for others ends up near the bottom of the list. When a giver considers his tasks for the day, praying for his loved ones is a high priority because he knows that giving some of the treasure of his 24 hours to intercede for our loved ones will always give them strength for winning their spiritual battles.

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore…be praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints (Eph. 6:12, 18).

Transforming us into those who go through life as givers instead of takers does not happen by God just hitting a switch. It is hard, painful work. But it is the path of life. Jesus put it this way, “If anyone wants to come after Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it” (Mt 16:24).

Lord, make us givers, not takers trusting YOU to take care of our needs, so we do not have to be worried about them and can focus on others.

For Further Prayerful Thought:

  1. Which example of Nehemiah being a giver rather than a taker most stood out to you?
  2. What do you think are the biggest obstacles to become more of a giver than taker in all of our interactions with others?
  3. How might the three observations we made about Nehemiah’s internal motivations explain his behavior as a giver instead of a taker?
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Effective Leaders Know How to Courageously Confront

Effective Leaders Know How to Courageously Confront

On 07 March, 2026 By Gary Yagel

Confrontation. It’s the least enjoyable part of leadership, but absolutely essential for effectiveness for any husband, father, coach, or team leader in business. Today, we look into Nehemiah 5, where Nehemiah puts on a “clinic in wise confrontation” from which leaders can learn much.

Last week, in Nehemiah 4, we examined some key principles for leaders as Nehemiah had to lead his people to address an external threat to accomplishing their project of rebuilding the wall—their enemies planning to attack them. Today, as we look to Nehemiah 5, we see Nehemiah, the leader, having to address an internal threat to completing the wall—dissention within the ranks. Nehemiah 5:1-13.

Now there arose a great outcry of the people and of their wives against their Jewish brothers. For there were those who said, “With our sons and our daughters, we are many. So let us get grain, that we may eat and keep alive.” There were also those who said, “We are mortgaging our fields, our vineyards, and our houses to get grain because of the famine.” And there were those who said, “We have borrowed money for the king's tax on our fields and our vineyards. Now our flesh is as the flesh of our brothers, our children are as their children. Yet we are forcing our sons and our daughters to be slaves, and some of our daughters have already been enslaved, but it is not in our power to help it, for other men have our fields and our vineyards.”

I was very angry when I heard their outcry and these words. I took counsel with myself, and I brought charges against the nobles and the officials. I said to them, “You are exacting interest, each from his brother.” And I held a great assembly against them and said to them, “We, as far as we are able, have bought back our Jewish brothers who have been sold to the nations, but you even sell your brothers that they may be sold to us!” They were silent and could not find a word to say. So I said, “The thing that you are doing is not good. Ought you not to walk in the fear of our God to prevent the taunts of the nations, our enemies? Moreover, I and my brothers and my servants are lending them money and grain. Let us abandon this exacting of interest. Return to them this very day their fields, their vineyards, their olive orchards, and their houses, and the percentage of money, grain, wine, and oil that you have been exacting from them.” Then they said, “We will restore these and require nothing from them. We will do as you say.” And I called the priests and made them swear to do as they had promised. I also shook out the fold of my garment and said, “So may God shake out every man from his house and from his labor who does not keep this promise. So may he be shaken out and emptied.” And all the assembly said “Amen” and praised the Lord. And the people did as they had promised.

THE PEOPLES’ COMPLAINTS

 The dissension among the Jewish people centered around the all too familiar social problems of hunger, exploitation, debts, and taxes. We see in the text the complaints that seem representative of the steep slide into severe economic hardship that many of the Jewish exiles were experiencing. Let's look at each one:

  1.  Verse 2: Some were saying, “We and our sons and daughters are numerous. In order for us to eat and stay alive we must get grain. There were large families. They didn't have enough to eat for two reasons: 1) abandoned fields during the Babylonian captivity had become overgrown, 2) there was a famine going on.
  2. If a man has a lot of mouths to feed but no food, he'll do whatever it takes to keep from starving. So, these poor farmers had to mortgage their fields, and vineyards and homes, to get the money to buy food. That was behind the second complaint. Verse 3: Others were saying we are mortgaging our fields our vineyards and our homes to get grain during the famine.
  3. The food shortage very likely led to higher food prices and a spiraling inflation. So, another reason these poor farmers were mortgaging their fields and homes was to get the money they needed to pay their taxes. Verse 4: Still others were saying we have had to borrow money and pay the King's tax on our fields and vineyards. So, there were two groups of people that were so poor they had to borrow money against their homes and farms: 1) those that had no food to eat and 2) those that had no money to pay their taxes.
  4. To make matters worse, the wealthy who had the money or grain to lend were charging exorbitant interest. This led to the poor not being able to make their payments and losing their farms and flocks. At his point the poor had no collateral left against which to borrow money to feed their family. The only asset they had left was their children themselves who they sold into slavery. Verse 5-6: Although we are of the same flesh and blood as our country and though our sons are as good as theirs, yet we have to subject our sons and daughters to slavery. Some of our daughters have already been enslaved but we are powerless because our fields and our vineyards belong to others.

NEHEMIAH’S ANGRY RESPONSE

When Nehemiah, this great spiritual leader, hears this report, he is furious. “I was very angry when I heard their outcry and these words” (5:6). Red-hot anger erupted inside Nehemiah like a volcano spewing ash and spilling lava. Nehemiah's response was like that of the Lord when he walked into the temple and saw the priests and money changers cheating the poor. Jesus turned over their tables and threw them out in fury. Godliness demands that at times we get angry. Although selfish anger is a work of the sinful nature (Gal 5:20), righteous anger is a virtue. But we must not let that anger lead us to sin. Paul said, “Be angry but do not sin.”  

A. Years ago, the son of Francis Schaefer, Frankie, wrote a book entitled, A Time for Anger: The Myth of Neutrality. It begins, “There are times in which anyone with a shred of moral principle should be profoundly angry.” Frankie Schaefer is absolutely right. How could Nehemiah not be outraged at the way the nobles and landowners were exploiting the poor, forcing a poor father to sell his daughter into slavery to pay their exorbitant interest and put food on his table. Whenever we see the weak, the poor, the helpless exploited by the strong, the rich, and the powerful—a volcano of anger should erupt in us. Complacency when we are aware of injustice is evil.  Proverbs 31:8-9 commands, “Open your mouth for the mute, for the rights of all who are destitute. Open your mouth, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy.” Isaiah 1:17 commands, “Learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow's cause.” Psalm 82:4 instructs, “Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”

William Garrison, who wrote the anti-slavery paper called, “The Abolitionist,” and was probably the leader in that cause, was so hot about the injustice of American slavery that he provoked many people. One of his friends, Samuel May, one day said to him, “My friend, do try to moderate your indignation and keep more cool. Why, you're all on fire,” to which Garrison replied, “My friend, “I have need to be all on fire for I have mountains of ice around me to melt.” The hard-hearted indifference of apparent Bible-believing Christians to the plight of slaves was a very black mark on Christianity in America.

Nehemiah’s anger about the exploitation of the poor, the weak, and the marginalized challenges all of us to ask, “Have be become calloused to such suffering?” Anger is a response to pain. A heart invaded by the Holy Spirit becomes more sensitive to the suffering of the weak, the marginalized, the poor, the exploited. We need to ask ourselves,

  • After the Supreme Court returned the legality of abortion to the states, have we left the battlefield of fighting for the rights of the unborn? More unborn children have died at the hands of abortionists than all the soldiers who have died in all the wars the US has ever fought.
  • Is our voice being heard objecting to the hundreds of prepubescent girls being persuaded by online trans coaches that they are in the wrong body and that testosterone is the wonder drug they need?
  • Is there anything we can do about fatherlessness in our cities that is at the root of generational gang violence, teen pregnancy and poverty?

No doubt Nehemiah was angry because he felt the pain of parents victimized by the wealthy into having to not only sell their family’s land, but their children—to put food on the table and pay their taxes.

B. But I believe, Nehemiah was angry for a second reason. In charging interest for loans to fellow Jews, the people were exhibiting a wholesale disregard for God’s Covenant Law. Think of the irony. The whole reason that Nehemiah and the people were busting their gut to rebuild the wall around Jerusalem was because it had been torn town by Nebuchadnezzar’s troops several generations earlier as punishment for disobeying God’s Covenant Law. Why bother rebuilding the wall if the Jews were going to keep breaking God's covenant requirements; God would just knock it down again! Listen to the words God had spelled out about how the wealthy land-owning Jews were to treat their impoverished fellow countrymen.

Leviticus 25:35-41. If your brother becomes poor and cannot maintain himself with you, you shall support him as though he were a stranger and a sojourner, and he shall live with you. Take no interest from him or profit, but fear your God, that your brother may live beside you. You shall not lend him your money at interest, nor give him your food for profit. I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan, and to be your God. If your brother becomes poor beside you and sells himself to you, you shall not make him serve as a slave: he shall be with you as a hired worker and as a sojourner.

Forty years later, when Moses repeated the covenant obligations of Israel, compassion towards their countrymen was again spelled out.

You shall not charge interest on loans to your brother, interest on money, interest on food, interest on anything that is lent for interest. You may charge a foreigner interest, but you may not charge your brother interest, that the Lord your God may bless you in all that you undertake in the land that you are entering to take possession of it (Dt. 23:19-20).

Nehemiah has been leading a group of people who have been busting their chops to get this wall built around Jerusalem but if the people aren't going to keep the covenant they might as well be building the wall on sand. It was only a matter of time before God would knock it down again. No wonder Nehemiah was so angry! So, Nehemiah has in front of him a leadership chore that no leaders like doing: confrontation.

LEARNING FROM NEHEMIAH’S CONFRONTATION

When We Need to Confront

Situation # 1: Another’s behavior has hurt us. Most of the time love forgives an offense without saying anything. “Love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8). Like the nurse who covers our private parts during an undignified procedure, it is the nature of love to cover another’s shame, not lay it bare in front of others. If you continue to be hurt, the offender may have a blind spot, not realizing how deeply he is wounding you. So, we follow Jesus’s instruction, If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone (Matt 18:15).

Situation # 2: Another’s behavior is hurting the organization. Fred Smith, the former CEO of UPS, writes, “Whenever I am tempted not to act in a difficult personnel situation, I ask myself, ‘Am I holding back for my personal comfort or for the good of the organization?’ If I am doing what makes me comfortable, I am embezzling. If doing what is good for the organization also happens to make me comfortable, that's wonderful. But if I am treating irresponsibility irresponsibly, I must remember that two wrongs do not make a right.”

Situation #3: Another’s behavior is hurting himself. We must confront when a person's behavior is harming himself, he is not facing his self-harm, and we have demonstrated enough love for him to have won the right to be heard.  Christian author, Eugene Habecker says, “As Christians we confront not to embarrass, belittle, tear down, or humiliate. We confront because of our commitment to help others reach their potential, including full-fledged stature in Christ.”  

Seven Steps to Effective Confrontation

A. Thoughtful preparation. Vs 7a: I took counsel with myself. Nehemiah put into practice the wisdom of Proverbs.

  • The heart of the righteous ponders how to answer, but the mouth of the wicked pours out evil things (15:28).
  • The tongue of the wise makes knowledge pleasant, but the mouth of fools spouts foolishness (15:2).
  • The wise of heart is called discerning, and sweetness of speech increases persuasiveness (16:21).

B. Private confrontation. Vs 7b continues, “and I brought charges against the nobles and the officials. I said to them.” Nehemiah did what Jesus would later teach his church members to do when a brother or sister wounded them, Go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. Nehemiah did not go to the poor in Jerusalem and play on class envy as the destructive ideologues of Cultural Marxism do in our culture. He went directly to those causing the problem.

C. He based his words upon Scripture. Vs 7c. “You are exacting interest, each from his brother.” “You are clearly violating Scripture.” He was referring to  the texts we just read, Leviticus 25, Deuteronomy 23, and others like Exodus 22. We all have different backgrounds, different personal convictions, different values. The only basis for challenging another is Scripture.

D. He pled with them. Vs 8-9: And I held a great assembly against them and said to them, “We, as far as we are able, have bought back our Jewish brothers who have been sold to the nations, but you even sell your brothers that they may be sold to us!” Nehemiah did not just say, “You are guilty.” He pled with them, entreated them, sought to persuade them. Notice his logic, “I brought back to Jerusalem with me from Susa, fellow countrymen redeemed from slavery by the Gentile King, Artaxerxes, only to discovery that you are now selling our fellow Jews back into slavery again!

Nehemiah continues his persuasive case, appealing to their national identity, the honor of their God, Yahweh, and seeking to awaken the fear of the Lord in them: Verse 9: So I said, “The thing that you are doing is not good. Ought you not to walk in the fear of our God to prevent the taunts of the nations, our enemies?

E. He modeled the generosity God requires. Vs 10: Moreover, I and my brothers and my servants are lending them money and grain. Let us abandon this exacting of interest. Nehemiah was already doing what he challenged them to do. He led from his life.

F. He offered a pathway to correct the problem. Nehemiah doesn't just issue a rebuke to the nobles and officials and then walk away. He offers a plan to correct the problem. “Return to them this very day their fields, their vineyards, their olive orchards, and their houses, and the percentage of money, grain, wine, and oil that you have been exacting from them.” The nobles and officials repented and agreed to the plan. Vs. 12:  Then they said, “We will restore these and require nothing from them. We will do as you say.” 

G. He put accountability in place. Vs. 12-13. And I called the priests and made them swear to do as they had promised. I also shook out the fold of my garment and said, “So may God shake out every man from his house and from his labor who does not keep this promise. So may he be shaken out and emptied.” And all the assembly said “Amen” and praised the Lord. And the people did as they had promised. The final step, when having to confront another, is recognizing the power of accountability to help the one being confronted to follow through on his commitment. There is a saying for business and life, that leaders who believe in human depravity recognize as rooted in truth: people do not do what we expect, but what we inspect. Accountability is a powerful tool to sustain repentance.

Consider this principle when it comes to the common masculine battle with lust. Steve Gallagher in his book, At the Altar of Sexual Idolatry, writes,

“Being brutally honest with oneself is crucial, but it is only the beginning. One man who had been convicted for attempted rape but later struggled his way out of sexual addiction said, “If you don't want to get rid of the problem confess it only to God. If you do want to get rid of the problem, confess it to another person. And if you really want to get rid of the problem, keep yourself accountable. Another man who is now living in victory said, “I confessed my sin to God for years. I mean I poured my heart out begging for his forgiveness. But it was within weeks of starting to confess to another brother that I obtained victory.”

This is the power of accountability, power that Nehemiah understood.

For Further Prayerful Thought:

  1. Why did Nehemiah get angry? Why don’t Christians get angrier at the exploitation of the weak, poor, and marginalized in our culture?
  2. What stood out to you about the way Nehemiah confronted the nobles and leaders about exploiting the poor? Why do you think it was successful?
  3. What is your emotional reaction to the word, accountability? What have you learned about when accountability works and when it fails? Why don’t men take better advantage of the power of accountability to overcome sin in their own lives?
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How Nehemiah Overcome Discouragement

How Nehemiah Overcome Discouragement

On 24 February, 2026 By Gary Yagel

Hanging on a wall in an office was a sign that read: “A PRAYER TO BE SAID WHEN THE WORLD HAS GOTTEN YOU DOWN AND YOU FEEL ROTTEN AND YOU'RE TOO DOGGONE TIRED TO PRAY AND YOU'RE IN A BIG HURRY AND BESIDES. YOU'RE MAD AT EVERYBODY... help!” Today, in our study of Nehemiah we encounter a group of people whom the world has gotten down, who feel rotten, who were probably too doggone tired to pray, and were probably plenty mad. It is Nehemiah's ragtag band of Israelites who had taken on the huge task of rebuilding the city wall. They have successfully resisted opposition enough to get the wall to half its necessary height. But discouragement sets in. This episode shows how Nehemiah overcame the discouragement of his people.  The narrative in the fourth chapter of Nehemiah continues:

In Judah it was said, “The strength of those who bear the burdens is failing. There is too much rubble. By ourselves we will not be able to rebuild the wall.” And our enemies said, “They will not know or see till we come among them and kill them and stop the work.” At that time the Jews who lived near them came from all directions and said to us ten times, “You must return to us.” So in the lowest parts of the space behind the wall, in open places, I stationed the people by their clans, with their swords, their spears, and their bows. And I looked and arose and said to the nobles and to the officials and to the rest of the people, “Do not be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, and fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes.”

When our enemies heard that it was known to us and that God had frustrated their plan, we all returned to the wall, each to his work. From that day on, half of my servants worked on construction, and half held the spears, shields, bows, and coats of mail. And the leaders stood behind the whole house of Judah, who were building on the wall. Those who carried burdens were loaded in such a way that each labored on the work with one hand and held his weapon with the other. And each of the builders had his sword strapped at his side while he built. The man who sounded the trumpet was beside me. And I said to the nobles and to the officials and to the rest of the people, “The work is great and widely spread, and we are separated on the wall, far from one another. In the place where you hear the sound of the trumpet, rally to us there. Our God will fight for us.”

So we labored at the work, and half of them held the spears from the break of dawn until the stars came out. I also said to the people at that time, “Let every man and his servant pass the night within Jerusalem, that they may be a guard for us by night and may labor by day.” So neither I nor my brothers nor my servants nor the men of the guard who followed me, none of us took off our clothes; each kept his weapon at his right hand (vs 10-23).

Why Life is Full of Pain and Difficulty

Let's review why it is that life is so full of pain, trials, and opposition. We face conflict on three different battlefields:

  • We struggle with our own sinful nature.
  • We struggle with the world that opposes Christ
  • We struggle with Satan and the powers of darkness.

Let’s dig a little deeper.  This struggle with our sinful nature alone would be enough to discourage and exhaust anybody. That sinful nature has invaded our mind, emotions, and will. Ephesians 4:17-18 says we must struggle and fight just to think correctly. “So I tell you this and insist on it in the Lord that you must no longer live as the gentiles do in the futility of their thinking they are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts.” That's just our thinking.

Our feelings get all wrapped up in the wrong things too. “Do not love the world or anything in the world” writes John. Our lives can only be healthy and whole when we delight in the Lord—when he is the center of our affections. God designed life to work only when our loves are ordered correctly and for the affections of our heart to be focused on him and not spill over that channel into destructive alluring cesspools.

Our sinful nature also waits at the door to take captive our will the moment we give it a chance. James says “but each one is tempted when by his own evil desire he is dragged away and enticed.” Then after desire has conceived it gives birth to sin. So, we must battle a sinful nature that invades our whole being.

We also must battle the world. Jesus tells his followers, “If the world hates you keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you” (Jn 15:18-19). The “world” is not God's material creation; it is the ungodly world system that opposes God. I know a teacher who recently instinctively slapped the hand of a boy who was refusing to obey her and about to cause damage in the middle of a music classroom full of kids. She was worried afterward about getting in trouble for this instinctive action, which the child deserved. Proverbs 13:24 says, “He who spares the rod hates his son but he who loves him is careful to discipline him." That truth runs contrary to the world's system that sees any kind of safe physical punishment like slapping the hand or spanking a child as abuse. It is not. It is inflicting temporary pain on a safe part of a child’s body to teach a child to self-regulate so the child will not be much more seriously harm later in life. In summary, we struggle with the world because its ways are opposite to God’s ways.

We also struggle with life in this world because of the effect sin has had on the world as I mentioned last week. In Genesis 3:16-19, to the woman God said, “I will greatly increase your pain in childbearing with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” Painful conflict in the family and in marriage happens. A wife has an instinctive resistance to her husband, and he is instinctively prone to use his leadership position selfishly. To Adam God said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree…cursed is the ground because of you. Through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you…by the sweat of your brow you will eat your food. That is the biblical basis, by the way, for Murphy's Law.

We struggle with our sinful nature, we struggle with the world, and we also struggle because Satan is our adversary. In fact, that's what the word “Satan” means, adversary. Peter warns, “Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion seeking for someone to devour.” The Bible is clear about the fact that followers of Christ faced enormous opposition on almost every front.

However, Scripture is equally clear in promising us the resources we need to overcome such opposition.

  • Concerning our thoughts, Paul wrote, “The weapons we fight with have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Cor 1-:4).
  • Concerning our affections, Paul prayed that the Ephesians, “would be able to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ and to know for themselves that love so far beyond our comprehension” (Eph 3:17-19).
  • Concerning our wills, Paul said, “Sin shall not have dominion over you (Rom 6:14).
  • Concerning the world, Jesus said, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart. I have overcome the world” (Jn 16:33).
  • Concerning Satan, John promised, “He that is in you (meaning the Holy Spirit) is greater than he who is in the world” (1 Jn 4:4).

So, the question arises, “If we have all the resources we need to overcome opposition why is it that the opposition so often overcomes us?” One reason is that we are so easily discouraged. We lose our will to fight. We lose our motivation to press on towards our goal because it is so hard. That was the experience of the group of Israelites attempting to rebuild the wall. They had all the resources they needed but they were severely discouraged and were ready to quit.

4 Causes of Discouragement Vs. 10-12

1. Weariness. “The strength of those who bear the burdens is failing.” The first cause of discouragement is physical exhaustion. Being tired takes the wind out of our sales. It pours a bucket of water over our passion. When we are physically or emotionally exhausted, we must beware that we are vulnerable to discouragement. A great example of this truth is Elijah. You may remember his victorious confrontation with the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel over who was the true God, Yahweh or Baal. God sent the fire. The entire nation turned back to Yahweh. Elijah had prayed that the drought would happen because it was part of the covenant curse for worshipping false God’s. So, when Israel repented, he prayed seven times for the rain to return. The deluge hit. Eljah ran down the mountain. Spiritually, emotionally, and physically spent, he then got a message from Queen Jezebel, who had already slaughtered numerous prophets saying, “You will be captured and executed within 24 hours.” Elijah fled for his life and when he got to safety, he was so depressed that he told God he wanted to die. From the heights of spiritual elation to the depths of suicidal despair. Exhaustion causes discouragement.

2. Losing perspective. Verse 10 continues “and there is so much rubble.” Discouragement happens when your focus shifts from your goal to the obstacles to reaching it. The old saying, tough times don't last but tough people do is true. But here's the secret of tough people. They choose where to put their focus. The Israelites could have set their focus on one of three places: the wall as it would look when it was built, the portion of the wall they had completed in just three weeks, or the rubble remaining to be moved to complete the wall. Choosing your focus is an act of the will. If it is set on how tough the task is, the result may be a victim mentality. If it is set on what has already been done with God’s help, the result is motivation.

Returning to the story we mentioned last week, when Moses sent 12 spies to spy out the land. 10 returned with their focus on the obstacles to taking the land. Their words, “We can't attack those people; they are stronger than we are. The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size. We saw giants there.” But there were two in that party who set their focus somewhere else. We read, “Joshua son of Nun and Caleb, son of Jephunneh who were among those who had explored the land tore their clothes and said to the entire Israelite assembly, “The land we passed through and explored is exceedingly good. If the Lord is pleased with us, he will lead us into the land a land flowing with milk and honey and will give it to us.” Discouragement happens when you lose perspective.

3. Walking by sight and not by faith. Verse ten says, By ourselves we will not be able to rebuild the wall. Jesus taught that a wise man plans ahead to determine how much a project will cost. Discerning reality is a good thing. Biblical faith is not blind to the facts. But God’s supernatural hand had been apparent in bringing this project so far. It was more logical to trust that God would continue to empower them to complete it than that he would abandon them. Faith is trust in God’s character.

4. Real enemy threats. Now in verses 11 we read, And our enemies said, “Before they know it or see us we will be right there among them and will kill them and put an end to the work.” At that time the Jews who lived near them came from all directions and said to us ten times, “You must return to us.” This was no idle threat or rumor. Their discouragement mounts when they hear credible threats to their safety.

Nehemiah’s Cure for Discouragement

A. He responded to their need for security.  Vs 13. So in the lowest parts of the space behind the wall, in open places, I stationed the people by their clans, with their swords, their spears, and their bows. The people needed physical protection. Nehemiah might have been frustrated with the situation. But it would have been foolhardy to ignore such a well-documented threat. Nehemiah could not be so consumed with achieving his goal that he ignored his people’s safety. He had to divert energy from the building project to make sure the people were adequately protected.

B. Nehemiah helped them recover their perspective by directing their attention to the Lord. Vs. 14 says,  And I looked and arose and said to the nobles and to the officials and to the rest of the people, “Do not be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome. Notice that in some way, Nehemiah prioritizes the influencers—the nobles and the officials. They had been looking at the rubbish; they needed their focus to be set upon the Lord. Practically speaking, what does it mean to remember the Lord, i.e. to direct attention to him when I'm discouraged. A writer named Andrew Murray answers:

  1. He brought me here. It is his will that I am in this difficult place. In that I will rest.
  2. He will keep me here in his love and give me grace in this trial to behave as his child.
  3. He will make the trial a blessing teaching me the lessons he intends me to learn and working in me the grace he means to bestow.
  4. In his good time, he can bring me out again…. how and when he knows.

So, I am here by HIS appointment, in HIS keeping, under HIS training, for HIS time.

C. Nehemiah intentionally sets their focus back on their original vision—a secure, flourishing city in which to live with their wives and raise their children. Verse 14 continues.  “Fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes.” A vision is a picture of the future you want to see that provides motivation for the present. John F Kennedy had a vision to put a man on the moon by 1970. David Hewlett told his engineers he wanted a calculator he could put in his pocket. Jesus gave Peter a vision to be the fisher of men. Throughout the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics taking place the last few weeks, we have heard athlete after athlete say that they had pictured that day—the day of winning the gold medal—throughout their career, driving their relentless motivation. A positive mental picture of what you are trying to achieve has great power to motivate, especially if achieving it protects your wife, kids, and home.  

D. Nehemiah led his people to persevere. Verses 16 to the end of the chapter explain the various ways, Nehemiah led them to achieve the double task of building the wall but also protecting the city. They were trusting God when they started to build. Then, in this chapter, their task became twice as hard. Instead of complaining and blaming God because he let this happen, they redoubled their commitment not to be dissuaded. The truth is that perseverance in a task God wants done is highly valuable to him. When you think about it, a diamond is a piece of coal that stayed on the job. They persevered.

   The intelligence they received that their enemies were plotting to attack them before they could get the wall completed may have leveled many of them in discouragement. But they got back up and into the fight. As Teddy Roosevelt observed so long ago:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strongman stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who was actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, and comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; who does actually try to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm the great devotion and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly,

    Far better it is to dare mighty things to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory door defeat.

Whatever the race is that you are running for God, however many times you have been knocked down, the challenge hers is get back up. Be among those who refuse to accept defeat.

For Further Prayerful Thought:

  1. How would you explain to a new believer why life is so hard?
  2. We noted 4 sources of discouragement: weariness, losing perspective, walking by sight, and real opposition. In your life, which one or ones cause the most discouragement?
  3. God allowed Nehemiah and his band of Jerusalem inhabitants to be opposed by enemies, intent upon murdering them. Such opposition doubled their work because it necessitated posting guards everywhere. How do you think Nehemiah kept this from disheartening his team?
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How Nehemiah Pushed Through Opposition

How Nehemiah Pushed Through Opposition

On 21 February, 2026 By Gary Yagel

In the most biographical of all his writings, 2 Corinthians, Paul says, “We have been given the great privilege of stewarding the gospel. God has chosen to put that gospel in us—but God recognizes that humans are as frail as jars of clay. He writes,

We have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way but not crushed; perplexed but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our bodies. (vs 7-10).

There is no power or strength in a clay pot. Tt is fragile and ugly. It often leaks. The passing of time only makes the vessel weaker. Paul was saying that any manifestation of power comes not from the pot but rather from what the pot contains. Paul then describes the life of a pot. I love the JB Phillips description, as 2 Corinthians 4 continues. “We are handicapped on all sides, but we are never frustrated. We are puzzled but never in despair. We are persecuted but we never have to stand it alone. We may be knocked down but we are never knocked out. Every day we experience something of the death of the Lord Jesus, so that we may also know the power of the life of Jesus in these bodies of ours.” Perhaps the key word in this description is every day. Opposition is relentless. It is inevitable, especially when you are seeking to accomplish God’s mission.

Nehemiah 4 describes opposition to Nehemiah’s mission. You'll remember that when this book began Nehemiah, though he was a Jew, was in Sousa, the capital of Persia. The year was about 430 BC. The reason Nehemiah was in Persia was because his people had seriously rebelled against God and his law. In judgment, God permitted Nebuchadnezzar to capture Jerusalem and Judah, deporting its inhabitants to Persia and utterly destroying the city of Jerusalem, its temple, and its walls. But after 70 years in captivity the people had repented and the Persian kings, Cyrus and Artaxerxes, had granted permission to the Jews to return to their homeland. Nehemiah's formidable mission is to rebuild the two-mile wall around the city. In chapter 3, we saw Nehemiah's brilliant strategy to organize and motivate the people. As chapter 4 opens opposition rises to rebuilding the wall.

Now when Sanballat heard that we were building the wall, he was angry and greatly enraged, and he jeered at the Jews. And he said in the presence of his brothers and of the army of Samaria, “What are these feeble Jews doing? Will they restore it for themselves? Will they sacrifice? Will they finish up in a day? Will they revive the stones out of the heaps of rubbish, and burned ones at that?” Tobiah the Ammonite was beside him, and he said, “Yes, what they are building—if a fox goes up on it he will break down their stone wall!” Hear, O our God, for we are despised. Turn back their taunt on their own heads and give them up to be plundered in a land where they are captives. Do not cover their guilt, and let not their sin be blotted out from your sight, for they have provoked you to anger in the presence of the builders.

   So we built the wall. And all the wall was joined together to half its height, for the people had a mind to work. But when Sanballat and Tobiah and the Arabs and the Ammonites and the Ashdodites heard that the repairing of the walls of Jerusalem was going forward and that the breaches were beginning to be closed, they were very angry. And they all plotted together to come and fight against Jerusalem and to cause confusion in it. And we prayed to our God and set a guard as a protection against them day and night (4:1-9).

Three Reasons for the Opposition We Face

A. We live in a fallen world. The world is not the way it is supposed to be. Our first parents’ sin brought devastation upon creation, as God cursed the ground that Adam worked, and the family relationships that Eve was the center of. Accomplishment is hard, resisting our efforts until we sweat. Life will always be tough in this world so long as it remains under the curse of sin. WE made it that way through our rebellion against God. When God regenerates us and calls us to himself, he does not put us in a bubble that protects us from the curse he put upon the earth—as much as we would like him to.

Furthermore, in a fallen world everyone looks out for number one. Nehemiah’s success rebuilding the Jerusalem wall was a threat to Sanballat and Tobiah. Sanballat was the governor of Samaria, and he lived in Beth Haran, a fortified city with walls about 8 miles northwest of Jerusalem. Tobia was governor of Amnon, across the Jordan to the east of Jerusalem. In those days several lucrative trade routes went through Judea connecting Egypt, Persia, Arabia, and Asia Minor. Sanballat and Tobiah were getting rich from that trade and knew that if Jerusalem were rebuilt, much of this valuable trade would return to it. In a fallen, overly competitive world, our success may be a threat to someone else.

B. Our mission from the Lord faces extreme spiritual opposition. We know that God was the one behind the mission to rebuild the wall around his city. He had worked miraculously to provide Nehemiah permission from King Artaxerxes to take an extended period of leave to accomplish the task, even providing timber for the project from the king’s own forest. Nehemiah saw the opposition of Sanballat and Tobiah to be spiritual in nature, which is why he took the matter to God in prayer and prayed as he did.

When we consider the mission that Jesus assigned us to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, it is worth pondering, what action Jesus envisioned by using the word, “seek.” Listen to the intentionality behind Webster’s dictionary definition of this word. “Seek” means, “to go to, to go in search of, to look for, to try to discover, to ask for, to request, to try to acquire or gain, to aim at, to make an attempt at.” Every one of these descriptions requires making an intentional effort. Our mission is: to be intentionally preoccupied with spreading Christ’s kingdom of righteousness and wholeness into every corner of our heart and over every inch of planet earth where we have influence. If you are living out that mission, you will face opposition from three enemies, the fallen world system, your own sinful nature and that of others, and Satan. As C.S. Lewis stated, “this world is occupied territory.” Opposition, wherever we are seeking to implement Christ’s agenda of righteousness, is always to be expected, and usually means we are on the right track.

C. God uses opposition to build our character. This opposition was part of God's plan. He ordained it. Don't brush past that truth too quickly. The hardship, difficulty, pain, wounds experienced at the hands of others—suffering and stress that life brings, painful though it is, has a good purpose. We all remember the promise, “All things work together for good for those who love God for those who are pursuing God's plan.” What is that plan? The next verse tells us: building our character, becoming like Christ.  I'm told that in the ancient world shipbuilders had a very precise way of selecting the wood for their masts. They would locate a tree on the top of a mountain or hill where it was exposed to violent winds and fierce storms. Shipbuilders knew that such trees would grow strong because the adverse conditions forced them to put their roots deep down, enlarging their roots and strengthening the inner composition of the tree. Only the toughest of trees would be fit for being the mast of a great ship. In the same way the blows we take, the difficulties and pain, are intended by God to force us to put our roots down deep into Jesus the Vine. The more we do that the stronger becomes our character and the greater becomes our usefulness to our master.

Sanballat & Tobiah Employ the Weapon of Ridicule

To “jeer at” or “ridicule” someone is to mock, belittle or make fun of someone. Ridicule wounds a person's self-esteem. It hurts another by attacking his self-image. Ridicule reaches into the tenderest part of the human soul and wounds a person's dignity destroying his confidence. Of course, confidence is what was needed for the Jerusalem residents to keep rebuilding the wall. Part of what makes ridicule painful is that it has some elements of truth. Sanballat’s 5 rhetorical questions and then later Tobiah’s taunt struck at a legitimate sense of weakness that Nehemiah and the others must have felt.

  • What are these feeble Jews doing?  They were weak and feeble. How could any group so weak complete a task left undone for 90 years?
  • Will they restore it for themselves? It had been originally built by ancestors much stronger than they.
  • Will they sacrifice? Sanballat says, “Do you think that your acts of religious fanaticism will cause this wall to just spring up, magically?”
  • Will they finish up in a day? Sanballat says, “Are you so stupid as to think this can be done in a day?”
  • Will they revive the stones out of the heaps of rubbish, and burned ones at that?” Sanballat is saying, “Do you have some magic wand you are going to wave and make stones jump back into place?”

Tobiah the Ammonite was beside him, and he said, “Yes, what they are building—if a fox goes up on it he will break down their stone wall!” Maybe this ridicule landed hardest. The truth was that the quality of the wall they were rebuilding was nowhere near the original quality of the wall.

I want to stop and think about this weapon of attacking the people’s confidence because it is a powerful weapon of Satan. It takes humans out of the fight, not only because they question their strength for the battle, but they recoil so far into themselves that they doubt that they have any value at all.

Some years ago, an exceptionally beautiful, 35-year-old woman was sitting in the associate pastor's office at a church in Cincinnati. Through the counseling session she began to reveal the difficult problems in her marriage that were being caused by her depression and deep sense of inadequacy. She had almost driven her husband away because nothing he could do made her feel loved and valuable. He felt like giving up. The pastor wondered how in the world this could be. He knew her husband was an unusually caring man and deeply loved his wife. Why couldn’t she believe she was adorable to him. Why was her depression ruining her life?

As the pastor probed, he discovered that as a girl this woman’s body had developed very early and with it, complexion problems. After explaining this, she began to sob uncontrollably as she retold how one day she was walking across the field when she saw Mr. Popularity, the captain of the football team, also standing on the field. As she walked by she heard a whistle and the words, “Great body!” Then she heard another guy say, “Yeah. All she needs is a bag over her head and she'd be great and then laughter.” Of course, her complexion cleared up, and she became a strikingly beautiful woman. But twenty years later she was convinced that all she needed to be accepted by others was a bag to wear over her head.

The old adage, “Sticks and stones can break my bones, but names can never hurt me” is a myth. Decades after bruises on the physical body heal, wounds to a person’s self-esteem can be alive and well, paralyzing their relationships. Perhaps that is why Jesus’ teaching was so severe about verbal abuse and angry words.

“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire,” (Matt 5:21-22). 

Let’s consider three applications of this severe teaching from Jesus

  • As the spiritual leader of your home, you must guard your tongue especially when you are angry. If your angry, thoughtless words wound another, Jesus explained what to do. “If you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift,” (Matt 5:24).
  • When administering correction, be careful to correct behavior (a one-time action); not attack character. For example, “You are losing screen time because you were disrespectful to your mother,” Not, “You are always disrespectful to your mother,” or “You never speak respectfully to her.”
  • Be on the lookout for damage done to your wife or children’s self-esteem. One evening a busy but smart dad prayed with his five-year-old daughter, and tucked her in bed with a kiss on her forehead. She looked up at him and asked, “Daddy, do you think I’m pretty.” Many dads would have said, “Of course you are, honey,” turned off the light and headed for their next task. This dad was wiser. He realized his daughter had just lifted the window shade of her soul, letting him see inside. He wisely said, “Of course you are honey. What makes you ask? His daughter burst into tears and said, “One of the boys in my class told me I was ugly.” This wise dad was able to apply the salve of a father’s love and protection to his little girl’s tender self-image.   

Nehemiah’s Response

Now let's examine Nehemiah's response to these attacks. More importantly, let's examine how you and I should respond when someone deeply wounds us

A. Notice what Nehemiah doesn't do. He doesn't answer back. Nehemiah had the self-control to say nothing. He didn't get defensive. He didn't counterattack. He didn't send out a nasty tweet on X. There are many instinctive things we want to do when we're attacked. But Nehemiah shows us the best. Keep silent. That kind of self-control was one of the things that made him a great leader.

B. His keeping silent before Sanballat and Tobiah doesn't mean he ignored what they said. Nehemiah took this opposition to God. Verse 4: “Hear us O our God for we are despised. It is human nature to do just about anything with frustration except take it to the one who can help us push through it with the right attitude.  

C. He’s leaves dealing with Sanballat and Tobiah to God. You may have found the rest of verses 4 through 5 a bit disturbing but let's look at them; Turn back their taunt on their own heads and give them up to be plundered in a land where they are captives. Do not cover their guilt, and let not their sin be blotted out from your sight, for they have provoked you to anger in the presence of the builders

These words sound a bit like David's words about his enemies and what are called the imprecatory psalms. There are two reasons why this prayer is proper:

  1. Because they are not merely Nehemiah's enemies; they are God's enemies. Nehemiah was commissioned by God to do this job for God's people—building a wall around God's city, Zion. To some degree to love God is to hate God's enemies. James appeals to this line of reasoning when he says “Don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred towards God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God” (Jms 4:4).
  2. This prayer is proper is because it is Nehemiah’s way of leaving it to God to balance the scales of justice. Nehemiah is putting into practice a principle that would later be taught by Paul, “Do not take revenge my friends but leave room for God's wrath. For it is written, It is mine to avenge. I will repay,’ says the Lord.” Many people don't understand the importance of this principle for forgiving others. Forgiveness never requires us to lay aside our sense of justice. It never requires us to say that the offense was OK when we know it wasn't OK it was wrong! The one who genuinely forgives is is the one who says, “I don't have to try to hurt him back; I'm asking God to settle the score.”

D. Nehemiah refuses to let opposition deter him.  So we built the wall. And all the wall was joined together to half its height, for the people had a mind to work. This is great but continuing on in Nehemiah revels that he did not succeed with this project by overcoming Sanballat and Tobiah’s opposition once. That’s not how you achieve any meaningful goal. Verse 7 continues, But when Sanballat and Tobiah and the Arabs and the Ammonites and the Ashdodites heard that the repairing of the walls of Jerusalem was going forward and that the breaches were beginning to be closed, they were very angry. And they all plotted together to come and fight against Jerusalem and to cause confusion in it. And we prayed to our God and set a guard as a protection against them day and night (4:1-9). A second time, we read that Nehemiah refuses to let opposition deter him. He renews his commitment to the goal and redoubles his efforts, posting a guard. The difference between success and failure often boils down to the willingness to stay at it and persevere.

President Calvin Coolidge said,

Press on. Nothing can take the place of persistence. Talent will not. Nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not. Unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not. The world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are overwhelmingly powerful.

They were the keys to Nehemiah’s success.

For Further Prayerful Thought:

  1. What is wrong with the idea that if God loved me, he would not allow my life to be so hard?
  2. What stood out to you about using the weapon of ridicule to demotivate another. What are the implications of Jesus’ teaching about the impact of words for those of us who are spiritual leaders?
  3. How can the example of Nehemiah inspire and strengthen you to persevere through whatever opposition you are facing?
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Overcoming Apathy in Your Followers

Overcoming Apathy in Your Followers

On 12 February, 2026 By Gary Yagel

As we return to our study of Nehemiah, we continue to learn from a great leader. Few of us probably think we have the gifts to be a great leader; yet every married man has been assigned to the leadership role in his marriage. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God.” (1 Cor 11:13). And of course we are assigned to lead our children as fathers.

One of the biggest challenges to all leaders is motivating our followers to move in the direction we want them to go. Former US President and the Commander of the Allied Forces in WW2, Dwight Eisenhower, once said, “Leadership is the ability to get a person to do what you want him to do, when you want it done, in a way you want it done, because he wants to do it.” What a great description of Nehemiah. This episode examines how one of the greatest leaders in history overcame the apathy of the residents of Jerusalem to rebuild the wall around the city that had remained broken down for ninety years. Incidentally, his strategy for building the walls of Jerusalem is the same strategy that God has established to build up the Body of Christ.      

One of the greatest historians who ever lived, Arnold Toynbee, observed from history, “Apathy can only be overcome by enthusiasm and enthusiasm can only be aroused by two things: 1) an ideal, which takes the imagination by storm, 2) a definite, intelligible plan for carrying that ideal into practice. Two weeks ago, in chapter 2, when seeking to overcome the Jerusalem’s resident’s apathy, Nehemiah appealed to an ideal which takes the imagination by storm. Nehemiah’s words were,“You see the trouble we are in, how Jerusalem lies in ruins with its gates burned. Come, let us build the wall of Jerusalem, that we may no longer suffer derision.”  For ninety years, the residents had walked past the ruins believing there was nothing they could do to fix their city walls. But Nehemiah took their imagination by storm convincing them they could rebuild it—and appealed to several high ideals in the community—love for their city, love for their children, and love for their God and his honor. Let’s review how Nehemiah did this and apply it to awakening enthusiasm to follow Jesus in our kids and grandkids.

1. Nehemiah led them. Nehemiah was not a resident of Jerusalem. He could have easily said, “You folks have gotten yourselves into a mess. Don’t you realize it is shameful to God for you to leave that wall in such disrepair? You need to rebuild that wall. Here, I brought you the materials to build it.” But leadership is always about bringing another with us as we pursue a goal. So, motivating our kids and grandkids to follow Jesus is about inviting them into our walk with God. That requires first winning their hearts to us, by loving them, being interested in their lives, affirming them, being affectionate with them, caring for them, and serving them. As one adult Christian said, looking back at the way his father influenced him towards Jesus, “I loved my father because he loved me so much and I couldn’t separate my father from his love for God.”

2. Nehemiah appealed to his followers’ love for God and pride in Jerusalem, God’s city. In a sense, he was implying “It is, after all, the wall around Jerusalem, the pride of our people—the City of Zion—which is in disgrace.” In the end, we want our kids and grandkids to eventually follow the ways of the Lord, not because they were raised that way, but because they love Jesus. Our goal is not perfect kids; it is kids who love Jesus because they know life is in him and he is worthy of supreme allegiance. I often say to God, ‘I don’t do hearts. Only you can change hearts.’ Nevertheless, our passionate prayers must be for God to capture their hearts.

3. Nehemiah appealed to the natural motivation of his followers. In his case, it was parents, especially fathers, to protect their families. “The trouble we are in” referred to their exposure to attack without the protection of the city wall. A wise leader knows how to appeal to the inherent motivations of his followers. For example, when it comes to discipleship, David, Paul, and the Apostle John appealed to males to be strong in character (1 Kings 2:2-3, 1 Cor. 16:13, 1 Jn 2:14b). But Solomon, Peter. and Paul appealed to a female’s desire to be beautiful in character (Prov 31, 1 Pet 3:3-4, Eph 5:27).

Whey my youngest son was 11 (and playing inside linebacker on his boy’s club team) he walked into my home office and said, “Jesus was a wimp.”

I reacted so violently, I almost fell out of my chair. I said, “What?”

He answered, “He told us to turn the other cheek and all that.”

I said, “Don’t you remember Jesus making a whip and driving the bad guys out of the temple?”

He said, “Jesus never did that.”

I thought to myself, “Great. Now I’ve got two problems. My kid is skipping Sunday school, and he thinks Jesus was a wimp.” I opened Scripture and read the story to him. I wonder if he ever could have been attracted to Jesus if Jesus were not tough on the inside with a toughness that Josh respected.

4. Nehemiah showed them proof that God had a plan to rebuild the walls. Not only was he, himself, standing there, with King Artaxerxes’ permission to rebuild the wall; huge stacks of timber from the king’s own forest were stacked all over the place. Being a part of God’s plan is tremendously motivating. That is why dads and granddads need to believe and point their kids to Ephesians 2:10, words each child needs to internalize. “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” Every child needs to believe that he or she is perfectly designed by God for the mission he wants him or her to accomplish. That is the secret to a strong self-image. One dad shared with me, “As my twin girls stated through puberty, when I realized that one was going to be far less shapely than her sister, I begin to affirm her athleticism, never addressing this personal issue directly but saying. ‘God gave you the body of an athlete. He is going to use you as an athlete.’ BTW the dad was right.

Returning to Toynbee’s analysis, we’ve seen in the second chapter that Nehemiah succeeded at awakening enthusiasm for rebuilding the wall via an ideal which takes the imagination by storm—rebuilding the wall—with him, because of their love of God and his holy city, to protect their kids, and because God had proved he was in this project. Now, Chapter 3 reveals Toynbee’s second requirement, a definite intelligible plan for carrying that ideal into practice. This is so detailed that it is boring to read, so I will just give us a flavor.

Vs. 1-2. Then Eliashib the high priest rose up with his brothers the priests, and they built the Sheep Gate. They consecrated it and set its doors. They consecrated it as far as the Tower of the Hundred, as far as the Tower of Hananel. And next to him the men of Jericho built. And next to them Zaccur the son of Imri built.

Vs. 28-32. Above the Horse Gate the priests repaired, each one opposite his own house. After them Zadok the son of Immer repaired, opposite his own house. After him Shemaiah the son of Shecaniah, the keeper of the East Gate, repaired. After him Hananiah the son of Shelemiah and Hanun the sixth son of Zalaph repaired another section. After him Meshullam the son of Berechiah repaired opposite his chamber. After him Malchijah, one of the goldsmiths, repaired as far as the house of the temple servants and of the merchants, opposite the Muster Gate, and to the upper chamber of the corner. And between the upper chamber of the corner and the Sheep Gate the goldsmiths and the merchants repaired.

Before digging into the strategy that Nehemiah did use, let’s notice what Nehemiah did not do, again remembering that his strategy for rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem was the same as God’s is for building the church.

  1. As Nehemiah contemplated how to get the job done, he did not go to the people of Jerusalem, take up a special offering, and then try to hire the Jerusalem Masonry Company to rebuild the walls. He did not depend on professionals to build the wall, but amateurs--regular old lady people.
  2. What Nehemiah didn't do was appoint a committee. Can you imagine what would have happened if he'd done that? The committee would probably still be meeting. Have you heard the paraphrase of John 3:16, “God so loved the world that he didn't send a committee?”
  3. Nehemiah didn't put an announcement in the Jerusalem Gazette or the synagogue bulletin asking for volunteers. If he had, he probably would have gotten the same 20% of the population that always volunteers to help when there are needs. There's a principle of group dynamics, which is that 20% of the people do 80% of the work and 80% do the remaining 20% of the work. Nehemiah never would have succeeded that way.

Nehemiah succeeded because he based his strategy on two key principles involvement and ownership. Let's look at these two components.

Involvement. Nehemiah had a massive project to complete. He broke the huge task of rebuilding 2 1/2 miles of walls into 41 smaller, manageable sections. A huge job often intimidates you and your followers, until you can figure out a way to break it down into bite-sized pieces. When Moses stood at the edge of the promised land, he sent spies out to reconnoiter the whole land, and they were intimidated. Exaggerating the size of the giants, they rebelled against God saying, “We can't take the land.” Forty years later, Joshua, Moses’ assistant, seems to have learned a lesson, because as they got ready to move into the promised land he sent his spies out to one city at a time, the first one being Jericho. The spies returned and said, “We can take the city.”

So, Nehemiah broke down this big task into smaller sections and he assigned specific, usually family groups, to each portion of the wall, enabling everyone to be involved in this ministry project for the Lord. And I mean everyone! Priests, Levites government workers, gatekeepers, security guards, police officers, farmers, goldsmiths, chemists, retailers, homemakers, and clerks, are all mentioned in this third chapter. This was a ragtag group of amateurs; but they got involved and they got the job done.

Ownership. The inhabitants of Jerusalem were committed in mass to reconstructing the walls. But being a skilled leader, Nehemiah realized he needed a way to give away ownership of the individual parts of the project so the people would end up not saying this is Nehemiah's project, or even saying this is our project, but saying this is my project.

I discovered the significance of getting ownership as a leader when I was a church planter, when we began to plan a building campaign. We decided it was worthwhile to hire a specialist to give us advice. When he met with our session, he started to click off what seemed like 27 different committees that we needed, one for promoting the banquet, one for decorations at the banquet, one for putting notes in the bulletin, one for planning the program of the banquet. Finally, exasperated, I asked, “Why in the world do we have to have all these committees?” He looked at me, smiled and said, “Because people give to THEIR building campaign not to YOUR building campaign.”

Nehemiah’s brilliant strategy was to assign responsibility to each group of Israelites to repair the portion of the wall closest to their home or business. Of course that strengthened their sense of ownership.

  • They are internally motivated because it is their immediate loved ones who will benefit.
  • They don’t waste time commuting to another site.
  • They are motivated to build it well knowing they would look at it every day.
  • They also don’t cut corners, knowing everyone else knows that part of the wall was built by them.

Nehemiah's plan worked fabulously. He appealed to each individual’s self-interest. Self-interest is not selfishness; it is responsibility—taking care of what belongs to you. This concept of stewardship is at the care of the Bible’s view of economics. Two of the Ten Commandments are based upon private ownership of property, “You shall not steal” and “You shall not covet.” Paul based NT church policies on this stewardship principle—you are required by God to take care of what belongs to you, liked yourself. If anyone is not willing to work, then he is not to eat, either. (2 Thes 3:10) and But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever (1 Tim 5:8).

Private ownership and personal responsibility to work to provide for one’s family are the opposite of socialism, state ownership of the means of production. Not only is socialism anti-biblical, but history also proves that it has led to failure every time it has been tried, and usually catastrophic suffering. One location where socialism was tried is in the US, which few know about.

The Plymouth Plantation in Massachusetts was founded in 1620 with a system of communal property rights, not biblical property rights. The community held everything in common, including food and supplies, distributing them equally and as needed by plantation officials. Everyone received equal portions regardless of their contribution. Gov. William Bradford, looking back on these years, reported,

“This system was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. The problem was that young men, that were most able and fit for labor, did repine (complain) that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense. Because of the poor incentives, little food was produced.”

In the spring of 1623, facing potential starvation, the colony abandoned their communal system, and each family was given their own land on which they could keep everything they grew for themselves. But now they alone were responsible for feeding themselves. This return to property rights, a concept taught in Scripture, had dramatic results. Food production soared and the Pilgrims prospered. Bradford wrote, “This change had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been. Giving people economic incentives changed their behavior.”

As spiritual leaders we need to realize that many naive Christians today mistakenly think that socialism is more just than free market capitalism. It is not. Back in Nehemiah, he successfully got the walls built in 53 days because he wisely appealed to the self-interest and God-given sense of responsibility that each citizen of Jerusalem felt for his own family and business.

Christ’s strategy to build his church follows the two principles we’ve been examining: 100% involvement and 100% ownership. In Romans 12:3-8, Paul tells us that every Christian has a spiritual gift (100% involvement), which we are to own and use (100% ownership). God's strategy for building the Body of Christ is not paid professionals doing the ministry any more than Nehemiah's strategy was hiring Jerusalem Masonry Contractors. Nor is it to appoint a committee. Nor is it to have 20% of the congregation doing 80% of the ministry and ending up burned out and exhausted.

I'm reminded of a TV interview done with an old NFL coach named Bud Wilkinson. Wilkinson was speaking in Dallas as a part of the President's physical fitness program. A rookie reporter from the local TV station fed Wilkinson what he thought was a perfect question. “Mr. Wilkinson, what would you say is the contribution of modern football to physical fitness?”

So, the kid was a bit flabbergasted when Wilkinson's responded: “Absolutely nothing.”Wilkinson went on to say, “I define football as 22 men on the field desperately needing rest and 50,000 spectators in the stands desperately needing exercise.” All too often that's an accurate picture of the church—20% desperately needing rest, 80% spectators badly needing to be involved, which would cause them to grow more in Christ.

The Genius of Nehemiah’s Plan

A. His strategy divided up the workload so no one person had to carry too heavy a load. There was no record of anyone burning out while the building was going on. In the same way, God's strategy for the church is designed to prevent any one person from caring too heavy a load and burning out. Applying this truth to men’s ministry, church leaders need men’s ministry leaders to get the rest of the men in the church out of isolation and into connection in the Body.

B. Nehemiah's strategy met one of the deepest needs of the human heart—the  need to accomplish something significant. Every morning on the way to work Meshullam the son of Berechiah could look at the beams and doors and bolts and bars he'd put in place. He could take proper pride in a job well done. God's strategy for the church works the same way. There is no one more excited or more enthusiastic about life than a person who is busy using his spiritual gifts and seeing fruit from his labor. That is why one of our jobs as spiritual leaders is to help our wives and kids understand what their gifts are, including their spiritual gifts.

C. The builders of the wall built in the place that was the most familiar to them, with people they were close to. Nehemiah’s groups were organized by affinity—through families working together, or professional guilds like goldsmiths and perfume makers. Affinity with others also came through various communities that built together, having been organized by districts. They knew each other. They knew who would be better at coordinating materials, chipping away the stone, hanging the gates, etc. In the same way spiritual gifts are best used in the context of regular relationships with others. For example, the gift of encouragement can't be used if guys are not connected in the Body knowing other guys are discouraged.

D. Building the wall together brought about healthy interdependence. If my neighbor’s wall was 10 feet tall and 10 feet thick, that was good incentive to make my wall just as high, thick, and effective for his protection as well as my own. Paul said of various members of the body, “If one member suffers we all suffer.”

E. The strategy of 100% involvement and ownership of the project not only accomplished the restoration of the wall in 53 days but provided an ongoing maintenance plan for the wall. Every morning and evening to and from work Meshullam the son of Berechiah would walk right past the wall he built. And the moment he spotted some slippage of the stones or settling of the posts, you can be sure he would get it repaired. In a similar sense by giving spiritual gifts to everyone, God provides for the ongoing maintenance of the Body of Christ, if each bleiever is connected in the community of Christ and using his gifts.

This chapter of Nehemiah shows us that a leader’s power to motivate his followers to achieve their goal is the forst step. But without a wise plan to achieve the goal, the result would have been FRUSTRATION. That is not what Nehemiah’s followers experienced. Rather, it was SUCCESS because he had a great plan. God has a great plan for building the church and Christ’s kingdom. We need to follow it, by every man contributing his spiritual and natural gifts as he is connected in the Body of Christ.

For Further Prayerful Thought:

  1. What do you most want to remember about how Nehemiah motivated the people?
  2. How have you observed the principle that when people have ownership of a goal or an asset, they feel much more responsible and motivated to take action?
  3. As you consider the parallel between Nehemiah’s method for building the wall and God’s method for building the church, what most stood out about the church?
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Romancing a Wife—Valentine’s Day Prep

Romancing a Wife—Valentine’s Day Prep

On 07 February, 2026 By Gary Yagel

Hi Men,

This is Gary Yagel. A few weeks ago, as I was thinking about my goals for 2026, after being away over New Years on vacation, it dawned on me that I was getting lazy about pursuing romance in my marriage. So, I spent most of a Monday morning catching up on what I had written, myself, about romance as well as listening to some podcasts from Family Life. The result was the realization that at least twice in Scripture God tells us that he wants husbands and wives to be drunk with sexual passion for each other, Proverbs 5:19 and Song of Solomon 5:1. It doesn't take too much motivation for me to want to please God on this particular matter! But it also does take work to romance a woman. This episode is a repeat of an episode from 2024 that reinspired me to do my part to romance my wife and leave the rest to God I think you'll find the biblical insights helpful as well.

If you are married, the founders of Family Life, Dennis and Barbara Rainey have a command of God for you to consider: “In the Song of Solomon, God enters the bridal chamber, where the newlyweds lay entwined in each other’s arms. He raises his hand over them and blesses them. His benediction urges them to feast on the joy of their sexual union. ‘Eat friends: drink and imbibe deeply, O lovers.’” (Simply Romantic Nights.) God wants husbands and wives to drink deeply and frequently of the refreshing waters of their partner’s sexuality. But most of us, whose marriages have lasted beyond the honeymoon stage, have found that sustaining romantic and sexual passion has been a lot harder than we ever thought it would be, especially because our wives are NOT wired the way WE are. This episode looks for biblical clues to understanding how and why a woman’s view of romance and sex is so different than her husband’s.

Christian counselors Les and Leslie Parrott have discovered that both the quantity and quality of sex in marriage are central to a good overall relationship. “In one survey on the importance of sex for marriage, the results were compelling: Couples who rated their sex lives positively also rated their marriages positively, and those who rated their sex lives negatively, rated their marriages negatively as well. In other words, if coupes report that sex is unimportant to them, it is very likely that they view their entire marriage as unhappy. (Eight Little Things That Might Make a Big Difference in Your Marriage.) Another Christian counselor, Dr. Kevin Leman, encourages couples,

“A fulfilling sex life is one of the most powerful marital glues a couple can have…The kind of sex I’m talking about takes a little work and a lot of forethought—but the dividends it pays are more than worth the effort. If your husband is sexually fulfilled, he’ll do anything for you. He’ll take a bullet, he’ll race a train, he’ll do whatever it takes to make sure you’re okay. And, men, if your wife knows that you view sex as a special gift to give her; if you can make her feel things she’s never felt before; and if you will learn to become a selfless, sensitive, and competent lover she’ll purr like a kitten and melt in your arms” (Sheet Music).

In Genesis 2 we see that marriage is the joining of two LIVES—therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the joining of two BODIES—and they shall become one flesh. In the next verse, God discloses his purpose for marriage: And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. Marriage is given as the one safe arena where husband and wife are naked, body, soul, and spirit—laid bare and vulnerable to each other. God wants us to proactively pursue loving intimacy of heart through conversation and loving intimacy of body through sex. We know that the Bible condemns joining bodies without also joining lives in marriage (I Thes 4:3). But it also condemns joining lives in marriage without joining bodies in sex (1 Cor 7:3). Both are foundational for marriage.

Non-biblical influences have caused Christians at times to devalue sex. One woman put it, “Because I want to be godly, I can’t allow myself to be too earthly—and sex is definitely earthly. I allow myself to experience a little pleasure—but only so much. If I got really carried away it would be too fleshly” (Dillow and Pintus, Intimate Issues). Sadly, this woman’s attitude towards getting carried away is exactly the opposite of God’s! God says to husbands, Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love. He commands godly men to regularly get drunk with their wives on sexual pleasure! In fact, fulfilling the sexual desires of your marriage partner is so important to God that he commands couples, The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise, the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another…so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. This text makes it every married Christian’s  responsibility to make sure his or her partner’s sexual desires do not go unfulfilled.

Tragically, the church and Christian counselors have neglected this teaching. 83% of wives say their husbands don’t know how to meet their need for emotional intimacy. In a different study, the same percentage—83% of husbands said that their wives didn’t understand their need for sexual intimacy (Hart, The Sexual Man). Many wives build resentment towards her husband because “men only one want thing: sex.” Equally resentful, men want to shout, “Yes! That’s the way I’m made by God; why do you condemn me for that? I’m trying to stay pure and direct all that desire towards you as God commands me to.” Through our struggle, my wife and I have discovered that there is great power to overcome resentment and stop demanding that our mate’s sex drive be like ours—in discovering and celebrating how different God designed our spouses’ sexuality to be.

DESIGNED TO BE DIFFERENT

Just as last week, we went back to the creation account of Adam and Eve to understand Eve’s need for heart intimacy, we return to this account to see how their difference in sexual desire flow from the differences in their design.  

  1. Adam is created for the ground, from the ground, given a name that means ground, tasked to work the ground, and his sin brings a curse upon the ground.
  • Adam’s innate orientation is toward the physical world.
  • So, why should it surprise us that Adam’s sexual desire is triggered through physical sight. Sight of the naked female physical body does it; no relationship with the person inside the body is necessary (which our wives can’t fathom!). “The sheer biological power of sexual desire in a male is largely focused on the physical body of an attractive female.” (James Dobson, What Wives Wish Their Husbands Knew About Women).
  • His sexual appetite comes from his physical body: James Dobson continues:

“When sexual response is blocked, males experience an accumulating physiological pressure, which demands release. The prostate gland, a small sac containing semen, gradually fills to capacity; as it reaches this maximum level, hormonal influences sensitize the man to all sexual stimuli. Whereas a particular woman would otherwise be of little interest to him, he is now eroticized in her presence (or in front of naked women on screens) when he is in a state of deprivation…She should recognize that his desire is dictated by definite biochemical forces within his body, and if she loves him she will seek to satisfy those needs as meaningfully and as regularly as possible.”

  • For men physical, sexual release in orgasm opens men’s hearts and floods their soul with feelings of love for their wives. Everyone knows that wives need to feel in love in order to want to make love. But fewer realize that a man needs to make love in order to feel in love. A man’s physical orgasm is the pathway to him remembering how precious she is to him.

B. Now let’s consider how different is God’s designed of Eve and how much sense it makes that her sexual desires are so different from Adam’s. Eve is designed NOT made from the physical ground but from a PERSON, Adam. She is designed for relationship. She is made for the man, given a name that means “out of the man,” assigned to assist the man, and her sin brings a curse upon her relationship with the man.

  • Eve is created with an innate orientation towards relationships.
  • It shouldn’t surprise us that being designed for a relationship with her husband, her desire for sex grows out of the closeness of her relationship with him. Christian counselor Barbara Rossberg says to men, “Men your sex drive is connected to your eyes. You become aroused visually. Your wife’s sex drive is connected to her heart; she is aroused only after she feels emotional closeness and harmony” (The Five Love Needs of Men and Women.)
  • Women’s sexual desires arise from being relationally attracted to the PERSON. “Their desire is usually focused on a particular individual whom they respect or admire. A woman is stimulated by the romantic aura that surrounds her man, and by his character and personality. She yields to the man who appeals to her emotionally as well as physically” (Dobson).
  • A woman’s sex drive may be just as strong as her husbands. But she won’t FEEL the hunger for sex with a man until their relationship makes her FEEL warm affection, closeness, and care. The condition for her to feel her hunger for sex is that her relationship with him is making her feel closeness and love. One woman explains, “To a woman sex is not an event—its an environment, it’s not an act, it’s an atmosphere.” She needs to feel in love before her sex drive can surface causing her to want to make love.

So, the idea that masculine sexual hunger flows from his physical body, but feminine sexual hunger flows from how she feels about her relationship with the man is perfectly consistent with what God tells us about their creation in Genesis.

This difference is also reinforced by looking at the love poem God has given to us in Song of Solomon, where we see this same pattern. Solomon’s sexual words to the Shulamite are almost all about the beauty of her physical body, which he longs for. Thirty-one verses express attraction to the beauty of her physical body. Two verses expressed longing to enjoy a relationship with her. In contrast, in accord with her feminine design, the Shulamite devotes twenty-eight verses to expressing her longing to enjoy a relationship with him and sixteen speak of her attraction to his physical body. He dreamed of her BODY. She dreamed mostly of a RELATIONSHIP with him and half as much of enjoying his BODY.

THE CHALLENGE TO EVERY CHRISTIAN HUSBAND AND WIFE

Misconnecting over our God-designed sexual differences can be extremely painful because sex is so closely related to our self-esteem. Truth be told, a man’s unrelenting sex drive is a real inconvenience to wives. It feels to a wife like her husband just wants to use her body to scratch his itch. More than one wife has been accused of not loving her husband because her desire for sex wasn’t keeping up with his. That is unfair. She’s not made to be able to turn on her sex drive on any moment. But from his point of view, his biological build-up of semen is not his fault; it is the way God designed him to drive him back into the arms of his wife where his need for heart intimacy is met as she surrounds him with her warm receptivity and love. Allowing sexual stimulation to always take him into his wife’s arms instead of to a screen or another woman is a great virtue in today’s eroticized world. We’re pretty opposite to our mates (Ethridge, Every Woman’s Battle).

  • Men crave sexual intimacy. Women crave emotional intimacy.
  • Men give love to get sex. Women give sex to get love.
  • Men can disconnect body from mind, heart, and soul. Women’s body, mind, heart, and soul intricately connected.
  • Men are stimulated by what they see, women don’t feel sexual hunger until they feel cared for and close to their husband.
  • Men have a recurrent semen build up cycle. Women have a recurring need for conversation with their husbands.
  • Men are vulnerable to unfaithfulness in the absence of sex. Women are vulnerable to unfaithfulness is the absence of emotional connection.

Why not consider inviting your wife to listen to the first part of this podcast and then make a covenant together: We will try to respect the differences in our mate’s sexual and romantic desires because we value God’s perfect design of each other and schedule time for both conversation and lovemaking because pursuing both is God’s design to erase aloneness and experience loving intimacy.  

ROMANCE: THE CONDITION WHICH ENABLES A WIFE TO FEEL SEXUAL DESIRE

One therapist writes, “Woman love great sex as much as men. The difference between a woman and a man is that she doesn’t feel her strong desire for sex until her need for love is first satisfied” (John Gray, Mars & Venus in the Bedroom). She needs first to feel loved, cherished, and desired. “When her heart is opened in this way her sexual center begins to open, and she feels a longing equal to or greater than what any man feels.” (Ibid). Men are easily sexually aroused by sight. But a wife doesn’t feel her sexual desire unless certain conditions are first met.

1. Avoid three conditions that bury her sexual desire for her husband.

  • Not feeling close to him. When I return home to my wife after a week away, my body wants my wife’s body as soon as I walk in the door, especially since I’ve been fighting the temptation not to look at something I shouldn’t. But I’ve learned that she needs an evening or day to reconnect her relationship with me emotionally before her sexual center wants to open to me.
  • The pressures of her job, her family, and her home. Unlike men, whose desire for sex is physiologically produced and therefore always present, her desire for sex gets lost beneath the load of her responsibilities. It’s not that she doesn’t love her husband as much as he loves her. It’s that her sexual desire for him gets lost. When a woman feels temporarily relieved of her pressure to care for others, she can begin to feel her sexual desires. That is why one wife said to her husband, could we not make love with that full clothes basket in the room. That just makes me keep thinking about the laundry I need to do. Our wives can’t feel their sexual desires for us when their hearts are busy focusing on their other responsibilities.
  • A tired body. James Dobson writes, “another sexual inhibitor, which husbands should understand, is fatigue. Physical exhaustion plays a significant part in women’s ability or inability to respond sexually. When she is tired, sex feels like an obligation rather than a pleasure. Although it is an obligation—spouses are not to deprive their mates of sexual fulfillment—it is wiser for us to pursue lovemaking when her body is rested. When she feels physically refreshed, she is much more likely to feel sexual desire for her husband instead of feeling like she has one more obligation to check off.

2. Create ROMANCE, which allows her to feel her sexual desire.

  • Romancing her means finding out how her day went and listening for what is on her heart. Sharing her heart precedes her wanting to share her body. The Shulamite in Song of Songs shows her sexual desires intertwined with her friendship longing, His mouth is most sweet, and he is altogether desirable. This is my beloved and this is my friend (5:16).
  • Romancing her means lifting the weight of her responsibilities from her shoulders. Only when she stops feeling that weight will she be able to feel her sexual desire for you. That is why romantic weekends are so powerful. That is why on date night YOU take care of the details. YOU feed the kids. YOU line up the baby-sitter and if sex is planned for the night you say, “Honey, I’ll put the kids down. Why don’t you relax in a warm bubble bath?”
  • Romancing her means making her feel cared for. Linda Dillow and Lorraine Pintus put it bluntly, “When she offers to help you organize your tool bench, it counts as an interruption. When you offer to vacuum the house, it counts as foreplay” (Simply Romantic Nights).
  • Romancing her means treating her like a princess. One female said, “As long as he shows me that I'm special--no matter where we are or what we're doing--that's romance. (Sana and Miller, How to Romance the Woman You Love).
  • Romancing her means cherishing her. A few years ago, while speaking to a Mothers of Preschoolers group, I asked the wives, “What makes you feel most loved by your husband?” Their answer was, “feeling cherished.” What that translates into for us is making her feel treasured, highly prized, deeply appreciated, precious.
  • Romancing her means helping her get into a romantic mood. Help her relax physically with a foot massage. Bring on the candles, flowers, little notes, and soft music. Also, although spontaneous sex is fine, it often helps wives “get in the mood” when they can mentally prepare for sex ahead of time. A woman knows her most powerful sex organ is her mind. (The above insights are derived from Gen 2, Eph 5, Prov 31, Song of Solomon 4-5).

3. Develop the skills of a good lover to increase her sexual desire (Song of Solomon 4-5).

  • When it comes to arousal, men are microwaves, women are crockpots.
  • Always touch her heart before you touch her body.
  • Warm her heart through affectionate non-sexual hugs and kisses to her non-erogenous zones.
  • Make her feel beautiful and desirable with words. I love your smile. I love the way you laugh. You look beautiful tonight. I love the smell of your hair. I love the touch of your smooth skin. You still have what it takes to light my fire.
  • Gradually touch her erogenous zones, circling back to non-erogenous zones, then back to her more sexual parts. Listen for clues about what she likes.
  • As her sexual engine gets revved up, she will want a rhythmic stroke.
  • Wait until she invites you to enter her.

After studying the feminine design from which a wife’s sexual desire for her husband flows, it makes great sense that feeling romance in her relationship with her husband is the condition her feminine nature requires in order to feel her sexual desires come alive. But, as every woman will tell you, romance means much more to a wife than getting her sexual desire’s going. In fact, after studying their survey results for writing the book, What Wives Wish Their Husbands Knew About Women, James Dobson concluded: “If I had the power to communicate only one message to every family in America, I would specify the importance of romantic love to every aspect of feminine existence. It provides the foundation for a woman’s self-esteem, her joy in living, and her sexual responsiveness.”

For Further Prayerful Thought:

  1. What would you say to persuade a Christian brother and sister that married couples having a great sexual relationship is important to God?
  2. What are some of the ways that feminine sexual desire seems consistent with what God has revealed to us in Genesis 2 about how he has created woman?
  3. How would you use the fact that God created Adam to be ground focused and Eve to be relationally focused to explain why difference in sexual desires can create resentment in marriage?
  4. What stood out to you about how to romance a woman?
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Getting Others to Follow You

Getting Others to Follow You

On 31 January, 2026 By Gary Yagel

How would you like to receive the following letter?

Dear Jim,

     As I met with God this morning, I was moved to tell God how deeply grateful I am to him for your influence in my life. As I look back over the years, I realized that it has been your life that has most influenced me to follow Christ. You always seemed to be available when I needed you. You understood my problems. You had just the encouraging ear I needed. I could always go to you when I was hurting inside because I knew you cared.

     Your walk with Christ has been a tremendous inspiration to me. Your wholehearted commitment to obedience, the wisdom that comes from your lips, your godly spirit in the midst of adversity and pain are a picture to me of what I want to be like. To whatever degree I have learned to humbly yield to Christ's will, whatever it is, it has been by watching you. I've learned to forgive others by watching you be hurt and yet be gracious enough to return love and understanding.

     Perhaps what I have appreciated most of all is that you have always believed in me. You told me that God had a great plan for my life and challenged me to settle for nothing less than Christ's best. Even in the dark times when I felt like a total failure, I knew you believed in me. The blue ribbons on my wall and trophies on my shelf are there because you kept challenging me to do the very best I could.

     So, thank you for the profound shaping influence your life has had on mine.

     Yours in Christ,

     Steve.

Wouldn't you love to receive this letter addressed to you from your son or daughter, grandson or granddaughter, from a friend at work or in the neighborhood, from a sister or brother, from a child in your Sunday school class or teen in the youth group that you lead? This is a letter about influence, getting others to follow you. That is the topic of today’s episode.

There is a difference between authority and influence. Authority is a position that allows you to coerce obedience to you. That is a good thing and needs to be used, especially in training a child. Punishment and rewards are foundational for teaching a child self-mastery. But leadership goes beyond authority. We can coerce a child to be kind in our presence, but when he is on the playground away from us and chooses the be kind—that is influence. Perhaps it is merely the influence of good training. Nevertheless, it is influence and that is what leadership is—the ability to get others to follow you. As the old saying goes, He who thinks he is leading when no one is following is only taking a walk.

If ever there was a man who could teach us how to influence others it was Nehemiah. The reason he was able to get the wall around Jerusalem built in 53 days, when no one else had for 90 years, was not that he had big biceps and a strong back; it was his ability to influence the people to join him in the project. Let's look at this story in the second half of Nehemiah 2/

     Then I came to the governors of the province Beyond the River and gave them the king's letters. Now the king had sent with me officers of the army and horsemen. But when Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite servant heard this, it displeased them greatly that someone had come to seek the welfare of the people of Israel.

     So I went to Jerusalem and was there three days. Then I arose in the night, I and a few men with me. And I told no one what my God had put into my heart to do for Jerusalem. There was no animal with me but the one on which I rode. I went out by night by the Valley Gate to the Dragon Spring and to the Dung Gate, and I inspected the walls of Jerusalem that were broken down and its gates that had been destroyed by fire. Then I went on to the Fountain Gate and to the King's Pool, but there was no room for the animal that was under me to pass. Then I went up in the night by the valley and inspected the wall, and I turned back and entered by the Valley Gate, and so returned. And the officials did not know where I had gone or what I was doing, and I had not yet told the Jews, the priests, the nobles, the officials, and the rest who were to do the work.

     Then I said to them, “You see the trouble we are in, how Jerusalem lies in ruins with its gates burned. Come, let us build the wall of Jerusalem, that we may no longer suffer derision.” And I told them of the hand of my God that had been upon me for good, and also of the words that the king had spoken to me. And they said, “Let us rise up and build.” So they strengthened their hands for the good work.

     But when Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite servant and Geshem the Arab heard of it, they jeered at us and despised us and said, “What is this thing that you are doing? Are you rebelling against the king?” Then I replied to them, “The God of heaven will make us prosper, and we his servants will arise and build, but you have no portion or right or claim in Jerusalem.”

Six Leadership Insights

As we saw last week, Nehemiah got Artaxerxes’ permission to go to Jerusalem to rebuild the wall. So, Nehemiah travels the 800 miles to Jerusalem. That is where we start to observe his leadership example.

A. Great leadership requires investigating and evaluating the situation. Proverbs 13:16 says, “Every prudent man acts with knowledge, but a fool flaunts his folly.”  In Proverbs 12:23 we read “A prudent man conceals knowledge, but the heart of fools proclaims folly.” Proverbs 14:15 says “The simple believes everything, but the prudent gives thought to his steps.”

Verses 13-15 tell us that Nehemiah went out through the Valley Gate toward the Dragon Well and on down to the sewage plant (that's the dung gate) and he inspected the walls—notice that. Imagine his grief as he stumbled among the ruins of what was once a great and mighty fortress. Then he went on the southern side of Jerusalem, then up the west side to the fountain gate. He came to the King's pool; it was such a mess he couldn't even get by it on his horse. So, he got off and walked ahead of his horse moving up the valley, examining the wall. Finally, he reentered through the Valley Gate. Twice he mentions examining the wall. The Hebrew word, examine, means to look into something very carefully. It was a medical word for probing a wound to see the extent of the laceration or infection. Nehemiah made a careful, conscious, probing examination all along the way. Why? Because, when a good leader has a goal, which he wants to help his team reach, he looks carefully into the circumstances that determine how to reach that goal. He does his research.

B. Great leadership requires formulating a plan in solitude. Why in the world would someone whose goal was to rebuild a wall inspect it in the dark? That is like a doctor saying, “Let’s go into this pitch-black room to examine you.” I think it is because he wanted to formulate his plan in solitude. Nehemiah, as he followed the broken-down wall, must have been conceptualizing his plan. Those of you in the building industry know that various types of jobs require different skills. Some people are able to work with brick and stone and mortar, but they can't do a thing with wood. So, I'm sure that as Nehemiah walked, he was thinking through who could do which jobs. That section required skilled craftsmen but the work in this section starts with pulling out the weeds and moving rubble requiring unskilled labor. We know that he had given thought to how he was going to accomplish this project because at the beginning of chapter 3 he already had a plan.  

One of the most critical disciplines of leadership is closing the door on the rest of the world, so that in quiet solitude you can formulate your plan.  Nearly any book you read on management will tell you that leaders of organizations must spend quality time with the door closed, the secretary or phone machine taking calls. That's especially true if you're a believer and you're seeking to discern God's leading. Remember how the Lord modeled this principle of retreating. For example, after the feeding of the 5000, we read, Immediately, he made the disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray (Matt 14:22-23).  

You can't lead if you don't know where you're going and you can't figure out where you should be going in the midst of chaos. It's my opinion that the number one cause of failed spiritual leadership at home is right here. Very few of us have a plan for how we're going to grow in our marriages or how we're going to meet the deepest needs that shape our children's hearts. You cannot lead effectively without regular times of solitude to think and plan and pray. It doesn't have to be a huge time commitment. It doesn't have to be in the middle of the night like Nehemiah. How about Sunday afternoon or Sunday evening, just to set aside time with your Commander-In-Chief to talk about your mission? God doesn’t usually speak loudly enough for us to hear him in the midst of chaos. His tends to be a still small voice.

C. Great leadership requires motivating your followers. Vs 17. Then I said to them, “You see the trouble we are in, how Jerusalem lies in ruins with its gates burned. Come, let us build the wall of Jerusalem, that we may no longer suffer derision.” Nehemiah was not a resident of Jerusalem. He could have easily said, “You folks have gotten yourselves into a bad mess. Don’t you realize it is shameful to God for you to leave that wall in such disrepair? You need to rebuild that wall. I brought you the wood that God provided for it. I suggest that you start building at the Valley gate and continue around clockwise.” But supervising is not leading.

Nehemiah enters into their suffering and their problem. He doesn’t just tell them to fix the wall; he invites them to join him in fixing the wall. Listen to these profound words that distinguish between a position of authority and leadership.

  • The boss drives people; the leader coaches them.
  • The boss depends upon authority; the leader on good will.
  • The boss says “I”; the leader says “We.”
  • The boss fixes the blame for the breakdown; the leader fixes the breakdown.
  • The boss knows how it's done; the leader shows how it's done.
  • The boss says “Go!”; the leader says, “Let's go.”

Besides inviting the people to join him, not just do this on their own, Nehemiah employs another form of motivation. There are two categories of motivation, external and internal. When children are young, external rewards and punishments work. External rewards also work temporarily with adults. Nehemiah could have used competition to motivate them. “Whoever gets their portion of the wall finished first, gets three months of NO TAXES.” That might have worked for a while, but it is doubtful that such external motivation would have enabled his people to overcome the fierce opposition that was to come.

Instead, Nehemiah appealed to internal motivation—their desire to protect their loved ones, and their love of their homeland. “You see every day how exposed we all are to our enemies. Let’s rebuild the wall to protect our loved ones and the pride of our people—Jerusalem, the City of Zion—which is in disgrace.” James Boice sees a parallel between Nehemiah and Sir Winston Churchill. “Churchill was a superb motivator, yet he seems never to have promised anything external, not prosperity, not leisure, not the return of good times. He offers only the (internal) satisfaction of having done the difficult task well.” Listen to Churchill’s famous words to England when Hitler was bombing the daylight out of them.

     "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.

     What is our aim? I can answer in one word. Victory at all costs. Victory in spite of all terror. Victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.

     We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France. We shall fight in the seas and oceans. We shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air. We shall defend our island whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender." (Nehemiah: Learning to Lead).

Nehemiah's appeal was similar, though couched in less dramatic language. The challenge to the people to rebuild so that they would no longer be in disgrace. It was an appeal to their nobler instincts of love for God’s holy city Jerusalem and his honor. May I challenge you:

You have been created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. God placed you in your family, in your community, in your career. In that place, your mission is to respond with all your heart to Jesus’ call TO HIM—to enjoy a love relationship with him, the call TO BECOME LIKE HIM—to be transformed into Christ-like character, and the call TO EXERCISE DOMINION FOR HIM, to implement his agenda in your role as husband, father, employee/employer, neighbor, church member, steward of resources, and ambassador of the kingdom, in every sphere of life. And God is glorified by the spiritual fruit that you produce in that setting. Jesus told us, “By this is my father glorified that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples” (John 15:8).      

D. Great leaders strengthen the faith of their followers. Vs. 18. And I told them of the hand of my God that had been upon me for good, and also of the words that the king had spoken to me. And they said, “Let us rise up and build.” Nehemiah pointed to the evidence that God was leading this project:

  • He’d already changed the heart of Artaxerxes.
  • He’d provided leave for Nehemiah.
  • He’d provided letters to governors and an armed guard for their travel.
  • He’d provided all the timber they needed from the king’s own forest to rebuild the wall.  

Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Courage to step out and trust God for the future grows by remembering his past faithfulness. That is why so many Psalms celebrate and rehearse God’s faithfulness to Israel throughout her history. When fear or anxiety seizes our hearts, thinking back to God’s faithfulness to us in crisis after crisis strengthens trust in him for the future. Nehemiah’s intentional reminder that this was God’s project turned out to be important because of the opposition they faced before they even got started.

E. Great leadership is not demoralized by opposition. Vs. 19-20. But when Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite servant and Geshem the Arab heard of it, they jeered at us and despised us and said, “What is this thing that you are doing? Are you rebelling against the king?” Then I replied to them, “The God of heaven will make us prosper, and we his servants will arise and build, but you have no portion or right or claim. No matter what project you undertake for God you can be certain you will face opposition. Why? Because of the environment. The place where you are attempting to accomplish that task is Kingdom Earth, a realm in which at present there are spiritual powers of darkness opposing every effort you make to implement Christ agenda of righteousness over the earth. Wise leaders refuse to let Satan discourage them by his opposition. In fact, opposition, though no fun, is a sign that we are on the right path!

G. Great leaders lean on God for his grace. In this episode’s text of Nehemiah, we've seen him in three different situations:

  • alone when he inspects the walls verses 11 through 16
  • in front of his people verses 17 through 18
  • facing his enemies verses 19 through 20.

Notice that at each juncture he refers to the Lord.

  • alone verse 12 “I had not told anyone what God had put in my heart to do.”
  • with his people verse 18 “I told them that the gracious hand of my God was upon me.”
  • with his enemies verse 20, “I answered them saying ‘the God of heaven will give us success we his servants will start building.’”

In all three settings Nehemiah leaned on God and maintained his spiritual perspective. Nehemiah is a reminder of what Jesus taught about impact. He said, “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” Spiritual fruitfulness in our lives, i.e. influencing those around us for the honor of Jesus can only happen by abiding in him.

Nehemiah is a great model of leadership to follow!

For Further Prayerful Thought:

1. How would you explain to a friend the difference between authority and leadership?

2. Why do you think it is imperative for leaders to become fully knowledgeable about the factors that impact achieving their goal?

3. What do you think of the statement, “Great leaders formulate their plan in solitude?” If you are married and have a family, how does this principle apply to being he leader at home, for you?

4. What leadership lessons from Nehemiah most stood out to you?

 

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Nehemiah Shows God’s Agenda Brings God’s Resources

Nehemiah Shows God’s Agenda Brings God’s Resources

On 24 January, 2026 By Gary Yagel

There is no ambiguity about what Jesus told us was to consume our lives as our top priority. He says, “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.” The Greek verb “to seek” means, to strive after, to desire. It is the opposite of being lackadaisical, indifferent, or nonchalant. It is pursuit that is self-motivated, intentional and passionate. The word “first” indicates that Jesus is telling us to make this pursuit the all-consuming top priority of our lives. In context, this verse is about being preoccupied. We are to be pre-occupied with spreading Christ’s agenda of righteousness and restoration over the earth.

As we saw last week, Nehemiah became a man who was consumed with God’s agenda, in his case the restoration of the wall around the city of Jerusalem. In this episode we see that when you adopt God’s agenda, he will provide the resources needed to accomplish it and we examine 7 insights about how he does it.

A good way to summarize our mission from Jesus is this: to be intentionally preoccupied with spreading Christ’s kingdom of righteousness and wholeness into every corner of our heart and over every inch of planet earth where we have influence. Accomplishing Jesus’ mission for me requires planning. How am I going to implement Christ’s agenda of righteousness in my heart loyalties, in transforming my bad attitudes and in my role as husband? How will my behavior change because I am adopting Jesus’ agenda as a neighbor, church member, steward of resources, and ambassador of the Kingdom—every sphere of life. But how can we implement’ Jesus’ agenda in these spheres without mulling over how we are going to do that and formulating a plan? As you seek to implement Christ’s agenda of righteousness in a sphere of life, whether it is to delight your heart more in the Lord, listen better to your wife’s heart, spend more time in the Word, build a relationship in your sphere of influence with one who needs Jesus, or get good eating and exercise into your life, there is much to learn in today’s episode about attempting to accomplish God’s agenda. So, let’s dig into the story.

To set the stage, in the first chapter, Nehemiah, who is the cup bearer for Persian King Artaxerxes, discovered that the Jewish exiles captured by the Babylonian King, Nebuchadnezzar but set free by the conquering Persian king, Cyrus to return to their homeland, were not doing well. The migration back to their homeland, Judah, had begun over 100 years earlier. They had rebuilt the temple and most likely the city walls. Then just thirteen years ago, Ezra had led a group of scribes back to Jerusalem. Ezra had confronted the Jewish men of the sin of marrying foreign women who turned their hearts to worship idols and, in an amazing exhibition of national repentance (much like that brought about by Elijah on Mt. Carmel), the guilty men agreed to “put way” their foreign wives. But in the 13 years since then it would appear that the city walls had again been torn down and its gates burned, leaving the people in great distress.

Upon hearing the news, Nehemiah immediately fell to his knees, weeping, praying, and fasting. His prayer revealed Nehemiah’s awareness that Judah’s 70-year captivity was the “scattering” that was promised in the covenant Yahweh made with Israel if they were unfaithful to Yahweh and went whoring after other gods. But Nehemiah also knew of the covenant promise that if they repented and came back to a renewed faithfulness to Yahweh, God would gather them again in Jerusalem which was place where Yahweh’s name dwelt. The first chapter ends with Nehemiah continuing to pray, fast, and weep.

Nehemiah 2:1-8. In the month of Nisan, in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was before him, I took up the wine and gave it to the king. Now I had not been sad in his presence. And the king said to me, “Why is your face sad, seeing you are not sick? This is nothing but sadness of the heart.” Then I was very much afraid.  I said to the king, “Let the king live forever! Why should not my face be sad, when the city, the place of my fathers' graves, lies in ruins, and its gates have been destroyed by fire?” Then the king said to me, “What are you requesting?” So I prayed to the God of heaven. And I said to the king, “If it pleases the king, and if your servant has found favor in your sight, that you send me to Judah, to the city of my fathers' graves, that I may rebuild it.” And the king said to me (the queen sitting beside him), “How long will you be gone, and when will you return?” So it pleased the king to send me when I had given him a time. And I said to the king, “If it pleases the king, let letters be given me to the governors of the province Beyond the River, that they may let me pass through until I come to Judah, and a letter to Asaph, the keeper of the king's forest, that he may give me timber to make beams for the gates of the fortress of the temple, and for the wall of the city, and for the house that I shall occupy.” And the king granted me what I asked, for the good hand of my God was upon me (Nehemiah 2:1-8).      

Let’s go back through the text for seven insights for setting out to accomplish God’s agenda in your life.

Vs 1. In the month of Nisan, in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was before him, I took up the wine and gave it to the king. Now I had not been sad in his presence.

     A. Accomplishing God’s agenda requires persisting in prayer. What happened after Nehemiah prayed to the Lord? Nothing. At least not right away. Nehemiah's story opened in the month of Chislev and it resumes in the month of Nissan. Chislev is December. Nissan is April. For four months nothing happened. Can you relate? It is tough to keep praying even when you know you are praying according to God’s agenda, when you see no results.

     Besides Jesus, there is one man that the Bible points to as the example, par excellence, of prayer: Elijah. His prayer brought about the repentance of an entire nation on Mt. Carmel in his showdown with the prophets of Baal. Any guess how many times Elijah prayed for the repentance of his people? If he prayed just 3 times per day, he would have asked for the same thing 1277 times. James is clear that he prayed for 3.5 years. For some reason persistent prayer is the only power that can overcome evil. Remember what happened to some of Jesus’ disciples when he was away from them on the Mount of Transfiguration? They used Jesus’ name but could not cast out a demon. Jesus’ explanation. “This kind can only come out through prayer.” I believe that Jesus knew something about the power of persistent prayer that he knew we couldn’t understand. Uncharacteristically, in has parables on prayer, Jesus did not tell us why praying for so long is required to overcome the kingdom of darkness. He didn’t try to. He just said, “keep on praying.”  

      B. Accomplishing God’s agenda is more likely when it has captured your heat. Nehemiah could not mask his grief. His heart of grief over his suffering people and the need to build a protective wall around Jerusalem was genuine. He was preoccupied with God’s agenda to build this wall just as Jesus said we should be preoccupied with implementing Christ’s agenda of righteousness in the spheres of our lives.

Vs. 2 And the king said to me, “Why is your face sad, seeing you are not sick? This is nothing but sadness of the heart.” Then I was very much afraid.

   C. Accomplishing God’s agenda requires leaving your comfort zone. When Artaxerxes made this comment, it is likely that Nehemiah’s heart started pounding, and his hands got sweaty for two reasons. It was the Law of the Meads and Persians that you could not be sad in the presence of the king. As a matter of fact you could be put to death for such an offense. The second the reason it was probably pounding is because Nehemiah saw that God had given him the opportunity he had been praying for to talk to Artaxerxes about going to Jerusalem and rebuilding the wall. Have you ever prayed for an opportunity to talk to someone about something important, maybe having to have a hard discussion or share your faith? The opportunity comes and your heart starts pounding and your tongue feels like it's getting tied in knots. Nehemiah says, “I was very much afraid.”

     If you are a serious Christ-follower who is committed to spreading Christ’s kingdom righteousness, you will find yourself in positions where you feel afraid. The difference between a dreamer and a person who accomplishes something meaningful for God is the willingness to take risk, the willingness to leave the safety of the status quo. Last evening I was talking with a woman who had taken on the responsibility of chairing the board of a Christian school. Immediately, after doing so she was challenged by so many crises that she was overwhelmed. She was forced to lean on the Lord big time. But then she said, “Ya know, I really don’t think I knew God before those crises. As God saw me through those tough times I really got to know God.” Passively accepting the status quo is not only disobedience to the Master who commands us to take action to spread Christ’s kingdom of righteousness, it also cheats us of getting to experience the heartache and faithfulness of God.

Vs. 3-4.  I said to the king, “Let the king live forever! Why should not my face be sad, when the city, the place of my fathers' graves, lies in ruins, and its gates have been destroyed by fire?” Then the king said to me, “What are you requesting?” So I prayed to the God of heaven. 

     D. Accomplishing God’s agenda requires the right attitude towards those God has placed in positions of authority. Although the story does not make a great point of Nehemiah's loyalty to King Artaxerxes his whole demeanor as well as his success presupposes it. The tact that Nehemiah takes to answer this question could have been logical or political. He could have answered,

     “Why am I sad? I'll tell you why. 13 years ago, in the seventh year of your reign, you sent a delegation of priests, including Ezra, and temple attendants to Jerusalem with your gold and silver offering to the God of Israel. But the governors surrounding the city of Jerusalem were jealous and afraid that a revitalized Jerusalem would be detrimental to their interests. So, over the last 13 years, they have torn town the city walls and relentlessly attacked Jerusalem’s inhabitants. You need to order those governors to stop; in fact, you need to make them rebuild the city walls that they destroyed.”

Perhaps there is a place for this kind of logical and political argument. But that was not the way Nehemiah chose to win over King Artaxerxes. Rather, his tact was personal. I believe his choice of a personal tactic strongly suggests a deep bond of loyalty that Nehemiah had built with the king. The English translation of Nehemiah’s rhetorical question, Why should not my face be sad, when the city, the place of my fathers' graves, lies in ruins and its gates have been destroyed by fire sounds to our ears a bit arrogant and sarcastic. But that was not the way it sounded to Artaxerxes. Nehemiah based the request for Artaxerxes’ help upon personal grief, which the king, who was proud of his own city and who also had his own ancestors, would understand. Nehemiah would not have made his request personal unless his loyalty to the king had built a personal bond with him.  

Vs. 5.  And I said to the king, “If it pleases the king, and if your servant has found favor in your sight, that you send me to Judah, to the city of my fathers' graves, that I may rebuild it.”

     E. Accomplishing God’s agenda, if it requires cooperation with unbelievers, must be winsome.

  • Nehemiah’s request is humble, and respectful—if it pleases the king.
  • His request is based upon his past loyalty—if I have found favor in your sight.
  • It is based upon shared values, ancestors should be respected—to the city of my fathers’ graves, that I may rebuild it.

The example of this godly man’s respect for the pagan king sharply contrasts with a worldview that is poisoning the thinking of many compassionate Christians. The worldview shaping the thinking of many Christians about social justice is Cultural Marxism, which defines all those in positions of authority as oppressors. Christians may disagree with policies concerning the enforcement of immigration law. But there is no biblical basis for labeling US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers “oppressors.” Christians who do so in the name of social justice are reflecting the worldview of cultural Marxism, not the Bible.

Vs. 6.  And the king said to me (the queen sitting beside him), “How long will you be gone, and when will you return?” So it pleased the king to send me when I had given him a time. 

     F. When it comes to accomplishing God’s agenda, the heart of the king is in the Lord’s hands. It is obvious that God has answered Nehemiah’s prayer. God has moved the king’s heart to say, “yes” to his request. My favorite missionary, Hudson Taylor proved throughout his life what he claimed, “It is possible to move men through God by prayer alone.” Chuck Swindoll sees the application of this principle to hardened authority figures.

There are few areas of life in which we live or work that do not come ready equipped with a superior, a boss, or other authority figure… When the time of confrontation comes between boss and employee, parent and child, coach and player, teacher and pupil, how do we handle that? That question becomes increasingly complex when the superior is insensitive to or unconcerned with spiritual things. The message God has for you at that point is, pray. (Hand Me Another Brick). 

Changing hearts is God’s specialty. Our job is to pray and honor the place of authority that another has in our lives. Proverbs 21:1 applies this principle specifically to those holding positions of authority: The king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will. I have a Jewish friend who took this verse very seriously. He sought approval from his parents to marry a Gentile girl. They refused. He prayed and redoubled his efforts to let them get to know her. A year later, his parents said, “We love this girl. Why haven’t you married her yet?” The result of honoring his parents in this way and thus keeping the 5th Commandment has been their tremendous love for his wife and harmonious relationship with his family.

Vs. 7-8. And I said to the king, “If it pleases the king, let letters be given me to the governors of the province Beyond the River, that they may let me pass through until I come to Judah, and a letter to Asaph, the keeper of the king's forest, that he may give me timber to make beams for the gates of the fortress of the temple, and for the wall of the city, and for the house that I shall occupy.” And the king granted me what I asked, for the good hand of my God was upon me.

     G. Accomplishing God’s agenda requires intentional planning and prayer. The old Revolutionary war soldiers used to say, “Trust the Lord. But keep your powder dry.” Swindoll writes,

     During these four months of praying and waiting, Nehemiah was planning. Pray to God, make your plans, set your sights, think through your hurdles. Many people in God's work are short sighted. Imagine Nehemiah's conversation with the first official outside the province of Susa if he had not planned ahead.

     “Where are you going?”

     “Well I was hoping by faith to go to Jerusalem”

     “OK where are your letters?”

     “I don't have any letters.”

     “Then go back and get them.” So, he would have had to go back and start all over (Ibid).

Our mission is to implement Jesus’ agenda of righteousness in every sphere of our lives, our heart loyalties, our heart attitudes, and in our role as husband, father, employer/employee, neighbor, church member, steward of resources, and ambassador of the Kingdom—every sphere of life. But how can we implement’ Jesus’ agenda in these spheres without mulling over how we are going to do that and formulating a plan? Can you imagine Sean McVay going into today’s NFC playoff with no game plan? No NFL team would play in a football game without a game plan. And your life is much more important than any NFL game!

Most of us learned this truth the hard way. If you fail to plan, plan to fail. Ignoring this truth may mean wasting time returning to the grocery store to get something you forgot because you failed to make a list or writing an essay that sounds more like a stream of consciousness exercise than a thoughtful, reasoned, argument. It might mean missing important opportunities because you arrived at a meeting out of breath and soaking wet because you forgot to bring an umbrella. Life can have a harsh way of teaching us not to neglect planning, when attempting to do something important.

So why would I think that I could love my wife well, without prayerfully studying the needs of her heart and what I can do to meet those needs? Why would I think I will be effective in sharing my faith without intentionally praying for opportunities and intentionally building relationships with key lost folks to win the right to be heard? How can I delight myself in the Lord, without deciding how to do that and when I will make time to do so? Great intentions remain just that, intentions, unless we make time to plan how we will implement those intentions! Pat Morley of Man in the Mirror, says, “If we are going to beat the old man (sinful nature) in us, we are going to have to get organized to do it.” Nehemiah knew that accomplishing God’s agenda, like accomplishing almost any agenda, requires careful thought and planning. So should we.

Back in chapter 1, Nehemiah had told us exactly what he had devoted four months to praying for: “Give success to your servant and grant him mercy in the sight of this man.” In chapter 2 we saw the result: God’s agenda brings God’s resources if we ask for them.

For Further Prayerful Thought:

  1. Can you relate to Nehemiah praying intensely for the wall to be rebuilt and seeing God do nothing? What have you learned about overcoming discouragement in prayer?
  2. It’s not stated explicitly but surely looks like Nehemiah had built a very strong relationship of servanthood and loyalty to Artaxerxes. What pieces of evidence do you see in the text that suggest such a strong relationship?
  3. Contrast the loyalty and respect for authority required of God’s people and shown by Nehemiah to cultural Marxism’s worldview that labels all authority figures oppressors. Where do you see the seeds of cultural Marxism in our culture? In the church?
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Attempting Great Things for God

Attempting Great Things for God

On 18 January, 2026 By Gary Yagel

Teddy Roosevelt, our nation's 26th president was a hard charging leader. An ardent admirer once exclaimed to him, “Mr. Roosevelt, you are a great man.” In characteristic honesty he replied, “No. Teddy Roosevelt is simply a plain, ordinary man—highly motivated.” It is safe to say that his answer describes most great leaders, plain and ordinary, yet whose hearts had been captured by a compelling mission. Certainly, Nehemiah, the subject of our new series, would say that about himself. Although he would say he was a plain and ordinary man underneath, he emerges as one of the most effective leaders in history, accomplishing in 53 days what no one else could accomplish in decades. Nehemiah would be the first to say that when God needs a mountain moved, he raises up mountain-moving men. But  though he lived five hundred years before the Messiah came, I think Nehemiah would he would be quick to repeat these words of Paul to every man listening: “You are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which he prepared beforehand that we should walk in them—be the mountain of a man you need to be to move your mountain!  

If I were writing a promo for Nehemiah to do a TED talk, the promo might read, "Become the best leader you can be. Learn how to gather information and form workable plans. Get other people to do what you want them to do and like doing it. Manage a difficult boss. Motivate subordinates. Master six great secrets for overcoming obstacles. Learn how to succeed where others have failed. Win without intimidation."Each of these items (and more) is taught in the book of Nehemiah. But what takes this leadership study from black and white to rich color is the way Nehemiah sorts out God’s leading and then leans upon God every step of the way. That skill set is one every guy needs. So, let’s dig into our study of Nehemiah.

Historical Context of the Book of Nehemiah: The Hebrew nation began with Abraham and the covenant that God made with him and his children. That covenant was a covenant of grace; there was no righteousness in Abraham to merit God choosing him to be the head of the Hebrew race, certainly no merit in the Israelites, who were a stiff-necked, rebellious people. Although they were chosen by grace to be the nation to enjoy a covenant relationship with God, the degree of blessing in the covenant was directly proportional to their obedience to the covenant sanctions—blessings for obedience, curses for disobedience. So, membership was by God’s unconditional love and grace, not works. But blessing was through obedience, which becomes very clear in passages like, Deut 28.

“And if you faithfully obey the voice of the Lord your God, being careful to do all his commandments that I command you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth….But if you will not obey the voice of the Lord your God…then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you….The Lord will bring you and your king whom you set over you to a nation that neither you nor your fathers have known. And there you shall serve other gods of wood and stone. And you shall become a horror, a proverb, and a byword among all the peoples where the Lord will lead you away.”

Keeping in mind the provisions of this covenant we skip ahead. After Solomon’s kingdom is divided because of his sin, the northern 10 tribes of Israel refused to repent of breaking the covenant sanctions even though God’s prosecuting attorneys, like Elijah and Elisha warned them that destruction would result from refusing to repent. In 722, God judged Israel by sending the Assyrian invasion. The ten northern tribes were wiped out of existence.  

But the southern Kingdom, Judah, which included Jerusalem, continued on another 140 years before it, too, was judged. Southern prophets included Isaiah and Jeremiah, who predicted 70 years of captivity in Babylon. To set the stage for Nehemiah, it is worth reading the 2 Chronicles explanation of the 70-year captivity.

“The Lord the God of their fathers sent word to them (Judah) through the messengers again and again because he had pity on his people and on his dwelling place (Jerusalem). But they mocked God's messengers, despised these words and scoffed at his prophets until the wrath of the Lord was aroused against his people and there was no remedy. He brought up against them the king of the Babylonians who killed their young men with the sword spared neither young man nor young woman old man or aged. God handed all of them over to Nebuchadnezzar. They set fire to God's temple and broke down the wall of Jerusalem. They all they burned all the palaces and destroyed everything of value there he carried into exile to Babylon the remnant who escaped from the sword and they became servants to him and his sons until the Kingdom of Persia came to power.”

“70 years were completed in fulfillment of the word of the Lord spoken by Jeremiah. In the first year of Cyrus, king of the of Persia in order to fulfill the word of the Lord spoken by Jeremiah, the Lord moved the heart of Cyrus to make a proclamation throughout his realm and to put it in writing. This is what Cyrus king of Persia says, ‘The LORD, the God of heaven has given me all the kingdoms of the earth. He has appointed me to build a temple for him at Jerusalem in Judah. Anyone of his people among you may the Lord his God be with him let him go up.’” (2 Chron.36:15-24).

First group returns to Jerusalem. This decree, in 538 BC, led to the first group of Jews returning from Babylon to Jerusalem (800 miles away) and rebuilding the temple. This first group had returned to Jerusalem about 100 years before the book of Nehemiah begins. It took them twenty years to rebuild the temple, which was completed and dedicated in 516 BC. This history is recorded in Ezra 1-6. There is now a 58-year gap.

Second group returns to Jerusalem. Ezra 7 we discover that in 458 BC Ezra leads a second group of Jews from Babylon to Jerusalem, which included many priests and scribes. Ezra hammers the Jews in Jerusalem for intermarrying and bearing children to women of idolatrous religions. The book of Ezra ends with national repentance of the men who had married foreign wives. So, God’s people have returned to Jerusalem and now have repented of their idolatry. According to God’s covenant with his people, that is the requirement for God to gather his people back to Jerusalem. This happened just 13 years before the book of Nehemiah begins in 445. Let’s examine the first four verses.

“The words of Nehemiah the son of Hacaliah. Now it happened in the month of Chislev, in the twentieth year, as I was in Susa the citadel, that Hanani, one of my brothers, came with certain men from Judah. And I asked them concerning the Jews who escaped, who had survived the exile, and concerning Jerusalem. And they said to me, ‘The remnant there in the province who had survived the exile is in great trouble and shame. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates are destroyed by fire.’ As soon as I heard these words I sat down and wept and mourned for days, and I continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven”

Since the original destruction of Jerusalem had taken place nearly 140 years before this conversation, the condition of the torn-down walls would have been well known to Nehemiah. Its mention would hardly result in a new outbreak of grief and fasting on his part. Hanani would have been talking about a recent destruction of Jerusalem’s wall, which must have been partially rebuilt.   

NEHEMIAH’S HEART

Nehemiah was called to build the wall, but first, he wept over its ruins. I believe that the powerful leadership influence that Nehemiah would later have with those living in Jerusalem began with his heart. Notice the phrase, “as soon as I heard this.” Nehemiah’s immediate, reflexive response was to be crushed with grief. We aren’t told why this was his response. But throughout the Psalms and Israel’s history, the glory of the temple and Zion, the city of David, were constantly associated with God’s glory. It was the name of Yahweh that was being dragged through the mud and defiled. When you love the God who is so holy and morally perfect that he turns evil into good, hearing God’s reputation trashed breaks your heart. He is worthy of absolute, supreme honor and nothing less. Jesus taught us that the starting focus of prayer should be, “May your name be hallowed.” Nehemiah had a nobleness about him that defaulted to wanting God honored.

The Hebrew word used by Hanani translated great trouble means “misery” and “calamity.” It is hard to imagine the terror of living in a city without walls, of the vulnerability to marauding bands intent upon raping your wife and daughter, kidnapping your son, or stealing your possessions. Nehemiah was broken-hearted at the thought. As Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, when he foresaw the destruction of Jerusalem that would happen 70 years later, he wept. On this great day of celebration and rejoicing because the Messiah was finally entering his city, prophesied by Zehariah, Jesus could not stop himself from weeping. If we would have a heart like Jesus, we must learn to weep over the way sin destroys.   

LEARNING FROM NEHEMIAH’S PRAYER—FIVE PRINCIPLES

1. He bases his request on God’s character.

Vs 5: And I said, “O Lord God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments.”

Nehemiah used “awesome” to describe God 2500 years before “awesome” became so popular! This is a summary of his prayer since he mentioned prayer and fasting day and night. It is a short statement, but it acknowledges several great attributes of God. “God of heaven” implies his sovereignty. “Great and awesome” point to his omnipotence. “Who keeps covenant,” speaks of his faithfulness to his word. “Steadfast love” points to his consistent decisions that are always best for us. When our kids ask, “Is there anything that God can’t do, our answer should be, “yes.” He cannot act in a way that is inconsistent with his character. That is the foundation of our faith.

2. He comes in humility.

Vs. 6: Let your ear be attentive and your eyes open, to hear the prayer of your servant that I now pray before you day and night for the people of Israel your servants.

The mark of a godly leader is that he goes first to God with the problems. As the cup bearer of the King, Nehemiah held a high position, much like the position of chief of staff (except that you also had to taste the wine first to make sure it wasn’t poisoned.) But Nehemiah doesn’t plead his case from a position of strength but of weakness—“Hear the prayer of your servant.” James Boise observes,

“The self-sufficient do not pray; they merely talk to themselves. The self-satisfied will not pray; they have no knowledge of their need. The self-righteous cannot pray; they have no basis on which to approach God. A true leader is not one who is self-sufficient, self-satisfied, or self-righteous. On the contrary, he knows his need and is ready to humble himself before the One who alone is sufficient for it” (Nehemiah—Learning to Lead).

3. He puts a biblical lens over the situation.

Vs. 7-8. Confessing the sins of the people of Israel, which we have sinned against you. Even I and my father's house have sinned. We have acted very corruptly against you and have not kept the commandments, the statutes, and the rules that you commanded your servant Moses. Remember the word that you commanded your servant Moses, saying, ‘If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the peoples”

Nehemiah fully understands why he and his people are 800 miles from Jerusalem in Babylon, i.e. why God judged his nation and sent them into exile. They broke their covenant with Yahweh and they brought upon themselves the sanctions of the covenant. God’s prophets, especially Jeremiah, continually warned of this happening: Listen to these words from Jeremiah 9:23-16

“The Lord says: ‘Because they have forsaken my law that I set before them, and have not obeyed my voice or walked in accord with it, but have stubbornly followed their own hearts and have gone after the Baals, as their fathers taught them. Therefore thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold I will feed this people with bitter food and give them poisonous water to drink. I will scatter them among the nations whom neither they nor their fathers have known.’”

A biblical perspective begins with owning our own sin and our people’s sin. But beyond that, a biblical lens helps you know how to pray. For example, the qualities of a godly woman listed in Titus 2 tell me where to ask God to give her my wife, daughters, and daughters-in-law strength. The James 1 lens that trials are intended to make me Christ-like changes the way I pray about tough circumstances, “Help me submit to your chisel. I do want to be like Jesus.”  

4. He bases his request upon God’s promise.

Vs. 9-10: “But if you return to me and keep my commandments and do them, though your outcasts are in the uttermost parts of heaven, from there I will gather them and bring them to the place that I have chosen, to make my name dwell there.’ They are your servants and your people, whom you have redeemed by your great power and by your strong hand.” 

Nehemiah knew that just thirteen years earlier, because of Artaxerxes’ decree, Ezra and many of the other priests and scribes had left Babylon and gone to Jerusalem to proclaim the Law of the Lord to its inhabitants. Upon discovering that that some of them had intermarried with the pagan peoples surrounding them and adopted their customs, Ezra had wept and fasted for days. God used his broken heart over their sin to bring about a revival. The book of Ezra ended with the men who had taken pagan wives agreeing to “put them away.” Nehemiah had concrete evidence that in Jerusalem God’s people had turned back to him. So, like an attorney arguing his case, Nehemiah presses God. “God you promised that if your people return to you and keep your commandments you will bring them back to Jerusalem. And by the way, that is the place YOU have chosen for YOUR NAME to dwell. THAT is the city that is without walls.”

When we ask God to so something that his Word says is his will, we are on solit ground in prayer. Here is what the Apostle John taught. “And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him”(1 John 5:14-15). John heard Jesus say, “If you abide in me, and my words abide in 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.” Jesus says, “Pray based on my Word and for spiritual fruit.”

Let’s apply this principle to praying for your spouse, Christian child, or brother. This is what Paul told the Colossians he was praying for them in Colossian 1:9-12:

  • That you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom
  • That you may walk in a manner worthy of the Lord
  • That you be driven by the desire to be fully pleasing to him
  • That you would bear fruit: love, joy, peace, patience…self-control.
  • That every good work will be fruitful for the kingdom
  • That you will continually be increasing in the knowledge of God
  • That you will being strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance
  • That you will being strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all patience.
  • That you will know the joy of the Lord
  • That you will develop the habit of giving thanks to the Father
  • That in hard times you will never forget that you will share in the inheritance of the saints.

5. He makes a BIG, specific request.

Vs. 11. “O Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of your servant, and to the prayer of your servants who delight to fear your name, and give success to your servant today, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man.”

Nehemiah, perhaps through his fasting and prayer, had decided upon a plan. He needed the God of the universe to make it happen because it was outrageous. He was about to ask King Artaxerxes for three years paid vacation and to pay the cost of rebuilding the wall from the royal treasury! Talk about guts. Many years ago, I heard this challenge: Attempt something so great for God that it is doomed to failure unless God is in it. That was Nehemiah. Chuck Swindoll writes:

Got any rivers you think are uncrossable? Got any mountains you can't tunnel through. God specializes in things thought impossible. He does the things others cannot do. The Lord is the specialist we need for those uncrossable and impossible experiences. He delights in accomplishing what we cannot pull off. But he awaits our cry. He listens for our request. Nehemiah was quick to call for help. His favorite position, when faced with problems, was the kneeling position. How about you?

For Further Prayerful Thought:

  1. What stood out most to you about God’s covenant with Abraham and his descendants which included sanctions, covenant blessings for obedience and covenant curses for disobedience?
  2. What was most attractive to you about Nehemiah’s heart?
  3. Which lessons about prayer most stood out. Which do you most want to remember?

 

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Spiritual Leaders Protect a Child from Himself

Spiritual Leaders Protect a Child from Himself

On 10 January, 2026 By Gary Yagel

Today we continue our study of the qualifications for overseers in 1 Timothy 3:4-5 where we read, He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive, for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God's church? This episode seeks to identify a biblical pattern for disciplining our children. We find that pattern in the way God, our heavenly father, disciplines us revealed in Hebrews 12. This episode identifies 6 parts to this pattern.

Before launching into our study of God’s fathering principles from Hebrews 12, it is worth noting again how countercultural Paul’s requirement for church leaders is.

  1. First, in this text Paul explains why the church is to be led by men. The reason is that the family is to be led by a man who God says, is the “head of the wife.” Home leadership is a requirement for church leadership. But some Christians have so conformed their thinking to the world, that they deny this obvious truth and ordain women to be elders and pastors. That is their right. What is mystifying is that they say they believe in the authority of the Bible.
  2. The second way that Paul’s teaching is countercultural is by using the word, “submissive” as the goal of parenting. This Greek word is a military term meaning to rank under from HUPO, under and TASSO, to arrange. Paul sees the goal of parenting as teaching a child to respect authority. Critical theory teaches the rising generation to disrespect those in positions of authority because they are oppressors.

This episode identifies six biblical principles from Hebrews 12:5-11 for Christian fathers to follow in disciplining their kids. You may not yet be married, be a dad, or still have any kids at home. But I’m confident these principles will be enlightening to you as you coach, teach, grandparent, pass on parenting guidance, or consider how your heavenly father parents you. In this text, the writer is trying to explain to his readers the painful experiences they are called to endure.

And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.” It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

As we continue the series, Loving Our Kids with the Fatherly Love of God, this text is loaded with parallels between the way God has designed FATHERS to discipline their CHILDREN and the way GOD OUR HEAVENLY FATHER disciplines US.

1. God has ordained the “common grace” principle that a father must protect his children from the destruction of their own self-centered, rebellious nature by firmly disciplining them. Proverbs 22:15 reminds us, Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him. Henry Cloud and John Townsend in their book, Boundaries with Kids, describe this sinful nature in action. An accurate description of children is that they are little people who are out of control of themselves and attempting to control everyone around them. They do not want to take control of themselves to adapt to the requirements of Mom and Dad; they want Mom and Dad to change the requirements!

This creation, common-grace principle that loving fathers discipline their kids is quoted by Solomon in Proverbs 3:11-12. It is repeated in Hebrews 12. Then the Hebrews author takes the principle a step further, asking rhetorically, what son is there whom his father does not discipline? In fact, this creation design that fathers discipline their children is so foundational that Hebrews continues, If you are left without discipline, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.

Not only does this creation principle apply to all human families, but in the community of faith, Paul reinforces it in Ephesians 6 when he explicitly charges fathers, not mothers, to raise up the children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. To be sure, children are commanded to obey PARENTS not just DAD. We are to be joined at the hip with our wives who provide vital partnership in administering discipline. Nevertheless, in God’s creation design and in the new humanity, the church, the responsibility for disciplining the children is given primarily to fathers, not mothers. It is worth noting that in America, manuals for raising children were addressed to fathers until the mid-1800’s when the Industrial Revolution took men out of their homes and into factories, essentially taking them out of their children’s lives during the day. That is when parenting manuals stopped addressing fathers and started addressing mothers. As Christian men devoted to staying focused on our mission from the Lord, we need to recover this responsibility, think deeply about biblical principles of discipline, and seek our wife’s partnership in presenting a unified, coherent, plan for disciplining our kids.

2. Loving our children requires firmly disciplining them. Hebrews 12:6 The Lord disciplines the one he loves and chastises every son whom he receives. Parental love needs to be far more than a caring feeling inside towards our children. The word used here for love is AGAPE, which is sacrificial love devoted to doing whatever is best for the other. What is best for our child, quite often, is the opposite of what my warm feeling for her would guide me to do. My warm feelings don’t want conflict. My caring feelings don’t want my child to hurt. But, the reality is that painful consequences for wrong behavior consistently administered is the way God commands parents to raise their kids. Whom the Lord loves he disciplines. It is not loving to passively allow a child’s sinful nature to shape her into a self-centered monster who expects the world to revolve around her. Nearly all a child needs for success and happiness she must learn through a parent’s discipline. This is such a vital truth that God says, Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him (Prov 13:24).

Five Reasons Why Parents Fail To Firmly Discipline Their Children

A. Parental irresponsibility. God commands parents, Discipline your son while there is hope, And do not desire his death (Prov 19:18) A child’s job is to test your “boundaries,” i.e. your resolve so she can learn about reality. Your child’s sinful nature makes her hate rules and limits. The parent’s job is to withstand the testing of those limits, including the child’s anger, pouting, tantrums, etc. A key to successful parenting is enduring your child’s hatred of your restrictions—your boundaries for them. Remember, their job is to test our boundaries and they are usually very good at their job! One wise parent said, “The trick of parenting is to hold onto your restriction one more time than your children hold onto their demand.”

B. Believing that loving their child means ACCEPTING his wrong behavior instead of CORRECTING it. The biblical view is the exact opposite: The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child left to himself brings shame to his mother (Prov 29:15). In this culture love has been mistakenly mis-defined as tolerance. But a loving doctor doesn’t tolerate cancer; he confronts it, and puts his patient through the pain of cutting it out.

C. Emotional neediness. Sometimes parents are more dependent than they realize upon their child’s affection and closeness which fills their own emotional tank. Unconsciously they are hesitant to create hostility in their child by being firm with discipline. Here is a Christian Psychologist’s explanation of this barrier to genuinely loving our kids—a story about Samantha raising a little monster.

   “Why can’t I spend the night with Madeline?” whined thirteen-year-old Beverly to her mother, Samantha.

   Tentatively, Samantha said, “Honey, remember that you’ve already been out two nights this week, and it’s a school night. I’m sure you can see Madeline another time.”

   “You just don’t want me to have friends! I never get to do anything I want never, never! “With this pronouncement Beverly stomped out of the kitchen and up to her room. Samantha then began the ancient dance she and her daughter had danced for many years. Samantha wanted and needed Beverly to be happy and close; their relationship was a central source of support for her. It was too painful to endure her daughter’s distance.

   Standing outside the closed door to her bedroom, she said, “Maybe I’ve been a little harsh. You’ve had a tough week. I guess one more night won’t hurt you.” The door burst open, and Beverly embraced Samantha and exclaimed, “Mom, you’re the best.”

D. Over-identifying with the child. Those who are gifted at showing mercy are especially susceptible to this obstacle. They instinctively want to protect their child from pain. Their thoughts may harken back to painful experiences they had with their own parents when they felt misunderstood or were denied what they really wanted by their parents. They must understand that their child will be most helped in the long-run by the parent imposing painful consequences now—to learn the character lessons that will prevent more serious pain later. For example, a child who is punished for violating the rule that she is not to talk to strangers in public places when mom or dad is not around—may be spared the horror of being sexually abused in the future.

E. Ignoring and zapping. This approach to parenting is quite common. A dad on the playground, says to his son, “Stop playing on the monkey bars.” But his son knows that this command means nothing. His father will not act until he has told the boy four or five times to stay off the monkey bars. So, the son continues to ignore his father’s command. The father, who is busy talking, yells at him again, but the son knows that his dad is not steamed up enough to act. Finally, the father reaches his limit and explodes, “You’ve got me really angry with you now. Go get into that car.” The dad trained his son not to obey until he started to get angry. He also made the issue HIS anger instead of the son’s disobedience. Kids live up to what is demanded of them.

Disciplining a child is tough. The only thing tougher is living with a child who is NOT firmly disciplined. We’ve just identified 5 reasons parents fail to firmly discipline their children even though the Lord disciplines the one he loves and chastises every son whom he receives

3. Discipline inflicts short-run pain for the long-term gain of your child. We see this principle in Heb 12:11 For the moment all discipline seems PAINFUL rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Parents and coaches must be willing to impose the short-run pain of today’s discipline for the long-run benefit the character that immerges tomorrow. When you paddle a child for not listening to you but running into the street, you administer safe limited pain so that next time he starts to run into the street, he will stop and not be hit by a car and be paralyzed for life. You administer safe, light, controlled pain now, so he avoids more severe pain later.

4. Firmly discipling our kids actually leads them to respect us more. The author to the Hebrews points this out, We have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them (vs 9). A 13-year-old penned the following letter to his dad.

Dear Dad,

   I like the way you don’t let me get away with much. Sometimes I act mad when I don’t get my way, but deep down I am glad you are strict. I would be scared to death if you let me do anything I want. I like that you and Mom agree on the rules around here. At Tommy’s house, if his mom says he can’t do something, he goes and asks his dad because he knows his dad will say okay just to get rid of him. And then there is a fight. Kids hate it when their mom and dad fight. I like the way you tell me the truth about everything. When I grow up and have kids, I want to be just like you.

   Your son, Jimmy

Admittedly, Jimmy was having a good day! Nevertheless, this verse from Hebrews 12 reveals an interesting truth about the respect that men are driven to want. Letting a child escape the punishment he deserves may avoid his hostility directed at you now, but in the long run he will disrespect you for not disciplining him.

5. Discipline puts our child on the path of LIFE: Hebrews 12:9-10 describes the benefits of discipline. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and LIVE? For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us FOR OUR GOOD, that we may SHARE HIS HOLINESS. The word, holy, means whole, not broken, not fragmented, restored to the way God designed us to be and to live the way we were designed to live. Parenting is about more than the present; we are preparing our child for his future. A child’s destiny will be determined by his character. Whether she grows up to succeed in love and in life depends upon what she possesses inside. Cloud and Townsend observe,

If a person’s character makeup determines his future, then childrearing is primarily about helping children to develop character that will take them through life safely, securely, productively, and joyfully. Parents—and those who work with children—would do well to keep this in mind. A major goal of raising children is to help them develop the character that will make their future go well (Ibid).

Setting standards and giving painful consequences when they are not obeyed are like training wheels that reinforce correct behavior in our children while they are gradually internalizing the larger reason for such behavior. Here are 3 foundational qualities we want our discipline to help them grow into.

a. Being Loving. We want our children to grow up to be loving, but the foundation for being a loving person is realizing that the world dies not revolve around them. Loving people consider the consequences of their behavior on others before they act. Training our children using rewards and punishment can teach them not to interrupt others while they are speaking (which is rude), to come to dinner immediately when it is ready (treating the food preparer with respect), keeping toys put away and clothes hung up (which shows respect to the rest of the family). This kind of training (giving consequences for selfishness, and mistreatment of others) can then be internalized to real love.

b. Being Self-controlled. Saying “no” to a toddler and smacking her hand if she touches something off limits trains her to master her impulses. My wife and I made plenty of mistakes as parents, but one thing we taught our toddlers was that when we yelled across the house to them or across the church lobby, saying “Come,” they were to come immediately. Very early they discovered there were painful consequences if they did not immediately come when we called them. Looking back, I think that training taught them self-mastery, i.e. impulse control.

c. Being Responsible. In many ways responsibility is the foundation of character—knowing what I am responsible for as opposed to blaming others or making excuses. It is also knowing what I am not responsible for—which is a key to overcoming worry and trusting God instead. To cite Boundaries with Kids, my favorite parenting book once more, Truly responsible people take ownership for the following things: feelings, attitudes, behaviors, choices, limits, talents, thoughts, desires, values, loves. To take ownership for these is to be a truly responsible person, the kind of person with whom everyone wants to have a relationship. A responsible person says, “My feelings are my problem, or “My attitude is my problem.”  

6. God does NOT simply tell us that his painful discipline will build spiritual fruitfulness LATER; God expresses EMPATHY WITH OUR SUFFERING RIGHT NOW. Hebrews 12:11 says, For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant. but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. God, in his Word tells us that he understands that the discipline process is painful and not pleasant. That is empathy.  Always accompany discipline with empathy for the pain it causes your child, but don’t rescue your child from the consequences of his misbehavior. Empathize with them about how hard it is to do the right thing, and then still require it. “I know it is lousy to have to clean up your room before you go out to play—I don’t always love having to keep my office clean either.” “I know it hurts to not be able to go out to the movies with your friends this weekend because last weekend you did not get back by the curfew. Missing out on being with your friends is painful. But that punishment is not changing.” “Losing your phone privileges for a week must suck. I hate missing out on what is happening in my friends’ lives.” “I know it is easy to get angry and be disrespectful towards others. I had to apologize to my boss for my disrespectful attitude towards her last week. But you still need to miss your video game time this evening and think about how it feels to be attacked by angry words.”

In short, as we model our discipline of our children after God’s discipline of us we must also exhibit another attribute of God—his fatherly compassion. Psalm 103 describes the heart of God. As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. Compassion does not mean canceling consequences for wrong behavior; but it is feeling the pain that our children feel as they have to learn some of the same hard lessons that we ourselves have had to learn.

For Further Prayerful Thought

  1. How would you answer a husband who said, “My wife is so much better with the kids, I leave the discipline of the children to her?”
  2. How would you explain to someone that loving a child requires disciplining them but that letting them go their own ways is a form of hatred for them?
  3. Which of the 6 reasons parents don’t discipline their kids as well as they should stands out to you?
  4. Which of the 6 principles from Hebrews 12 for administering discipline that is like God’s discipline of us stood out most to you? Why do you think that is important?
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Qualities of a Leader Others Will Follow

Qualities of a Leader Others Will Follow

On 03 January, 2026 By Gary Yagel

One of my favorite leadership proverbs is, “He who thinks he is leading when no one is following is only taking a walk.” So how do leaders get others to follow them? That is a relevant question because nearly everyone listening to the podcast is in a leadership position or will be. This includes married men (or single guys who expect to be) as leaders of their marriages, dads, those overseeing others at work, and those filling leadership roles in the church.

As we return to our pre-Christmas study of I Timothy, we come to chapter three, where Paul lays out the qualifications to serve as an elder in the church. In doing so, he gives us a portrait of not only the character required for spiritual leadership, but of leadership that even the secular world acknowledges attracts followers.   

Let’s begin studying the qualities required for spiritual leadership by looking at the first two verses of I Timothy 3: The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach.

Without detracting from the truth that this description is God’s Word, it is interesting that even in Roman secular culture, there is a common grace understanding of very similar virtues required for effective leadership.

For example, ancient writer, Diogenes Latier gives the stoic description: “He must be married, he must be without pride, he must be temperate and he must combine prudence of mind with excellence of outward behavior.”  Another ancient writer, Onosander gives us another. “He must be prudent, self-controlled, sober, frugal, enduring in toil, intelligent, without love of money, neither young nor old, if possible, the father of a family, able to speak competently, and of good reputation” (William Batclay, Commentary on I Timothy).

Leadership is influence, i.e. the ability to get a following. So, even secular observations about reality point to qualities of a leader that awaken respect in followers. So, let’s dig into this text.

Paul Begins by Affirming Leadership

“If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task.” Paul begins with the affirmation of leadership structures for the church in two ways: 1) by affirming one who aspires to serve as a leader and 2) by affirming the leadership position of overseer, itself, calling this function of leading a noble task. This affirmation grows from several roots.

  • God specifically designed a leadership position for the church. That position is described by three words, which are used somewhat interchangeably in the NT. They are elder, PRESBUTEROS (Titus 1:5), overseer EPISCOPAS (1 Tim 3:1), and pastor (POIMEN) (Eph 4:11 and I Peter 5:1-2). Elder points to the fundamental requirement for being ordained to this office, spiritual maturity. Overseer points to this office holders’ task of directing the church in its functions. Pastor (shepherd) refers to the relationship between the leaders and their flock.
  • This is the office tasked with the authoritative teaching of God’s Word. Notice that in verse two, the overseer must be able to teach. The is the fundamental difference between the office of deacon and elder. This requirement is missing in the biblical requirements for deacon. Also, the office of pastor is grammatically linked to the process of teaching in Ephesians 4:11 so that the office is called pastor/teacher. The elder, overseer, shepherd has one eye on the Word of God and the other on the sheep to feed and lead them. Within the eldership, later in I Timothy, Paul seems to delineate a category of elders who teach and preach the Word full time, “who labor in preaching and teaching,” to be worthy of double honor, which includes paying them fairly (I Tim 5:17-18).
  • The office of overseer is affirmed because God has ordained structures of authority for family, civil, and ecclesiastical life. As we’ve seen in past podcasts, God is quite clear in telling us that these authority structures are ordained by him—men to lead their marriages and homes, civil government to reward good and punish evil, and elders in the church to oversee it and lead it. This biblical worldview of authority structures sharply conflicts with an ideology currently poisoning our culture called cultural Marxism (critical theory), which automatically calls those who hold these positions privileged oppressors. Moreover, where Scripture commands believers to respect those holding leadership positions because God placed them there, critical theory demonizes those leaders, going so far as to justifies using force to overthrow leadership structures. This biblical worldview of leadership is also directly opposed by egalitarianism, which ignores what the Bible teaches about men filling biblical leadership roles. Leading our homes is NOT patriarchal oppression; it is obedience to Jesus!

The word, noble (KAKOS), which Paul uses to describe the office of overseer, means inherently good, honorable, distinguished, exalted by moral or ethical excellence. Leading our homes and churches as men is not only demeaned by many in the culture but often viewed as outright oppressive patriarchy. But the fact is that every effort to lead is precious; it is a noble effort in God’s eyes.

This truth speaks volumes to guys who are disheartened about their leadership of their marriage and families. As wonderful as our wives are, Scripture tells us that even wives who support the biblical teaching of male leadership in the home and church still have a sinful nature that instinctively opposes their husbands. Genesis 3:16 teaches this reality and when both Paul and Peter cover household responsibilities they both find it necessary to command wives to submit to their husbands. My point is not to blame wives. After all, how well do we do our jobs—repeatedly sacrificing to put our wives’ well-being ahead of our own needs and desires? The point is that marriage leadership is tough because it requires overcoming two sinful natures. If you feel beaten up, not appreciated, and like a failure at loving her unselfishly, when you are not receiving what you need, remember, your task is a noble one. Spiritual leadership at home is not for sissies; it is for those who man up embracing it as the noble calling that it is. Seeking to love unconditionally is a royal action, in God’s eyes. When you keep trying to lead, even when you don’t see any results in your marriage or with your kids—you are still striving to do something that Jesus notices and calls noble.

A Noble Office Must Be Filled by Those of Noble Character

A. Above reproach. Paul begins with a sobering reality. The leader of an organization, whether a family, a business, or a church carries the weight of responsibility for the organization’s reputation on his shoulders. As Christ’s stewards, our leadership responsibility of our families, businesses (since God created us for good works he planned before creation), and especially Christ’s church begins, continues, and ends with the cry, “NEVER let me bring shame upon your name from this position.” May we all be consumed by the passion not just to never put Jesus’ reputation at risk but to fulfill leadership roles assigned by Jesus with such excellence that his name is exalted.

B. The husband of one wife. This Greek phrase as not common. In Greek, the word wife and woman are the same word, as are husband and man. This text is literally “of one-wife husband.” A literalistic interpretation of this phrase is that men who never marry, whose wives have died, or who are divorced are prohibited from serving as elders. Such an interpretation is inconsistent with the rest of Scripture. For example, a parallel phrase is used as a requirement for women to receive financial help as widows, (of one-husband wife) Yet, in the same text the younger widows are urged to remarry, which would disqualify future elderly women from meeting the requirement of  being the wife of one husband if this interpretation were intended by Paul. So, the best understanding, in my view, is to interpret the phrase to mean “a one-woman man.” This widely accepted understanding precludes polygamy and having a mistress, which were common in Roman culture. It also prohibits on-going adultery or an unbiblical divorce, for which the church believes sincere repentance has not been demonstrated.

This “a one-woman man” interpretation is also a very apt description of sexual purity. Our sexual appetite is an enormous blessing. In fact, science has demonstrated chemical and hormonal health benefits of intercourse, not to mention the re-bonding of hearts. Being a wise “one-woman man” is not always easy, since two individuals are involved, both of whom have a selfish nature to overcome. Nevertheless, a wise spiritual leader will be patient but intentional about doing what he can to ensure that he and his wife are satisfying each other’s sexual and emotional intimacy needs. (link to my book).

C. Sober-minded (NEPHALIOS). This Greek word means “to be free from the influence of intoxicants.” It is translated temperate. There is one exception to this prohibition against intoxication. Married men are commanded, Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love. Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman and embrace the bosom of an adulteress? (Proverbs 5:18-20)   

This one exception is remarkable, since drunkenness, in general, is sin. With the exception of being sexually addicted to our wives, the evil of addictions is that we are never to let anything but the Holy Spirit control us. Paul made this clear in his prohibition, “Do not be drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Holy Spirit” (Eph 5:18). God wants us to enjoy the pleasures of life, working, sex, success, winning, food, drink, recreation. But the virtue NEPHALIOS, which is often used in conjunction of being watchful, makes us careful not to let the appetite for pleasure control us, whether the appetite is for alcohol, sexual pleasure (porn), food (gluttony), or success (workaholism).

D. Self-control (SOPHRON). Barclay points out that this Greek word was virtually untranslatable into one word. He explains, “It is variously translated, of sound mind, discreet, prudent, self-controlled, chaste, having complete control over sensual desires…Plato defined it as ‘the mastery of pleasure and desire.’” This virtue goes beyond preventing our appetites from being so out-of-control that they addict us (NEPHALIOS); this word implies the inner mastery of all of our desires—physical, emotional, and spiritual. It is hard to overstate the importance of this character quality in Scripture. For example, when Paul writes a similar pastoral letter to Titus, he urges Titus to implore four groups of believers to pursue godliness, older men, older women, younger women and younger men. The only virtue that Paul challenges all four groups to focus upon is this quality, SOPHRON, i.e. self-control. Here are a few thoughts about the virtue of self-control.

  • Self-control is most easily learned in childhood. I believe that the reason God says to us, Whoever spares the rod hates his son (Prov 13:24) is that painful consequences for wrong behavior are vital for teaching a child self-control. To never say, “No” to a child or put down clear boundaries with painful consequences for violations deprives a child of learning one of the most foundational virtues, “saying no to my desires,” i.e. self-control.
  • Proverbs 25:28 says, Like a city that is broken into and without walls so is a person who has no self-control over his spirit. Failure to teach a child self-mastery through painful consequences for crossing the line produces adults who are led around by whatever desire seizes them like children following the Pied Piper.
  • The reason that self-control is so valuable is this truism: We shape our habits, our habits shape our character, our character shapes our destiny.
  •  A great definition of self-control is instant obedience to the initial promptings of the Holy Spirit.
  • When someone asks you for a prayer request and you can’t think of anything, just ask him to pray for the fruit of the Spirit, self-control. It is essential for shaping our lives to accomplish God’s game plan for us. But it is also freeing to know that in our weakness, we can claim the fruit of God’s Spirit at work in us producing self-control.

E. Respectable (KOSMIAN). This adjective comes from the Greek word KOSMOS (origin of English word cosmos), which is the Greek word for world, with an emphasis on the word order, as in “the created order.” It is translated respectable, well-behaved, and dignified, all of which refer to the outward life that is well-ordered. Barclay notices the connection between the prior virtue, self-control (SOHRON) and this quality KOSMIAN. “If a man is KOSMIAN in his outer conduct, it is because he is SOPHRON in his inner life.” The progression of thought here suggests a statement made by Gordon MacDonald in his book Ordering Your Private World, mentioned earlier in this study, “If my outer world is in order, it will be because I am convinced that the inner world of the spiritual must govern the outer world of activity.” Is that the way you are functioning? Is time for retreating you your inner world a regular part of your time management?

Perhaps this virtue should not surprise us, when we think back to the way Paul began this letter to Timothy. Charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine, nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies, which promote speculations rather than the STEWARDSHIP from God that is by faith. This term, stewardship, is a very rich word, with an enormous biblical theme behind it to describe our mission as Christ-followers. Just as our Creator-God brought order out of chaos, we, God’s image-bearers are to shape and order Kingdom Earth FOR Him. We are to spread the Kingdom righteousness and restoration wherever we have influence. Our inner walk with Jesus should be resulting in outward impact for the kingdom of righteousness in the cosmos.  

F. Hospitable. (PHILOXENIA). The Greek word for hospitality comes from the word for friendship love—PHILEO combined with the word for stranger XENIA. It describes an open heart towards outsiders and a resulting open home towards them. A welcoming heart towards outsiders has always been at the core of living out the Christian faith. This aspect of godliness calls all Christians to special care for aliens, sojourners, and immigrants. It is in keeping with OT calls to vigilance by God’s people to ensure that the disenfranchised are never mistreated: “Do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor” (Zechariah 7:10).

As I have stated in the past, I believe that Scripture leaves no room for Christians to oppose the enforcement of borders in our country or Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers enforcing immigration law. Not only is administering such punishment the responsibility of government, but Scripture also makes clear that for an unrepentant, continual lawbreaker, punishing the lawbreaker is an act of love. However, what about those who have crossed our border illegally, once, but are otherwise law-abiding aliens? In my view, Christians cannot just close our hearts to their plight. We cannot abandon our call to love the stranger, even if he once crossed the border illegally. It seems to me that the call to love the stranger requires us to at least ask some questions: Is every alien caught by ICE given a chance to be legally deported with his family? Is issuing a steep fine for crossing the border illegally but offering a path to citizenship more expressive of Jesus’ just mercy than forcibly deporting them? I don’t know. But I do know that godliness requires special love for outsiders, even those who broke the law to come into our country.

To summarize this episode, these two verses from I Timothy 3, are extremely countercultural. Leadership and authority in our culture are routinely demonized because the strands of egalitarianism and cultural Marxism are spreading throughout the fabric of social media. But God says, pursing your God-assigned leadership position is a noble endeavor. And that pursuit of leadership requires cultivating the heart attitudes that draw others into following you.

For Further Prayerful Thought:

  1. How does Paul’s insistence that fulfilling a spiritual leadership position is a “noble task” affect your perspective about such positions?
  2. How can we better remember that fulfilling the leadership positions assigned to us by Jesus with excellence brings honor to Him?
  3. Which of the six virtues most stood out to you 1) above reproach, 2) a one-woman man, 3) sober-minded, 4) self-controlled, 5) exhibiting an ordered life, 6) demonstrating love for the outsider.
  4. Which of the above six do you most need to focus upon building?
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Re-Energized to Use Prayer as a Weapon in 2026

Re-Energized to Use Prayer as a Weapon in 2026

On 26 December, 2025 By Gary Yagel

Hi Men,

This is Gary Yagel. After Jesus’ ascension, the eleven returned to the upper room in Jerusalem where they were staying and were “devoting themselves to prayer.” Not surprisingly, such intense devotion to prayer brought a huge advance for the kingdom. A few days later, on the Day of Pentecost, when Peter preached to the crowds, 3000 souls came to faith.

Wouldn’t you love to see more spiritual fruitfulness in your life in 2026—your love for Jesus growing stronger, your heart becoming more like his, your loved ones putting their roots more deeply into Christ, the vine, more opportunities to plant the seeds of faith in the lost around you? I know I would. And the path to such spiritual impact is clear—devote myself to prayer. May this past episode re-energize your determination to wage war for the kingdom to prevail in your sphere of life in 2026, as it has re-energized mine.

Today’s episode is from is the final week of a 4-week series we produced in August of 2023, entitled Five Habits That Shape Godly Men. What drives our podcast/blog is the desire to hear, “well done” from the lips of our Lord after running the race marked out for us. Just as the key to success in athletics is training—building the right habits—we know that in the spiritual world the same principle holds true: WE shape OUR HABITS—and then OUR HABITS shape OUR LIVES.

Do you wish you had a little more motivation for your prayer life? I know I could use more. That is our objective as we examine Jesus’ prayer life in this episode. But first, let’s review the first 4 habits we’ve covered in this series. We began with the most important habit of all—REGULARLY REALIGNING OUR HEARTS—building the habit of re-setting our heart affections on Lord, as our first love. The importance of keeping the affections of our heart set upon God first is underscored by our Lord who told us that the first and greatest of all commandments is “to love the Lord with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30). Keeping our hearts properly aligned is the most vital discipline any human can have, because God says to us, Above all else, guard your heart, for from it flow the springs of life (Prov 4:23). In this episode (# 34, August 14) we looked very specifically at how to build a weekly habit into our lives that resets our affections on delighting in the Lord. Then, in the second half of that episode, we examined a second habit that shapes the life of a godly man--the practice that caused both Joshua and David to flourish—meditating on the Word of God. Frankly, the promises of God that accompany gaining God’s wisdom are staggering. Her profit is better than gold. She is more precious than jewels, and nothing you desire can compare with her. Long life is in her right hand; in her left hand are riches and honor. Her ways are ways of pleasant ways and all her paths are peace. SHE IS A TREE OF LIFE to those who lay hold of her” (Prov 3:14-18).

Then we saw the power of investing our treasure in kingdom ministry because wherever our treasure is, our hearts will follow. We looked to Scripture to answer the question, “how do I determine how much my check each month to support kingdom work should be?” Then, last week, we studied a fourth habit—the pattern we observed in Jesus’ life of escaping to the wilderness to meet with his CO—God the Father—to pray about his mission. We asked the question, “If God has ordained a world in which success in nearly every pursuit requires a game plan—why would we think accomplishing HIS MISSION for us would be any different, especially when we see Jesus modeling the practice of getting away with his heavenly father to pray about his mission?” We invited a busy, 27-year-old high school teacher and football coach to share his practice of finding an hour Sunday morning before church to focus with his CO on his mission.

So, let’s dig into another discipline of Jesus—praying specifically for the spiritual battles of those he cared for. Jesus’ life was as full and busy as ours is, yet Luke was amazed that in the midst of his frenetic pace of ministry, Jesus got away to pray so much. Listen to Luke’s description. After Jesus heals a leper, Luke says Now, even more, the report about him went abroad, and great crowds gathered to hear him and to be healed of their infirmities. BUT HE WOULD WITHDRAW TO DESOLATE PLACES AND PRAY (vs5:15-16). Luke the historian, while recounting the life of Jesus, was struck by Jesus’ radical devotion to prayer. The crowd is exploding, the needs and opportunities to teach, heal, and cast out demons are growing exponentially. But nothing could change Jesus’ astonishing devotion to shut out the crowds and pray.

Then later, in chapter 22—some details about the text reveal more about Jesus’ devotion to interceding in prayer for those he loved. Jesus said, “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat” (Luke 22:31). Here, the Greek word, you, is plural, indicating that all the disciples are in view. Satan is seeking to violently shake every one of the disciples. Satan is real. He is the destroyer. He hates followers of Christ. Jesus devoted himself to interceding in prayer for his team, his loved ones, his disciples. Jesus’ method of combat to fight Satan was PRAYER. When I read this story, I think, “Jesus was God. Why didn’t he just command Satan to leave Peter and the other disciples alone? Why did he have to pray to the Father? There is much that we don’t know about the way God the Son emptied himself—as described by the Apostle Paul in Philippians 2. But we see here that Jesus, God’s Son in the flesh, fights Satan with prayer.

As Jesus continues the conversation in Luke 22, he switches to the singular word you to address Peter: “but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.” Notice how specifically Jesus’ prayer was tailored to the spiritual battle surrounding Peter. “I have prayed, Peter, that though you will betray me, your faith ultimately will not fail. I have prayed that you will come back to me.” Then Jesus instructs Peter, “When you do, strengthen your brothers.” “My prayer will be answered—you will come back to me after failing me; and when that happens there is something I want you to do—strengthen the other brothers.” Very specifically, his prayer gave spiritual power to Peter—the power needed to resist Satan’s attempts undermine Peter’s faith. Consistently Scripture reveals that prayer for others empowers them to defeat Satan. Let’s examine a few more texts.

1. After Jesus returns from the Mount of Transfiguration, he finds his disciples arguing with a group of Scribes. The text says: And he asked them, “What are you arguing about with them?” And someone from the crowd answered him, “Teacher, I brought my son to you, for he has a spirit that makes him mute. And whenever it seizes him, it throws him down, and he foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid. So I asked your disciples to cast it out, and they were not able….Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, “You mute and deaf spirit, I command you, come out of him and never enter him again.” And after crying out and convulsing him terribly, it came out, and the boy was like a corpse, so that most of them said, “He is dead.” But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he arose. And when he had entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, “Why could we not cast it out?” And he said to them, “THIS KIND CANNOT BE DRIVEN OUT BY ANYTHING BUT PRAYER” (Mark 9:29).

2. The best-known text about spiritual conflict in Scripture is Ephesians 6, which begins, For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places (vs 12). Then Paul gives us two basic commands: A) PUT YOUR ARMOR ON so you can use it to stand firm (vs 13-17) B) PRAY…. praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints (vs 18-20) Again we see God telling us that the way to fight Satan is to pray. Interceding is not something we do for our loved ones simply because God commands it but because it stops Satan’s destructive work in people’s lives.

3. When we realize that the OT gives us physical pictures of spiritual realities, Exodus 17 communicates the same truth. Prayer is the way to defeat the powers of darkness.

So Joshua did as Moses told him, and fought with Amalek, while Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill. Whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed, and whenever he lowered his hand, Amalek prevailed. But Moses' hands grew weary, so they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it, while Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on one side, and the other on the other side. So his hands were steady until the going down of the sun.  And Joshua overwhelmed Amalek and his people with the sword (vs 10-13).

I can think of no clearer picture of the power of prayer to defeat Satan than this. As Moses lifts up the staff of the Lord in prayer—Joshua and Israel prevail; but when he lowers his staff, the Amalekites prevail. Incidentally, Aaron and Hur provide a great picture of why we need other brothers in our lives. Like Moses, our arms of prayer get weary. Unlike Moses we cannot see the spiritual victories that take place in the lives of our loved ones when we pray, which makes our arms lifted in prayer to get heavy quickly. The truth is that every last man reading this blog has loved ones—a wife, kids, friends, neighbors down in the valley—who will lose spiritual battles if we do not pray for them and will win those spiritual battles if we do. Prayer defeats Satan. Renowned missionary, Wesley Duewel, writes,

Prevailing prayer is God’s ordained means for extending His kingdom, for defeating Satan and his empire of darkness and evil, and fulfilling God’s eternal plan and bringing into effect His good will on earth. It is God’s means of covering the earth with his blessings. Prevailing prayer is God’s priority strategy for our age (Mighty Prevailing Prayer).

4. Many passages of Scripture link prayer to the conquest of Christ’s kingdom of light over Satan’s kingdom of darkness. Our calling as Christ-followers is to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, i.e. to seek to displace the Prince of the Power of Darkness and his evil cohort from their rule over earth, spreading Christ’s kingdom instead. This link between defeating sin to advance Christ’s the kingdom of righteousness and prayer is quite clear in Jesus’ instructions about prayer. He says to pray, “May your kingdom of righteousness come, may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. In heaven, there is total surrender to the righteous will of God. As we pray for righteousness to overcome evil, specific biblical texts apply this principle of prayer to our own personal godliness while other texts explain that it is by prayer that righteousness spreads over the earth.

  • Concerning our personal growth into holiness, Jesus linked prayer directly to the spiritual fruit of our lives. Probably standing in front of a grape vine, Jesus said to the 12, If you abide in me, and my words abide in 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. The fruit of the Spirit, like the faith that Jesus’ intercessory prayer enabled in Peter, comes about through prayer.
  • But prayer is not just the power behind overthrowing our personal sins. Psalm 2 tells us that prayer is the appointed way that Christ is spreading his kingdom over the nations right now. Psalm 2 consists of a conversation between God the Father and God the Son, beginning with God the Father’s scorn for mankind’s arrogant attacks against him and his Anointed One, Jesus. But they will be defeated BY JESUS’ PRAYER. Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against his Anointed, saying, “Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us.” He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord holds them in derision.  Then he will speak to them in his wrath, and terrify them in his fury, saying, “As for me, I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill.” I will tell of the decree: The Lord said to me, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you. ASK OF ME, AND I WILL MAKE THE NATIONS YOUR HERITAGE, AND THE ENDS OF THE EARTH YOUR POSSESSION (Ps 2:1-8).

Jesus is interceding right now for the overthrow of Satan’s kingdom and spread of the kingdom of righteousness. The biblical case could not be more clearcut: intercessory prayer gives our loved ones spiritual power to defeat Satan.

12 Reasons to Devote Ourselves to Intercessory Prayer

Here is a succinct, rapid-fire list of benefits of devoting ourselves to intercessory prayer for our loved ones.

  1. Intercessory prayer is God’s ordained means of releasing spiritual, strength, blessing, and power. James 4:2. “You have not because you ask not.”
  2. Intercessory prayer gives vital needed strength to our loved ones in their spiritual battles. Eph 6:19-20 “Pray that I may declare the gospel fearlessly as I should.”
  3. Intercessory prayer is God’s ordained way of defeating Satan, Luke 22:13 “Simon, Simon, Satan has demanded to sift you as wheat, but I have prayed for you.”
  4. Intercessory prayer was the central part of a priest’s responsibility and is thus part of our calling as priests of God. I Peter 2:9 “You are a royal priesthood.”
  5. Intercessory prayer is the way Christ’s kingdom advances. Ps 2:8 “Ask of me and I will make the nations your inheritance.”
  6. Intercessory prayer is God’s means of producing spiritual fruit John 15:7 “If you abide in me and my Words abide in you ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you. By this is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples” (Gal 5:22-23). “The fruit of the Spirit love, you, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control.”
  7. Intercessory prayer is the means to joy that Jesus wants us to experience. John 16:24 “Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be made full.”
  8. Intercessory prayer strengthens our faith as we see God’s answers…and it is especially our FAITH that pleases God. Heb 11:6 “Without faith it is impossible to please God.”
  9. Intercessory prayer deepens our relationship with God, thus satisfying the deepest longings of our hearts. I Cor 6:13 “You were made for God and God is the answer to your deepest longings.”
  10. Intercessory prayer is a way to daily lay down our lives for one another. It is giving some of the minutes that constitute my life for the benefit of others. Gal 5:13 “Be servants to one another in love.”
  11. Intercessory prayer is the command of God for us, Ephesians 6:8 “And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep praying for all the saints.”
  12. Intercessory prayer was a distinctive the mark of our Master’s life—the one we are to emulate.  (Luke 22:31-32) “He would often withdraw to desolate places and pray.”

Prayer—The Mighty Force That Moves the Kingdom of Righteousness Forward

Earlier this year I pointed the remarkable historic results of a decision made

August 27, 1727, by the Moravian Community of Christians in Herrnhut, Germany to begin an round-the-clock “prayer watch.” This commitment to intercessory prayer continued nonstop for over a hundred years. Church historian A. J. Lewis explains, “For over a hundred years the members of the Moravian Church all shared in the ‘hourly intercession.’ At home and abroad, on land and sea, this prayer watch ascended unceasingly to the Lord.” Here are some of the astounding historical events that took place during those 100 years. Again, it began in 1727.

  • In November 1734, (just 7 years after the intensified prayer effort began) Jonathan Edwards delivered a series of sermons on “Justification by Faith Alone,” resulting in a great revival in Northampton and along the Connecticut River Valley in the winter and spring of 1734–35, during which period more than 300 made professions of faith in 18 months.In the 1730’s and 1740’s (3-13 years after prayer focus began) the Great Awakening took place in America, having an immeasurable impact on the shaping of America.
  • In 1738 (11 years after the prayer meeting began) John Wesley, after two years of fruitless ministry in Georgia as an unconverted minister met a group of Moravians on the ship as he returned to England. In England he joined a Moravian group leading to his famous conversion, May 24, 1738, when he felt his "heart strangely warmed". He went on to traveling over 4,000 miles every year as a circuit rider, preaching some 40,000 sermons in his lifetime. When he died, the denomination he founded contained 294 British preachers and 71,668 British members along with 198 American preachers and 43,265 members. All of this fruitfulness in his ministry took place during the hundred-year prayer watch of the Moravians. (Wesley died in 1791.)
  • In 1741, (14 years after the prayer meeting started) Englishman, George Whitefield traveled to North America, where he eventually traveled 5000 miles and preacher over 18,000 times to 10,000,000 listeners in Great Britain and her colonies.
  • The Baptist Missionary Society was founded by William Carey (who subsequently went to India) in 1792, the London Missionary Society in 1795, the American Mission Societies began in 1787, and the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in 1810. It was during this 100 years of intentional prayer by the Moravian church the these mission societies were built, which became the foundation for the next century, knows as “The Great century of Christian missions.” This period 1815-1914 witnesses the greatest numerical and geographical expansion of the missionary enterprise of any epoch until that time—including the penetration of the most populous nation of the world—China, by Hudson Taylor and the China Inland Mission.

Your heartfelt prayers of intercession for your loved ones have no less power to defeat Satan. Tremendous power, says God, is made available through a good man’s earnest prayer (James 5:16).

For Further Prayerful Thought:

  1.  What are the obstacles you need to overcome in order to more consistently intercede for your loved ones?
  2. Which texts of Scripture seemed to most clearly make the case that Satan can’t stand against our prayers made for the spread of righteousness?
  3. Do you think it is harder for Christians today to carve out time to consistently pray than it was for Moravian Christians from 1727-1827?

 

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Why Jesus’ Title PRINCE OF PEACE Is Both Encouraging & Challenging

Why Jesus’ Title PRINCE OF PEACE Is Both Encouraging & Challenging

On 20 December, 2025 By Gary Yagel

Former NFL quarterback Joe Namath is known for many things, but one of them is the statement, “When you win, nothing hurts.” The pleasure of winning is so great that it overpowers the pain of aching muscles and bruised bodies.

This week, I’ve been struck by the pain of life in a fallen world everywhere. A wife whose husband rejected her for another woman is left with a shattered heart and four boys to care for. This week, the father upon whom she leaned for strength, died of a heart attack. A broken-hearted church elder told me that two of his daughters had just “come out”—one declaring that she is bi-sexual, the other introducing her female lover to the rest of the family. Another brother’s hope that his adult daughter might be moving back towards Christ has been crushed. Every day, more precious teen girls are deceived by woke ideologues into thinking their problems of puberty are caused by being a boy in a girl’s body, then having their breasts carved off by doctors in the name of “affirming care.” Although we are starting to see this turn around in some places this abusive practice of our children continues in other places. Some bear the physical pain of aging, frequently aching and no longer able to even get a good night’s sleep. The suffering brought about by sin in this fallen world is everywhere.

If you are disheartened, battered, discouraged or weary—your heart aching or soul bruised from fighting the good fight—my hope is that this episode will give you such a clear picture of the colossal triumph of Messiah Jesus, and our part in that victory, that in some small way the pain is lessened, because we GRASP the ENORMITY of our WIN.

Today, we come to the final episode in our series, Our Messiah and Abundant Life, by examining Jesus’ title, the Prince of Peace. Let’s read Isaiah 9:6-7:

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.

The coming of Messiah Jesus into the world is not just to give sinners the password to heaven; he came to establish a kingdom to take over the rule of earth. “Of the increase of his government…there will be no end.” The Prince of Peace will overthrow the Prince of the Power of the Air (Eph 2:2) and rule instead. Notice this word INCRESASE. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end. This statement perfectly corresponds to Jesus’ description of his follower’s mission to spread Christ’s kingdom of righteousness over earth.

  • Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness (Matt 6:33).
  • Pray then like this…May your kingdom (of righteousness) come—i.e. may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven (where there is perfect righteousness) (Matt 6:10).
  • All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go THEREFORE and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. (Matt 28:18-20).
  • The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches (Matt 9:31-32).

The good news—is that Jesus, the second Adam is now doing what the first Adam was supposed to do—exercising dominion over the earth FOR God. As you’ve heard me say often, the gospel of the New Testament is the gospel of the kingdom—not of just personal, private, salvation. The gospel of the kingdom has four chapters: creation, fall, redemption, restoration, not just two, fall and redemption. The title, PRINCE OF PEACE points unequivocally to this four-chapter narrative. Scripture begins with the creation of all things and ends with the renewal of all things. Because this podcast is about our mission as Christ-followers, I want my hearers to understand that our generation has inherited a Christianity that has often reduced the gospel to just two chapters, which has damaged our understanding of our mission. Let’s look at the words of several scholars who point out this failure in the Bible-believing church. The first is Hugh Whelchel, founder and Executive Director of the Institute for Faith, Work, and Economics. He writes,

“In the United States during the first half of the nineteenth century came the great religious revival called the Second Awakening. It was led by individual preachers such as Charles Finney, Lyman Beecher, and Peter Cartwright. The revivalist preachers’ view of the gospel focused on personal sin and individual salvation. ‘Come forward and be saved.’ ‘Pray to receive Christ,’ ‘Walk with Jesus,’ and ‘Share your faith with other people’ became the common language of the Christian faith. While the movement had substantial positive effects, it led to a truncated gospel. It’s view of Scripture can be called the Two-Chapter Gospel.”

“In the Two-Chapter Gospel, Chapter One presents our problem: separation from God because of our sin. Chapter Two presents the solution: Jesus Christ has come into the world to bring salvation and reunite us with God through his work on the cross. While sin and salvation are undeniable realities, they are not the complete gospel. In this abridged version of the gospel, Christianity becomes all about us. The Two-Chapter Gospel ignores creation and final restoration. It leaves out God’s reason for our creation—the cultural mandate—and the Christian’s final destination. We must understand the Bible teaches salvation as not an end in itself; it is a means to fulfill God’s ultimate plan for man on this earth” (How then Should We Work?).

Dr. Tim Keller, former NYC pastor and professor at Westminster Seminary describes the same historic loss of the four-chapter gospel:

Some conservative Christians think of the story of salvation as the fall, redemption, heaven. In this narrative, the purpose of redemption is escape from this word; only saved people have anything of value, while unbelieving people in the world are seen as blind and bad. If, however, the story of salvation is creation, fall, redemption, restoration, then things look different. In this narrative, non-Christians are seen as created in the image of God and given much wisdom and greatness within them (cf. Ps. 8), even though the image is defaced and fallen. Moreover, the purpose of redemption is not to escape the world but to renew it…it is about the coming of God’s kingdom to renew all things (“Our New Global Culture: Ministry in Urban Centers” article).

A third scholar, Michael Metzger, is concerned about the way the two-chapter gospel has lost the dignity of every human as God’s image bearer: He pens,

For two thousand years, the gospel was recited in four chapters titled, creation, fall, redemption, and the final restoration. It reminds us that we are made in the image of God. This gospel started in Genesis One and can be found in the Apostle’s and Nicene Creed. Tragically, two hundred years ago the story was edited to two chapters; the fall and redemption. The opening chapter of creation was largely forgotten. The new starting line was Genesis Three (the story of the fall). It reminds people that they are fallen sinners. We’re both—made in God’s image and sinners….The four-chapter gospel elevates our worth as image-bearers of God. The two-chapter story focuses on our deficiency (Back and Forth).

Another scholar, Al Wolters, summarizes this full, four-chapter gospel this way, “What was formed in creation has been historically deformed by sin and must be reformed in Christ” (Creation Regained.)

Isaiah 9’s title of Messiah Jesus as the PRINCE of Peace—a ruler of a kingdom of righteousness that will spread over earth establishing a never-ending kingdom—points to the four-chapter gospel. The term PEACE, the Hebrew word being SHALOM, points even more clearly to this same four-chapter narrative, which includes the restoration of creation. Let’s dig into the meaning of this rich Hebrew word. Cornelius Plantinga, in his book Engaging God’s World explains: “The webbing together of God, humans, and all creation in justice fulfillment, and delight is what the Hebrew prophets called shalom. We call it “peace,” but it means far more than just peace of mind or cease-fire between enemies….In the Bible, shalom means universal flourishing, wholeness, and delight—a rich state of affairs in which natural needs are satisfied and natural gifts fruitfully employed, all under the arch of God’s love. Shalom, in other words, is the way things are supposed to be” (Engaging God’s World, Cornelius Plantinga).

SHALOM, it could be said, is the OT word for the restoration that the Messiah would bring. Remember how we came to understand poverty, from a biblical perspective—the fracturing of the four relationships of life—with God, ourselves, other people, and the creation, all brought about by mankind’s sin. Messiah Jesus, the PRINCE OF PEACE brings restoration of all four broken relationships. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross (Col 1:19-20). The entire world, in all its glory and pain, needs the redemption that will bring shalom. “The world isn’t divided into the sacred realm and the secular realm, with redemptive activity confined to the sacred zone. The whole world belongs to God, the whole world has fallen, and so the whole world needs to be redeemed, ‘every square inch’ as Abraham Kuyper famously said. The whole creation is ‘a theater for the mighty works of God,’ first in creation and then in re-creation (Ibid). Messiah Jesus comes to inaugurate and, eventually, consummate his kingdom of righteousness. In fact, the “coming of the kingdom of God” is just the NT way of spelling SHALOM.

THE IMPACT OF UNDERSTANDING THAT JESUS IS THE PRINCE OF SHALOM

A. It becomes clear that our 9-5 vocation is central to God’s cosmic purposes. If God’s mission for individual Christians is primarily to build a relationship with someone at work so he will accept Jesus’ gift of the password to heaven—our actual 40 hours/week of vocational work are utterly insignificant, except to earn some money to give to missionaries and preachers to proclaim the gospel. Let me say that building a relationship with others to lead them to Christ IS POSSITIVELY A CENTRAL PART OF OUR MISSION. The best way to spread Christ’s righteous kingdom is to lead someone to faith in Christ who then surrenders to Christ’s lordship!! However—and it is a big however—this two-chapter view of the gospel is a horrible distortion. It ignores the original purpose God had for creating us, spelled out in Genesis 1—to exercise dominion for HIM over the earth. The coming of the Messiah does not abrogate this original creation calling. In fact, the exact opposite is the case. Our purpose is to seek first the SPREAD OF HIS KINGDOM OF WHOLENESS, RIGHTEOUSNESS, RESTORATION over the earth. What better way to spread righteousness over the earth than for every Christian to perform his vocational calling righteously all day long, five days a week? Cornelius Plantinga gives a picture of what this might look like in today’s world,

“Perhaps a Christian would shape the occupation of quality-control supervisor by encouraging whistle-blowers instead of retaliating against them. Perhaps a Christian would shape the occupation of computer repair technician by doing top notch diagnoses in order to save the customers the expense of further unnecessary repairs. Perhaps the Christian would shape the occupation of CEO of a major airline by telling the customers the truth about flight cancelations and delays. In any case, occupational reformers serve the kingdom of God as surely as a Billy Graham Crusade does.” (Ibid).

Let’s look at a real example of a man spreading the kingdom of righteous in his workplace. Wayne Alderson was the Vice President of Operations at Pitron Steel during a time of hostility in his company between labor and management. Putting his Christian faith to work, Alderson realized that as the top manager on the floor he needed to be much more intentional about treating the labors with the dignity that the image-bearers of God deserved. Here are just a few of the things he did.

  • In a work environment where it was understood that management never mixes with labor, Alderson determined to learn the names of the individual laborers and began walking through the plant, daily, to chat with men as they worked.
  • In his steel plant, just like the old cowboy days when the good guys wore the white hats, it was understood that management wore white work helmets, laborers wore black helmets. Alderson painted his helmet black.
  • Alderson noticed that Sam Piccolo, the labor union president and leader on the floor had no teakwood office like management. In fact, the only office he had was the cab his crane. Alderson saw that as a slur on Piccolo’s leadership, an insult to his dignity, and got him a real office in which to meet with his men.
  • Alderson began standing at the company gate like a pastor standing at the church door greeting the parishioners after the service. Wayne offered his hand and personally thanked each man he could for his day’s work.    

Eventually, Alderson’s activities dissolved the labor/management hostility, which led an 84-day strike to end.

BIBLICAL VALUES FOR SPREADING RIGHTEOUSNESS IN YOUR WORKPLACE

1.Every worker, student, manager, and customer is made in God’s image and therefore to be treated with dignity and respect. (Ja 3: 8): We use the tongue to bless our Father, God, and we use the same tongue to curse our fellowmen, who are all created in God’s likeness.

2. Vocational success comes from serving others well, an expression of the command to love our neighbor as ourselves. (Prov 11:26): The people curse him who holds back grain, but a blessing is on the head of him who sells it.

3. Economic efficiency is vital to competing well enough to have an organization; but it must not come through unfair wages. Prov 22:6: Whoever oppresses the poor to increase his own wealth, or gives to the rich, will only come to poverty.

4. Success usually requires some unpleasant work. Prov 14:4 Where there are no oxen, the manger is clean, but abundant crops come by the strength of the ox.

5. Financial integrity and honesty are of utmost importance. Prov 11:1: A false balance is an abomination to the Lord, but a just weight is his delight.

6. Making moral compromises are never worth it. (Prov 15:27): Whoever is greedy for unjust gain troubles his own household, but he who hates bribes will live.

When we embrace the full, four-chapter gospel, understanding that Messiah Jesus’ mission for us is SHALOM—restoring broken dignity, reconciling broken relationships, revitalizing broken business ethics—as a primary way of spreading righteous behavior across the earth, the passion for our work can be renewed. Every decision you make to treat another with dignity, serve others, treat the less fortunate with compassion, do the job no one else wants to do, to keep your word even when it is costly, to argue for the morally right decision—matters eternally. You are doing what you were created for—exercising dominion for the King.

B. There is a second great benefit to understanding the four-chapter gospel story: The fourth chapter, restoration, which pictures the full reign of the PRINCE of SHALOM can open our eyes to how BIG a WIN, Jesus’ victory really is. Paul describes the future that awaits believers “What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived” the things God has prepared for those who love him (I Cor 2:9). The OT prophets like Isaiah longed for and foresaw the day when the curse of sin on creation would be fully reversed. The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them (Is 11:6). God would shake his people free from their enemies just as he had done in Egypt. In the new age, God’s people will respond with glad obedience, the rich helping the poor, the strong helping the weak. As God’s grace spreads across the land, the lame will begin to dance; the blind will gaze at the world they have never seen before; the deaf will hear the song of a lark. Covenant obligations broken and forgotten will be fulfilled. In a word, the prophets long for SHALOM.

In that day, God himself will be with them as their God.  He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” This text always makes my mind return to a scene from Lord of the Rings.

Just after the climax of the story, Sam Gamgee discovers that his friend Gandalf was not dead (as he thought) but alive. He cries, “I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself! Is everything sad going to come untrue?” The answer of Christianity to that question is—yes. Everything sad is going to come untrue. But something even greater than ending pain will take place. Not only will all pain be REMOVED—it will be REVERSED.  C. S. Lewis wrote: “They say of some temporal suffering, ‘No future bliss can make up for it,’ not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory.”  May contemplating the greatness of the WIN that is coming lift the cloud of darkness for a moment—and make the heartaches of spiritual battle HURT LESS.

For Further Prayerful Thought

  1. How does Jesus’ title Prince of Peace reinforce the truth that the gospel has four chapters, creation, fall, redemption, restoration and not just two, fall and redemption?
  2. What stood out to you about the meaning of the Hebrew word, shalom? Why would it be biblical to say that shalom is the answer to all the levels of poverty in the world?
  3. Why would you support the argument that one of the highest callings of Christians is to spread the kingdom of righteousness in their vocations?
  4. What aspects of kingdom righteousness in the workplace stood out to you?
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Why Jesus’ Messianic Title EVERLASTING FATHER Matters

Why Jesus’ Messianic Title EVERLASTING FATHER Matters

On 13 December, 2025 By Gary Yagel

Sometimes a single word can be loaded with meaning: Mom, Dad, Darling, Champion, Failure. Single words can be so important that Jesus said, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” As we continue our advent series, Our Messiah and Abundant Life, we come this week to two words that make up this title that are loaded with a wealth of meaning, encouragement, and hope. The title is EVERLASTING FATHER.

One year when I was home from college on Christmas break, I asked my pastor, “What does it mean in the Isaiah 9 Christmas text that Jesus is the EVERLASTING FATHER? How can the Second Person of the Trinity, God the Son, BE the First Person of the Trinity, God the Father?” He gave me an answer, that as a pastor I have never forgotten: He said, “I don’t know.” (I realized that pastors don’t have to have all the answers.) As I have dug into the word meanings and background of this messianic title of Jesus, it has become clear that this text is not using the Trinitarian title, Father, for the Messiah here; rather, it is portraying the nature of the Messiah’s kingship. Keeping this truth in mind we can identify four characteristics of his Messianic kingship contained in the title, EVERLASTING FATHER. Let’s begin with the word, FATHER.

A. King Jesus is not just a king who rescues us from oppression; he is a king who wants you to have a personal relationship with him. NIC commentator, John Oswald observes that in the ancient near east, many kings claimed to be a “father” to their peoples. This claim, whether true or not, was an attempt to convince the people of the king’s benevolent protection and care for them. “Messiah Jesus’ rule,” says Isaiah, “will be like that of a FATHER leading his home—personal.” Another pair of commentors, Keil and Delitzsch, point out that the title, EVERLASTING FATHER “designates (the Messiah) as the tender, faithful, and wise trainer, guardian, and provider for his people.” Messiah Jesus would be that kind of king—personally engaged like a caring father with his people.

When we think of royalty, such power positions can easily lead to aloofness. Knowing this, more than one President of the United States was known for saying to his staff. “One group always has direct access to me anytime, any place 24/7: my kids. The Messiah would not be a ruler separated from his people by the veil in the temple. He would not remain set apart, cut off from direct access. He would be Emmanuel—God with us. In fact, the bond that King Jesus would have with his subjects was to be so personal that Jesus would compare his bond to them with his bond with the Father, “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love.”

The concept that abundant life is having a personal relationship with Christ, radically changed my life in high school. I grew up in a church era that not only used the King James Bible with all its “cometh”s and “goeth”s, and “thee”s and “thou”s—but such language was used in prayer. “Thank you that thou listeneth to us.” To put a positive spin on this experience, I learned about the transcendence of God—his greatness, his awesomeness, his holiness, his “otherness.” That is a great starting point, understanding the weightiness of God, what the Bible calls, the fear of the Lord that his law is never broken without consequences. We don’t so much brake the law as the law breaks us.

But it was Young Life and the J.B. Phillips modern paraphrase of the Bible that taught me about the imminence of God—that I could have a personal relationship with him. I learned that Messiah Jesus wanted an everyday relationship with me that was just as real as his relationship with Peter, James, and John when he walked the shores of the Sea of Galilee. Back then I memorized the Good News translation of Psalm 63. The more I remember that King Jesus is the kind of Commanding Officer that a father is—one who wants to walk intimately with me—the more Psalm 63 comes alive: May these be yours and my words today.

O God, you are my God, and I long for you. My whole being desires you; my soul is thirsty for you, like a dry, worn-out, and waterless land.  Let me see you in the sanctuary; let me see how mighty and glorious you are. Your constant love is better than life itself, and so I will praise you.  I will give you thanks as long as I live; I will raise my hands to you in prayer. My soul will feast and be satisfied, and I will sing glad songs of praise to you. As I lie in bed, I remember you; all night long I think of you, because you have always been my help. In the shadow of your wings I sing for joy. I cling to you, and your hand keeps me safe (vs 1-8).

King Jesus is not just a king who rescues you from oppression; he is a king who wants you to have a personal relationship with him.

B. He is also a king who is FULL OF FATHERLY COMPASSION for us.  In studying Isaiah’s choice of the word FATHER to describe the coming Messiah, it is valuable to see how Isaiah uses the term father in other places in the rest of the book of Isaiah. In Isaiah 63, when Isaiah is trying to persuade Yahweh to stop withholding mercy from his people, Isaiah writes, Look down from heaven and see, from your holy and beautiful habitation….The stirring of your inner parts and your compassion are held back from me.…. You, O Lord, are our FATHER, our Redeemer from of old is your name.

Isaiah identifies fatherhood with compassion. The Psalmist does as well. He writes,

As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust. The Messianic King will not only rule justly; he will lead and rule with compassion. Jesus remembers our frame; he knows we are dust. Though Isaiah may not know that the Messiah would be the Great High Priest, his description of Jesus’ kingly rule matches that later description: For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Jesus NEVER TIRES of hearing us pour out our weaknesses and requests for his strength. HR LOVES BEING THE STRENGTH WE NEED in our weakness!

The compassion of Jesus draws me to him. I suspect it does to you as well. The compassion of the Messiah is not only seen in his High Priestly role, but of course all through the gospel accounts of Jesus’ life. Last week, in studying John 9—the story of the man Jesus healed who had been born blind. Let’s return to it and notice four aspects of Jesus’ compassion.

As Jesus passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?  Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him…. Having said these things, he spit on the ground and made mud with the saliva. Then he anointed the man's eyes with the mud and said to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam.” So, he went and washed and came back seeing….They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. Now it was a Sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. So the Pharisees again asked him how he had received his sight. And he said to them, “He put mud on my eyes, and I washed, and I see.” Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.” But others said, “How can a man who is a sinner do such signs?”

1. Jesus did not ignore the horrific suffering of a human being who was born blind. Jesus had things to do, places to go just as we have. But a compassionate, Jesus-like heart just can’t walk past such suffering and ignore it. Jesus could do something about the suffering—remove it by healing the man. And so that is what he did. Are there ways you can remove or mitigate another’s suffering without rescuing them from responsibility?

2. Jesus destroyed the crushing shame the blind man felt over his blindness. The disciples turned him into an object lesson for a theological study of whose sin caused this problem, his or his parents. Like Job’s friends, they knew that sin caused suffering. So, piled upon his intense suffering from total blindness, was oppressive shame, his blindness shouting everyday that either he or his parents had sinned so badly that God had done this to him. It is hard to imagine this weight sliding off his shoulders, when Jesus said, It was not that this man sinned, or his parents. Jesus-like compassion is sensitive to the shame others bear by the social sins of our culture, a child who is gay or trans, a marriage that has failed, a struggle with weight control, an addition to battle with tobacco, or porn.

3. Jesus’ choice to heal on the Sabbath the way he did may have been out of compassion for the crowds being weighed down by the Pharisees with legalism. This healing took place on the Sabbath, and the Pharisees’ extreme legalistic tradition forbade spitting on the Sabbath. Specifically, they cautioned that the spit might run downhill and make mud, and making mud is work. Notice that the Pharisees were particularly concerned about how Jesus healed the blind man, which was spitting and making mud. In other words, it appears that Jesus deliberately chose to heal the blind man in this manner to pick a fight with the Pharisees!

They had turned God’s revelation about how to walk with Him into an oppressive pile of manmade rules—destroying the concept that the essence of God’s covenant with his people was love. Yahweh had made it clear: The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for HIS TREASURED POSSESSION, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his LOVE on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the Lord LOVES you (Deut 7:6-8). In response the covenant obligation of Israel was first to love God and second, to love their neighbor. The Pharisees piled upon the backs of the people a ridiculous number of man-made rules—over 600, a legalism so severe that it perverted the religious leaders into caring more about spit running down hill and making mud than the tragedy of a precious human never having been able to see, being given sight.

Jesus cared too much for the people hearing the religious representatives of Yahweh pervert the Torah teaching to do nothing. Ideas have consequences. Bad ideas have victims. The perverted legalism of the religious leaders was destroying the people’s understanding of what Israel’s covenant of grace with God was all about. These victims pulled on Jesus’ heart. He could not DO NOTHING about it. So, he deliberately confronted the lie that the religion of Moses was about spitting or not on the Sabbath.

4. Jesus tracked down the blind man after he had been put out of the synagogue to invite him into the followship of believers. Because the blindman confronted the Pharisees he was put out of the synagogue.

The Pharisees said to the formerly blind man, What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?” He answered them, “I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?” And they reviled him, saying, “You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from. The man answered, “Why, this is an amazing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if anyone is a worshiper of God and does his will, God listens to him. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” They answered him, “You were born in utter sin, and would you teach us?” And they cast him out.  Jesus heard that they had cast him out, and having found him he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man? He answered, “And who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?” Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and it is he who is speaking to you.” He said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him. 

The healed blind man’s honesty about Jesus had caused him to be thrown out of the synagogue, a fate far worse than it sounds. It resulted in a person being kicked out not only from a building, but from Jewish life altogether. From this moment on his parents and friends will have nothing to do with him. He cannot purchase food from any loyal Jew. In his culture the healed blind man is now persona non grata. But Jesus pursues and finds the formerly blind man and leads him to faith. That is what fathers do. Jesus--the Messianic King has a heart of FATHERLY CONPASSION.

C. Messiah Jesus’ title, EVERLASTING FATHER also points to his role in shaping our character. Once again, to understand what Isaiah means when he uses the term father to describe the nature of the coming messiah, we need to see Isaiah’s other uses of father in his book. In Isaiah 64, we read his description once again of God as a caring father, engaged with his children, but this time focusing on his role of shaping his children. But now, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.  We belong to God and he, like fathers who have children born to them, trains those in his charge. King Jesus is not only committed to a personal relationship with us and full of fatherly compassion for us; he is also our personal trainer. My son, do not despise the Lord's discipline or be weary of his reproof, for the Lord reproves him whom he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights (Prov 3:11-12).

Trials and pain are the sharp sculpting tools that our CO uses to shape our character as a potter does his clay. Have you developed the habit of linking the pain in your life to the godly character God might be building in your life. After first taking your feelings (“this sucks!”) to the Lord, there is strength in identifying what character trait the Lord might be working on. For example:

  • Experiencing the pain of being taken for granted, not appreciated, which is the opportunity to ask God to take care of our affirmation needs and learn to better love selflessly.
  • Being discouraged by the way sin seems to be triumphing is the opportunity to deepen hope—the certain confidence in the good news of the gospel—that one day everything that is broken will be fixed.
  • Being frustrated by obstacles to our daily agenda, in one sense honors God by our desire to be good stewards of our time and achieve goals for him. Yet, achieving our goal may honor him less than quiet, restfulness in him. Replacing frustration with resting in Jesus is meekness a fruit of the Spirit. 
  • When your wife’s flaws make your life harder, it is the chance to remember that in Paul’s description of AGAPE love in 1 Corinthians 13, patience is the first attribute mentioned!

The master you follow, Messiah Jesus is a CO who is like a potter shaping clay! But he is also the source of the power to be transformed—through abiding in him.

D. Our fourth observation about Jesus’ Messianic title, EVERLASTING FATHER is that, like the title we looked at last week, MIGHTY GOD, it points to Jesus’ divinity.

As one commentary reads, “The third name EVERLASTING FATHER springs out of the second, MIGHTY GOD; for what is divine must be eternal. The title ETERNAL FATHER designates Him, however, not only as the possessor of eternity, but as the tender, faithful, and wise, trainer, guardian, and provider for his people even in eternity.” By pointing to the eternality of Messiah Jesus’ fatherly rule, Isaiah again hints that the Messiah would be God himself. This becomes clearer in Isaiah 63:16b, which says, You, O Yahweh are our Father; our Redeemer from of old is your name. To say that Yahweh is Israel’s father and that the coming king will be the EVERLASTING FATHER is a way of telegraphing that the Messiah would be God, himself. The Messianic title, the MIGHTY GOD (looked at last week), plus the tile FATHER, plus the adjective EVERLASTING—all point to the deity of Jesus.

In a culture that loves Jesus’ teaching about social justice, many like Jesus, but want to put him in the category of a great teacher like Gandhi, Confucius, or Buddha. But no other religious teachers claimed to be divine. In sharp contrast, Jesus unambiguously and repeatedly claimed deity. If Jesus claimed to be God and wasn’t he was either a liar or a lunatic; but he could not be considered a good moral teacher. C.S. Lewis makes this clear in his trilemma argument in Mere Christianity:

“A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

For Further Prayerful Thought

  1. What are the differences that a person would normally have in his relationship with his king and his father?
  2. Is it overstating the case to say that Christianity is best summarized by saying that Christ did to pay for our sins so that the guilt that blocks us from a relationship with the Holy One of Israel could be removed so that we can have an eternal personal relationship with him?
  3. Why would a compassionate leader be easier to follow than one who is not?
  4. What is the worst part of being a vessel that Jesus the Potter is cutting into? What is the best part?
  5. How would you persuade a non-believer that holding the opinion that Jesus was a great teacher is logically untenable?
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Why It Matters That Our Messiah is the Mighty God

Why It Matters That Our Messiah is the Mighty God

On 07 December, 2025 By Gary Yagel

Have you ever wondered why it is so hard to keep our passion for Christ burning brightly, why we are not more consumed by loyalty and faithfulness as we should be to the one who died for us? Author, Max Lucado, gives a thoughtful answer—we face an enemy of our soul called, the agent of familiarity. Lucado explains,

His commission from the dark throne room is clear, and fatal: “Take nothing from your victim; cause him only to take everything for granted…” His aim is deadly. His goal is nothing less than to take what is most precious to us and make it appear most common….He’s an expert at robbing the sparkle and replacing it with the drab. He invented the yawn and put the hum in humdrum. And his strategy is deceptive. He won’t steal your salvation. He’ll just make you forget what it was like to be lost. Worship will become common place and study optional. With the passing of time, he’ll infiltrate your heart with boredom and cover the cross with dust. Score one for the agent of familiarity (God Came Near.)

Has the poison of the ordinary dulled your excitement about walking with Jesus? If so, our hope is that understanding the titles of Messiah Jesus from Isaiah 9, Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, will explode your view of just who this being is who called you by name to be his follower.

Why did the long-awaited Messiah of Israel have to be the MIGHTY GOD—and what does that title mean for our everyday walk with Jesus today?

THE ISAIAH 9:6 TEXT

The phrase, mighty god is constructed from the words EL for god and GIBBOR for mighty. Interestingly, the Hebrew word GIBBOR is often used to describe a powerful hero. This word use is not accidental. As OT scholars have pointed out the true hero of the OT is not Abraham, Moses, Joshua, or David, but GOD. The promised land was not Abraham’s land bequeathed to his descendants, but a land of milk and honey promised as God’s gift to God’s people. The “Ten Words” brought down from Sinai were not Moses’ laws but those of a God so holy that anyone who touched the mountain would die. The conquest of the promised land by Joshua was not accomplished by Joshua’s might, but because Yahweh fought for his people. The establishment of David’s throne in Jerusalem by defeating surrounding peoples like the Philistines was accomplished not by David’s military prowess but by God’s power—a truth David understood when he said to Goliath,

 “You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the Lord will deliver you into my hand…that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, and that all this assembly may know that the Lord saves not with sword and spear. For the battle is the Lord's, and he will give you into our hand,” (1 Sam 17:45-47).

Behind the truth that it is Yahweh who saves, (which is what the name Joshua and Jesus mean) was the truth throughout Israel’s history that their political oppression was always the result of their disobedience to Yahweh. A careful look at what the OT prophets proclaimed reveals that the cause of Israel’s military oppression was their sin—their disobedience to their covenant obligations. For example, in the very first chapter of Isaiah, we read,

Ah, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, offspring of evildoers, children who deal corruptly! They have forsaken the Lord, they have despised the Holy One of Israel, they are utterly estranged. Why will you still be struck down? Why will you continue to rebel?... Your country lies desolate; your cities are burned with fire; in your very presence foreigners devour your land; it is desolate, as overthrown by foreigners….If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land; but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be eaten by the sword; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken (vs 4,5,7, 20).

The oppressors that the Messiah needed to overthrow never were the Assyrians, Babylonians or Edomites. The oppressor always was SIN. It was the sin of the Israelites that led God to allow their political enemies to oppress them. That is why the great lesson of the OT is that God’s people cannot save themselves. “The Law never succeeded in producing righteousness,” writes Paul. “The weakness was always human sin,” (Rom 8:1-3). The promised Messiah would (eventually) overthrow the political oppression Israel experienced—but only because the Messiah would overthrow the real cause of Israel’s military occupation—their SIN. And God, himself, would be the only one powerful enough to break the human shackles of sin. The Messiah would be the MIGHTY GOD—God himself, and the only being powerful enough to overthrow evil. Isaiah goes on to tell us that this Messiah, alone, who is the MIGHTY GOD has the power to ABSORB EVIL and OVERTHROW EVIL. In chapter 53 of Isaiah, the Messiah ABSORBS EVIL: Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows…he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.

Isaiah goes on to tell us that God is displeased with human sin but sees no human who can solve the problem and overthrow evil. Only the MIGHTY GOD, himself, is powerful enough to defeat it. So, God will clothe himself in righteous and fight this spiritual battle.

Justice is turned back, and righteousness stands far away; for truth has stumbled in the public squares, and uprightness cannot enter. Truth is lacking, and he who departs from evil makes himself a prey. The Lord saw it, and it displeased him that there was no justice. He saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no one to intercede; then his own arm brought him salvation… He put on righteousness as a breastplate and a helmet of salvation on his head (59:15ff).

Sin is so powerful that only the MIGHTY GOD, Messiah Jesus, could overthrow it.

THE AWFUL POWER OF SIN to CORRUPT and DESTROY

The message of the OT could be summed up: No human has the moral power to keep God’s Covenant Law—to be righteous. Thus, no man can experience the presence of God. Were sinful man to see the face of God he would instantly perish—the reason that God, in grace, expelled fallen Adam and Eve from the Garden. In Paul’s words to the Romans, By works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law… the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe, (3:20-22).

The awful power of sin to corrupt is revealed in the moral failure of OT fathers to fulfill their task as the heads of their families, following the covenant pattern of Abraham, about whom God said, “For I have chosen him, that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice, so that the Lord may bring to Abraham what he has promised him,” (Gen 18:19). Sin’s awful power had so corrupted the Israelites, that almost no fathers fulfilled this obligation, causing the OT to end with the prophecy in the very last verse, that finally one would come who would turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the hearts of the children to their fathers. 400 hundred years later, John the Baptist announced the coming of the New Covenant Messianic era—the turning the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared,” (Lk 1:17).

This awful power of sin to corrupt and destroy is nowhere seen more clearly than in the clergy of Israel—the priests, scribes, and Pharisees—the one group who had been given the OT Scriptures. Notice the irony from John 9 abut who actually is blind. After Jesus had healed a blind man, the Jewish leaders verified his blindness from birth with his parents. We pick up the story in vs 24:

So, for the second time they called the man who had been blind and said to him, “Give glory to God. We know that this man is a sinner.”

He answered, “Whether he is a sinner I do not know. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.”

They said to him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?”

He answered them, “I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?”

And they reviled him, saying, “You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.”

The man answered, “Why, this is an amazing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if anyone is a worshiper of God and does his will, God listens to him. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.”

They answered him, “You were born in utter sin, and would you teach us?” And they cast him out.

SIN causes humans to suppress the truth in unrighteousness. It is too powerful for humans to defeat. Our only hope is a messiah who is the MIGHTY GOD. Our need is one MIGHTY enough to win a battle that is cosmic in scope.

THE COSMIC SCOPE OF EVIL

  • And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed (John 3:19-20).
  • We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places (Eph 6:12).

We need a messiah who is the MIGHTY GOD because we CANNOT STAND against evil, ourselves. We must never ever underestimate the power of sin. As Christians, we’ve been set free from slavery to sin; if we hadn’t been, we never would have come to faith in Christ! But sin is still present with us, lurking in the throne room of our hearts awaiting an opportunity to seize control any moment.

I remember a striking example of this vulnerability of my own heart, not that long ago. Every parent has taught a child that when he breaks something belonging to someone else, he must own up to it; that is elementary. Yet some time ago on one occasion, when I scraped a car in a parking lot, my rationalizing heart said, it wasn’t that bad. Nevertheless, I am ashamed to say, I moved my car to another parking place so I wouldn’t be caught—until God’s Spirit won control of my conscience. I would think that as a grandparent, by now I might be well-beyond such a heart reaction. But God warns, Let the one who thinks he stands watch out that he does not fall (1 Cor 10:12). Sin, still lurking in my heart until I die, reminds me also of Archibald Harts description of the male sex drive. “For many men the sex drive feels like a volcano. Explosive and unpredictable… when it erupts it can lay waste to everything in its path including honor, reputation, families, virginity, fidelity, chastity, good intentions, life-long promises, and spiritual commitments,” (The Sexual Man). Sin is too powerful for us to defeat alone for very long. We need the help of our Messiah, the MIGHTY GOD. 

APPROPRIATTING THE MIGHTY GOD’S POWER FOR OUR SPIRIUAL BATTLES

Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might (Eph 6:12)

A. Gain strength from your brotherhood connections. The Reformers spoke of two means of grace, the Word and the Sacraments. I personally believe they missed one—the Body of Christ. Paul taught clearly in Ephesians 4 that it is by truth- speaking relationships that the Body is built up into Christ the Head. Honestly, if a man is not making an effort to build relationships with some brothers for strength and accountability, I find it hard to believe that he is taking seriously enough the sin lurking in his heart that can easily take him down!

B. Build the habit of putting on the armor of God. Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil (Eph 6:10-11). I’ve done a fuller study of the armor of God in past series. But here is a quick reminder of what putting on this armor looks like: 

1. Belt of truth. Putting on the belt of truth means encircling our lives with God’s truth. Besides regular reading of Scripture, the encircling with God’s truth could be done by listening to the Breakpoint podcast which applies the biblical worldview to the issues of the day, or a similar podcast. It might mean turning on your Bible app and listening to a few chapters of Scripture while driving. It might mean taking an hour on a Sunday afternoon to read straight through a book of the Bible, or a book that seeks to apply God’s word to a specific topic. It is the habit of encircling our lives with God’s truth.

2. Breastplate of righteousness. The breastplate protected vital organs. I suggest that putting it on means at least these 3 things: 1). Doing the right things is always the priority. Righteousness guards the one whose way is blameless, but wickedness subverts the sinner. (Prov 13:6) The end never justifies the means. 2) Never letting Satan, the accuser of the brothers drive me away from Jesus because of the filth of my sin. We wear the robe of Christ' righteousness, having been declared “righteous” from the lips of the Judge, himself. 3) Putting on the breastplate of righteousness means being known for pursing “rightness” and justice where I can. The armor often indicated the army to which one belonged. Our mission from our CO is to pursue the spread of rightness—restoration and justice—over the world that Jesus claims as his kingdom.

3. Readiness of the gospel. Paul compares the Roman warrior’s shoes to being ready to move a conversation towards discussing Christ. Several concepts emerge from the text. First, our direction—where our feet are headed—should be towards sharing Christ with others. The strong implication is that we should have a strategy, a direction, a plan, somewhere we are going to share Christ with others. The second idea is that when the opportunity to talk about Jesus comes, we should be ready. I have found that there is one excellent way to “be ready.” A few years ago, I said to a buddy, “I want to start praying for more opportunities to share my faith.” Within 2 weeks, when my racquetball league opponent started to talk about Western philosophy, I recognized the opportunity and spent the next 30 minutes talking about Christianity with him. I was alert because I was already specifically praying. One of the tools that our ministry provides men is a Check 6 wallet card with 6 questions to help men connect and support each other’s spiritual battles. Question # 5 is, “Who are the non-believers you are building relationships with and how can I prau for your strategy to share Christ with them?”  We need to help each other put on readiness to share the gospel of peace.

4. Raising the shield of faith. Faith is relentless confidence in the goodness of God’s character—that all of his dealings with us and those we love spring from the character of goodness and love—wanting what is best for us. Satan relentlessly attacks our confidence in the goodness and love of God as he did the confidence of Eve and Job. Three actions seem required here: 1) being alert to Satan’s attempt to make us doubt God’s goodness, 2) realizing that faith is a choice, saying to God, “I choose to trust you no matter what I am feeling.” This was a truth I had to recall just this past week, when a number of things about our ministry were getting me down, emotionally I knew I had to use my will to make a choice. Was I going to trust God or did I actually believe God was going to NOT keep his Word for the first time in the history of the world! 3) The third action is recognizing how precious our choice to relentlessly trust God regardless of circumstances is to Him.

5. Helmet of Salvation. The helmet protects our mind. The helmet of salvation seems to refer to thinking about our salvation correctly. Thinking correctly about our salvation means: 1) We can never turn a cold shoulder to those whose lives are being ruined by sin, because such were we. 2) We can never be judgmental towards other sinners. 3) We can never envy the wicked because we know how destructive evil is. 4) We can never stop striving for personal righteousness, which is not legalism, but something Jesus said we should hunger and thirst for.

6. Sword of the Spirit the Word of God. Both this weapon and the belt of truth have to do with the Word of God. Where the belt of truth is more focused on the habit of encircling ourselves in God’s truth, wielding the sword of the Spirit is more about taking captive every thought to expose it to the Word of God. This is the skill and habit of fighting Satan’s temptations with the Word of God, as Jesus did, and is a good reason for committing some texts of Scripture to memory.

So, step one is expect to fail if you don’t get some brothers in your life because God doesn’t expect any man to have enough strength to fight his spiritual battles alone. Step two is use your supernatural armor and weapons.

C. Step 3 is: Pray with perseverance. In view of the reality that we are engaged in a spiritual battle, Paul urges Christians to take a second action, beyond just taking up the armor of God. That command is to pray. Praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. Messiah Jesus, the MIGHTY GOD has now ascended to the Father. In this age, the primary way his kingdom of righteousness defeats the kingdom of darkness is prayer. This seems clear in Psalm 2, where God the Father says to the ascended Jesus, ASK of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession. Jesus, right now, is at the right hand of the Father interceding. We join in his work. The way that persevering intercessory prayer overpowers the kingdom of darkness is a great mystery to me. But when I realize that Messiah Jesus had to be the MIGHTY GOD because no other being has the power to overthrow sin, I begin to realize why persevering prayer in Jesus’ name is foundational for defeating evil anywhere—my own life, that of my family members, and the culture in which I live. I remember the great triumph of Elijah on Mount Carmel who prayed that Israel would return to worshipping the true God instead of Baal—and that as Israel’s covenant with God stated, God would send drought until they repented. He prayed for three years, five months and 29 days without seeing any result. That is 1278 days—probably many hours each day! I’m not sure I’ve prayed that much for any of the spiritual victories I long for in my own life, that of my family, or that of our culture!

For Further Prayerful Thought

  1. How would you support the idea that the overall teaching of the OT is that the real oppression of Israel was done by foreign military powers but by SIN? Why might this point to the fact that the deliverer would have to be God, himself?
  2. Paul commanded Christ-followers to abhor evil. What stood out to you in this episode about the awfulness of sin?
  3. When it comes to being strong in the Lord and the strength of his might, which aspects of appropriating Christ’s power to fight spiritually stood out to you?
  4. Which piece of spiritual armor do you most need to start putting on?
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Delighting in The Wonderful Counselor

Delighting in The Wonderful Counselor

On 28 November, 2025 By Gary Yagel

Eight months after he had watched the twin towers of the World Trade Center come crashing down, Arizona Cardinals, safety Pat Tillman was staring at an offer of 3.5 million dollars to continue to play for the Arizona Cardinals. But he could not sign the contract because his heart compelled him to enlist in a far greater mission—protecting the country he loved. On May 31, Pat Tillman enlisted in the US Army and became an Army Ranger. On his second tour in Afghanistan, he paid the ultimate price for his country. Tragically, he was killed by friendly fire.

I believe there is something of Pat Tillman’s heart in every man. Sometimes it’s buried so far down we don’t realize it is there. But part of every man wants to devote himself to a great mission, a mission that is worthy of his full allegiance—a mission that really matters. After all, boys don’t dream of sitting safely at a computer desk, bringing home a paycheck, and becoming a nice guy. Their dreams and the stories they love are about defeating the evil villain to save the world against impossible odds, winning the hand of the beautiful princess in the process and riding in the lead chariot of the victory parade. Boys dream of greatness, which can only come by accomplishing a great mission. So, what is the mission of a Christ-following man? I would argue that our mission has three distinct parts. 1) We are called TO CHRIST—to enjoy a love relationship with him. 2) We are called TO BE LIKE CHRIST to cultivated Christ-like heart attitudes. 3) We are called to EXERCISE DOMINION FOR CHRIST—implementing his agenda in every sphere of human life.

For the next four weeks, our focus is on the first and most foundational part of our mission—deepening our love relationship with Christ. We will do this by zooming the camera in on four titles of Jesus given in the Isaiah 9 prophecy of the coming Messiah Jesus—Wonderful Counselor, Almighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. What do these titles tell us about Jesus and what difference these descriptions of our Commander in Chief make in our everyday lives?

 Everyone knows that the mission of the church is to make disciples. So before digging in to why it matters that Jesus is called WONDERFUL COUNSELOR, I want to show how the word disciple points to the three-part calling mentioned above. The early Christians had a much clearer idea of what a disciple was than we do today. Bands of disciples with their masters were quite common in Jesus’ day. They understood three callings of discipleship:

  1. Everyone knew that a disciple had the deepest kind of possible personal friendship with his master because they did life together. The language that we use for this part of discipleship is that we are called TO Christ (to enjoy a love relationship with Him.)
  2. Everyone also knew that a disciple (the Greek word is MATHETES) was a FOLLOWER of a master. The disciple patterned his whole life on the teaching and example of his master. The disciple’s greatest goal was to be like his master. We say, we are called TO BE LIKE CHRIST (to Christ-like character).
  3. The early church understood WHY Jesus’ great commission to make disciples of the nations in Matthew 28:19-20 was preceded by verse 18, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples….” Jesus was not referring, in Matt 28, to his eternal, sovereign authority as God the Son, which he ALWAYS had. Rather Jesus was speaking as the Second Adam. He was talking about his defeat of Satan, sin, and death, the tyrants who had usurped the rule of Adam’s kingdom enslaving mankind. The early church understood the gospel, not as the good news of personal private salvation but as the good news that the second Adam has come to overthrow Satan, sin, and death, fix everything that has been broken by sin, and establish the rule of his kingdom of righteousness over planet earth. They understood that to be Christ’s disciple was to enlist in his cause—the spread of his kingdom of righteousness over every square inch of the planet. Therefore, this podcast defines the third part of our mission this way. We are called TO EXERCISE DOMINION FOR CHRIST (to implement Christ’s agenda in your role as husband, father, employee/employer, neighbor, church member, steward of resources, ambassador of the kingdom—every sphere of life). Exercising dominion for Christ recaptures our creation calling to shape culture and to guide our children to do so, which is why we do occasional series like, “Protecting Our Children from Enticing but False Worldviews.”

Today we return to the core of our mission, Called TO CHRIST to enjoy a love relationship with Him. Our goal is to understand our Commander in Chief better so that we can love Him more. Isaiah 9:6 says, For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Before digging into what it means that our CO is the Wonderful Counselor, let’s remind ourselves why our mission always begins with our love relationship with Christ. Six reasons come to mind:

WHY OUR LOVE RELATIONSHIP WITH CHRIST IS OUR MISSION FOUNDATION

1. Because both God the Father in Deuteronomy 6 and Jesus in John 14 say, “If you love me keep my commandments.” The greatest commandment is, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength (Mark 12:30).

2. Because in helping the Corinthians defeat lust, Paul explained that we were made for God and God is the answer to our deepest longings (1 Cor 6:13).

3. Life is designed for us to first set our hearts upon delighting in God. The very first two commandments teach us that we are to set our hearts on no other God, allowing not other God to steal first place in our hearts.

4. Because in God’s design, he wants us to renew our hearts—filling them with joy, delighting in Him. Rejoice in the Lord, always. Again, I say rejoice (Phil 4:4).

5. Because LIFE is the result of knowing God. Jesus prayed to the Father, And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. Eternal life doesn’t wait till we die. It begins now and continues into eternity and describes not just the duration of life but quality of life (Jn 17:3).

6. Because the power to accomplish the other two parts of our mission—becoming like Jesus in our inner heart attitudes and accomplishing Christ’s agenda in each part of my life is dependent upon the strength of my relationship with Christ the Vine.  Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me (John 15:) So let’s get to better know Jesus the Messiah as God reveals him to us in Isaiah 9.

Why It Matters that Jesus is the Wonderful Counselor

A. At every point his treatment of us is based upon divine wisdom: Of course, the whole point to the mystery that God is using Isaiah to reveal is the incarnation. The deliverer will be a human. For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder. But his four titles underscore the ultimate deity of this child deliverer, as well. His name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. But what distinctive characteristic of Jesus does WONDERFUL COUNSELOR point to? The Hebrew for wonderful counselor is literally “wonder of a counselor.” In chapters 1-8 of Isaiah, the folly of human wisdom is derided. In contrast the coming messiah would give wondrous counsel, unequaled, and unfailing in its wisdom. This Messiah’s wisdom is further described two chapters later: There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit. And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord (11:1-2).

True to this prophecy, it is almost humorous to watch the wisdom of Jesus confound the Scribes and Pharisees in the NT who try to trap him. For example, they knew he was widely beloved for his compassion and mercy towards the outcasts and despised “sinners.” But they also knew that as a true rabbinic teacher from God, he had to uphold the Torah. So, in John 8 the scribes and Pharisees implement their plan to trap Jesus. First, they set up a woman to commit adultery in a situation where they could catch her in the act. That this was a setup is suggested by the fact that brought they only the woman to Jesus and not the man. Then, they said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. Now in the Law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. So, what do you say?” What an ingenious trap! If Jesus says, “Stone her,” he loses his following with the people. If he says, “Don’t stone her” he shows that he is false prophet undermining the Torah. But Jesus blows their trap out of the water by saying “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” At another point they tried to trap Jesus by asking whether it was lawful to pay taxes to Caesar? If Jesus answered, “Yes” he would lose favor with the heavily tax-burdened people. But if he answered, “No,” the scribes and Pharisees would charge him with insurrection to the Roman government. But their trap is no match for Jesus, the Wisdom of God, incarnate. He just said, “Show me the coin for the tax…” And Jesus said to them, “Whose likeness and inscription is this?” They said, “Caesar's.” Then he said to them, “Therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's (Matt 22:17-21).

The Hebrew words used for Wonderful Counselor tell us that Jesus knows exactly how life works. He knows how the human heart is shaped, what is required to satisfy its yearnings. He knows which choices lead to success and which foolish ones undermine prosperity. He knows how relationships work, and the exact way that humans mess them up. Since the fall of mankind, we are bent to run our finger against the grain of the universe covering our lives with splinters. Paul tells us in Colossians 2 that all things were created by and through Christ and John tells us that he was the divine WORD or LOGOS. Our messiah’s role as Wonderful Counselor might be in view in Proverbs 8 when God’s wisdom is personified:

“The Lord possessed me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth. When there were no depths, I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water. Before the mountains had been shaped I was brought forth….when he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him, like a master workman, and I was daily his delight rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the children of man. (Prov 8:22-31).

Jesus’ office as Wonderful Counselor seems intended to assure us that our Commander in Chief knows what he is doing. He designed life. He knows what will lead to our fulfillment in this life and eternal joy in the life to come. The word, “oops” is never heard from our CO’s lips. HE is in charge of making sure that all things work together for our good. Joseph was betrayed by his brothers, sold into slavery, and falsely accused by Potiphar’s wife. But all of that led to him becoming the number two ruler in all of Egypt only beneath Pharoah himself and be in a position to help his family and survive a famine. Because Jesus is THE WONDERFUL COUNSELOR it is a no brainer to trust in the Lord with all our hearts and lean not to our own understanding—in all our ways to acknowledge him trusting him to make our paths straight (Prove 3:5-6).

B. He redeems our thought process from folly. Emphasizing that our messiah is the Wonderful Counselor may be a wake-up call to the truth that sin has darkened our minds far more than we realize. One of the major themes of the book of Isaiah was the way that Israel’s earthly wisdom often gained from Egypt led them astray.

  • Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and shrewd in their own sight (5:21).
  • You felt secure in your wickedness; you said, “No one sees me”; your wisdom and your knowledge led you astray (47:10).

Proverbs 14: 12 is very clear. There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death. In case we missed it, Proverbs 16:25 repeats 14:12 word for word. There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death. Notice how clear Paul is about the way sin has corrupted our thought process:

You must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart (Eph 4:17-18). Christians need to have our minds renewed, set free. We need to realize that we default to folly more often than we realize. Jesus is the WISDOM of GOD—the Wonderful Counselor whose goal for us is to seek the wisdom of his Word. The very book of Proverbs is introduced with these words:

To know wisdom and instruction, to understand words of insight, to receive instruction in wise dealing, in righteousness, justice, and equity; to give prudence to the simple, knowledge and discretion to the youth—Let the wise hear and increase in learning, and the one who understands obtain guidance, to understand a proverb and a saying, the words of the wise and their riddles. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge; FOOLS DESPISE WISDOM AND INSTRUCTION (1:2-8).

Humans need a savior who will first and foremost set them free from their natural folly. The Messiah is the Wonderful Counselor who restores us life viewed from God’s perspective, to empower us to shape our lives by God’s wisdom.

C. The Messiah brings the New Covenant and pours out the Holy Spirit to write God’s word on our hearts. The Jeremiah 31 prophecy is cited by Hebrews as now fulfilled in Christ. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws into their minds and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people (Heb 8:10). At Pentecost the Holy Spirit was more fully poured out as the one who dwells in us, whose job as the PARACLETE is to apply the Word of God to our hearts. This is an extremely beneficial aspect of the New Covenant. The Wonderful Counselor—whose wisdom shows us how to live, and whose ascension to the Father means that the Holy Spirit now indwells Christ followers TO APPLY THE WORD OF GOD TO EVERYDAY LIFE is a central tenet of the Christian faith.

But there is a caveat. There is a specific tool that is required for the Holy Spirit to do his work of transforming our minds. It is the Sword of the Spirit, THE WORD of GOD. Jesus’ Messianic title Wonderful Counselor reminds us that at the core of Christ’s redemptive work in our lives is the renewing of our minds. As I mentioned last week, in Paul’s great theological treatise on God’s grace, explained in the first elven chapters of Romans, he challenges Christians in response to such grace by offering themselves, including their very bodies, to God as a living sacrifice. Then, the very first specific instruction he gives is this: Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind (12:2). The Wonderful Counselor, our Messiah, wants our minds transformed by Word of God. From the day Adam and Eve fell and our sinful mind became clouded, we have needed the wisdom of the Wonderful Counselor. Now we have the Holy Spirit to help us—but WE MUST STILL BE THE ONES TO SEEK IT. And if we will—the promises of blessing are all still there:

Blessed is the one who finds wisdom, and the one who gets understanding, for the gain from her is better than gain from silver and her profit better than gold.  She is more precious than jewels, and nothing you desire can compare with her. Long life is in her right hand; in her left hand are riches and honor. Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her; those who hold her fast are called blessed (Prov 3:13-18).

Does not wisdom call?...”Take my instruction instead of silver, and knowledge rather than choice gold, for wisdom is better than jewels, and all that you may desire cannot compare with her. I, wisdom, dwell with prudence, and I find knowledge and discretion…I have counsel and sound wisdom; I have insight; I have strength. By me kings reign, and rulers decree what is just; by me princes rule, and noble, all who govern justly. I love those who love me, and those who seek me diligently find me.  Riches and honor are with me, enduring wealth and righteousness. My fruit is better than gold, even fine gold, and my yield than than choice silver. I walk in the way of righteousness, in the paths of justice, granting an inheritance to those who love me, and filling their treasuries…And now, O sons, listen to me blessed are those who keep my ways. Hear instruction and be wise, and do not neglect it. Blessed is the one who listens to me, watching daily at my gates, waiting beside my doors. For whoever finds me finds life and obtains favor from the lord, BUT HE WHO FAILS TO FIND ME INJURES HIMSELF; All who hate me love death (Prov 8).

How many ways does God have to say it. There is NO investment in life that pays greater dividends than time spent in God’s Word gaining God’s wisdom! If our thought process were not broken, we would not need a Messiah who is the Wonderful Counselor.

For Further Prayerful Thought

  1. Do you agree or disagree that every man has a little of Pat Tillman in him—a capacity to be inspired by a great mission.
  2. How would you argue that the most foundational part of our mission as Christ-followers to deepen our love relationship with Jesus?
  3. What stood out to you as take aways from the truth revealed to us by God the Jesus the Messiah would be the Wonderful Counselor?
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Is Critical Theory Corrupting Our View of I.C.E. and Gender?

Is Critical Theory Corrupting Our View of I.C.E. and Gender?

On 22 November, 2025 By Gary Yagel

John Stonestreet and Brett Kunkle, in their book, A Practical Guide to Culture, write: “We live the way we do because of our worldview. Our worldview, whether or not we’re consciously aware of it, informs our actions in the world and our interactions with others. It consists of our deeply held beliefs about God, morality, and the nature of relationships.” In other words, ideas have consequences. Good ideas bring blessings. Bad ideas bring victims.

Since the 1930’s, one of the worldviews taught at our universities and impacting our culture, is critical theory, aka cultural Marxism. This episode argues that many Christians today have been corrupted by strains of critical theory in their thinking about I.C.E., the use of authority, and their view of gender. I believe the way many Christians ignore what I Timothy 2 teaches proves my case. But critical theory's corrupting influence goes beyond gender.    

In Romans 12, after telling us that our first response to God’s mercy in sending Christ for us should be to put ourselves on the altar to God as a living sacrifice, Paul’s second instruction is to fix our broken thought process. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. One of the ideologies in our culture that is squeezing us into its mold, as I mentioned in the intro, is a destructive worldview called, cultural Marxism. Let’s review this system of thought so we can identify its corrupting impact in our culture and perhaps our own lives. 

Origin and Growth of Critical Theory

Critical theory is a way of viewing society that is rooted in Karl Marx’s dichotomy of society into the oppressed proletariat laboring class and the oppressor bourgeoisie land and business owner class. Italian Marxist Antonia Gramsci extended this oppressor/oppressed lens into every aspect of culture. Thus, not only are laborers oppressed by business owners (Marxism), but the poor are oppressed by the rich, blacks are oppressed by whites, women are oppressed by men, homosexuals and transgendered oppressed by cisgendered people. Poor nations are oppressed by wealthy nations, immigrants wanting to cross our borders are oppressed by Americans citizens who want closed borders. Palestinian Muslims are oppressed by Israel. Gramsci called the force that enables these oppressors to oppress “unjust, cultural hegemony.” You may remember this term from history class, which usually refers to the influence of stronger nations over weaker ones. Gramsci used hegemony to mean “the social, cultural, ideological, or economic influence exerted by a dominant group within a culture.”

A group of Gramsci’s followers, called the Frankfurt School, moved from Germany to Columbia University in NY City in 1935. It has been spreading it’s antibiblical ideology across America’s college campuses ever since. They expanded Marx’s oppressor/oppressed economic lens to every sphere of social injustice. All inequities are caused by the cultural power of the OPPRESSORS, which these OPPRESSORS cling to through their religious, political, social, and cultural structures. Cultural Marxists want to see these structures, such as Christianity, the US Constitution, the free market, accurate history, and the structure of the family torn down to accomplish "social justice." Critical theory idealogues foment violence to create social unrest across our country. But it is not the extremists who concern me, but the threads of this ideology creeping into the thinking of those who call themselves Bible-believing Christians. Here are some of those threads:

Thread # 1: An anti-Biblical view of justice. Cultural Marxism says “all inequalities are unjust.” Privilege is evil and the cause of oppression. Equal opportunity is replaced by the call for equity. Whereas equality means that each individual or group is given the same opportunity or resources, equity recognizes that each person has different circumstances and, therefore allocates the exact resources needed to reach an equal outcome among all. This is pure Marxism—the redistribution of wealth, i.e. the state stealing from the rich and giving those funds to the poor. After all, why should some have so much and others so little; it is not fair!

Mao fomented revolution through his slogan “from each according to his ability and to each according to his need.” This utopian ideal to force “equality” upon others led ultimately to the slaughter of 65 million Chinese by Mao, and 20 million in the USSR by Lenin and Stalin (Jay Richardson, Money Greed and God). That this Marxist view of justice is seen in critical theory is obvious. For example, Ibram Kendi, the author of How to Be an Antiracist, and leading spokesman for Critical Race Theory writes, “As an anti-racist, when I see racial DISPARITIES, I see racism” (Ted Cruz, Unwoke). Think of it, ANY inequality PROVES racism. Therefore, the “haves” are always demonized by critical theory. What is troubling is that the recent reawakening of Christian concern for social justice has led many to unthinkingly adopt a sinful bias toward those deemed “oppressors” by critical theory. They have a sinful, blaming attidute against categories of God’s image bearers that just happens to perfectly match the categories that critical theory names “oppressors.” They embrace the legacy media's demonization of these "oppressors" with no discernment. Here are some examples of undeserved bias:

  • Against I.C.E. agents who are putting their lives at risk to do their jobs eforcing laws passed by Congress and are viewed as the “oppressors” while gangs that have sent thousands of teens to their death through fentanyl poisoning are somehow the “oppressed.”
  • Against Homeland Security administrators enforcing immigration law who are seen as the “oppressors” while illegal immigrants are seen as victims. God’s love for the sojourner never trumps the just rule of law. We may favor a fine and path to become legal for those who crossed the border illegally or overstayed, their visa, illegally. But such disagreement can never lead to resistance to law-enforcement.
  • Against the President. Some Christians refuse to associate with supporters of Trump despite his pro-life. pro-Israel, anti-woke agenda. He used American economic strength to end wars, has helped the poor through foreign investment that will bring thosands of jobs to our economy, saved  thousands of young lives from fentanyl death and young women and children from being raped by Mexican drug cartels by closing the borders, which are all consistent with biblical values. Of course, some disagreement with MAGA is legitimate. I cannot support MAGA's nationalism. But does that one negative really negate countless other biblical policies being implemented by his administration or has critical theory blinded some Christians to reality?
  • Against business owners, who are the “oppressors” because somehow one person becoming wealthy means he caused another’s other’s poverty (which exhibits complete ignorance of economics). In reality it is business owners who provide jobs to workers who are fundamental to developing the resources on planet earth to feed its population.
  • Against men. I’ve witnessed the unjust treatment of a male accused of abusing a thirty-year-old woman with whom he had a four-year consensual affair. It was sin, but it was not abuse. Biblical justice holds both man and woman equally accountable, and being labeled an abuser in this culture, when you are not, is a horrific injustice.
  • Against police. Police in our cities are deemed the “oppressors,” while black teen male lawbreakers are the “oppressed.” Justifying an attempt to hurt the police through defunding because they are racist oppressors is absurd when between 75 and 88 thousand police officers in America are black.

Thread # 2: A false oppressor/oppressed social binary, which is evil. Of course, those with power oppress those with less. That is an obvious conclusion from biblical teaching about the fall. But the radical fall of Adam’s race transmitted his sinful nature to all humans, not just the rich and powerful. The Biblical law requiring landowners to harvest only once, leaving the leftovers for the poor, needs to be recognized; but to act justly is not just defending the marginalized. It is being impartial, i.e. not favoring the rich or POOR. “You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the POOR or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor” (Lev 19:15).

The most insidious aspect of this oppressor/oppressed false dichotomy is that it demonizes the enforcement of the law. It falsely identifies enforcing the law as authoritarianism. Therefore, interfering with I.C.E. is justified, and the Commander-in-Chief is labeled a fascist for enforcing immigration laws passed by Congress. This past week, five members of Congress put out a video to military members implying that those who disagree with the Commander-in-Chief’s orders should defy them. Anti-I.C.E. sentiment, anti-law-enforcement, and politicians who enable it, should be roundly criticized by Christians because biblical teaching to support law enforcement is very clear. Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore, whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment (Rom 13:1-3). Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good (I Pet 2:13-14). Are some innocent people harmed by I.C.E.’s enforcement of the law? Yes. Can law enforcement be corrupt? Yes. But that has never been justification for Christians to oppose the enforcement of law. Both Peter and Paul would be unjustly executed by the Roman emperor, Nero. Nevertheless, they knew that opposing the enforcement of civil law is EVIL. 

But Cultural Marxism’s oppressor/oppressed lens sees lawbreakers as victims, not those needing punishment. Cities like San Francisco and Chicago have been overrun by crime because officials refuse to enforce laws. This victim mentality towards lawbreakers could not be more anti-biblical or unloving. There is no place for Bible-believing Christians to be anti-I.C.E., support non-enforcement of immigration law, or vote for politicians who are quick to release guilty prisoners when such neglect is rewarding crime, harming innocent citizens, and destroying cities.

The biblical view of punishment for repeated lawbreakers could not be more different than cultural Marxism’s victim mentality, which excuses the wrong behavior that is destroying the lawbreaker, internally. It is best for society, but also for the lawbreaker not to get away with lawlessness. Christians who think it is loving to let convicted lawbreakers escape punishment are looking through the lens of cultural Marxism not the Bible. Scripture teaches that punishment for lawbreaking is required to motivate humans towards righteousness. Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him (Prov 22:15). Love for an unrepentant lawbreaker means bringing punishment, in the hopes of bringing repentance that will rescue him from the downward spiral of sin that will result in more pain and judgement from God if he continues. Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him (Prov 13:24). Love punishes evil, so it will not destroy its perpetrator.

GENDER

Strains of critical theory are also causing many who claim to be Bible-believing, to reject clear biblical teaching about authority in the home and church. Have you ever wondered why women are considered a minority when they outnumber men? According to cultural Marxism, the reason is cultural hegemony. White men have gained cultural power by using traditional views of gender roles and the patriarchy of the Bible to oppress women. I know for certain that egalitarianism and critical theory are corrupting today’s Christians. How? Because the biblical teaching that men are assigned leadership in the church is crystal clear—but many won’t defy the culture. The case against ordaining women to be teaching elders (pastors) or ruling elders is irrefutable. We come to it today in our study of 1 Timothy 2:11-15.

Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control.  

Here are some facts about this text:

  • “Learning quietly with all submissiveness” refers to the elders of the church affirming or denying the legitimacy of what the visiting preacher said. In other words, they are to be silent when the elders of the church are judging whether or not a visiting preacher's teaching is true. This is the tradition behind saying "Amen" which means "it is true," after someone speaks.
  • Paul is speaking with Apostolic authority when he says, “I do not permit.”
  • The context of this prohibition is worship. What Paul says refers to the authoritative teaching of God’s Word, which corresponds to preaching today.
  • Paul is not discussing women having authority over men outside the church.
  • “Have authority over a man” means what it says. Egalitarians have tried to argue that this prohibition was specific to Timothy’s Ephesian church by attempting to translate the Greek word AUTHENTAO “usurp authority,” or “abuse authority.” But over 80 examples of AUTHENTAO exist outside the NT clearly establishing that the word means “exercise authority.”
  • This teaching cannot be merely an accommodation to the culture because Paul bases it on the order of creation. It is therefore normative for all cultures.
  • This text in I Timothy is consistent with what Paul said in I Corinthians 11:13. But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of  a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God. Paul sees significance in the fact that Eve was created to be Adam’s perfect ally not vice versa.
  • Paul reaffirms the “order of creation,” here. God’s recounting of Adam’s sin did not begin, “you ate the forbidden fruit.” It began, “Because you listened to the voice of your wife and ate…” The creation design was Adam leading Eve and them both exercising dominion over the reptile kingdom. But Satan had subverted this order. Eve listened to the serpent and Adam listened to Eve.  
  • The woman was deceived. Paul appears to weigh seriously Satan’s intelligence in trying to deceive Eve instead of Adam. I believe Paul saw something in this strategy that caused him to believe Adam was less vulnerable to deception.
  • Saved through childbearing does not mean saved by childbearing. Paul’s mind was going back to Genesis 3, which recorded not only the fall but God’s curse upon Eve. She will have pain in childbirth, but God’s blessing will still be on the woman through the process of childbirth, if she continues to walk with Jesus bearing the righteous fruit of faith, holiness, love, and self-control.

NT policy is clear. God has assigned the leadership position of pastor and elder in the church to qualified men. Even if this text were unclear, the rest of Scripture teaches that leadership in the church, as it is in the home, is assigned to men.

  • As we’ve seen, in 1 Cor 11:13, Paul explicitly teaches that the head of a wife is her husband and again in Ephesians 5. Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior.
  • The church is uniformly called “the household of God” by the NT writers. Men are responsible for leadership in their own household, so it follows logically that they would be leaders in the “household of God.”
  • This pattern of leadership in the church follows the pattern of leadership in creation. Not only was Eve created for Adam and not vice versa, but Adam had the responsibility of naming Eve, a mark of authority in that culture.
  • The requirement for a pastor or elder is “to be the husband of one wife.” Scripture does not read “or the wife of one husband, (1 Tim 3:2).
  • The requirement to lead the church was "demonstrated success at leading the home," which was assigned to husbands and fathers (1 Tim 3:6).
  • God assigned Abraham the teaching responsibility to guide his kids in the ways of the Lord and Paul addressed fathers, when he commanded, "Raise them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord," (Eph 6:4).
  • Since Scripture commands church members to submit to their elders, if God assigned women to be elders, then who would submit to whom? Would the husband church member submit to his wife the elder, or would she submit to him as his wife? Mutual submission is a non-answer; the question is, “who has the final say?” This impossible situation does not exist, because only qualified men are assigned to be church pastors and elders.

Why do many Christians and churches rationalize clear biblical teaching about gender roles in the church? Because cultural Marxism considers biblical teaching to be the imposing of oppressive patriarchy upon women. It falsely claims that any structure of authority is demeaning to those required to submit because submitting admits one’s inferior status. But this is a lie from Satan, the first egalitarian who wanted to be equal to God and tempted Eve to be like God. Is Jayden Daniels an inferior human being to Dan Quinn, his coach? Does a driver show his inferiority to a police officer when he obeys his wave to come through an intersection? Does an employee following his boss’s lead demonstrate that he has less dignity and worth than his boss? God ordained structure for order in life. His structures are not the problem; the problem is sin. The claim that submitting to authority proves inferiority was proved completely false by Jesus, once and for all. All of Scripture indicates that God the Son is fully equal to God the Father in dignity and glory. Yet The Son chose to humble submit himself to The Father to accomplish our salvation.

Critical theory’s claim that the Bible teaches oppressive patriarchy is completely false. Nothing could be further from the truth. Both Israel and the NT church were governed by the rule of law. The heads of families were accountable to the elders of the town for obeying laws like Leviticus 19:18 You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself. In the church, husbands and fathers were accountable to the elders for their conduct and challenged regularly to sacrifice whatever was necessary to enable their wives and children to flourish.

God’s design of male and female to complete one another in the loving intimacy of marriage is glorious. Of course it is; God chose it to image himself! And every time Christians follow critical theory and demean the gender roles the Bible teaches for the home and the church, men are further enabled to be passive, instead of obeying Christ's call to step up to their leadership role. The old Puritan, Matthew Henry, who was uncorrupted by critical theory or egalitarianism, got it right on this issue. He wrote. “Eve was made from a rib, out of the side of Adam; not made out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected by him and near his heart to be loved by him.” 

For Further Prayerful Thought:

  1. How does “cultural Marxism” sound like what you’ve heard about (economic), i.e. regular Marxism?
  2. If justice means there must be no disparities of money, ability, or power in society, why does it logically follow that the “have nots” will be hostile to the “haves?” Why might they be able to justify a revolution as Mao did in China?
  3. Why would it be tragic if the legitimate enforcement of the law were seen as authoritarianism? Knowing that holders of authority can and do use it unjustly, why do you think God takes such a strong stand (in Rom 13 and I Pet 2) requiring Christians to obey authority.
  4. What do you think of the argument that the biblical teaching about gender roles and church leadership is so clear that to deny it strongly suggests Christians are being shaped by culture and not Scripture?  
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Answering the Call to Fight

Answering the Call to Fight

On 15 November, 2025 By Gary Yagel

At one point in the movie Braveheart, William Wallace (Mel Gibson) must rally his troops as they face likely death at the hands of a much larger English army. His brilliant strategy is an appeal to those who want to run. He points out that if they run, they will always live with regrets that they did not answer the call to fight. His words, "Fight, and you may die. Run, and you'll live...at least a while. And dying in your beds, many years from now, do you think you would be willing to trade all the days, from this day to that, for one chance—just one chance—to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they'll never take our freedom!" The troops cheer and Wallace leads them into battle.

No Christian man I know wants to live with the regret that when the call to fight for his loved ones came, he deserted. In this episode from 1 Tim. 1, Paul charges Timothy and all of us who are spiritual leaders, Fight the good fight. “Timothy, here is your charge as a spiritual leader. FIGHT!” This episode digs into what Paul meant.  

John Eldredge is right when he says “Behind the world and the flesh is an even more deadly enemy, one we rarely speak of and are even much less ready to resist. Yet this is where we live now, on the front lines of a fierce spiritual war that is to blame for most of the casualties you see around you and most of the assault against you” (Wild at Heart). Of course, Eldredge’s comments remind us of Paul’s assessment of life: We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places (Eph 6:11-12). This same spiritual conflict is behind Paul’s charge to Timothy when he says This charge I entrust to you, Timothy, my child, in accordance with the prophecies previously made about you, that by them you may fight the good fight (1:18).

NOTICE THAT THIS CHARGE IS PERSONAL

A. It is based upon Timothy’s unique gifts. Paul roots his charge to Timothy in the prophecies previously made about him. He goes back to Timothy’s specific calling, recognized by the church when Paul placed hands upon him. Though you may not hold a church office, it is as true of you as for Timothy that you have a specific calling based upon your natural and spiritual gifts, immediate family, vocation, family of origin, neighborhood, church, and friendships. Ephesians 2:10 explains. We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. This verse is enormously important when it comes to understanding our personal mission from Jesus. The relationships we have in each sphere of our lives are no accident. In fact, you may be the only gospel some ever read. It is easy to miss what this verse actually says about our own calling.

We think that kingdom advancement happens on stage Sunday mornings, by media influencers, or other upfront Christians. One man holding this view said to John Eldredge, “I’d love to be William Wallace leading the charge with a big sword in my hand. But I feel like I’m the guy back there in the fourth row with a hoe.” Eldredge responded, “That’s a lie of the Enemy—that your place is insignificant, that you aren’t really armed for it anyway. In your life, you are William Wallace. Who else could be? There is no other man who can replace you in your life, in the arena you’ve been called to. If you leave your place in the line, it will remain empty” (Ibid). It is our loved ones who will be overrun by the Evil One, if we don’t accept the call to fight for them. If we are absent, there is no one else to take our place to protect them.

B. The charge is personal because it comes to us from the lips of our CO. “Calling” for a Christian isn’t just a job; it is personal response to Jesus. A disciple is, by definition, one who hears and responds to the call of a master, “Follow me.” A disciple embraces his master’s cause, in our case the spreading of his kingdom over the planet. Fighting for his kingdom is about allegiance to our Master. Os Guinness writes: Calling is the truth that God calls us to himself so decisively that everything we are, everything we do, and everything we have is invested with a special devotion, dynamism, and direction lived out as a response to his summons and service (The Call). It is our Lord, from whose lips comes the charge: Fight.

WHAT DOES FIGHTING THE GOOD FIGHT LOOK LIKE?

Answering this question requires jumping ahead to Paul’s explanation of what God desires Timothy’s work to accomplish. I Timothy 2:4: This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people 1) to be saved and 2) to come to the knowledge of the truth. There are 2 objectives to fight for.

A. Objective # 1. All people to be saved from their sins. Paul is referring to all categories of people, not saying that every individual will be saved. (See ESV footnotes). As we saw last week, Paul declared just 6 verses earlier, Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners (1:15). The gospel is that after Adam aligned his heart and kingdom with Satan’s revolt against God and surrendered Kingdom Earth to the tyrannical rule of Satan, sin, and death, God sent a second Adam to invade earth and human hearts to overthrow the Kingdom of Darkness and establish Christ’s agenda of righteousness and wholeness. “Saving people from their sins” means much more than saving people from the punishment for their sin (justification). It means saving them from the power and brokenness of their sin. Fighting the good fight is fighting for the kingdom of righteousness to prevail over every part of a human’s life and every square inch of Kingdom Earth.

B. Objective # 2. God desires that all people come to the knowledge of the truth. Why is this the second objective? Here are some of the biblical answers.

  • Because men, by their unrighteousness, suppress the truth (Rom 1:16).
  • Because we are to no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds, darkened in their understanding (Eph 4:17).
  • Because the devil…does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies (Jn 8:44).
  • Because the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil (Jn 3:19).
  • Because we are the light of the world. (Mt 5:16-17).
  • Because the weapons of our warfare have divine power to destroy mental strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ (2 Cor 10:4-5).

So, fighting the good fight means fighting 1) for sin to be overthrown by righteousness and 2) for truth to overcome Satan’s lies. In short, fighting the good fight is seeking Christ’s kingdom of righteousness and light to prevail over Satan’s kingdom of sin and darkness.

TWO ESSENTIALS FOR EFFECTIVE FIGHTING

Paul identifies two essentials for successfully fighting the good fight. Vs 1:18-19. This charge I entrust to you, Timothy, my child, in accordance with the prophecies previously made about you, that by them you may fight the good fight, holding 1) faith and 2) a good conscience.

A. Essential # 1 for leadership: faith—the habit of trusting God. You can be sure that every launch you make against the kingdom of darkness will provoke a counter assault from the Enemy, whether a small incursion, like walking on the treadmill, or trying to get up earlier to pray more, as well as a major effort for the kingdom, like reaching others for Christ. The flaming arrows will come reigning down. In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one (Eph 6:16).

At the highpoint of a youth ministry I led, we slammed into opposition from the Evil One. Our summer staff members were actually going through quiet time material with the kids to help them build the habit of meeting with God daily. We had a great year-round staff and had hired four summer interns. But one Saturday night in August, on the only weekend of the summer that my senior high staff members all had to be out of town, I got a call from my Middle School senior leader, who was in tears. He confessed that he had been sleeping with his girlfriend, a single adult member of our church, and she was now pregnant. He wanted to, himself, confess his sin to the middle school kids and parents the next night at the regularly scheduled middle school youth group meeting.

Sunday morning during the worship service I was mulling over what I was going to say at that meeting, when it dawned on me that I was scheduled to lead the senior high youth group meeting that met at the same time, because all my senior high leaders were away. I returned home from church, not quite knowing what I was going to do. The topic of the meeting had been pre-determined to be Christian friendship, which would be followed by handing out six quiet time studies on the topic of Christian friendship to be used the following week. As I pulled into our driveway, I noticed that my brother, who had worked with our senior high group in past years, had just returned from his summer of discipleship training with the Navigators. As we ate lunch, he explained that part of his training was to design a small group study lesson and lead it on a particular discipleship topic. I asked, “What was your topic?” He answered, “Christian friendship.” I said, “Scott I think I know what God’s will is for you tonight!” Efforts to further the kingdom always bring down Satan’s fiery darts. But God will come through, if we just keep trusting him.

B. Essential # 2 for leadership: a good conscience. A good conscience can mean a clear conscience, i.e. seeking forgiveness when necessary or a conscience that has not been violated, i.e. a conscience that is listened to. I learned the importance of listening to my conscience the hard way. At one point while serving as a church planter, our normal harmony as a congregation was eroding and I didn’t know why. Our session had been united in planting a daughter church to our north, which required me to travel up to that church and preach at a 9:15 service and then return to the mother church to preach at 10:45. We had also been united in going forward in our building program at the same time. Our session was united in our plan to sell bonds to the congregation and friends to fund the building construction. We patiently answered concerns and objections at a congregational meeting about the bond sales but the disharmony seemed to be spreading.

Needless to say, these nights found me not sleeping well. One morning, about 4:30, I began pleading with God, “Is there something I have done that is preventing you from bringing harmony on this issue.” Immediately I thought back to our application to sell bonds. When I filled out the total church’s income, my conscience had prompted me—"You are including the income from the daughter church in this number, but they are going to separate from the mother church.” But I had ignored my conscience. So, I gathered the elders, confessed my sin of ignoring the Lord’s promptings and the sin of deception. We decided to put a sticker on our bond package which gave full disclosure that the mother church was planting a daughter church, which would require significant loss of funds to the mother church. Proverbs 11:3 says, The integrity of the upright guides them, but the crookedness of the treacherous destroys them. Of the six unhappy families, three left. There is a cost to sin. Three remained, one of which later told us they became more committed to us because of this confession of sin and our integrity. Leadership responsibility in our homes and churches should weigh heavily on us. If we ignore our conscience those under care suffer.

STEP # 1 IN THE GOOD FIGHT: DESTROY THE ENEMY'S STRONGHOLDS BY PRAYER

It is common knowledge that any country with a strong air force planning to invade another country will first use air power to soften up the enemy before the land invasion. In the Iraq war, the United States began a "shock and awe" bombing campaign which lasted 24 hours before the ground invasion began.

As we seek to dislodge the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience from his hold on the lost and this fallen world, our primary weapon is prayer. When Peter, James, John, and Jesus returned from the Mount of Transfiguration, they encountered some of the other disciples who could not cast out a demon in Jesus’ name. They asked why not and Jesus answered, "This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer" (Mk 9:29).

On another occasion, Jesus said to Peter, “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you” (Lk 22:31-32a). Jesus was very clear about how his kingdom of righteousness and light overcomes the kingdom of evil and darkness. After casting out a demon, he said, “If it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own palace, his goods are safe; but when one stronger than he attacks him and overcomes him, he takes away his armor in which he trusted and divides his spoil (Lk 11:20-22).

Paul understood this power of prayer over the Kingdom of Darkness. Ephesians 6 reveals that because we wrestle against spiritual forces of evil, Paul gave two fundamental commands—not just one. 1) use your spiritual equipment but 2) PRAY. He says the same thing here when he explains fighting the good fight. FIRST OF ALL, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people (1 Tim 2:1). Let’s look at these four categories of prayer.

A. Supplications: DESIS. At the core of this word is a sense of need. It is a request for help. I love the JB Philps translation of Philippians 4:6-7 Don’t worry over anything whatever; tell God every detail of your needs in earnest and thankful prayer, and the peace of God which transcends human understanding, will keep constant guard over your hearts and minds as they rest in Christ Jesus. Remember the core principle for receiving spiritual riches is recognizing our own need, i.e. spiritual poverty. Prayer warfare begins with making sure our own needs are taken care of, so we can concentrate upon fighting for others.

B. Prayers: PROSEUCHE. This word is only used to describe conversation with God, never with man. This word reminds us who the being is to whom we are speaking. The verse just before Paul began his charge to Timothy to fight the good fight was, To the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. There is a strength that he alone can give, a forgiveness that only he can grant, a certainty that he alone can bestow. There are promises that he alone has the power to keep, and challenges that he alone can help us overcome.

C. Intercessions: ENTEUXIS. This word meant to come into a king’s presence with a petition. This prayer answers the call to FIGHT. We ask in the name of the true king of Earth’s Kingdom, Jesus, who began his call to make disciples with the historic fact that he has taken back Adam’s kingdom, Earth, from its slavery to Satan sin and death. All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me, Therefore, go and make disciples….This prayer word describes kingdom warfare.

D. Thanksgivings: EUCHARISTA. This is a combination of the word EU “good” and CHARIZOMAI “to give freely.” It combines a heart of gratefulness with the habit of verbalizing such gratitude by giving thanks. To understand how important the virtue of gratefulness is to God, it is useful to remember that Paul traces the root of human sin to a refusal to honor God and give thanks to him. Romans 1:21, For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him. Paul understands the insulating value of a thankful heart. Fighting the kingdom of evil and darkness is disheartening and exhausting. We will wear out emotionally unless we train our hearts to continually give thanks to our God. David urges us to enter God’s presence with thanksgiving: Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise! Give thanks to him; bless his name! For the Lord is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations (Ps 100)

HOW TO FIGHT THE GOOD FIGHT

A. Objective # 1 God wants us saved from enslaving power of sin.

  • Strive to replace sinful attitudes and behavior with righteousness. Put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness (Eph 4:21-23).
  • Pray effectively for loved ones by considering what God might be teaching your loves one and ask: “Please, by your spirit empower my loved one to overcome their sinful nature and produce in them love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness or self-control (Gal 5). Make my wife inwardly beautiful by empowering her to be a husband lover, children lover, meek, self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind (Titus 2:4-5)
  • Pray for work associates, neighbors, and family members to come to faith.

B. Objective # 2 God wants us to come to a knowledge of the truth. Pray for God’s spirit to tear down Satan’s strongholds of lies & empower our loved ones to:

  • Know that abundant life is in Jesus (John 10:10b)
  • Know that God is good (Psalm 34:8)
  • Know that God is the rewarder of those who diligently seek him (Heb 11:6).
  • Know that love of God that surpasses understanding (Eph 3:19).
  • Know that if we sow to the flesh, we will reap corruption but if we sow to the Spirit, we will reap life (Gal 6:8).
  • Know that God’s design of male & female differently to complete each other with different roles in the home and church is glorious and perfect (Gen 1-2).
  • Know that the wisdom of God’s Word is more precious than gold and nothing we desire compares with her (Pr 3:14-15).

Men, let’s answer the call to fight for our Lord’s honor and loved one’s wellbeing!

For Further Prayerful Thought:

  1. If I am called to fight the good fight for those God has sovereignly place around me, and I desert from the battle line, what does it mean for those I’m called to fight for?
  2. How does Paul’s statement that God desires humans to be saved from sin and come to a knowledge of the truth related to Jesus’ teaching that we are to seek to dispel the kingdom of evil and darkness from our lives and the world and replace it with the righteousness and light of his kingdom?
  3. Why battle for people to see truth?
  4. Why are a good conscience and faith prerequisites for successful fighting?
  5.  How might the things we ask for in prayer for ourselves and others, be impacted by realizing that the good fight is for the fruit of righteousness to be formed in us and others as well as for Satan’s lies to be torn down?
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Is Devotion to God’s Law Legalism?

Is Devotion to God’s Law Legalism?

On 08 November, 2025 By Gary Yagel

In Psalm 119:97, David cries out, “Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day.” But Paul wrote to the Romans, “You are not under law but under grace,” (6:14) and to the Galatians, “If you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law” (5:18). So, for Christians, which is it? Are we called to live free from the Law or devoted to the Law? How we answer this question makes a radical difference in how we live. The biblical answer is not as difficult as it appears. Yet confusion about keeping the law causes millions of believers to have a fuzzy view of their mission. So, let’s dig into our study.

As we continue our study of I Timothy we realize that the question of the place of the law for Christians was an issue that Timothy and other church leaders at Ephesus were wrestling with. We’ll get to his instructions to Timothy in a moment but first let’s observe two overview truths concerning the NT teaching about the law.

1). In every instance in which Paul says, “we are not under the law,” the context was how we are justified, i.e. declared legally righteous before the judge of the universe. Although Paul points to the example of Abraham “who believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness” to prove that Old Covenant believers always were saved by faith and NOT by keeping the law, human pride had corrupted many of Israel’s scribes and Pharisees who believed they were saved by keeping the law. And they had become shockingly legalistic. This strain of thought was making its way into the church and Paul steadfastly fought it, especially in the books of Romans and Ephesians. As Paul had written to this Ephesian church, By grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast (Eph 2:8-9). So, “not being under the law” refers to how Christians are saved, not how they live.

2). Theologians have identified three different categories of Biblical law.

  1. Civil. These had to do with governing the nation of Israel. They focus on the way civil society functions, for example what happens when your ox gores someone, land ownership is disputed, or witnesses give conflicting testimony in court. NT Era Application. Although the giving of the Law in Leviticus and Deuteronomy shows all three categories of law interwoven, Biblical scholars agree that the civil laws of Scripture provide general equity to guide civil society formation and that to whatever degree these laws function as guidelines for a society, that society will be blessed. For example, the civil law of Deuteronomy 9 establishes cities of refuge for the protection of those who accidentally killed someone from revenge-seeking relatives. But intentional murderers were to be executed. This same general distinction between manslaughter, which is unintentional and murder that is premeditated is a pattern followed by US Law.
  2. Ceremonial. The OT ceremonial laws had to do with the priesthood, sacrifices, rituals, the temple, and religious holidays. NT Era Application. The book of Hebrews is written to show that these were all types and foreshadows pointing to and fulfilled in the coming of Christ our Great High Priest. Every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins… by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified (Heb 10:11-14).
  3. Moral. The purpose of the moral law is to spell out what true righteousness looks like in everyday practice. That behavior is summarized in the Ten Commandments given by Moses in Exodus 20 and repeated forty years later in Deuteronomy 5. The first four commandments (first table of the law) describe what loving God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength look like. 1) Give me first place in your affections. 2) Worship me for who I really am not your own image of me. 3) Respect my name. 4) Set apart a day a week for special time to enjoy me.  The second table of the law reveals what loving our neighbor as ourselves looks like. Honor your father and mother. Don’t commit murder, adultery, theft, deceit, or coveting. NT Era Application. The moral law is an eternal expression of the holy nature of God. It is what true righteousness looks like. So, the binding nature of the moral law not only comes fully into the NT, devoting ourselves to keeping the moral law is the mark of true Christians, especially teachers who teach sound doctrine. That is Paul’s point to Timothy. 

TIMOTHY 1:5-15

A. The true gospel produces righteous living. The only gospel there is in Scripture is the gospel of the kingdom—the good news that the Second Adam has come into Kingdom Earth to overthrow the reign of sin, take back Adam’s throne, and spread the rule of righteousness throughout the earth. Therefore, any charge to valid church leaders or teachers will be connected to producing the fruit of righteousness. Thus, Paul explains that the aim of his charge to church leaders is producing the first spiritual fruit of righteousness, love. The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. Certain persons, by swerving from these, have wandered away into vain discussion, desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions (v 5-7).

The ESV Study Notes explain the chief theme of I Timothy: “The gospel produces holiness in the lives of believers, and there is no legitimate separation between belief and behavior.” Paul jumps right to this issue in verse 5 saying that any charge to a legitimate spiritual leader or teacher in the church is a charge to demonstrate the highest of all godly virtues, love for those under their care. He then demonstrates that you can never separate the moral law of God from the gospel. Both the moral law of God and the gospel are given to stop evil and bring about righteousness. That is why he argues that true gospel preachers exhibit love, which is at the core of the two greatest commandments.

B. Furthermore, true gospel teaching of the moral law exposes evil. The moral law explains what true righteousness looks like and what falling short, (which is called “sin”) looks like. Because the moral law exposes sin, it has the power to restrain evil as well, if responded to properly. This restraining purpose of the law is not needed by the righteous, but by the lawless. As Paul explains,  

Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully, understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the righteous but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted (1:8-11).

Paul is saying that valid gospel teaching is never antinomian, a word that means, “anti-law-ism.” The moral law of God is good. Not only does it show what true righteousness looks like, it both exposes evil and restrains evil. Notice that in this text Paul is going through the Ten Commandments. “Any teaching that minimizes the moral law of God,” says Paul, “is contrary to ‘sound doctrine.’” The word sound used here means “health-giving.” Teaching that undermines the moral law is NOT “health giving.” Why? Because the moral law always points us to the path of life. To counter antinomianism, Paul wrote to the Galatians. Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap life forevermore (Gal 6:7-8). The true gospel never undermines the moral law.

C. The same message, that the true gospel never undermines the moral law is restated by Paul a few verses later. Verse 15: The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Of course! How could the true gospel ever minimize the moral law of God when Jesus’ whole purpose in coming into the world was to rescue us from sin, not just its punishment but its power to enslave us. The truth is that the gospel always leads to a love for God’s moral law and devotion to it.

THE PURSUIT OF RIGHTEOUSNESS

What is your gut response to the word, righteous?  What comes to mind when you hear, Ryan is consumed with being righteous, or Lauren is focused on her own righteousness?”  This word does not appeal to us at all. The reason is that it has many very unfortunate, very mistaken connotations. Let’s try to distinguish, the rich biblical meaning of this word from our sadly mistaken, default ideas.

A.  First, the biblical concept of righteousness does not at all imply self-righteousness. It is not the salvation by works that all other religions teach. The Greek word, DIKAIOSUNE  means, that which conforms to the moral will of God. This word does not carry with it, in any way the idea that this righteousness is earned, that it reflects an over-estimation of one’s own righteousness, or that this righteousness is in any way a basis for self-justification.

B. Second, although the Bible does use DIKAIOSUNE, the word for righteousness, to describe the imputed righteousness of Christ to us, its more common use in the NT is a call to righteousness of character. Christ has declared us legally righteous. The law has no claim against us to condemn us for our sin. But the term, righteousness has a much richer meaning in Scripture than just justification, a one-time act. Notice that Hebrews 10:15, which we just read, distinguishes between the one-time act of justification (being declared legally perfect) and the Christ-follower’s ongoing growth into righteous character, sanctification: For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.  

C. Pursuing biblical righteousness is NOT moralism. Moralism is using obedience as a bargaining chip with God. Moralists might trust Christ for salvation, but they aren’t sure God will love them if they don’t behave. Instead of the freedom to bask in God’s unconditional love, a moralist must be good, so God loves him back and God will give him what he wants. Moralist’s obedience to God earns them the right to demand that God bless them in the ways they expect blessing. When God doesn’t do that, their faith is shattered. The moral law oppresses them because they must keep it for God to love them. The reality, however, as Steve Brown points out, is that only those who know God will love them even if they never get better, will ever get any better (DMin Lectures). When they understand God’s unconditional love, they will love the moral law not hate it and pursue true righteousness with all their hearts. It is God’s path to life and to pleasing him!

D. A focus on biblical righteousness is NOT legalism. Legalism’s focus is on outward rule-keeping. It loads its proponents down with extreme applications of the law, which its advocates make binding on everyone “How could any Christian put his kids in public school,” “Everyone should keep the Sabbath the way we do.” “You watched an R-rated movie?” Jesus explained that the legalism of the scribes and Pharisees was the opposite of true righteousness. He said, Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness (Matt 23:23).

THE CHRIST-FOLLOWER’S MISSION: PURSUE RIGHTEOUSNESS

Despite the common misconception that pursuing righteousness is legalistic, there is an overwhelming case in Scripture that, in fact, the mission of Christ-followers is to pursue righteous attitudes and behavior in their own lives and over the earth.

A. Pursuing righteousness is not legalistic; it trusts what Jesus said about the law.

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.  For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.  accomplished. Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven (Matt 5:17-19).

After these verses, Jesus expanded the meaning of the ten pillars of the moral law to include far more than outward behavior. Not murdering means not harming through words or anger. Not committing adultery means not lusting. Not bearing false witness means always keeping your word. Not stealing means giving generously. Jesus did not deny the validity of the moral law; he expanded it.

B. Pursuing righteousness is not legalistic; it’s our calling from The Master. In Matthew 6:33, Jesus expressly tells his followers that their top priority, above caring about what they will eat or drink or wear is to seek first the rule of Christ’s kingdom of righteousness. The phrase, “the kingdom of God and his righteousness” is a grammatic structure, which shows that the kingdom of God and righteousness are being used as synonyms. The kingdom of God is the sphere where Christ’s agenda of righteousness and restoration is being accomplished.

C. Pursuing righteousness is not legalistic; it images God to the world. The Apostle Peter wrote, As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy” (1 Pet 1:14-16). Interestingly, Peter quotes here from Leviticus 11:45, which gives two reasons for being holy: because that is the proper response of one who has been saved from slavery—in the case of Israel slavery to Egypt, in the case of Christians slavery to sin. Secondly because we are to image God. For I am the Lord who brought you up out of the land of Egypt to be your God. You shall therefore be holy, for I am holy.

D. Pursuing righteousness is not legalistic; it is God’s plan of redemption. Jesus launched his ministry in his hometown of Nazareth quoting the great Messianic passage of Isaiah 61:1-3 which says that God’s purpose was to turn his people into oaks of righteousness. The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, …that they may be called OAKS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS, the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified. As the firstfruits of the new order of humanity, we show the world what restoration to wholeness looks like.

E. Pursuing righteousness is not legalistic; it is expressing gratefulness to God for his mercy. In his letter to the Romans, after devoting eleven chapters to explaining the mercy of God in his glorious plan of salvation, Paul challenges believers with the only logical response: With eyes wide open to the mercies of God, I beg you, my brothers, as an act of intelligent worship, to give him your bodies, as a living sacrifice, consecrated to him and acceptable by him. Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mold, but let God re-mold your minds from within, so that you may prove in practice that the plan of God for you is good, meets all his demands and moves towards the goal of true maturity (12:1-2).

F. Pursuing righteousness is not legalistic; it is what all Christians do. Paul commands the Ephesian Christians, Put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and…put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness (4:22-24).

G. Pursuing righteousness is not legalistic; it is loving Jesus in HIS love language.

Jesus said, If you love me, you will keep my commandments (Jn 14:16).

H. Pursuing righteousness is not legalistic; it is what Christ-followers transformed hearts CRAVE. Jesus’ clearest portrait of human living when his kingdom invades our heart attitudes is known as a series of Beatitudes. The fourth is Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Of course! The most satisfying, fulfilling way to live is to be restored to God’s unfallen design. The moral law shows us what that design, true righteousness, looks like.

Notice that this Beatitude is not just focused on outward behavior that is right; our inner hearts are to crave the spread of righteousness. When Jesus says we are to hunger and thirst for such righteousness, the power of that metaphor misses modern day believers, who know very little about being really hungry or really thirsty.  But in Jesus’ day, a working man ate meat only once per week and many beggars would have to go two days before eating. Severe thirst was even more common in a world where there was no plumbing, a hot, scorching sun, and dust storms that could fill the throat and nostrils nearly to the point of suffocation. Jesus is saying, "My followers are those whose longing for righteousness is as strong as a starving beggar’s hunger for food, whose passion for righteousness is as intense as the thirst of a weary, parched-throated traveler."

In closing, Scripture overwhelmingly teaches that pursuing righteousness is NOT being legalistic. In fact, that pursuit is to consume us. John Macarthur writes, “The fourth beatitude speaks of strong desire, of driving pursuit, of a passionate force inside the soul. It has to do with ambition—ambition of the right sort—whose object is to honor, obey, and glorify God by partaking of his righteousness. (The MacArthur New Testament Commentary). May our hunger and thirst for righteousness—for everything broken by sin to be fixed—lead us to say with David to the Lord, “Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day.”

For Further Prayerful Thought:

  1. How would try to explain to a new believer that when Paul said that Christians don’t live “under the law” he was referring to how we are SAVED, not how we are TO LIVE.
  2. What stood out to you about the three categories of biblical law?
  3.  Look back at the 8 texts and reasons that pursuing righteousness is NOT legalism. Which ones seemed most persuasive to you.
  4. In David’s Psalm 119 cry, “O how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day” why might he associate loving God’s law with meditating on it?
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Hearing “Well Done” From the Master

Hearing “Well Done” From the Master

On 01 November, 2025 By Gary Yagel

Today, we continue our study of I Timothy by noting Paul’s teaching that genuine Christian leaders are focused not on philosophical speculation or useless theological debate but upon being faithful stewards of what God has entrusted to us. He instructed Timothy, Charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine, nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies, which promote speculations rather than the STEWARDSHIP from God that is by faith. This term, stewardship, is a very rich word, with an enormous biblical theme behind it to describe our mission as Christ-followers. In fact, Jesus taught that it is being faithful stewards that leads to hearing “well done” from the Master.

From the first page of Genesis to the closing pages of Revelation, the mission of God’s people has been to steward Kingdom Earth for God as his future dwelling place. We are to order our world, following the paradigm of righteousness, for the Glory of God. Here are just some of the texts that overwhelmingly demonstrate this truth.

A. Man is created in God’s image. Let us make man in our image, after our likeness (Gen 1:26). God is the GREAT ORDERER. The very creation account that precedes this text shows God moving in creation from the unformed “stuff” of creation to greater order and complexity. Repeatedly, God separates and divides—the light from the darkness, the waters under the expanse from the waters above the expanse, dry land from water. He brought order out of the undifferentiated stuff of Genesis 1:2 The earth was without form and void. “The book of Genesis opens with a majestic description of how God first created the heavens and earth and then how he ordered the earth to become his dwelling place” (ESV Study Notes). As those who bear his image, we also were created to be orderers.

B. Genesis 1:26 continues And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” Following immediately upon explaining our identity as his image bearers, God says we are to rule, i.e. exercise dominion. OT scholar Bruce Waltke suggests an obvious connection in Genesis 1:26—that being an image bearer means “ruling on behalf of.” Waltke observes that in the Ancient Near East it was widely believed that a god’s spirit lived in any statue or image of the god, with the result that the image could function as a kind of representative of the god wherever it was placed. It was also common in the ANE to think of a king as a representative of a god. The king ruled but the god was the ultimate ruler, so the king was seen to be ruling on God’s behalf. The text is saying that exercising royal dominion over the earth as God’s representative is the basic purpose for which God created man.

C. God continues to explain our creation assignment in Genesis 1: 28: Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and SUBDUE it. Again, the ESV Study Note scholars observe, “The term ‘subdue’ (Heb KABASH) elsewhere means to bring a people or a land into subjection so that it will yield service to the one subduing it. Here, the idea is that the man and woman are to make the earth’s resources beneficial.”

Adam continues God’s creative work of ordering, i.e. shaping the material of creation by subduing the earth. To subdue the earth is to explore the created world and harness its laws for the good of mankind. From police officers who keep order in civil society to engineers who harness the laws of creation in order to solve human problems to scientists who discover those laws, the human concept of vocation is rooted in God’s call to mankind to subdue the earth. God places creation in the care of people who are to develop it.

The commands to populate the earth and to subdue it are called the cultural mandate. Richard Mouw says the cultural mandate is “God’s charge to our first parents to ‘transform untamed nature into a social environment’ by cultural formation that fit’s God’s design” (When the King Comes Marching In). We are to rule FOR God. Not only is Adam to exercise dominion by creatively harnessing the laws of nature for the good of mankind but he is to exercise dominion over the society that grows as the population expands. He is to order civilization FOR God.

 “God’s good creation includes not only earth and its creatures, but also an array of cultural gifts, such as marriage, family, art, language, commerce,… government… tent-making, musicianship, and metalworking. All of these unfold the built-in potential of God’s creation.” (Cornelius Plantinga Engaging God’s World.)

As the image bearers of God, humans are charged not only with caring for what God has already created but also with developing and ordering culture FOR God. Humans know what pleases God because God wrote his moral law on our hearts.

D. When Adam and Eve rebel, the consequence is that the kingdom they were to rule righteously FOR God is surrendered to the triumvirate, Satan, (the Prince of the Power of the Air), sin, and the consequence of sin—death, which rule Kingdom Earth. But the messianic seed of the woman is promised—a second Adam who would defeat Satan, sin, and death—taking back Earth’s throne. After the resurrection proved his victory over Satan, sin, and death, the Second Adam ascended to takeover earth’s throne and do what Adam was supposed to do—order every sphere of life FOR God—spreading Christ’s rule (called his kingdom of righteousness) over the earth. All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations (Matt 28:18-19a).

E. To follow Jesus, the Second Adam, is to recover the original call of Adam to order every aspect of the kingdom entrusted to him by God according to righteousness. “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness,” as scholar Herman Ridderboss argues means grammatically “spreading the righteous rule of Christ” over the earth. (The Coming Kingdom). The top priority of my followers,” says Jesus, “is ordering every aspect of their lives according to My agenda of righteousness.” Our mission is to order our heart loyalties, our heart attitudes, and every sphere of our lives by Christ’s agenda of righteousness. The paradigm that we are to follow, as we seek to order our lives, is Christ’s kingdom of restoration and righteousness. We are to pray, “may your kingdom come. i.e. may your righteous will be done in the second Adam’s kingdom, Earth, as it is in heaven.”

Jesus has begun restoring everything broken by sin and we are the firstfruits of that process. Paul explained, If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. James says we are the firstfruits of the restoration yet to come. Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures (1:18). We are the new order and have the privilege of putting on display Christ’s new order, his kingdom of righteousness transforming our heart attitudes and  behavior, and impacting the world around us as salt and light.

F. Behind Paul’s teaching to Timothy about false teachers was the recognition that the true gospel always brings about a re-ordering of human life The invading kingdom of righteousness overthrows the kingdom of darkness. The word Paul used for this re-ordering was OIKONOMIAN, the word from which we get economy. It is usually translated as stewardship. It comes from OIKOS a house and NEMO to arrange or order. It usually denotes the management of a household or estate. Once again, we see the consistent theme of our mission—being given our very lives, time, energy, number of days, gifts, resources, relationships—by God, we are to steward them well. We are to order our lives, putting on display the new order for our LORD’s pleasure and glory, spreading kingdom righteousness.

G. Finally, this call to order every part of our lives for our King is clearly evident from Jesus’ parable of the faithful steward, which explains that the phrase seeking the kingdom of God means “faithfully stewarding our lives—all we have been given by God—to implement his agenda of righteousness and restoration.”

The kingdom of heaven… will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted to them his property. To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. He who had received the five talents went at once and traded with them, and he made five talents more. So also he who had the two talents made two talents more. But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master's money. Now after a long time the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them. And he who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five talents more, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me five talents; here, I have made five talents more.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant…And he also who had the two talents came forward, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me two talents; here, I have made two talents more.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant…He also who had received the one talent came forward…But his master answered (the unfaithful steward), ‘You wicked and slothful servant! (Mt 25:14f).

In the NT era, one talent would have been equal to $600,000.00. Notice that the contrast is between being intentional to act to bear fruit from the resources entrusted to us and doing nothing, being lazy, being passive. It is noteworthy that unlike the prodigal son, this unfaithful servant did not spend the resources entrusted to him doing evil. Nevertheless, he was so ungrateful for the enormous blessing bestowed upon him that he didn’t care whether what he did with his resource was pleasing to his master or not. Of those to whom much is given, much is required.  You and I have been given new life in Christ. How can we not take charge of our lives and order them for God’s glory? How can we deny Jesus’ command to be intentional about seeking to spread Christ’s righteous agenda into our heart loyalties, heart attitudes, every sphere of our lives, and over every square inch the world where we have influence?

Jesus—The Faithful Steward Who Ordered His Life

If we are to faithfully steward our lives for Jesus, Gordon Macdonald writes:

We must come to see ourselves as living in two very different worlds. Our outer or public world is easier to deal with. It is much more measurable, visible, and expandable. Our outer world consists of work, play, possessions, and a host of acquaintances that make up a social network. It is the part of our existence that is easiest to evaluate in terms of success, popularity, wealth, and beauty. But our inner world is more spiritual in nature. Here is a center in which choices and values can be determined, where solitude and reflection might be pursued. It is a place for conducting worship and confession, a spot where the moral and spiritual pollution of the times need not penetrate. (Ordering Your Private World)

MacDonald continues, “Our public worlds are filled with a seeming infinity of demands upon our time, our loyalties, our money, and our energies. And because these outer worlds of ours are so visible, so real, we have to struggle to ignore all their seductions and demands. They scream for our attention and action (Ibid).

When life got hectic for Jesus, he displayed an incredible determination to retreat to his inner world to ensure that his outer world was being guided by it. Luke notes, what happened when Jesus’ fame explodes after healing a leper. Now even more the report about him went abroad, and great crowds gathered to hear him and to be healed of their infirmities. But he would withdraw to desolate places and pray (Lk 5:15-16). Here is the lesson Jesus’ example teaches us.

Memo to the Disorganized: If my outer world is in order, it will be because I am convinced that the inner world of the spiritual must govern the outer world of activity (Ibid pa 1). That is a perfect description of the way Jesus lived. So must we if we want to hear “Well done” whispered into our ear at the end of our race.

Enabling the Inner World of the Spiritual to Order the Outer World of Activity

Step #1. Reject rudderless living. God created US to rule our lives not circumstances. Many of us are going through life like a raft rushing down a white-water river, careening off of whatever gets in the way, with no rudder or paddle. That is not the way David, for example, lived. While on a raid, he had left too few guards home to protect his city, leading to catastrophe in his outer world. We read

And when David and his men came to the city, they found it burned with fire, and their wives and sons and daughters taken captive. Then David and the people who were with him raised their voices and wept until they had no more strength to wee…. And David was greatly distressed, for the people spoke of stoning him, because all the people were bitter in soul, each for his sons and daughters (Vs3-6a

The anguish of this moment was severe. So crushing was David’s mistake of leaving two few guards at his camp that his band of brothers—poster children for extreme loyalty—were on the verge of mutiny. David’s outer world is falling apart. So, what does he do? He withdraws to his inner world. The next verse says, But David strengthened himself in the Lord his God. He asked God what do. God said, track down the Amalekites. They did that and rescued their families unharmed.

Memo to the Disorganized: If my outer world is in order, it will be because, having faced up to what drives me, I listen quietly for the call of Christ (Ibid p. 50).

Step #2. Catalogue biblical data that reveals God’s agenda for each sphere of your life. Someone has said, “God forgive us for aiming too low and hitting the mark every time.” But what is worse is not aiming at all because we have no target on the wall. This step maps out the ground that Jesus wants taken as you seek to overpower the kingdom of darkness in your own life and replace it with righteousness. Forming your battle plan requires data about each target:

  • List sinful attitudes that must be replaced and godly attitudes built. Study them by knowing synonyms for them and their opposites.
  • List what Scripture says about a wife’s needs, e.g. to be cherished, to be understood, to be honored, to be praised, to be treated as joint heirs, etc.
  • Identify biblical principles for financial management, e.g.  

--Treasures gained by wickedness do not profit (Prov 10:2),-- Honor the Lord with your wealth and with the firstfruits of all your produce; then your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will be bursting with wine (Prov 3:9-10).-- Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to do it (Prov 3:27).

  • Catalogue other verses about Christ’s agenda for you, personal growth, being a godly employee or employer, discovering and using your spiritual gifts, etc.

Memo to the Disorganized: If my outer world is in order, it will be because I have begun to pursue the discipline of seeing events and people through the eyes of Christ so that my prayers reflect my desire to be in alignment with his purposes. (Ibid p. 219).

Step # 3. Escape often to your inner world to talk about your mission w/ your CO. When Sauls troops invaded David’s home, and he narrowly escaped with his wife, Michal’s help, David retreated to his private world and penned Psalm 59. When David miraculously escaped from King Achish, he wrote Psalm 34. After Nathan confronted David with his adultery with Bathsheba and murder of her husband, David wrote Psalm 51. Is there a pattern here? The man after God’s own heart often retreated to his private world. So, did Jesus. A pattern that I have tried to follow for years is to find time to retreat each Sunday afternoon, evening, or Monday morning into my private world with my CO to recover focus on my mission. It is impossible for me to express how much this habit has shaped my life.

Memo to the Disorganized: If my outer world is in order, it will be because I make a daily. or at least weekly) choice to monitor its state of orderliness (Ibid p. 11).

Step # 4. Formulate your plan. Accomplishing nearly anything requires a plan—going to the grocery store, buying gifts for the family, leading a meeting, winning a ball game, even getting ready to go to bed. So why would we ever think that we could please Christ in stewarding our lives—without ever making a plan?  I fear that laziness as a follower of King Jesus has been excused because intentional, planned efforts to pursue righteousness are misidentified as works-righteousness. May I remind us all the justification by faith alone through grace alone does NOT lead to passivity, it leads to intentionally seeking first the spread of Christ’s righteousness over every square inch of the planet. THAT REQUIRES A PLAN. There is great, biblical wisdom in the saying, “If you fail to plan, plan to fail.” God never intended his followers to fly by the seat of their pants but to exercise dominion over their lives.

Memo to the Disorganized. If my outer world is in order it will be because I have made a daily determination to see time as God’s gift and worthy of careful investment (Ibid p. 88).

Step # 5. Abide in Jesus for the power you need. Apart from Jesus’ power at work in us we can not order our lives according to righteousness. His promise: I am the vine; you are the branches. If you abide in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. (Jn 15:5).

Memo to the Disorganized: If my outer world is in order, it will be because I regularly choose to enlarge the spiritual center of my life (Ibid p.172).

The mark of orthodox teaching and genuine godly leadership in the church is that both are permeated with the call to be faithful stewards of the lives and resources God has entrusted to us, ordering their use according to the paradigm of kingdom righteousness, which is Jesus’ agenda. Let me close with these final words.

Memo to the disorganized:  If my outer world is in order, it will be because I have made a deliberate decision to begin the “ordering” process now.

For Further Prayerful Thought:

  1. Which aspects of being made in God’s image most point to us being made to order every aspect of human life FOR the king, in your opinion?
  2. How would you support the idea that the Great Commission, “Go and make disciples of the nations,” is a renewal of Adam’s original commission, “Be fruitful, fill the earth and subdue it?”
  3. How would you defend the idea that if our outer world is ever going to be ordered for God, the reason will be that we’ve become convinced that the inner world of the spiritual must govern the outer world of activity?
  4. Which of the 5 steps given to govern our outer world from the inner world do you most want to remember?
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Authority—The Biblical vs Cultural Views

Authority—The Biblical vs Cultural Views

On 25 October, 2025 By Gary Yagel

In a world in which cultural influencers are labeling ICE the enemy, the current administration is demonized as being “fascist” and “authoritarian,” and Al Sharpton is saying that Virginians who don’t vote for Abigail Spanberger for governor are misogynistic, patriarchal oppressors, how does the just use of authority differ from authoritarianism?  After all, wise Christians know that radical depravity has infected all human hearts. Power corrupts. Absolute power may corrupt absolutely. We should be on edge about ICE invading immigrant communities. Like all members of law enforcement, they must be held to the highest possible standards. Furthermore, in my view, Christians’ love for the alien requires us to be concerned about those who once crossed into our border illegally, but currently are law-abiding, responsible members of our community. Before being forcibly deported, are they being urged to take advantage of the opportunity of the Department of Homeland Security's  Project Homecoming, which offers financial and travel assistance for those who voluntarily self-deport? And has anyone in the Trump administration considered another form of justice for those coming into the country with their families illegally—a stiff fine that when paid changes their status to being here legally. Many Christian ministries engaged in ministry to immigrant communities favor this form of justice.

The strains of egalitarianism and cultural Marxism which identify biblical authority structures as themselves, “evil,” are infecting our loved ones, causing them to resist the rule of law. They need a biblical understanding of God-established authority in civil society, the church, and the home despite the flaws of those filling those God-designed roles.

The Purpose of God-ordained structures of authority is LOVE. That is the case for all three spheres of life, civil society, the church, and the home. Authority is never to be used selfishly but always for the benefit those under one’s care as a leader. Jesus said, You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matt 2):25-28). Let’s consider how authority is appointed by God in all three spheres, for the benefit of those under their care and then consider how sin corrupts the use of the structure, not the structure itself.

CIVIL AUTHOPRITY

Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good. For this is the will of God (1 Peter 2:13-15)

Notice that the purpose of civil authority is to punish EVIL and promote what is GOOD. Civil authority is a common grace means of holding back sin which would otherwise destroy both humans themselves and human society.

A. Civil authority’s purpose is LOVE. Punishing evil is the most loving step the government can take FOR THE EVIL DOER. Compassionate Christians sometimes equate love with helping one avoid pain, but that is wrong. Painful consequences for wrong actions keep offenders from spiraling down into deeper evil, further destroying their lives:

  • Whoever ignores instruction despises himself, but he who listens to reproof gains intelligence (Prov 15:31-32).
  • Cease listening, my son, to discipline, And you will stray from the words of knowledge (Prov 19:27).
  • Stripes that wound scour away evil and strokes reach the inmost parts (Prv 20:30)
  • Discipline your son while there is hope and do not desire his death (Prv 19:18).
  • My son, do not reject the discipline of the Lord or loathe His reproof, For whom the Lord loves He reproves, even as a father corrects the son in whom he delights (Prov 3:11-12).

Punishing evil is also the most loving step the government can take FOR SOCIETY.

Jesus summarized the last six of the ten commandments (you shall not murder steal, lie, or commit adultery, etc) as loving your neighbor as yourself. Consistent punishment for breaking these laws motivates society towards keeping these laws. The concept of “the fear of the Lord” refers to knowing that sin will be punished.   

  •  By the fear of the Lord men depart from evil (Prov 16:6).
  • When the scoffer is punished the naïve become wise (Prove 21:11).
  • For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval,  for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid. (Rom 13:3-4).

B. Sin corrupts God’s design of civil uuthority. Because the Bible teaches total depravity, Christians cannot mindlessly support the unjust use of authority. Those wielding authority can pervert justice since all humans are infected by sin,

  • That is what caused many southern churches to be silent about the horrific treatment of black human beings as slaves and during Jim Crow.
  • That is what caused the liberal churches in Germany to justify their complacency regarding the evils of Hitler and the Third Reich.
  • Sinful love of comfort can cause middle class Christians to simply favor “law and order” politicians without concern for the administration of law and order becoming “authoritarianism.” Such complacency led to the rise of Hitler.

All Christians must recognize that sin makes us inherently resistant to authority and prone to bitterness toward authority figures who harm others. But we must never support politicians who promote lawlessness.

  • Both Romans 13 and I Peter 2 call us unequivocally to a submissive attitude towards civil authority. They were written at the very time Nero was using Christians as candles to light his garden. Christians must never associate with those fomenting disobedience to civil authority, despite their heinous acts.
  • Martin Luther King Jr. showed us that in the face of extreme injustice, there may be a place for controlled civil disobedience. King, who vehemently opposed violence, was jailed in Birmingham in 1963, for leading a nonviolent protest against segregation. This is not the same as fomenting violence in the streets.
  • The ideologies of critical theory (aka cultural Marxism) and egalitarian call to anarchy may be slipping into many Christians’ thinking who care deeply, as we should, about the way authority has been misused. But the widespread release of criminals and opposition to justly enforcing laws cannot be justified biblically

CHURCH AUTHORITY

A. Church authority’s purpose is LOVE. The purpose of Paul’s letter to Timothy was to cause him to recognize illegitimate leadership in the church. So, Paul writes I Timothy to help Timothy recognize false teaching and to understand that true Christianity results in godly character. In fact, the purpose of church leader authority is love. Paul explains: As I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine, nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies, which promote speculations rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith. The aim of our charge is love (1 Tim 1:3-5a). Hebrews urges church members to submit to their leaders, because those leaders are accountable to God for providing tender care of God’s flock. Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account (Heb 13:17a). Church leaders are given authority so they love their flock.

B. Sin corrupts God’s design of church authority. God assigns the leadership in God’s household, the church, to men. Although this teaching must be balanced with the truth that women are full members of Christ’s Body whose gifts are essential, this teaching is clear.

  • I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet (1 Tim 2:14). Paul is not just addressing a specific situation of cultural feminine rebellion, making this command culturally normative. He bases it on the universal experience of creation and the fall.
  • The assignment of leadership in the church is clear when we examine the qualifications to be elder/overseer. I Tim 3:2 An overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife… The text does not say, “the marital partner of one spouse.” The text does not say “the husband of one wife, or the wife of one husband.
  • In this same letter, I Timothy 3:15, Paul calls the church the household of God. Since the NT assigns the leadership of covenant households to men, it follows logically that God’s household would follow the same structure.
  • If women can be elders, is the elder wife under her husband’s authority as her husband or is he under her authority as the elder? “Mutual authority” is a nonsense answer since the question has to do with the final say. The impossibility of answering this conflict says it all. There is no answer to this dilemma because it is imaginary. Men are to lead the household of God.

Sin, by definition, causes rebellion to authority. We demand to be our own boss, submissive to no one. Egalitarianism began in the heart of Satan who said, “I will ascend to the mountain of the Lord, I will be God.” Rebellion against God’s created gender role structure and the structure of church authority by calling it oppressive patriarchy should surprise no one. Yet church after church in America has bent to the God of egalitarianism leading them to deny the authority of Scripture. Here are words from the Jesus Without Baggage website, entitled, “How Christian Patriarchy is a Misguided and Harmful Belief that Does Tremendous Damage.”

Christian Patriarchy oppresses and denigrates women and girls. They are expected to submit meekly to whatever the husband demands. This is wrong, oppressive. The idea is that men are directed by God and have the responsibility to direct their wives. But Women can follow the voice and direction of God just as easily as men can. Christian Patriarchy develops an environment for physical, emotional, and sexual abuse against women and misrepresents biblical passages. (The author then cites 5 biblical texts that teach that men are to lead their homes and churches, commenting:) These passages are used as if they are the very word of God—eternal propositional truth. But these opinions were written by people (not God) to address issues in particular congregations and based on the culture that existed at the time. They are not the eternal word of God.

HOME AUTHOPRITY

A. The purpose of a husband and father’s authority is LOVE. Husbands love your wife as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her (Eph 5:25). Adam was placed in the garden to cultivate it, bringing out the potential of all that was in the garden including his wife and kids. Similarly Christian husbands are to follow Christ who gave his life so his bride might be radiantly beautiful on the inside—sanctified—that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.

In the NT, fathers are assigned the responsibility for raising up kids in the discipline and instruction of the Lord (Eph 6:4). Adam, the first man, was place in the garden to prune its inhabitants so they reach their full potential. Thus, fathers use discipline to shape their kids’ character reach their full potential. Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child; the rod of discipline will remove it far from him (Prv 22:15). As the Lord disciples the one he loves, so do fathers.

B. Sin corrupts God’s design of the husband and father’s authority. After Eve sins, God explains to her that sin will cause problems over her husband’s leadership role in the family. Your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you.

Notably, God’s first words to Adam after he sinfully ate the fruit are NOT, “You ate the fruit I told you not to eat,” but “Because you have listened to your wife and have eaten of the tree,” The ESV Study Notes observe,

The ongoing result of Adam and Eve’s original sin of rebellion against God will have disastrous consequences in their relationship. (1) Eve will have the sinful “desire” to oppose Adam and assert leadership over him, reversing God’s plan for leadership in marriage. (2) Adam will also abandon his God-given pre-fall role of leading, guarding, and caring for his wife, replacing it with his own distorted role to “rule over” Eve.

Sin also corrupts the responsibility to punish children for doing wrong. Punishment can become cruel, harsh, abusive, and controlling. Similarly, sinful neglect and laziness can cause them to let their children go their own way. The rod and a rebuke give wisdom, but a child who gets his own way brings shame to his mother (Prov 29:15). Laziness can cause us to fail to give a child small painful consequences for small disobedience, depriving him of learning self-control. That only sets him up for God sending him large pain later for larger violations. Perhaps that is why God warns, He who withholds his rod hates his son, but he who loves him disciplines him diligently.

THE LOVE THAT LEADERS NEED TO GIVE ARISES FROM THREE WELLSPRINGS.

The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith (I Tim 1:5). Every Christian man I know wants to love well his wife and kids. But we often don’t. How can we increase our capacity to love? Paul tells us that the very AGAPE, self-sacrificing love we need arises from 3 sources.

1. A pure heart. The word heart (KARDIA) refers metaphorically to the inner place where our motives, desires, and loves reside. A pure heart channels the wellspring of our desires into righteous channels. All my sexual desires are directed towards my wife. All my desire for respect is directed towards hearing “well-done” from the lips of the master. A pure heart is governed by pure MOTIVES--where concern for the loved one TAKES PRIORITY over love for oneself. Greater love has no one than this that he lay down his life for his friend. A pure heart is selflessness combined with an understanding of, and commitment to another’s needs. God so loved the world that he gave up what was most precious to him—his Son—to meet our great need for salvation. Self-love is normal and instinctive. We ought to be concerned about our own needs, take responsibility for meeting them ourselves, as adults should, and take those we can’t meet to God. But a pure heart prioritizes the other’s needs over our own. Tim Keller illustrates:

“Courage is loving your neighbor’s well-being more than your own safety. Honesty is loving your neighbor’s interests more than your own, even when the truth will put you at a disadvantage. Look at injustice. You may say that you believe in social equality and justice and think that you do, but if you make business decisions that exploit others, it is because at the heart level, you love your own prosperity more than your neighbor’s.” (Making Sense of God, Tim Keller).

A pure heart is one not motivated by self-concern which has been pushed aside. It is becoming, through Jesus, entirely motivated to pursue another’s welfare.

2. A good conscience. The Greek word for conscience (SUNEIDESIS) comes from the word knowing and with. Thus, we carry with us an all-seeing part of us called our conscience. Here are three reasons why a good, or clear conscience is a wellspring for genuine love: 1) True love never disregards the voice of conscience. Love does not rejoice at wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. (1 Cor 13:6). Agreeing to have sex before marriage because your fiancée wants to is NOT genuine love. It is never worth violating your conscience to obtain a benefit for another. 2) True love does not violate what our conscience tells us is untrue or morally wrong out of sympathy for another. Empathy is not the highest manifestation of love. If you see a person drowning, you can empathize with the drowning victim all day; but love pulls the victim out of the water. Similarly, when your daughter comes home from college claiming that she is a male in a woman’s body, the LGBTQ+ propaganda says your highest moral virtue is empathy, trying to understand how she feels and not making her FEEL WORSE. But love recognizes the truth: something is terribly wrong with your daughter. 3) True love grows by dealing with conflicts in the relationship not ignoring them. If my conscience tells me I have offended or been offended, it is my responsibility to clear up the matter.

3. A sincere faith. A hypocritical faith is one that feigns faith to enjoy the benefits of the faith community. In contrast, Paul says real faith is a wellspring from which AGAPE love flows. Real faith is trusting God. It is taking God at his Word, knowing his promises can be 100% trusted. Why are sincere faith and selfless love so closely interconnected? Because I will not be free to fully focus on devoting myself to another’s needs when I am concerned about my own. When I trust God’s promise, My God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus (Phil 4:19) I can give generously to alleviate a need or display my love for another. I can find freedom from needing to impress others when I am confident of 1 Pet 5:6. Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you. When facing complex decisions that can preoccupy me, I can relax and focus on the needs of others when I am certain of James 1:5. If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. When I am consumed with anxiety, I can keep from overburdening my loved ones when I know God’s promise, You can throw the whole weight of your anxieties upon him, for you are his personal concern (I Pet 5:7).

Profound wisdom from God about the three springs from which agape love flows.

For Further Prayerful Thought:

  1. How would you defend the statement, “Though sometimes authority structures are filled by corrupt individuals, undermining God’s ordained authority structures in civil society, the church, and the home is evil, because those structure’s purpose is LOVE?”
  2. In your own words, why does sacrificial love issue from a pure heart?
  3. In your own words, why does sacrificial love issue from a clean conscience?
  4. In your own words, why does sacrificial love issue from a sincere faith?
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Overcoming The Crazy Busy Lifestyle

Overcoming The Crazy Busy Lifestyle

On 16 October, 2025 By Gary Yagel

Hi Men,

This is Gary Yagel. As we begin a new series next week, entitled, “Jesus-like Character that Inspires Followers,” from I Timothy 3, I am reminded that godly heart attitudes do not spring up in our sinful hearts on their own. Godly attitudes result from cultivating them. That is exactly what Christ followers are to do because Paul told us that is God’s purpose in bringing us to faith in him. He wrote to the Romans. And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son.

Many times, we are so tossed around trying to cope with the crazy busy life we lead that we that we don’t even think about what Christ’s mission for us is. When we lose sight of God’s mission for us, to cultivate Christ-like heart attitudes, we also lose sight of God’s purpose in the trials and difficulties he takes us through, making our lives frustrating, and discouraging instead of spiritually fruitful. So, before we begin our 1 Timothy 3 character study, we need to hear the challenge to stay better focused on our mission. Here is a Past episode that helps us do that,

Today, we’re thinking about the subject, Don’t Waste Your Life: Rule It for Jesus. Paul taught that God perfectly designed Christ-followers for their specific mission, which he called, good works. In Ephesians 2:10 after he clarified HOW we are saved, i.e. by faith, he then explained WHAT WE ARE SAVED FOR. He continues, For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. Not only does God have a specific mission for you, which Paul summarizes as good works, but that mission is so important that God specifically designed you for it—to have your specific place and responsibilities in your family, your natural gifts and vocational calling, your specific spiritual gifts with which to contribute to the Body of Christ, and your specific relationships with the lost. God has designed both ME—and THE SPECIFIC OPPORTUNITIES I WILL HAVE EACH DAY to impact my world for Christ. I don’t know about you, but I sure don’t want to get to the end of 2023 and look back at all the opportunities that God gave me that I missed. I don’t want to waste my life. This episode looks at how to overcome a disordered life, so that I can stay focused on Christ’s mission for me—and so bring him honor every day.

For most of us, our lives in 2025 are well described by Kevin DeYoung, in his book, Crazy Busy.

You’ve got car repairs. Then your heater goes out. The kids need to see a doctor. You haven’t done your taxes yet. Your check book isn’t balanced. You’re behind on your thank you notes. You promised your mother you’d come over and fix the faucet. You’re behind on wedding planning. Your boards are coming up. You have more applications to send out. Your dissertation is due. Your refrigerator is empty. Your lawn needs mowing. Your curtains don’t look right. Your washing machine keeps rattling. This is life for most of us.

It is ironic that our society’s historic level of fabulous wealth, which has provided so many labor-saving devices and conveniences, has left us so out-of-control BUSY.

But technological growth doesn’t just lead to convenient, labor and time-saving devices; it leads to endless opportunities. Today, in one week, a human can encounter more information via the internet and his cell phone than most humans encountered in a lifetime. The endless opportunities of our technology combine with a particular component of human nature to make our lives crazy-busy: NO ONE WANTS TO MISS OUT ON OPPORTUNITIES. Who wants to be out of the loop on the latest Facebook post that has gone viral? Who wanted to miss out on the latest conversation about the World Cup? Who wants to miss the latest text from friends, or Facetime call from loved ones? Who wants to miss the latest podcast that could hep him be better at his profession. The result of this fear of missing out is that when we finally do have a little free time at the end of the day we are too exhausted to use it productively. Life is often like being on a raft rushing down a raging river with no rudder. We just bounce off whatever is in front of us and move on. But if we choose to live life that way, it will cost US and OUR FAMILIES. Here is a glimpse of some of the costs of a disordered life.

THE COST OF A CRAZY BUSY DISORERED LIFE

A. The crazy busy life can mask the erosion of our soul. Busyness, itself, robs the soul of joy. When our lives are frantic and frenzied without space for soul renewal, we are more prone to surrender to the enemies of our soul, anxiety, resentment, impatience, irritability, discontent. Busyness keeps us so distracted that we don’t realize the toll it is taking on our inner, spiritual life. But God never intended us to be able to cope with life apart from renewing our INNER STRENGTH. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me…. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. Gordon MacDonald, in his book, Ordering Your Private World, observes:

Our public worlds are filled with a seeming infinity of demands upon our time, our loyalties, our money, and our energies.  And because these public worlds of ours are so visible, so real, we have to struggle to ignore all their seductions and demands.  They scream for our attention and action. The result is that our private world is often cheated, neglected because it does not shout quite so loudly.  It can be effectively ignored for large periods of time before it gives way to a sinkhole-like cave-in.

B. The second danger of being CRAZY BUSY is that less important matters take center-stage and shove the most important matters to the periphery. The GOOD THINGS around us gobble up our most precious possession, time, cheating us out of the BEST THING—accomplishing the mission for which our LORD created us, because we don’t default to thinking about our mission. Praying about and planning how best, 1) to love my wife, 2) shepherd my kids, 3) reduce my spending so I can give more to kingdom advancement, 4) build a relationship with my next door neighbor, 5) winsomely express the biblical worldview on current topics at work—these important tasks that are essential to accomplishing Christ’s mission for me don’t have to be done today, or even this week. These activities can usually wait. But often the most visible though less important, tasks call for immediate response--endless demands pressure every waking hour. No matter where we are, our phone pings with the latest email, text, or social media notification) THE APPEAL OF THESE DEMANDS SEEMS IRRESISTIBLE, AND THEY DEVOUR OUR ENERGY. But in the light of eternity their momentary prominence fades. With a sense of loss, we recall the important tasks that have been shunted aside. We realize that we've become slaves to the demands of the visible world. 

Perhaps the greatest tragedy of living a disordered life is that our wives and children suffer. The outer, visible world can so consume men with good things, that they don’t invest in praying for their wives’ and children’s spiritual battles. Tremendous power is made available through a good man’s earnest prayer (James 5:16). In Exodus 17, so long as Moses’ arms were lifted up in prayer for those under his care, the Israelite warriors prevailed over the Amalekites. But when his prayer arms were lowered, the Amalekites prevailed. When combined with NT teaching, there is no doubt that this text is a physical picture of spiritual reality. Our family members down in the valley fighting the Evil One will win spiritual victories if we pray for them that they will lose if we do not. Even wonderful visible things can devour our time, pushing aside the vital things.   

C.  The third danger of the CRAZY BUSY life is investing our life in what doesn’t really matter. Socrates famous statement, “The unexamined life is not worth living” is true.  Someone has said, “If we are going to hear, ‘Well done good and faithful servant’ from the Master, we need to well do.” If we want to hear the Lord’s commendation for accomplishing the mission he gave us, we need to stay focused on that mission, as Jesus did.

On the night before he died, he made an astonishing claim. He said to his Father, "I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do.” We wonder how Jesus could have talked about a completed mission. His three-year ministry seemed all too short. For every prostitute whose heart he touched, hundreds remained untouched. For every blind man enabled to see, hundreds were still blind. Yet on that last night, with many urgent human needs unmet and useful tasks undone, the Lord said he had completed the work God had given him. How did he do that? How did he stay focused on his mission? Jesus will be our model for this entire series. But today, let’s just note 1) Jesus had a clear understanding of his mission. Jesus knew the many Biblical texts that explained the messiah’s mission. 2) Jesus frequently withdrew from the disciples and the crowds to be alone with The Father, his Commander in Chief, to discuss his mission.

Helping Christian men follow Jesus’ example is the very purpose of the Mission Focused Men for Christ weekly podcast. As we begin our fourth season, since new men are joining us all the time, it seems appropriate to review the way we try to enable Christian men to escape from a disordered life and instead stay focused on Christ’s mission for them.

FOUR REQUIREMENTS FOR OVERCOMING A DISORDERED LIFE

A.  A biblical view of our MISSION. Christian men realize that since they have chosen to follow Christ, they need to pattern their lives according to Jesus’ example and teaching. So, the Bible is the foundation for understanding their mission. They want an answer to the question, “What did God put me on planet earth to do?” They may know they are here for God’s glory, but they still want to know how that relates to their everyday life in the form of their mission. They rightly assume that God doesn’t just expect us to know what he put us on planet earth to do—he tells us those purposes in his Word. A biblical search for what is said about the mission of Christ-followers reveals teaching that falls into three categories. These three categories are summarized in our 3-fold understanding of our mission:

1. First, we are called TO CHRIST—to enjoy a love-relationship with Him. This part of our mission, Called TO CHRIST, answers the question, “Where am I to set the affections of my heart?” “What is to be my first love?” “Who can give me the dependable, unconditional love I need to continually renew my soul? The answer is CHRIST. I am made to enjoy Him & that joy grows from loving him more deeply, knowing him more fully, and walking with him more closely. So, this podcast answers questions like:

  • How do I keep walking closely with Christ?
  • How do I satisfy my heart by enjoying Him?
  • How does it change my life to remember how much he enjoys me? 
  • How do I continually refill my emotional tank by abiding in his love?

2. The second aspect of our mission, according to Scripture, is that we are called TO BE LIKE CHRIST—in our heart attitudes. A disciple shows his allegiance to his master by wanting to be like him. This part of our mission, CALLED TO BE LIKE CHRIST, answers the question, “What kind of man will I become on the inside?” The answer is “one with the character of Jesus.” 

There are numerous other NT lists of godly character traits. The Mission Focused Men for Christ podcast takes a close look at these Christ-like character qualities because demonstrating the character of Jesus to the world is at the core of his mission for us. In fact, Scripture tells us that the very work of the Holy Spirit, who is given to us as a down payment of our eventual complete redemption, is to purify our character making us like Jesus, right now. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control. In 2023, Lord willing, we will be doing a study of these spiritual fruit—what they looked like in Jesus’ life and should look like in ours.

3.  The third biblical part of our mission is that we are to Exercise Dominion for Christ over every aspect of our lives. As Adam was to develop the resources of the earth and shape the emerging culture in a way that pleased God, we are to implement Christ’s agenda in our own lives and, where you have influence, in the world” This part of our mission answers the question, “What am I to do with my life?” The answer is to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness i.e. seek to implement Christ’s agenda of righteousness on this planet. A man does that through every role he fills—by being the man Christ wants him to be as a husband, father, extended family member, church member, employee, employer, neighbor, steward of resources, citizen, and ambassador to the lost.

So, this podcast tries to be very practical with ideas about what Christ’s agenda is for a man filling these various roles. Hopefully shared in a spirit of encouragement, these challenging practical insights provide the path men need to accomplish the mission God put him on planet earth to accomplish for his glory. So, the first requirement to overcome a disordered life is a concrete, biblical definition of our mission.

B.  A commitment to gaining the practical insight needed to fulfill the mission. On a good day, when a Christian guy today actually wants to please Christ, he often doesn’t know HOW. He lacks the practical wisdom to actually do what he’s supposed to do as a husband, father, and Christ-follower. He knows, for example, that he needs a closer walk with Christ but often feels far from God and doesn’t know what to do about it. He knows he is supposed to become more like Jesus but doesn’t have a concrete target on the wall of what godly character actually looks like. His most important relationships—with his wife and kids—are often more difficult to figure out than he ever expected. How does he fix those? And how is he supposed to get some wins in his battle with lust, instead of repeated failure?

Our commitment is to make Mission Focused Men for Christ a valuable game plan for getting your mission accomplished. We want not only to challenge you to a deeper walk with God but help you overcome the obstacles to such closeness. We want not only to remind you that becoming like Jesus is the greatest way to honor him, but to sharpen your vision of Christ’s character qualities and understand how to grow into them. Our objective is not just to call you to be the spiritual leader of your home, or to fight for your loved ones in prayer; we want to show you HOW. If you are not receiving fresh insight about HOW to achieve your mission, we’re not doing our job. The second requirement for overcoming a disordered life is a commitment to discovering the practical pathways to accomplishing our mission.

C.  Recognizing the need to be regularly re-energized. Committed Christian men today are tired. They carry many responsibilities in a world where working hours and commutes are long. They are spending nearly all their energy just putting one foot down in front of the next doing their daily tasks. Contributing to this energy depletion is the everyday spiritual battle we must fight—against Satan, who tempts us, against the world that entices us, and against our own sinful nature that betrays us. Losing spiritual battles takes the wind out of our sails; it causes us to lose heart. Most Christian men don’t need to be nagged about their failures; they need a gust of fresh wind in their sails to go hard for Jesus.

Mission Focused Men for Christ is rooted in the biblical call to encourage one another. The word, encourage, comes from cour, which refers to heart. The goal of our podcast is to give fresh heart to Christ-following men. Its tone is intended to rekindle passion for Christ, to pick men up who have been disheartened by their own failure, to refill men’s spiritual tanks. We want our podcast to always communicate a grace-filled approach to our calling to follow Jesus.

D.  Receiving being bite-sized challenges, not huge ones that overwhelm us.  When Moses sent spies to scout out the entire Promised Land, the spies came back discouraged, saying, “We’ll never defeat the giants.” Forty years later, Joshua sent the spies out into the Promised Land one city at a time. They came back and said, “We can take the city.” The scope of Christ’s mission for our lives is daunting. In fact, it is so intimidating that it often leads to paralysis. Where do I even start? 

The Mission Focused Men for Christ podcast believes that life is made up of mostly small decisions made every day. Its purpose is helping men to know how to relate the big picture of their mission as Christ-followers to their everyday lives. The short length, 20-23 minutes of content plus a few minutes for review and resource identification enables men to easily squeeze it into their schedule.

7 BENEFITS OF OVERCOMING A DISORDERED LIFE

  • It will help us slow down enough to listen to our conscience so that we are more likely to do the right thing. It provides opportunity for God’s Word to discern the thoughts and intentions of the heart (Heb 4:12).
  • It will help us slow down enough to notice and not walk past those around us with practical needs, so we can be servants to one another in love. (Gal 5:13).
  • It will help slow us down enough to think through which poisonous worldviews being absorbed by our loved ones and how to winsomely counter them with the biblical truth destroying every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, to take every thought captive to obey Christ (2 Corinth 10:4).
  • It will help slow us down enough to think about how we can pray for and support the spiritual growth of our wife that she may be holy and without blemish (Eph 5:27) and our kids bringing them up in the nurture and instruction of the Lord (Eph 6:4).
  • It will help slow us down enough to make sure that we ourselves and our children are committed to the worldwide mission of taking the gospel of the kingdom beyond our shores to make disciples of all nations (Matt 28:19).
  • It will help slow us down enough to make sure we are taking advantage of the influence in others’ lives that our leadership gifts give us. The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them. But not so with you…Let the leader be as one who serves (Lk 22:25-26).
  • It will help slow us down enough to make sure there is no one in my life who needs my sympathetic heart or listening ear to celebrate her joys or hurt because of her pain. Romans 12:15. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.

At the very core of God’s design of humans is that we order, shape, exercise dominion over ourselves and our surroundings. In a world where nearly every worthwhile goal requires careful thought and planning, why would we assume that accomplishing God’s mission for our lives would be any different? If we are to succeed at overcoming disordered living must first be convinced that God’s design for humans is that our inner private world govern our outer world of activity.

For Further Prayerful Thought

1.What do you think is the biggest cost of living a disordered life?

2. Why might the failure to have a concrete understanding of your mission, make it easy to live a disordered life?

3. What are the pluses and minuses of defining our mission as the MFMfC podcast does, i.e. Called TO Christ, Called TO BE LIKE Christ, Called to EXERCISE DOMINI0N for Christ?

4. What benefits of overcoming a disordered life stand out to you?

5. What do you think are the biggest challenges to living an ordered outer life because you have ordered your inner private world?

Resources Used in Today’s Podcast

Crazy Busy, by Kevin DeYoung

Ordering Your Private World, by Gordon MacDonald

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How David Lost His Battle with Lust for Bathsheba

How David Lost His Battle with Lust for Bathsheba

On 11 October, 2025 By Gary Yagel

Hi Men,

This is Gary Yagel. As we near the end of our series on spiritual warfare, it seems appropriate to address the temptation that men identify as their most frequent—the battle with lust. Today’s episode from a pat series looks carefully at lessons we can learn from King David’s failures in surrendering to his lust for Bathsheba.

Vince Lombardi said, Men, winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing. This episode examines how David lost a battle that brought devastation into his own life and great suffering to his family.

A bird watcher gazed at the magnificent soaring of the golden eagle he had spotted. It was nothing but regal eloquence in flight, climbing, gliding, soaring higher and higher almost effortlessly. Such a sight was a perfect picture of the early years of David’s life, as he climbed from the place of lowly shepherd to the heights of national leadership as king. In thirty years, David experienced unparalleled success as he rose to power. No king of Israel would ever be as well loved by the people, as victorious in battle, or as faithful to the Lord.

But as our ornithologist continued to watch the golden eagle’s flight, something went terribly wrong. The majestic creature seemed incapable of soaring higher and, in fact, began to plumet. Moment’s later it lay dead on the ground. Bewildered, the observer found his way to the lifeless mass, wondering what had happened. As he examined the eagle, he discovered the answer. Still curled up in its talons was a weasel, no doubt the prey that the eagle was expecting to provide it the pleasure of a meal. But as the weasel was drawn close to the big bird’s body for flight, it had managed to sink its teeth into the breast of the eagle sending the majestic creature to earth. 2 Samuel 11 is the chapter that records the deadly bite of the weasel in David’s life. What he expected as he drew Bathsheba to his body was a feast of pleasure. What he got was a deadly wound that sent him crashing downward. David was taken down by temptation, specifically by sexual lust. Let’s look at how lust defeated him.

In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab, and his servants with him, and all Israel. And they ravaged the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem.  It happened, late one afternoon, when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king's house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful. And David sent and inquired about the woman. And one said, “Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?” So David sent messengers and took her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. (Now she had been purifying herself from her uncleanness.) Then she returned to her house. And the woman conceived, and she sent and told David, “I am pregnant” (2 Sam 11:1-5).  Let’s make some observations:

1.  David had been sowing the seeds for this kind of defeat for years.  Back in 2 Sam 5:13, we read, And David took more concubines and wives from Jerusalem, after he came from Hebron, and more sons and daughters were born to David. David had placed himself above God’s law as an exception to God’s design of marriage between one man and one woman. Ever since David took a second wife, he had been violating Dt 17:15-17, You may indeed set a king over you whom the Lord your God will choose. …he shall not acquire many wives for himself. Using Paul’s spiritual armor analogy, David was not encircling himself with God’s truth about the behavior of Israel’s kings, which would have caused him to have the breastplate of righteousness in place regarding his sexuality.

We might think that if any man in Israel should be able to turn away from the temptation to have sex with another man’s wife, it would be David. With multiple wives and concubines his sex drive had to be sated, right? But that is not how lust works. God seems to have designed sex so that satisfying our sexual desires sinfully inflames our illicit sexual desire, making it harder to resist temptation next time. The more we indulge our sexual appetite in the wrong way the stronger that appetite becomes. Applying this principle to the use of porn, Jerry Kirk writes,

At the University of California, Irvine, Dr. James L. McGaugh has conducted research suggesting that memories of experiences that occurred at times of sexual arousal are difficult to erase.  Thus powerful, sexual memories keep reappearing on his mind’s memory screen—stimulating and arousing him.  Every time he masturbates to those fantasies, he is like one of Pavlov’s dogs, rewarded by his orgasm, which reinforces the memory (How Pornography Harms). 

So, the first truth from David’s example is that losing the battle with lust today strengthens lust for its next battle with me, tomorrow.

2. When the temptation struck, David had no Jonathan in his life. Jonathan had been killed years before on Mt Gilboa. David, like most powerful leaders had no one in his life watching his back. He had not one sit him down years before this incident with Bathsheba and say, “David your military success is great, but what about Deuteronomy 17:16. What are you doing, thinking about taking a second wife?” And when David sent Joab out to lead the army in his place, no one said, “I know you are getting older, but when a king sends warriors out to battle, they need their king leading the way.”  When it comes to battling lust in the twenty-first century, the stakes are too high, the battle too fierce, the enemy too wily, the attacks too frequent, the cost of defeat too severe for any Christian man to fight his spiritual battle alone. The second observation from David’s example is that David had no one watching his back. Do you? 

3. When temptation struck, David was not where he should have been. That fact is certainly emphasized as this story begins, In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David stayed at home. David’s loyal soldiers lay on rocky ground inside a tent; David was taking a nap in his luxurious palatial bedroom. David’s men left the comforts of home for the hardship of war; David left the hardship of the war he instigated to enjoy the pleasures of home including his harem. David’s men fought till they had no energy left; David slept till he was bored. When Jesus taught us to pray. “lead us not into temptation” he was teaching us that it is wise to think through the situations that bring us temptation. Over the years, I compile this list for the battle with lust.

OUTER Conditions When The Craving for Illicit Sexual Pleasure Is Most Appealing

  • Something sexually stimulating crosses your path.
  • You are alone with the opportunity to pursue illicit sexual pleasure.
  • You are far away from anyone who would know about your little private pleasure excursion.
  • It is the middle of the night and you can’t sleep.
  • You are in physical situation that has a past association with sexual pleasure.

INNER Conditions When The Craving for Illicit Sexual Pleasure Is Most Appealing

  • Loneliness
  • Boredom
  • Anger (perhaps towards wife)
  • Emotionally down or empty

So, our third observation is to be alert to situations where temptation might strike, so we can avoid them or anticipate the temptations they could bring.

4. David notices naked Bathsheba and continues to feast his eyes on her. Archibald Hart describes the male sex, drive, Strong, urgent, forceful, and impatient, the sex drive dominates the mind and body of every healthy male. Strong sexual feelings are common to all normal men.  They are determined more by hormones than by evil desire (The Sexual Man). The blunt truth is that because of David’s multiple wives and concubines, David had been feasting his eyes on lots of naked women; why should Bathsheba be any different? Unlike the godlier Job, David did not bounce his eyes away from the scene of this exposed woman. Job 31:1 tells us that Job made a covenant with his eyes not to look lustfully at a young woman. This discipline of bouncing our eyes away from half dressed women is vital for two reasons. 1) If I gawk at sexually provocative images, it trains my daughters to think that what gets a man’s attention is dressing provocatively. 2) Continuing to gaze, as David did, opens the door to lust. The best strategy for defeating lust is beating it when it is furthest from my heart—at the beginning, when it just requires bouncing my eyes, before my sexual engine starts revving up. This of course, is what David did not do.

5. David’s sexual desires are ignited. The more David watches the more the weasel sinks its teeth into David’s flesh. I’m reminded of James’s description of temptation, Each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it has run its course, brings forth death. (1:14). The word for lust is EPITHUMIA, which means, literally, over-desire, or run-away desire. We associate lust mainly with intense sexual desire, but the word means any kind of intense desire. What James is saying is, each one of you is tempted after your normal desire becomes run- away desire, which then entices you to sin. It is a normal desire to want to have order in your home, but when that desire becomes a run-away desire causing you to explode at your kids, you sin. The fruit in the garden of Eden was desirable to Eve, but when her desire for it became run-away desire, she sinned. Any red-blooded man would have been attracted to Bathsheba’s beautiful body, but David’s continued look enabled Satan to fan the embers of God given sexual desires into blazing run-away desire. Dietrick Bonhoeffer writes:

 In our members, there is a slumbering inclination toward desire, which is both sudden, and fierce. With irresistible power, desire seizes mastery of the flesh. All at once, a secret, smoldering fire is kindled. The flesh burns and is in flames. It makes no difference whether it is sexual desire, or ambition, or vanity, or revenge, or love of fame or power, or greed for money (Temptation).

Temptation begins by stoking sexual desire into out-of-control lust.

6. Temptation provides the opportunity to satisfy the desire unrighteously.

Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband was away. The text implies that her bathing was ritual bathing marking the end of her period. David had servants who could inquire about her and the status of being the King to require her to come to his palace. Back in James 1:15, we read, after lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin. As sperm and egg must be joined together for physical conception to take place, so the two elements of intensified desire and opportunity to step across the line of the moral law come together giving birth to sin. Again, Bonhoeffer describes the process,

At this moment, God is quite unreal to us…The devil doesn’t fill us with hatred of God but with forgetfulness of God. The lust thus aroused envelops the mind and the will of man in deepest darkness. The powers of clear discrimination and decision are taken from us. It is here that everything within me rises up against the Word of God. (Temptation).

When the craving for sexual gratification is ignited and there is opportunity for sexual sin, Scripture says FLEE. Paul writes to the Corinthians, FLEE fornication (1 Cor 6:8), and to Timothy, FLEE youthful lusts. Joseph FLEES from the seductions of Potiphar’s wife. But David doesn’t do that. His run-away desire for Bathsheba is in control. He asks about her and even, when he discovers that Bathsheba is the wife of Uriah one of his thirty Mighty Men, the most courageous and loyal men in the nation, it makes no difference. The weasel’s deadly teeth are squeezing tighter. David must have her. And so, he does.

7. David seems to get away with his sin, but he does not. One of the deadliest parts of sin is that its destructive consequences almost never happen immediately. David thinks he’s gotten away with it, but Bathsheba gets pregnant. It has to be his baby since she had just finished her period. He schemes to bring Uriah home to sleep with his wife, so everyone thinks it’s his. Let’s pick up the story there,  

When Uriah came to him, David asked how Joab was doing and how the people were doing and how the war was going. Then David said to Uriah, “Go down to your house and wash your feet.” And Uriah went out of the king's house, and there followed him a present from the king. But Uriah slept at the door of the king's house with all the servants of his lord, and did not go down to his house. When they told David, “Uriah did not go down to his house,” David said to Uriah, “Have you not come from a journey? Why did you not go down to your house?” Uriah said to David, “The ark and Israel and Judah dwell in booths, and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord are camping in the open field. Shall I then go to my house, to eat and to drink and to lie with my wife? (2 Sam 11:7-11).

Can you imagine the dagger of guilt that must have pierced David’s heart at that moment? Out of unwavering allegiance to David, Israel’s army, and Israel’s God, Uriah would not go near his own wife. This picture could not contrast more sharply with David’s lust, contempt for God and his law, scorn for his troops, and betrayal of Uriah the pilar of loyalty to David, in taking his wife. What more could God do to open David’s eyes to his sin than to show him this stark contrast? But David’s heart was so hardened by sin, that instead of falling to his knees and begging his loyal subject’s forgiveness, he ends up deciding to murder him! I want to tell you, when I think of this conversation, and see the way sin blinded his conscience, it terrifies me. David doesn’t get way with his sin. His sin hardened his heart so much that he murders one of the most loyal, faithful men in Israel.

Take-Aways for Us From David’s Failure

a) We need to hate evil. Paul commands the Romans, Abhor evil (12:9). He warns the Galatians, Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap.  For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap life that continues forever (6:7-8). The pain that David caused himself and others would take three or four podcasts to cover; it was enormous. One of his sons raping one of his daughters, another son murdering his brother—it was awful.

b) W need to put an end to the childish thought that God’s laws restrict our happiness. Listen to the grieving heart of God, because David did not trust him enough to obey him. After citing all that he had done for David, God says AND IF THIS WERE TOO LITTLE, I WOULD ADD TO YOU AS MUCH MORE. Why have you despised the word of the Lord, to do what is evil in his sight? (2 Sam 12:7-8). God’s heart as our father is to lavish us with good gifts. When life doesn’t give us what we want, we need to stop acting like the spoiled child at the grocery store check-out line who wants candy, whining, “You don’t love me.”

c) King David was that soaring golden eagle, the best Israel had to offer. But the best king broke four of the ten commandments in just this one story: You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife (10th), you shall not commit adultery (7th), you shall not steal (8th), you shall not murder (6th). The primary lesson of the story of David and Bathsheba is that sin is too strong for any human, even a man after God’s own heart. ONLY JESUS can defeat sin. This is a liberating truth, because it gives us the courage to bring our struggles with lust into the open. God never intended any man to fight his spiritual battles alone. To do so is TO LOSE THEM.  Joe Dallas says,

Sexual sin thrives in the dark. If you’re caught up in any sexual vice, one thing is certain; the secrecy surrounding your behavior is what strengthens its hold on you.  However ashamed you may feel about admitting your problem to another person, the reality is this:  YOU CAN’T OVERCOME THIS ON YOUR OWN.  IF YOU COULD, WOULDN’T YOU HAVE DONE SO BY NOW? (Every Man’s Battle Workshop).

d) We must let failure drive us towards Christ and not away from him. After being confronted by Nathan, and told that God forgave him, David took his failure to God writing Psalm 51. The Accuser of the Brethren wants to heap shame upon us because of our sin—especially sexual ones. Don’t let him get away with that! A veteran warrior in the battle with lust points out:

It isn’t the sinless man who makes it to the end; rather, it’s the man who’s learned to pick himself up after he stumbles.  If you’re struggle seems relentless, remember this; when you commit yourself to sexual integrity, you commit yourself to a DIRECTION, not to PERFECTION.  You may stumble along the way—that’s no justification for sin, just a realistic view of life in this fallen world. What determines the success or failure of an imperfect man is his willingness to pick himself up, confess his fault, and continue in the direction he committed himself to.  Remember Paul’s approach: “Forgetting those things that are behind, I press on towards the mark of the high calling” (Ibid)

For Further Prayerful Thought:

1. How is the story of the weasel taking down the eagle similar to lust’s takedown of David?

2. What are the outer conditions and inner conditions when sinful sexual lust is most appealing to you?

3. How would you summarize the price tag of David’s sexual sin?

4. How is David an example of letting his failure drive him TO God and not AWAY from God. (You might want to look at Psalm 51—written after David was confronted by Nathan.)

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Biblical Insight About How Spiritual Battles Are Won

Biblical Insight About How Spiritual Battles Are Won

On 04 October, 2025 By Gary Yagel

Hi Men,

This is Gary Yagel. When most Christians think about the biblical teaching about spiritual warfare, they end with Paul’s last description of our weaponry, “the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.” But that is not where Paul ends the discussion. He continues right into the process of spiritual battle, prayer. In verses 18-20 of Ephesians 6, Paul explains the same truth proclaimed in James 5:16, “Tremendous power is made available through a good man’s earnest prayer.” Today’s episode from a past series explains how prayer is a powerful force for pressing back the forces of evil in the spiritual battles we are called to fight for ourselves and our loved ones.  

Author Dave Murrow observes what anthropology has confirmed: Warfare is still imprinted on the male psyche. Men love to watch war movies and read war novels. They play war games on computers. Polls show men always support military action more than women (Why Men Hate Going to Church). Science just confirms the truth we are given in Genesis 2:15—that Adam is designed to shape and protect the garden. Since Adam and Eve’s sin brought Satan, sin, and destruction into the garden, all our efforts to shape our lives and culture in righteousness are opposed by this triumvirate. We must fight, in the power of Christ, for every inch of ground. Today we examine a powerful WEAPON for this fight: prayer. But viewing prayer as a weapon for fighting is probably NOT what most men think of prayer as being for. They see prayer as praise to God, confession to God, thankfulness to God, requesting God’s help for those grieving or having surgery. But rarely do we see prayer used the way Paul tells us in Eph 6”18 it is to be used: as an act of war. And when men understand this dimension of prayer, prayer moves from being a guilt-producing obligation to becoming a life-changing thrill! Could that happen in your prayer life? Yes, and that is our goal in this episode.

As we’ve seen, behind the world and the flesh is an even deadlier enemy, one we rarely speak of and are much less ready to resist, the kingdom of darkness, which is to blame for most of the casualties around us and assaults against us. Paul said it this way, We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Paul reveals two vital implications of this reality 1) we must put on our spiritual armor and weapons—the belt of truth, etc. but secondly 2) we must PRAY. Eph 6 continues, praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints (vs 18). Paul uses one of the words for prayer four times. Why is prayer such a vital part of combatting the spiritual forces of evil?

Our Prayer Power Is Only Grasped by Understanding Redemptive History

A.  Because humans are made to bear God’s image, God created humans to rule over a world using their mental capacity and creativity to develop the potential of the earth and all those living on it—causing everything to flourish. God, left things “undeveloped” so man could exhibit God’s image in developing earth’s potential. The law of God was written on Adam and Eve’s hearts, to guide them to shape the world righteously in a way that pleased God. Explicitly that moral law was summed up, “You may not eat of the fruit that is in the midst of the garden.”

B. When Adam and Eve ignored their conscience and rebelled against the High King by eating the fruit, Adam’s race lost the moral ability to shape the earth in a way that was consistent with God’s righteousness. SATAN, and SIN (along with sin’s consequence DEATH) began to rule Adam and Eve’s kingdom.

C. Adam and Eve’s descendants inherited that corrupt nature. Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned (Rom 5:12). There is nothing that any human can do to free the human race from sin’s enslavement of human nature.

D. God himself would have to come, invade human nature, and become a second Adam. So, God The Son, came into the world as Jesus the Messiah to “redeem” the new humanity and new earth from the destruction, power, and presence of sin.

 And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him (Col 2:13-15).

E. At the cross, Jesus, the second Adam overthrew the usurpers of Adam’s kingdom--Satan, sin, and death, restoring the throne of Adam’s kingdom to the new head of Adam’s race, namely King Jesus to spread the kingdom of God over earth from his position at the right hand of the Father. George Ladd explains,

The Kingdom of God is the redemptive reign of God dynamically active to establish his rule among men, and this Kingdom, which will appear as an apocalyptic act at the end of the age, has already come into human history in the person and mission of Jesus to overcome evil, to deliver men from its power, and to bring them into the blessings of God’s reign. The Kingdom of God involves two great moments: fulfillment within history, and consummation at the end of history. (The Presence of the Future).

F.  We live between these two moments in history; Jesus has already ultimately defeated Satan, sin, and death, and yet they have not yet been destroyed. During this present age, Jesus wants us to spread his righteous rule over earth (Matt 6:33) THROUGH HIS POWER. The fact that this can only be done through his power was stressed by Jesus in the words that preceded his great commission: All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me, therefore—go and make disciples of the nations. Only IN CHRIST is there power to overcome the kingdom of darkness. Ladd continues,

The kingdom in this age is not merely the abstract concept of God’s universal rule to which men must submit; it is rather a dynamic power at work among men….  Before the apocalyptic coming of God’s Kingdom and the final manifestation of his rule to bring in the new age, God has manifested his rule, his Kingdom to bring men in advance of the eschatological era the blessings of his redemptive reign.

G. Jesus’ defeat of Satan, sin and death at the cross, his resurrection, and then ascension bring about the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in a fuller way. On the day of Pentecost, Peter tells the crowds they are witnessing the fulfillment of Joel’s prophecy, And in the last days it shall be, God declares that I will pour out my Spirit (Acts 2:17). The primary work of the Holy Spirit reinforces the truth that Christ is establishing his kingdom of righteousness RIGHT NOW. Paul describes the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives:

Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh…. Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, division, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control (Gal 5:16-23).

Linking These Facts of Salvation History to PRAYER

A. Just as God left the earth undeveloped because he wants Adam to exercise dominion over the earth to develop its potential, much of Christ’s redemptive power for the new creation is waiting for us to access. Because he made us to be his image bearers, he wants US to engage the weapons of spiritual warfare to advance the kingdom of righteousness over earth. Just as God did not create the world with iphones already invented, God’s new creation does NOT begin with Christ-followers and their world already perfected. During our current period of church history, he has given us spiritual resources to spread the rule of Christ over every sphere of life on planet earth. God does NOT need us to do anything for Christ’s kingdom to advance. But he has chosen to grant Christ-followers, a role in advancing the kingdom of righteousness. PRAYER IS THE PRIMARY WEAPON FOR ADVANCING CHRIST'S KINGDOM OF RIGHTEOUSNESS OVER THE KINGDOM OF DARKNESS in this world. Why?  Here are three reasons:

1.  Because only Jesus has exhibited the power required to defeated Satan, sin, and death. Paul prays fervently that the Christ-followers in Ephesus would grasp the greatness of this spiritual power. Paul asks God to give them the eyes to see:

What is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above  every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all (1:19-23).

The resurrection of Christ brings the future power of God—that will one day heal and renew the entire world—into our lives now, accessed by prayer in his name.

2.) God, Himself, identifies PRAYER as the way Christ kingdom advances. Just as a military invasion begins with cruise missiles and bombing runs, our efforts to advance the kingdom on earth must begin with prayer, the only weapon capable of dislodging the enemy from its strongholds. Prayer is such a potent offensive weapon for advancing the kingdom of Christ over earth, that in Psalm 2 we hear God The Father identify prayer as the way Christ’s kingdom spreads. The Father promises the Anointed One, “ASK of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession.” As Christ-followers join Christ in ASKING that his kingdom would advance, The Father promises to act.

3) The third reason why prayer is the primary weapon for advancing Christ’s kingdom in the world is that Jesus specifically taught that the Father will give the Holy Spirit’s help to those who ASK for it. Luke 9:11, Jesus says, What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him! In context Jesus is not talking about a one-time filling of the Holy Spirit but continuing to ask God to work through the Holy Spirit. Indeed, we may even ask for the Holy Spirit’s help for others, not just ourselves. Paul tells the Ephesians that he prays to the Father “That he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being” (3:16).

All of this background is to say that you and I have a vital role in the defeat of evil in our world. In many cases, God will not act to defeat evil if you and I do not pray. There are many things God can do but doesn’t do if we don’t ask. That is especially true in combating evil. Perhaps the power of Christ to defeat sin could be compared to an antibiotic against the bacteria of moral evil that has spread to every aspect of human life. Prayer in Christ’s name for that person or battle does cause God’s Spirit to inject antibiotics into that bacteria. God promises, “The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.” (Ja 5:16). But we may not see the result of the injection for two reasons: 1) we can’t see inside people and 2) the disease of sin is so strong that multiple injections are needed. We may not see the result of our prayers, but they bring others one step closer to defeating evil.

Lessons from Ephesians 6:18

Praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints,

1. Note that the context of this admonition to pray is battling the spiritual forces of evil. It is prayer for some aspect of the kingdom of righteousness to prevail over the kingdom of evil.

2. The Greek word for “supplication” is DEOMAI which means: “ask fervently for help.” The root comes from the word, “desire.” So, it means asking intensely for something you really want.

3. Every member of the Body of Christ is to be engaged in prayer warfare for other Christians. The expectation of Paul is that the intense spiritual battle he has just described must be won by making supplication for ALL the Saints.

4. Paul stresses perseverance in prayer. He must have known by experience how hard it is to keep going in prayer support for other’s spiritual battles. He would also be familiar with Jesus’ emphasis on persevering in prayer, as in Luke 11.

And he said to them, “Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves, for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him’; and he will answer from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything’? I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his impudence he will rise and give him whatever he needs. And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. (vs 11:5-9). 

I have wrestled with this text and fervent prayers of mine that have gone unanswered for a long time. To get at what I think this parable means, I need to go back to my high school days. Back then, we used the term cheap girl, for a girl who would easily give sex to a guy who wanted it, instead of requiring a life-long commitment to love her in marriage. She was lacking dignity. She was a people pleaser. God is not a cheap God. He does not let us USE him. He does NOT spring into action the moment we make a request, saying to us, “Your wish is my command.” He has way too much dignity to jump into action because one of his kids, once in a while, thinks to make a request that he has forgotten about the next day. Yes, God will respond to this request; that is his promise. But he is not our personal genie. He is the ultimate heavy weight, full of glory. The neighbor within the house is not such a people pleaser that he will wake up his whole household, including his kids, some of whom probably will not get back to sleep, keeping him and his wife awake half the night, just because a friend asks for some bread. God does not answer prayers because he is a people pleaser. “He has too much dignity,” says Jesus, “for you to EVER think he is a puppet on strings.”

But when the man within the house realizes, “my neighbor asking for bread is never going to stop knocking. He is so impudent, that he refuses to take ‘no’ for an answer,” he will give what is requested to his neighbor. The precious treasures we request of God—a son or daughter returning to Christ, a relative coming to salvation, victory over an enslaving sin—don’t happen because on a whim we asked God to work. They only happen for those who in a humble sense, refuse to take “no” for an answer. They keep asking and asking and asking. The ground conquered by Christ’s kingdom of righteousness is not cheap nor easily obtained; it belongs only to those who persevere in prayer.  

What To Pray For

Prayer releases spiritual power when its focus is spiritual battles and the work of the Holy Spirit producing Christ-like attitudes. We see this in Paul’s 

Phil 1:9-11: And it is my prayer that your LOVE may abound more and more, with KNOWLEDGE and all DISCERNMENT, so that you may APPROVE WHAT IS EXCELLENT, and so be PURE and BLAMELESS for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of RIGHTEOUSNESS that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.

Col 1:9-11. We have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the KNOWLEDGE OF HIS WILL in all spiritual WISDOM and UNDERSTANDING, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully PLEASING TO HIM: BEARING FRUIT IN EVERY GOOD WORK and INCREASING IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD; being STRENGTHENED with all power, according to his glorious might.

Gal 5:22. The fruit of the Spirit IS LOVE, JOY, PEACE, PATIENCE, KINDNESS, GOODNESS, FAITHFULNESS, GENTLENESS, SELF-CONTROL.

Eph 3:17-19.  I pray that you, firmly fixed in love yourselves, MAY BE ABLE TO GRASP (with all Christians) HOW WIDE AND DEEP AND LONG AND HIGH IS THE LOVE OF CHRIST—and to KNOW FOR YOURSELVES that love so far beyond our comprehension. May you be FILLED THOUGH ALL YOUR BEING WITH GOD HIMSELF!

You might want to write down the names of your loved ones and others you know God has called you to pray for and choose from the verses above a request that seems most suited to his or her needs.

Men, our mission is to FIGHT THROUGH PRAYER for the kingdom of righteousness to prevail in our own heart attitudes, in the hearts of our wives, children and grandchildren, church, neighborhood and nation. During this stage of church history, prevailing prayer is God’s ordained means of extending his kingdom, for defeating Satan and his empire of darkness, and bringing to earth a taste of the way things will someday be. If we do not fight this battle, the kingdom of darkness will prevail in the hearts and lives of those we love. No one else can take our place in this fight!

For Further Prayerful Thought:

1. Why do think Christians don’t see prayer more as a weapon?

2. What is wrong with saying that after the resurrection, Jesus left this world to go back to heaven and be with God?

3. What does Jesus want Christians to during this stage of salvation history, between his ascension to God’s right hand and his final return?

4. Why is it important, that Jesus prefaced his command to make disciples of all nations with, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me, Therefore…”?

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Using the Sword of the Spirit in Everyday Life

Using the Sword of the Spirit in Everyday Life

On 27 September, 2025 By Gary Yagel

Hi Men,

At the core of this podcast/blog is a belief that men are created for mission. We want our lives to matter, to be more than a shooting star, a momentary blip in eternity, then disappears. We want to accomplish something meaningful—and Jesus calls us to do just that. It is to seek to spread the rule of his Kingdom of Righteousness, over every square inch of planter earth. Practically speaking, we seek the kingdom of Christ 1) to rule over our heart loyalties; we are called TO CHRIST—to enjoy a love relationship with Him, 2) to rule over our heart attitudes; we are TO BECOME LIKE CHRIST—to Christ-like character, 3) to rule over every sphere where we have influence, called to EXERCISE DOMINION FOR CHRIST—to implement His agenda of righteousness and restoration in our roles as husband, father, employee/employer, neighbor, church member, and ambassador of the kingdom. It is the whole-hearted pursuit of this mission that is the backdrop for Paul to say that we are opposed at every point by the Kingdom of Evil. Notice that Pauls’ word choice emphasizes opposition by using the word against five times. For we do not wrestle AGAINST flesh and blood, but AGAINST the rulers, AGAINST the authorities, AGAINST the cosmic powers over this present darkness, AGAINST the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God. Today we return to the past series, Winning Spiritual Battles Because We Use Spiritual Weapons, to study what it means to wield the Sword of the Spirit, in everyday life.

 Author,  David Jeremiah observes, 

The biblical context for viewing all of life’s events is called spiritual warfare—the age-old conflict between the kingdom of darkness and the kingdom of light…. Biblically and practically speaking, we are in a spiritual war. The Christian’s spiritual enemy is not in uniform, and he doesn’t meet us on an identifiable battlefield. He uses ruthless and unconventional tactics such as deceit, deflection, and disguise…. The church of Jesus Christ needs to know its enemies and his strategies. Above all, Christians need to know how to gain victory over this enemy. (The Spiritual Warfare Answer Book).

In this episode, we take a practical look at HOW YO USE the sword of the Spirit to resist thoughts and temptations that seek to entice us off of the path of life and onto the road of destruction. As we continue the series, Winning Spiritual Battles Because We Use Our Spiritual Weapons, we come today to Paul’s admonition to take up… the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God (Eph 6:17). One of the best things about this weapon is that unlike the others, we actually get to see Jesus using it in Scripture. We’ll dig into a study of Jesus’ combat with Satan, in a moment but lets first get to know a bit about this weapon.

This weapon is the Word of God, which is so powerful for transforming human minds and hearts that it is called “living.” For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.  (Heb 4:12-13). As we will see, even Jesus did not battle Satan with his own thoughts but only by quoting Scripture.

The Greek word for sword, MACHAIRA does not describe the swash buckling kind of sword used by Zoro. Rather, it was quite short, more like a dagger. It was used by the Romans in close hand-to-hand combat. This weapon is for personal attacks. This truth is underscored by the Greek word Paul chooses for Word (of God). It is not LOGOS, which connotes broad, general principles. Rather, Paul chooses RHEMA, which refers to specific “utterings.” NT scholar W. E. Vine writes,

The significance of RHEMA as distinct from LOGOS is exemplified in the injunction to “take the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” Here the reference is not to the whole Bible as such, but to the individual Scripture passages, which the Spirit brings to our remembrance for use in time of need, a prerequisite being the regular storing of the mind with Scripture (An Expository dictionary of NT Words).

Identifying the word of God as the sword of the Spirit is consistent with what we know about the work of the Holy Spirit. Not only does He indwell Christ-followers so they have the presence of Christ with them at all times (abiding in Christ), the Holy Spirit’s work is to help us overcome our sinful nature and transform our hearts into Christ-like attitudes—love, Joy, peace, patience…etc. So, the Holy Spirit is right inside us to help us when thoughts come into our minds, designed by Satan to lead us away from Christ and his righteous path. He is there to help us recall the right truth in Scripture to combat Satan’s lies. But of course, we can’t recall, what we have never read or committed to memory. Let’s zoom in to the wilderness of Judea and watch Jesus wield the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

First Temptation: Use your power to command these stones to be bread

Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. And the tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” But he answered, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ (Matt 4:1-4).

Satan begins the temptation by appealing to Jesus’ power, If you are the son of God use that power to turn stones into bread. What many don’t realize is that Jesus’ hunger after a long fast meant that he was close to death. Those who have practiced long fasts point out that after 6 or 7 days, hunger pains go away. If they have water, a human can fast about 40 days, but when his hunger pangs return, he must eat soon, or he will die. Jesus was being tempted not to have to depend upon his heavenly father, but to use his spiritual power to take care of his own needs. The passage he cites is Deut 8:3. The verse before it provides important context.

And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord (Deut 8:2-3).

Dependency upon God for your daily bread reflects the humility that is vital for depending upon God’s moral law every day. Jesus refused the temptation to stop depending in humility upon his heavenly father. The first Adam refused to depend upon God to satisfy his hunger for food, failing to trust God’s instruction not to eat of the tree in the middle of the garden. Instead, he allowed the delicious fruit to entice him into rebellion against God. He violated God’s restriction and ate. The first Adam put his physical appetite ahead of obedience to God. The Second Adam, though at the point of dying because of his need for food—refused to take matters into his own hands. He humbled himself depending on God. In quoting Deut 8:3, man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord, Jesus is saying real life comes not just through physical sustenance but also by obedience to God. That is the lesson God wanted to teach the Israelites in the wilderness.

Second Temptation: Putting God to the Test

Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up lest you strike your foot against a stone.’”  Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test’” (Matt 4:5-7).

In the second temptation Satan again appeals to Jesus’ power, If you are the Son of God…..The temptation is to throw himself off the pinnacle of the temple in Jerusalem proving that he was the messiah, and thus winning a following. In response, Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 6:16, You shall not put the Lord your God to the test, as you tested him at Massah. Here is what Israel did at Massah:

(Israel) camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. Therefore the people quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink.” And Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord? But the people thirsted there for water, and the people grumbled against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?” So Moses cried to the Lord, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me” (Exodus 17:1b-4).

God provides water from a rock that Moses strikes. Then Moses sums up what happened in the words, they tested the Lord by saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?” The sin of the Israelites was demanding that God prove himself IN THE WAY THEY DECIDE HE MUST DO SO. Had Jesus thrown himself off the pinnacle of the temple in Jerusalem, it is likely that the Jewish people, recognizing by this supernatural feat that Jesus was the Messiah, would have immediately risen up in rebellion against the Roman occupation. A bloodbath would have ensued, and the people would have coronated him the king of a political Israel. Instead, Jesus must defeat the more deadly triumvirate, Satan, sin, and death by going to the cross, inaugurating the spiritual kingdom of Israel—Christ’s Kingdom of Righteousness.

What is the difference between having faith that God will work supernaturally to answer our prayer (thus pleasing God), and sinful presumption, which puts God to the test? Genuine faith always includes humility. Consider the faith of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in Daniel. When told by Nebuchadnezzar that they must fall down and worship his statue or be cast into the fiery furnace, they answered,

“O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.” (3:14-18).

In contrast, the arrogant Israelites in the wilderness, demanded that God give them water when and where they wanted it. Their arrogance is revealed in demanding that God prove himself to them THEIR WAY instead of God’s way. Jumping off the temple pinnacle would have demanded that God prove Jesus was the Messiah and win a following JESUS’ way rather than God’s way.

Third Temptation: Achieving a great goal but making one small compromise

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” Then Jesus said to him, “Be gone, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.’” Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and were ministering to him (Matt 4:8-11).

In this temptation, Satan offers to give Jesus rulership over every kingdom of the world if he would just hit his knees and worship Satan once. At this point in Jesus’ sinless life, his heart was full of perfect love for humans. Jesus must have thought back over all the centuries of human suffering caused by Satan’s rule of the earth, since Adam’s rebellion. Imagine all the suffering Jesus could relieve, all the healing he could perform, all the good he could do, if he were in charge of Adam’s kingdom, instead of Satan. It would just take one small compromise. Just genuflect once—and he could avoid the horrible agony of the cross and rule Adam’s kingdom for good. But thanks be to God, Jesus resisted Satan’s enticing offer. Satan tempted the first Adam and Eve to become LIKE GOD, knowing good and evil. They chose rebellion rather than submission. Satan tempts the Second Adam to be LIKE THE GOD of this world—ruling all the kingdoms of earth—and Jesus fought off the temptation with God’s word, Deut 6:13, “Be gone, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.”

Jesus parries every blow Satan attempts, by citing a relevant specific passage of Scripture. Jesus grew up in an oral culture where practicing Jew’s like Joseph and Mary had their children memorize much of the Torah. Certainly, this is strong motivation to stay devoted to reading and study Scripture ourselves—a vital weapon in our arsenal. Is there some way in our culture to train ourselves to wield the sword of the Spirit, when temptation strikes? David Jeremiah, founder of Turning Point, answers that question from his own life. He writes,

Years ago, my friend Swen Nater and I got together at a restaurant. We talked about the areas where we thought the enemy would come after us, and we took a concordance and researched the Scriptures. We came up with about forty “swords” (i.e. specific verses for specific temptations) for each of us, which we stored in the armories of our minds. I suggest you do the same. Think of the areas in which you know Satan will tempt you, find some Bible verses relating to those areas, write them out on little cards, and put them where you will see them often. Memorize them. Internalize them. Learn them by heart--and be ready to use them when the enemy attacks.

Even Jesus, did not try to fight Satan’s temptations without quoting Scripture!

A List of 13 Temptations and Correlating Combat Truths from Scripture

1.  When I doubt that following Christ is worthwhile: Ps 34:10 (Even) the young lions suffer want and hunger; but Those who seek the Lord shall not be in want of any good thing.

2. When inwardly bored, the temptation to indulge in lustful pleasure strikes:Matt 5:6: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for THEY shall be SATISFIED.

3. When God wants me to give more generously than I want to:Luke 6:38: Give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.”

4. When I am angry because of my wife’s critical words: Prov 12:1 Whoever hates correction is stupid.

5. When I am repelled by my wife’s selfishness feeling like I work at meeting her needs way more than she works at meeting mine. Eph 5:25: Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.

6. When anger seeks to control my decisions. James 1:20: The anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.

7. When I have more month left than money, and am tempted to worry. Phil 4:19: My God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

8.  The temptation to get a better deal by bending the truth a little. Prov 10:2 Ill-gotten gains do not profit, but righteousness rescues from death.

9. When I am envious of a friend’s new house, car, or other possession. Matt 6:19-21: Don’t pile up treasures on earth, where moth and rust can spoil them and thieves can break in and steal. But keep your treasure in Heaven where there is neither moth nor rust to spoil it and nobody can break in and steal. For wherever your treasure is, you may be certain that your heart will be there too!”

10. When everything is going wrong, and I want to murmur against the Lord. Romans 8:28: For those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.

11. When my pain and suffering send the message that God doesn’t love me. Heb 12:6: For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.

12. When I want more sugar and don’t feel like working out. 1 Cor 6:19-21: Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, …. Therefore, honor God with your bodies.

13. The temptation to spin the truth so I am in seen a more favorable light. Prov 12:19: Truthful lips will endure forever, but a lying tongue is only for a moment.

The result of yielding to Satan’s temptation is always destruction. But wielding the Sword of the Spirit fends off the thoughts and impulses that The Enemy plants in our minds to lead us into death. The Word of God brings LIFE. This truth led King David to write Psalm 19 and sing: 

The Law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul; The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. THEY ARE MORE DESIRABLE THAN GOLD, YES, THAN MUCH PURE GOLD; SWEETER ALSO THAN HONEY AND DRIPPINGS OF THE HONEYCOMB. (Ps 19:7-8,10).

For Further Prayerful Thought:

1. Do you think this is a fair statement? If a man is not winning his own spiritual battles, he won’t be very effective helping his wife and children win theirs.

2. Describe in your own words the power of the Word of God.

3. What did you learn from our examination of the way Jesus wielded the sword of the Spirit?

4. Of the 13 temptations, listed, which 2 or 3 do you most need to be able to parry, by quoting Scripture?

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Thinking Biblically About Charlie Kirk’s Impact and Murder

Thinking Biblically About Charlie Kirk’s Impact and Murder

On 20 September, 2025 By Gary Yagel

Today, we set aside our series Winning Spiritual Battles Because We Use Our Spiritual Weapons to seek to put a biblical lens over the event that has captivated our national thinking over the past ten days—the assassination of Charlie Kirk and his impact upon the rising generation. A partisan tweet on social media this week got my attention. It said, When Democrats are angry, you get Black Lives Matter riots, Antifa church shootings, Trump assassination attempts, Charlie Kirk assassination, pro-life pregnancy centers put on fire, Tesla vandalism, attacks against ICE agents, attacks against police, attacks against federal court houses. When Conservatives get angry, we have prayer vigils. What do you think of this tweet? Is this contrast accurate or unfair? Let’s try to think biblically about the cause of Charlie Kirk’s assassination and what Charlie’s remarkable impact upon millions of young men and women across America can teach us.

ROOT CAUSES OF CHARLIE’S MURDER

A. Observation # 1: Political violence is committed by those on the left and right. Although I have long been aware of the unfathomable atrocities committed by left wing Communist dictator, Mao Ze Dong, it was enlightening for me to read this week of the equally heinous crimes of the American-supported dictator against whom, Moa fomented rebellion, Chiang Kai-shek. One historian describes Chinese life under Chang, “The Chinese people are terrorized from two sides: Mao’s rebels and Chiang’s army. Armed and dangerous, these forces roam the countryside demanding taxes, seizing food, raping women. Enraged, many civilians secretly begin supporting the Communists, who are deemed les evil than Chian Kai-shek’s corrupt national army” (Bill O’Reilly, Confronting Evil). Similarly, we know that in Iran, the Ayatollah Khomeini, who called America the Great Satan and Israel the Little Satan, was the personification of evil. Between 1979 and 1989, between five and ten thousand women were executed by the regime. Millions more were raped and sexually abused for so-called crimes against Islam. But the pro-Western dictator, known as the Shah, who was overthrown by Khomeini, was no less ruthless a killer. “He rules through sheer brutality. At his order, innocent civilians are routinely abducted, tortured, disappeared” (Ibid). The Shah’s secret police, known as SAVAK, are responsible for gunning down between 500 and 1200 dissidents in what has been called the Jaleh Massacre. A historical lens confirms the truth of the biblical verdict, “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one” (Rom 3:10-12). Man is radically depraved. Sin corrupts every facet of the human heart including the use of political power. Political violence and evil are committed by the politically right and politically left.

B. Observation # 2. Despite the presence of evil on the right and left, these political ideologies are NOT equal when it comes to INSPIRING political violence. Conservative ideology does NOT inherently inspire political violence. The left-wing, woke political movement DOES. Recently, CBS news reported the findings of Stanley Schwartz at Cedarville University that of those who self-identified as “left of center,” 38% said it would be “somewhat justified” to murder President Trump. For those self-identifying as more left-leaning, those numbers grew to 48% who agreed it was “somewhat justified” to murder Donald Trump. These numbers are astonishing. This is the fruit of left-wing ideology. To understand the reason that we see this fruit of woke thinking, we must go to its roots. Here are three roots of left-wing ideology that breed violence.

Root 1. Their utter dependence upon the flawed ad hominem way to argue causes them to constantly demonize their opponents. AI explains: “The ad hominem fallacy occurs when someone attacks the character, traits, or circumstances of an opponent rather than addressing the argument they are presenting.” Left-wing ideology cannot be supported by logical arguments or historical facts. Left-wing policies have a proven record; they fail everywhere they are attempted—be it Mao’s China, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, Castro’s Cuba, or Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela. And when they fail, the poor suffer the most. Since logic and history disprove leftist ideology, the only argument they have left is calling their enemies fascists, “Hitler,” or racists. Their fundamental approach to arguing their case is to demonize their opponents. When any political movement relies on this form of argument it is promoting hatred to further its cause. Psychologists have a fancy term for the way hate-filled rhetoric leads to violence. They say it provides “a permission structure” for the weak-minded to murder a political adversary.

The killer of Charlie Kirk left no doubts about his motivation. He had engraved on one of his bullets, “Hey Fascist, Catch!” This murder is rooted in the political left’s character assassination of Charlie Kirk labeling him a fascist. This fact is indisputable. Its contrast to the conservative approach to winning followers could not be clearer. Charlie sought dialogue with his political opponents.

Root 2: Left-wing ideology is rooted in cultural Marxism, which justifies the violence of the oppressed class against the oppressors. Cultural Marxism, aka critical theory is a comprehensive way of viewing society that is rooted in Karl Marx’s dichotomy of society into the oppressed proletariat laboring class and the oppressor bourgeoisie land and business owner class. Italian Marxist Antonia Gramsci extended this oppressor/oppressed lens into every aspect of culture. Thus, not only are laborers oppressed by business owners, but the poor are oppressed by the rich, blacks are oppressed by whites, women are oppressed by men, homosexuals and transgendered oppressed by cisgendered people. Poor nations are oppressed by wealthy nations, immigrants wanting to cross our borders are oppressed by Americans citizens who want closed borders. Palestinian Muslims are oppressed by Israel. Criminals are criminals because they are the oppressed class, so violence against ICE and law enforcement officers doing their duty is fomented.

Gramsci called the force that enables these oppressors to oppress “unjust, cultural hegemony.” All inequities are caused by the cultural power of the OPPRESSORS, which these OPPRESSORS cling to through their religious, political, social, and cultural structures. These structures, such as Christianity, the US Constitution, the free market, law and order, accurate history, and the structure of the family must be torn down to accomplish social justice. Critical theory is evil to the core. It appeals to the heinous human propensity towards envy, excuses violence, foments rebellion towards authority and sets up a perverted view of justice that is expressly forbidden in Scripture—basing justice upon one’s class. Leviticus 19:5 says, You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor.

Critical theory’s justification of violence by the oppressed class toward the “establishment” is clearly seen in the reaction to the death of George Floyd. Leftists rioted in 140 cities, vandalizing and looting. They fire-bombed police cars. At least 19 people were killed. As Antifa and Black Lives Matter burned down buildings across the country, left wing mayors and governors did nothing. The same critical theory class envy and justification of evil violence by the oppressed is seen in the murderer of the CEO of United Health Care, Brian Thompson, in NYC by Luigi Mangione. Left-wing ideologues across the nation celebrated this brutal taking of a human life. Charlie Kirk’s killer was in the “oppressed class,” according to critical theory—in a homosexual relationship with his transgender roommate transitioning to be a female. Robinson etched a transgender meme on one of the bullets intended for Charlie. When asked by his roommate why he had murdered Kirk, Robinson said, “I’ve had enough of this hatred. Some hate can’t be negotiated out.” Critical theory justifies the murder of an oppressor by the oppressed.

Root 3: Left-wing ideology is fundamentally committed to overthrowing existing political authority.  The left’s approach to injustice is to overthrow existing political structures, promoting lawlessness to create anarchy (so they can seize power). Scripture calls all Christians to promote justice for the poor and destitute. But it never countenances violence to accomplish such justice. Writing at a time of enormous unjust persecution of Christians by Nero, Paul wrote,

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore, whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain (Romans 13:1-4).

The support of left-leaning politicians for those who have committed violent crimes is astonishing. Critical theory gives oppressors the right to murder their political opponent. This ideology could not contrast more sharply with the biblical worldview of crime. The biblical view that spells out what is required in our treatment of others is the royal law of love. “You shall love your neighbor as yourselves.” The reason such love is required is rooted in the identity of that neighbor—she bears God’s image. James appeals to this principle to persuade us to use kind words. With (our tongue) we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so (3:9-10).

The biblical worldview of crime is more fully reflected in Genesis 9, where again, we see that it is rooted in man’s identity as God’s image-bearer. From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, FOR GOD MADE MAN IN HIS OWN IMAGE. Punishment for breaking the moral law is required for justice. But NOT punishing evil behavior is also unloving to the lawbreaker. Letting the lawbreaker continue down the spiral toward greater and greater evil is to hate him. Prov 13:24: Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him. And we know that Whom the Lord loves he disciplines (Heb 12:6).

It is the biblical worldview, not cultural Marxism, that shaped civil rights champion Martin Luther King, Jr. He was committed to non-violence, and he rooted his appeal to justice for black Americans in their God-given human dignity as those made to be like their heavenly father. Listen to these words, from his “I have a Dream” speech given on the steps of the capitol. Appealing to Amos 5:25, he said,  

I have a dream that one day “every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together…This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning: My country, ‘tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!” 

King wanted human biblical freedom based upon the truth that every black man was created in God’s image. He did not seek the violent overthrow of government, anarchy, or the totalitarian rule of the left. The political conservatism that Charlie championed was like that championed by Martin Luther King, committed nonviolent submission to the rule of law, and to justice for all because all humans bear the image of God.

PUTTING A BIBLICAL LENS OVER CHARLIE’S IMPACT

A. Components of Turning Point USA’s Mission that All Christians Can Support

  • The organization’s mission is to identify, educate, train, and organize students to promote the principles of fiscal responsibility, free markets, and limited government. Thes are all consistent with biblical teaching.
  • It is organized to empower informed civic and cultural engagement grounded in American exceptionalism and a positive spirit of action. Empower informed civic and cultural engagement. By any measure, Scripture supports helping Christian citizens become politically engaged and influence culture.  

B. Components of TPUSA’s Mission to Be Cautious About. The term, American exceptionalism is a term that requires careful thought.

  • We must be exceptionally grateful to God for our material prosperity, and the precious treasure we enjoy of freedom from tyranny.
  • We are exceptional in that our declaration of independence is biblically based. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
  • We are exceptional in giving much of our wealth to charity and world missions and in usinn our military not to invade but to defend human rights.
  • However, a belief in American exceptionalism can lead to nationalism—an ideology that a Christian cannot embrace. Our citizenship is in heaven.
  • American exceptionalism can lead to blindness to the shortcomings of our founding fathers, which has severely wounded our fellow citizens.

--The man who penned the Declaration of Independence did not believe all men are created equal. Jefferson, like 6 other US presidents owned slaves.

--From 1800-1860 many, if not most of the richest men in America were slave traders; it was the most lucrative business in the country.

--Thomas Jefferson, whose monument graces the DC skyline, would be found guilty of sexual abuse today because of his sexual relationship with Sally Hemings, the enslaved, underaged companion of his younger daughter Polly. Hemmings was 15 years old, when the sexual relationship began. Slaves can’t say “no” to their masters. DNA tests prove that Thomas Jefferson fathered six children through her while she remained his slave.

  • Despite these caveats, there is much for Bible-believing Christians to celebrate in the rise of Turning Point USA because conservatism’s values greatly overlap Biblical ones. But it is Charlie’s actions that most inspires me.

C. Charlie’s Obedience to His Lord’s Call To Be Salt and Light For the World.

1. Charlie lived out a holistic gospel. As John Stonestreet said, Charlie defied the idea that we have to separate sharing the gospel from the other areas of life. Questions about sports, politics, and God were all fair game. Also, homosexuality, transgenderism, and abortion. He was proving false and demonstrating to be false the idea that we have to NOT talk about politics in presenting the gospel." Charlie Kirk knew that ideas have consequences and bad ideas have victims. So, he went into the hotbed where destructive ideas were being forged—university campuses. As his pastor testified, Charlie knew that the shaping of culture was a spiritual battle. Everyday, he lived out the truth of 2 Cor 10:4-5 For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. 5 We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ. But he didn’t simply share the biblical worldviews. He used his vocation as a politically conservative operative to proclaim the gospel, when he saw the opportunity.

2. Charlie’s impact resulted from his strategy to ENGAGE with others. In my opinion this strategy, more than anything else, explains his unparalleled success. Remember his slogan, “If you disagree with me come to the front of the line (at the mic).” In contrast to almost every conservative influencer, Charlie wasn’t content to go deliver lectures on college campuses, or just post on X. He understood the “silo” nature of polarized culture today—that conservatives have no contact with the left and the left no contact with the right. He understood intuitively that he could never get a hearing with the rising generation unless he engaged directly with them, listening to their viewpoint. A thoughtful biblical commentator, opined, “Charlie showed that conversation can be had. He showed it must be had. He showed that the truth can still win hearts and minds and that lies can be opposed and that it can all be done with a big smile” (Ibid).

3. Charlie won the hearts of his listeners by respectfully listening to those who disagreed with him. Here is another description of Charlie’s impact. “Charlie Kirk was a committed truth teller with a remarkable gift for exposing and answering deceit. Yet in the midst of doing that he treated his conversation partner with the dignity they had as image-bearers of their creator recognizing that they too were victims of their own bad ideas.”   

4. Charlie intentionally developed skill as an apologist for Christ. He knew the command of Peter, In your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect (3:15). Charlie went to his pastor on one occasion and said, “I didn’t ask for it but I’ve become a high-profile defender of the faith. Would you train me? I need to become the best I can be.”

5. Charlie had the courageous heart of a lion. Proverbs 30:30 states A lion (is) mighty among beasts, who retreats before nothing. When Charlie first stepped onto college campuses, without even a college degree, think of the fears he had to overcome. What if I am asked a question I can’t answer? What if I end up making a fool of myself, worse yet making a fool of Jesus? What if this whole thing only succeeds at making the Christians on this campus laughing stocks because I screw up? Charlie must have known and claimed Jesus’ promise to his followers when they faced hostile opponents Do not worry about what to say or how to say it. At that time you will be given what to say, for it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you (Matt 10:19-20).

By the time you read this, Charlie Kirk’s funeral will be over. You will have heard many fine things about Charlie. I close with just one. He shaped his life according to these words from Jesus.

You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet. You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

May Carlie Kirk’s life and death inspire us to NEVER hide our light under a basket.

For Further Prayerful Thought:

  1. How would you respond to someone who tried to argue that Charlie’s death had nothing to do with the left-wing ideology embrace by his killer Tyler Robinson.
  2. What do you think is the difference between patriotism and Christian nationalism. (Hint—whenever you see ism attached to a word it describes a worldview).
  3. Which aspects of Charlie’s example do you find most inspiring. How can you allow that inspiration to bring about a change in your life?
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How the Helmet of Salvation Protects Us

How the Helmet of Salvation Protects Us

On 13 September, 2025 By Gary Yagel

Hi Men,

This is Gary Yagel, producer of the Mission Focused Men for Christ Podcast/Blog. Like everyone else in the country, I have been pondering the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Many lenses have been and will continue to be placed over this incident. Charlie was penetrating the heart of the beast--college campuses where many corrupt, ungodly worldviews have been fomenting and spreading since cultural Marxism invaded our colleges and universities in the 1930's. Charlie confronted these destructive ideas in the most biblical of ways--inviting those who espoused them to come to the front of the line to engage with him in dialogue. 

Because of his incredible influence on college campuses, if I were Satan, Charlie Kirk would be near the top of my hit list to be taken down. The lens that I want to put over this incident is that our battle is “not against flesh and blood but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” In my mind the murder of probably the most effective proponent of the biblical worldview on college campuses today is a very sober reminder of the viciousness of The Evil One, his hatred of Christ-followers, and his determination to corrupt the thinking of the rising generation. Yes, our sovereign God will overrule it and turn this horrific evil to his good. Perhaps in death Charlie’s legacy will have far greater impact on the rising generation than if he had lived beyond 31. We will never know. But this brutal take-down by The Evil One is a striking reminder of the power and pure evil of the kingdom of darkness. That is why Paul warned us “Therefore take up the whole armor of God.” That is the reason for this series explaining our spiritual weapons and armor. In this past episode, we examine the vital need to put on the helmet of salvation.   

As we seek to run well the race marked out for us, this calling means advancing the righteous reign of King Jesus in our own hearts, attitudes, and behavior, not to mention shaping each sphere of life with Christ’s agenda. But it is very easy to think, “Who am I to spread righteousness anywhere? Whoever thinks that’s my job in life, doesn’t understand the corruption of MY heart and weakness of MY flesh.”  But it is Christ who told his followers to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. Jesus calls us to this primary life focus, knowing the weakness of our sinful nature because his plan has never been for us to seek righteousness in our own strength but in his. He tell us. Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God (Eph 6:10-13). This episode tries to define in practical terms how to put on the helmet of salvation and how that protects us in the fight to do the right thing.

A few years ago, I was sitting in the stands watching some of the finest moments in my son’s collegiate football career. Playing the Rover position (sort of combination safety/linebacker, he had stopped the opposing ball carrier for no gain. The next play he chased down the tailback on a sweep for a loss. A few plays later, he met the fullback right in the hole at the line of scrimmage for no gain. But my son didn’t get up. The running back had ducked his head just as Josh hit him in a helmet-to-helmet collision. Josh had a concussion that kept him in a dark, quiet dorm room for three days and out of football for weeks.

The main purpose of helmets, whether in sports, in battle, or in work situations like construction sites, is to protect the brain from injury. The brain must be fiercely protected, because once the brain is damaged, body functions also get damaged. That is why the NFL is investing millions in helmet design, most recently studying God’s design of woodpeckers. This medical reality is also the reason behind the helmets worn by the Roman legions. They did not want their soldiers concussed and therefore controlled by fuzzy vision and confused thinking. Paul tells Christians that our salvation is like a helmet protecting us from fuzzy, confused thinking. But how does the helmet of salvation do that? And what does it mean to take up the helmet of salvation over and over—we don’t have keep asking Christ to come into our lives over and over again!

Some commentators envision the helmet’s protection of the brain to be protecting our thinking—the process by which God’s Word renews our minds. Indeed, spiritual warfare is very much about the thoughts that capture our mind. In 2 Corinthians 10 we are told that we have divine power to destroy…. arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ (vs 5). But in the text we’re studying, the next piece of armor Paul will mention is the Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, by which Jesus took every thought captive when he fought Satan. When Paul says, “Take the helmet of salvation” he is NOT talking about the need to renew our mind in this verse; he is talking about how understanding SALVATION in particular protects our minds.

An important clue in understanding Paul’s teaching on the armor of God is realizing that Paul is as influenced by Isaiah’s writing about the armor of God as by the Roman soldiers guarding him, if not more. Here are the verses from Isaiah 59:15-17 that impacted Paul concerning the helmet of salvation. In summary these verses record God’s decision to HIMSELF bring salvation.

Man’s Evil: Truth is lacking, and he who departs from evil makes himself a prey. The Lord saw it, and it displeased him that there was no justice. 

Man Can’t Save Himself: He saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no one to intercede;

The Solution: then his own arm brought him salvation, and his righteousness upheld him. He put on righteousness as a breastplate, and a HELMET OF SALVATION on his head. (59:15-17b).

This text uses the same expression Paul used, helmet of salvation. The whole point to the Isaiah 59 text is that salvation for Adam’s race can not come from another human; God, himself must provide salvation from sin and its consequences. God himself will be the Messiah who wears the helmet of salvation and breastplate of righteousness. So, taking up the helmet of salvation is a reference to the reality that salvation from sin comes by grace alone, through Christ alone. Think of what Paul has already said in this same letter about salvation. By grace you have been SAVED through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast (2:8-9).

Remember, the purpose of a helmet is to protect the brain. So what Paul is saying is that in some way the reality that salvation from sin comes by grace alone through Christ alone PROTECTS our thinking as Christians. I believe this is the truest understanding of taking the helmet of salvation. Let me try to say this another way. The one to whom he helmet of salvation belongs in Scripture is only Christ (Is 59:17) But we get to wear that helmet because of grace, that we are “IN Christ,” dependent upon him for every aspect of salvation. So, the helmet of salvation to which Paul refers is the protective truth surrounding our thinking that SALVATION IS FROM CHRIST AND NOT FROM US. To see how this truth can protect our thinking, let’s consider three component parts to our salvation.

Salvation Means We Are Saved From The PENALTY Of Sin

The Greek word for salvation, SOTERIA includes deliverance from God’s just wrath upon all lawbreakers separating them from his holy presence and consigning them justly to destruction in hell. Jesus said, Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into  judgment, but has passed from death to life (John 5:24). The salvation story is the reality that we ourselves are destitute sinners whose only hope is God’s mercy. God, himself must save us. How does surrounding our daily thinking with the helmet of salvation protect us?

1.  It protects us from thinking WE ARE TOO DIRTY FOR GOD TO WANT A RELATIONSHIP WITH.  In Luke 5, after spending a whole night finding no fish, Peter sees Jesus miraculously fill his nets. Luke reports, But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.”  I have found that many men struggling with lust, feel the same way. “Lord I know you love me, and forgive me because Christ died for my sins. But you are holy. My lust is so repulsive it makes me disgusting to you. Depart from me. I’ll be back to see you after I’ve proved that I really am sorry for my sin by getting a few wins under my belt.”

But putting the helmet of salvation on means, knowing that only Christ can make us holy. We are declared righteous. Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us. And Christ’s righteousness is not so incomplete that we have to add a little of our own! The truth about our salvation is that we are far more flawed than our lust proves while at the same time we are far more loved and accepted than we imagined. Henry Cloud and John Townsend, write, When we finally understand that God isn’t mad at us any more, we become free to concentrate on love and growth instead of trying to appease him (How People Grow).

A mother named Maria understood the principle that feeling dirty might drive someone away from those who love her. Her 15-year-old daughter, Christiana, had run away from home to the big city. Maria knew Christiana would turn to prostitution to support herself. She also knew that when Christiana did so, she would feel too dirty and disgusting to think her mom and family would ever want a relationship with her, again. So, Maria threw some clothes in a bag, gathered all her money, and bought a bus ticket for Rio de Janeiro. She stopped by the drugstore to take as many pictures of herself as she could afford. Maria visited every hotel, night-club, or bar where prostitutes hung out. At each place she left her picture—taped on a bathroom mirror or tacked to a hotel bulletin board. On the back of each photo, she wrote a note. But before long, Maria was out of photos and money. So, broken hearted, she returned home.

A few weeks late, young Christiana descended the hotel stairs. Her young face was tired. Her big brown eyes no longer danced with the laughter of youth but spoke of pain and fear. She longed to trade these countless beds for the secure pallet of her bedroom at home. As she reached the bottom of the stairs, her eyes noticed a familiar face. There on the lobby mirror was a small picture of her mother. Christiana’s eyes blurred with tears as she crossed the room and removed the small photo. Written on the back was this compelling invitation: “Whatever you have done, whatever you have become, it doesn’t matter. Please come home.” Christiana did.  (No Wonder They Call Him Savior, by Max Lucado). 

Putting on the helmet of salvation means remembering that God’s arms are always open to us like the arms of the father who runs to throw his arms around the prodigal son.

2. The helmet of salvation protects us from JUDGING OTHERS. Jesus taught, Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye (Matt 7:3-5).

Taking up the helmet of salvation means remembering the rock from under which I was dug--that my salvation is all about God’s incredible mercy for me. I have a whole forest of timber in my eyes, compared to another’s speck. When the flaws and sinfulness of others wound me or make my life more difficult, my own desperate need for God’s mercy surrounds and protects my mind from impatience, anger, retaliation, and bitterness.

3. The helmet of salvation protects me from APATHY TOWARDS THE POOR, THE OUTCASTS, THE HURTING. Let’s think for a moment of the Good Samaritan.

A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back (Lk 10:30-35).

How does this relate to putting on the helmet of salvation? WE are the wounded man. We lay helpless and bankrupt, dying in the road. Christ who is our natural enemy because he is God who hates evil, who owes us nothing, nevertheless shows great mercy for us. He stops and gives us of his riches and saves us. When we realize we are the one in need of mercy, we better understand the gospel of grace. Christians who RECEIVE mercy must be drawn to those who NEED mercy.

There are two powerful effects that the gospel of grace has on a person who has been touched by it writes Tim Keller.  First, the person who knows that he has received mercy while an undeserving enemy of God will have a heart of love for even (and especially) the most difficult and ungrateful persons. When a Christian sees prostitutes, alcoholics, prisoners, drug addicts, unwed mothers, the homeless, the refugee, he knows that he is looking in a mirror….The second major effect that the gospel of grace has on a person is that it creates spontaneous generosity (Ministries of Mercy)

My salvation story is that he who was rich emptied himself so that I who am poor might be rich. This truth that is foundational to the salvation story is a helmet that protects me from apathy for those broken by sin. Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required, said our master (Lk 12:48).

Salvation Means We Are Saved From the POWER of Sin

4. Putting on the helmet of salvation protects us from PASSIVITY AND LAZINESS. The salvation story was never just that those who put their faith in Christ are saved from the penalty of their sin and go to heaven when they die. Such a mistaken understanding leads to a neglect of Christ’s call to discipleship—the call to enjoy a personal relationship with him right now, the call to become like him in this life, the call to spread the kingdom of righteousness over our sphere of earth.

The word salvation refers to the truth that believers are being saved from the power of sin in this life. Justification is a one-time act that saves us from sin’s punishment. Sanctification is the ongoing process of saving us from sin’s power. Paul writes: For this is the will of God, your sanctification (1 Thes 4:3). I am called to pursue God’s goal for my life: holiness of character. Salvation is not spiritual retirement. It is pressing on towards our upward call in Christ Jesus.

5. Putting on the helmet of salvation protects us from NEGLECTING OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD. The helmet of salvation is the reality that Jesus is the only one with the power to save me from sin’s destructive power. WE MUST DEPEND UPON HIM EVERYDAY. Jesus precedes his marching orders to the church to make disciples with a very important historic fact about our power for discipleship. All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples (Matt 28:18). It is only in the power of Christ that I can surrender to Christ’s kingly rule over my heart loyalties, heart attitudes, and the other spheres of my life. After Christ ascended, he poured out the Holy Spirit who empowers us to be holy. But the only way the spiritual fruit of godliness is produced is by abiding in Christ, because he is the vine and we are the branches.

Salvation Means We Are Saved From the PRESENCE of sin

6. Putting on the helmet of salvation protects us from DESPAIR, when evil wins.

The third aspect of the word, salvation, refers to our future hope. The biblical word for hope does not imply uncertainty as the English word does. Our hope is certain, but it is future.  Before penning the verses we are studying in Ephesians, Paul had written to the Thessalonians, Let us be sober, having put on...for a helmet the hope of salvation. Here, Paul had referred to this third part of salvation—the final return of Christ when all of creation will be set free from its bondage to sin and restored. (Rom 8:18-21). We are given a glimpse in Rev 21.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first 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 I 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. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away…. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment” (Rev 21:1-5).

John’s vision of the new heaven and the new earth is breathtaking. God’s people are adorned as a bride for his son, clothed in righteousness. God, whose presence dwelt in the tabernacle and temple of old, will be present with them to satisfy their hearts with the ecstasy of his immediate presence; they will see him face-to-face. Sorrows will be turned to joy, mourning and pain wiped from memory. Thirst will be quenched without cost.

During this church age evil will triumph at times, then be driven back, and then triumph, back and forth. But taking up the helmet of salvation is remembering that sin’s utter defeat will take place one day. The proof of that, argued Paul, was Christ’s resurrection. That is why he closed his chapter on the resurrection (I Corinthians 15) with the words, Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain (vs 58).

For Further Prayerful Thought: 

1. Why does taking up the helmet of salvation mean something different from just thinking biblically about stuff.

2. How does putting on the helmet of salvation protect us from thinking we are too dirty for God to love?

3. Why does being saved by grace alone cause a true Christian to be drawn to those who need mercy?

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Protection From Satan’s Fiery Darts

Protection From Satan’s Fiery Darts

On 06 September, 2025 By Gary Yagel

Hi Men,

This is Gary Yagel, producer of the Mission Focused Men for Christ Podcast/Blog. No man wants to fail. Yet, truth be told, most Christian men would say they lose far too many battles, when Satan tempts us. Paul had the same sinful nature we have. He yielded to temptation, as we do. But he did know that God has given us a spiritual shield to protect us from Satan’s fiery darts, but left it to us to raise that shield, when tempted. Today’s episode from a past series examines what the shield of faith is and how we raise it to repel Satan’s attacks.

Men don’t always admit it, but deep inside, we all want to be heroes. We want to come through when it matters for our loved ones. In our own way we would love to be like Joshua or David or William Wallace leading the charge with a sword in our hand in the spiritual battle. Yet, instead of identifying with such great warriors on the front line, most of us feel like we are just the factory worker back home in the war effort, putting in our 8 plus hours a day, sharing home responsibilities with our wives, checking our social media, maybe grabbing an hour on Disney+ and starting the whole routine over again the next day.

But thinking that your role in spiritual battle is insignificant is a lie from the Enemy. Christ has called you and me to follow him in his cause of defeating evil and establishing his righteous kingdom over every square inch of human hearts and lives. There is no other man who can replace you in your life, in the arenas you have been called to. If you leave your place in line, it will remain empty. You must be the hero in your own story. There is no extra or stunt man to fill in for you. Winning your spiritual battles matters. You will celebrate for eternity the ones you win tomorrow and the next day and the day after that because each victory has honored Christ. This episode examines how we protect ourselves from Satan’s fiery arrows by lifting up our shield of faith.

One thoughtful author writes, Behind the world and the flesh is an even more powerful enemy, one we rarely speak of and are even more less ready to resist. Yet, this is where we live now—on the front lines of a fierce spiritual war that is to blame for most of the casualties you see around you and most of the assault against you. It is time we prepared ourselves for it (John Eldredge, Wild at Heart).

There IS a dragon to be slain. Our loved ones do need us to be heroic and to fight for them, for ourselves, and for the honor of our King, Jesus Christ who has defeated Satan’s kingdom and claims this world as his own. Let’s learn from Ephesians 6:16 another truth about how to fight this battle:  In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one. The Roman battle shield looked more like a door than a trash can lid. It was four feet tall and two and a half feet wide allowing the soldier to crouch completely behind it. It was covered with thick leather and metal, that could deflect incoming arrows.

Paul likens this protective shield to the Christian’s faith. Biblical faith is relentless confidence in the goodness of God’s character—that all of his dealings with us and those we love spring from the character of goodness and love—wanting what is best for us. This unwavering confidence in the goodness and love of God is what Satan relentlessly seeks to destroy. We see that in his attack on Eve and on Job.

A. Consider Eve. When we read God’s history of mankind—the Bible, we’ve barely gotten through creation in the first two chapters when we encounter Satan planting the one idea into Eve’s heart that is responsible for more human destruction than any other idea—the lie that God’s goodness can’t be trusted. When this wrong idea captured Eve’s heart, she rebelled, Adam rebelled with her, and humans have been rebelling against God and his law ever since. Satan’s chief strategy to inspire rebellion in Eve’s heart was to make her doubt God’s goodness. Let’s take a moment to study again this tactic of Satan used on Eve.

The Serpent said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Gen 3:2-5).

1. Notice that Satan actually begins the temptation by planting a complete fabrication into Eve’s mind, i.e. the possibility that this unfair God might have put all the delicious fruit trees in the garden just to make them miserable by not permitting them to eat ANY of them. His words, again, Did God really say you can’t eat from any tree. Even though God never said that, as Eve pointed out, Satan still planted the idea that God was the kind of being who could have done something so completely unfair.

2. Satan further undermined Eve’s confidence in God’s goodness by taking her focus off all the wonderful fruit God had given them to enjoy throughout the entire garden and directing her focus on one apparently unfair restriction. EVERY SINGLE other tree in the garden, with its lush fruit for Adam and Eve to enjoy proved God’s GOODNESS—his desire to bless them with GOOD gifts. Later, Jesus would remind us of this wonderful benevolent nature of God: Which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent?  If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him (Matt 7:9-11).

3. Satan’s attack on God’s goodness continues, For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” Satan insinuates that: 1) God’s motive is selfishness—he is keeping something good from her and Adam, all to himself, i.e. the knowledge of good and evil, and 2) God’s moral law is fundamentally a restriction on our happiness. Both undermine her confidence in the goodness of God. The truth of course is that his law is given to us out of his goodness—to guide us into blessing. King David said, I will never forget your precepts, for by them you have given me life (Ps 119:93).

B. Satan’s tactics to destroy the faith of Job are different—he has the power to inflict enormous physical, emotional, and spiritual pain on Job. But his strategy is the same—to try to get him to curse God instead of trusting him. Job learns some humility, but Satan fails. In the midst of unfathomable pain, Job, says, Though he slay me, yet will I trust him (13:15). And God’s goodness, hidden for a season of affliction, bursts forth, again in the closing chapter of Job with the words, And the LORD restored the fortunes of Job….And the LORD gave Job twice as much as he had before (42:10) Inscribed on the shield of faith we need to raise against Satan’s attack on God’s goodness are the words, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust him.”

It is noteworthy that Paul begins this admonition to raise our shield of faith with “In all circumstances” (ESV). Because Satan’s desire is to create doubt in our hearts about God’s love for us, the fiery darts of doubt Satan sends our way often result from painful experiences and situations. Tony Evens, in his book, Victory in Spiritual Warfare, notes that Paul tells us to take up our armor in the evil day:

The evil day is the day that all hell breaks loose in your life—when you are under attack. It’s when the finances are so low that you don’t know how you are going to make it through the end of the week. It’s when you’ve lost your job. And there is no new job in sights. It’s when you are breaking down emotionally and have lost your passion for life. It’s when your marriage seems hopeless, your kids have turned away, your health deteriorates, your future looks bleak. It’s when your friend has betrayed you, you’re overcome by an addiction or impulse, or life seems to deliver any other piercing stab.

In view of such trials, it is imperative to realize that FAITH is not an EMOTION; it is an act of the will. Any normal person encountering the difficult, sometimes heart-wrenching circumstances mentioned above will feel an array of emotions including doubts about God—perhaps discouragement, anger, frustration, disappointment, worry, fear, distrust, sorrow, insecurity, resentment, self-doubt, or grief. The feelings are not unbelief, itself, but put our faith to the test. Faith is a decision. It is choosing to trust God despite all the feelings and circumstances that severely undermine confidence in God’s love for you. I heard my son-in-law say through tears and the agony of a heart split open in grief, at the funeral of his 21-year old son, “Though God slay me, yet will I trust him.”

In my own life, in a crisis nowhere near as severe, but nevertheless real, I remember learning that faith is a decision to trust God. Our church was pursuing the crazy agenda of planting a daughter church while going through a building program at the same time. I was a circuit rider, traveling to the daughter church to preach at the 9:15 service, then driving to the mother church to preach at the 10:45 service. In the midst of this process, my lone associate pastor and his wife, both of whom my wife and I leaned upon heavily, felt called away to another ministry. It normally takes 12-18 months to replace a staff person in the church. I remember where I was standing right after I heard that news that Bill and Jeannette were leaving. Wrestling with the fear that I would fall apart emotionally under this stress, I realized I had to make a choice; either trust God or not. I said, “I choose to trust you, God.” Little did I know that within our own congregation was the man God would call to fill that staff position. Two weeks after the first associate and wife left, his replacement started (who, btw stayed at the church longer than I did.) God is worthy of our trust! Faith is not a feeling but a decision to trust God. Hebrews 11:1 tells us faith is the assurance of things hope for—confidence that God has a good purpose WHICH WILL BE REVEALED IN THE END, and the conviction of what is unseen—confidence THAT THOUGH UNSEEN, RIGHT NOW God is working everything together for my good.

There is one aspect of the Roman shield that is especially significant in our culture where men are often isolated. The shields were designed to lock together as mutual defense against the rain of enemy arrows. Stu Weber, in his book, Locking Arms, asks men, “Do you see the critical point here? This is the shield of faith, which by design is interlocked with the soldier next to you. This is the shield of faith utilized in community.” A few years ago, a friend discovered that his infant daughter had a very serious, life-threatening disease. I asked him what he learned about raising your shieled of faith through that experience. Here is what he wrote:

Our faith helped my wife and me deflect the attacks of fear, doubt and despair that we faced. While our faith stood secure in the midst of our trials, we learned how important it was to have the community of faith stand beside us to strengthen our resolve. Have you ever watched a movie showing warriors locking their shields together to block an arrow barrage? Sustaining faith through a major health crisis works this way. Mine was buttressed through these multiple health crises through the faith and prayers of brothers.  Of course, the main linking of shields was with my wife, but the many texts, calls, and questions from brothers keeps me going. One brother would not accept "fine" or "okay".  He insisted on being real and shared his struggles as well. That helps build faith. It strengthens your shield knowing your brothers are locking arms. I know they are with me and they know I am with them.

Six Reasons for Trusting God

(Components of a Shield of Faith Laminated Together)

1. Trust God because those who trust him will not be in want of any good thing. We will not come to God, if we believe his motive is to deprive us, wound us, or restrict our pleasure. Have you ever known someone who lost a parent through death or divorce and is bitter with God? We must be convinced that God wants what is best for us, or we won’t pursue him whole-heartedly. But God says, Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him! Oh, fear the Lord, you his saints, for those who fear him have no lack! The young lions suffer want and hunger; but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing (Ps 34:8-10).

2. Trust God because he is the God of all comfort (2 Cor 1:3). Allowing you to suffer does not mean he has closed his heart to you. God became flesh to be our Great High Priest, so that he understands the depths of our pain because he felt that pain himself. Jesus’ compassionate heart was proved for all time, when seeing the tears of Martha and Mary over the loss of their brother, his tears gushed forth even knowing he was about to bring Lazarus back from the dead. Jesus taught  that grieving, whenever we encounter the pain brought about by the way sin has broken life in this world, is true godliness. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. So, we cannot weep without Jesus entering into our pain and feeling it himself. And having such compassion, he assures us that he will never test us beyond our ability to endure (1 Cor 10:13).

3. Trust God because every single frustration and trial in your life has a good purpose. We all can identify with Alexander and his terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. His day started badly and grew worse. By evening he says, There were lima beans for dinner, and I hate limas. There was kissing on TV and I hate kissing. My bath was too hot, I got soap in my eyes, my marble went down the drain and I had to wear my railroad train pajamas. I hate my railroad train pajamas (by Judith Vorst). Every one of us has day’s like Alexander’s. As Christians, we realize God is sovereign. We know the promise of God in Romans 8:28, All things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. But we often forget the next verse, which explains HOW all this pain and frustration can be good. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son. God’s purpose is to use trials and frustrations to build Christ-like character. We cannot become like Christ in our character without enduring pain. Pain is the fire that refines our inner attitudes. Like working out, present pain NOW leads to RICH SATISFACTION later (even in this life). Jesus taught that the deepest form of happiness (MAKARIOS), translated blessed in the beatitudes, results not from circumstances but from godly heart attitudes. There is truth to the phrase tough times don’t last; tough people do (and the satisfaction of enduring tough times outweighs the pain.)

4. Trust God because his love for us causes him to be commited to our eternal joy. We hate present pain, whether it’s the frustration of careful plans dashed, having our self-esteem trashed, unjust treatment, pouring ourselves into an effort that fails, or our body or our heart blaring, “I hurt.” But, from an eternal perspective, God sees that enduring pain now will lead to eternal joy. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison (2 Cor 4:17). He loves us too much to sacrifice eternal joy for present relief from pain.

5. Trust God because doing so is especially pleasing to him. In gratefulness for God’ grace, all that he does to forgive my sin, love me unconditionally and turn my evil heart to him, I want to please him. Hebrews 11 teaches HOW. Our FAITH is singled out as especially pleasing to God. Without faith it is impossible to please (God), for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him (vs 6). Trusting him is personal to God. He declares that our trust in him is more precious than gold. Both Peter and James tell us God, therefore, tests our faith. Peter writes, You have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ (1 Pet 1:6-7). James writes, Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness (James 1:2-3). The muscles of faith atrophy if they are not exercised. When it comes to your faith muscles, God plans on taking eternal delight in you being ripped. And so will you!

6. Trust God because he has already proved he is FOR US. In pop culture, taking something by faith is contrasted with having proof. Faith is believing in something even when there is no evidence for it. That is not the Biblical meaning of FAITH. In the famous verse, Romans 8:28, it is true that Christians are to believe that all things work together for good for them. But he goes on to give us the evidence upon which this faith rests: because God is FOR us. If God is for us, who can be against us? (vs 31).  In fact, in this eighth chapter Paul specifically tells us all three persons of the Trinity are FOR us.  In verse 26, the Spirit himself intercedes FOR us with groanings too deep for words. In verse 32, he tells us that God the Father is FOR us, He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up FOR us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? In verse 34, Paul tells us God the Son is FOR us.  Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding FOR us. The reason our shield of faith protects us from Satan’s flaming arrows of doubt is that we are trusting a truth about God’s character, PROVEN by the facts:  GOD IS FOR US!

For Further Prayerful Thought:

1. For you, what is the hardest part of remembering that winning your spiritual battles matters?

2. What circumstances tend to be the occasion for you to doubt God’s goodness and whether following Christ is worth it?

3. Of the six aspect of our Faith Shield mentioned, which “Trust God because…” statement do you most want to remember?

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Steering Conversations to Share the Gospel

Steering Conversations to Share the Gospel

On 30 August, 2025 By Gary Yagel

Hi Men,

This is Gary Yagel, producer of the Mission Focused Men for Christ Podcast/Blog. Today’s episode from a past series examines the pair of combat boots that Paul said all Christians should put on to advance Christ’s kingdom. As we walk through life, says Paul, the boots we are to wear are called readiness shoes. As a soldier’s boots need to make him ready to move in different directions quickly, we need to be prepared to go in various directions to share the gospel of peace whatever the circumstances dictate.

Today we continue our study of the armor of God and finish looking at Eph 6:15, where we’re told to put on, as our shoes, the readiness of the gospel of peace. I think most Christian men want to be contagious Christians. We know that sharing our faith is something our Lord wants us to do and when we do seize opportunities to talk with others about Christ the experience pumps joy and energy into our walk with Him. We also realize that if we are to lead our homes well, our wives and kids need to see us modeling Jesus’ love for the lost and a commitment to seeking ways to share him with others. So, we want to be ready, when the opportunity presents itself, to steer a conversation towards the good news that our listener can have a personal relationship with Christ. This episode looks at three ways TO BE READY when that opportunity arises.

It gets my attention when the two primary NT texts that call Christians to share their faith use the same word. In the text we’re studying, Eph 6:15, Paul writes and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the READINESS given by the gospel of peace. Peter tells his readers that Christians should always be READY to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you (1 Pet 3:15). The same Greek word, HETOIMOS translated ready or prepared is used. It means able and inclined to respond without hesitation. Every day, no matter where our feet take us, whatever the situation we walk in to, we are to be READY to share our faith, i.e. to give a reason for the hope that is in us. And we are to do that wisely. Scripture says, The wise of heart is called discerning, and sweetness of speech increases persuasiveness (Prov 16: 21), and The heart of the wise makes his speech judicious and adds persuasiveness to his lips (Prov 16:23). There are probably many ways to be ready. In this episode I pass along three that have helped to me.

A. The first way to BE READY to move a conversation towards discussing Christ comes from understanding the OT background behind Paul’s command in Ephesians to shod our feet with the readiness of the gospel. As Paul writes he is influenced both by the armor of the Roman soldiers guarding him, and the words of Isaiah concerning the coming of the Messiah. Paul knew Isaiah 52:7, How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.”  The good news is that the promised Messiah, God, himself, would rescue Adam’s kingdom from the devastation of its slavery to sin and establish his righteous rule over earth. The good news is the gospel of the kingdom.

Notice how the three descriptions of this kingdom in Isaiah match what Jesus said about the kingdom of God, which he inaugurated. 1) The good news is not just, “We now have a ticket to heaven.” It is peace—shalom has come. The messiah has come to reweave shalom by restoring human relationships broken by sin—our relationship with God, self, others, and creation. Shalom describes the flourishing of all four relationships. 2) The Isaiah text goes on to tell us this good news is of happiness. It is hard to miss the connection between this word and the happiness (MAKARIOS) of kingdom life portrayed by Jesus in the beatitudes, blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, blessed are the pure in heart. The good news of the kingdom is that God gives the Holy Spirit to kingdom members to deliver us from destructive heart attitudes and produce godly, Christ-like character. 3) The third cause for proclaiming good news is salvation. As we saw last week salvation is not just escaping judgement. It is Jesus’ the second Adam’s work to fix the mess the first Adam made—restoring wholeness to everything broken by sin.

The first way to prepare for conversations with the lost is to understand the full-orbed gospel of the kingdom. Things are not the way they are supposed to be. There is pain, frustration, and struggle for humans because the fall has fractured the shalom of harmonious relationship with God, ourselves, others, and creation. A lost person’s openness to Christ is often tied to wanting relief from that brokenness. Last week we used Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to see that Jesus is the answer to this extensive brokenness. Let’s review what we saw and go deeper.

1. Maslow says mankind’s most foundational need is PHYSIOLOGICAL--for oxygen, water, food, clothing, shelter, and health. But the curse of Adam’s sin upon the ground has caused humans to lack what they need physiologically to flourish. The coming of Christ’s kingdom means that creation itself will be set free from this bondage to decay. Since Jesus’ kingdom brings the renewal of the physical earth, Jesus taught his followers to prefigure the coming physical wholeness of the world by feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, housing strangers. We are to care for those harmed by physical brokenness of earth. The agape love shown by believers in meeting these physical needs is the best way to turn their hearts to Christ.

In John 9, Jesus bumps into a man who experiences the brokenness of Adam’s kingdom by being born blind. Jesus meets that physiological need; he restores his sight. Thirty verses later Jesus led the healed man to saving faith (vs 35-38). In my role as a pastor, I have found that when humans are face to face with their physical frailty, they are open to discussing spiritual things. On one occasion, I was visiting the elderly father of a congregational member in the hospital. He had some church background, but I asked, him, “Has anyone ever explained to you what the Bible says about heaven and hell and the afterlife?” He answered, “No” I said, I’d be happy to come by and visit you after you get out of the hospital a few times and we can look into that together, if you would like to” He said, “Great. I’d like that.” We went through an evangelistic Bible study together and he prayed to receive Christ. We started our joint study with God’s holiness. I remember that because later when this man joined our church, he began his testimony, “Holy, holy, holy is God….” When brokenness of our physical body becomes a reality, that brokenness can be an avenue to lead others to Christ.

2. The next level need that humans seek to satisfy when their physiological needs are met is SAFETY, both physical and emotional. That is why Christians have protected widows from immolation in India and founded orphanages around the world. The brokenness of Adam’s kingdom is also apparent in addictions to porn, alcohol, drugs, gambling and in a host of emotional battles that threaten our internal health like, grief, anxiety, or depression. Many have found Christ, because a friend sent them a booklet on grief or depression that steered them to biblical health for this affliction and ultimately to Christ. It was a neighbor’s battle with anger that opened the opportunity for me to lead him to Christ. One Saturday afternoon when I returned from an all-day meeting, my wife told me that the neighbor we had been reaching out to and praying for wanted me to go see him. I later found out that he had gotten angry in the midst of an argument with his wife and pushed his wife away. That afternoon she had left him. When I walked in his front door, he said, “Gary, I need Christ in my life.”  He knew that his anger was a threat to his marriage and came to faith in Christ because he needed Christ’s help to overcome that brokenness.

3. As we continue to think of the gospel—the good news that Christ has come to fix everything broken by sin, we move on to Maslow’s third tier of need—FOR LOVE and BELONGING. As we saw last week both Zacchaeus and the woman at the well in Sychar were experiencing the brokenness of human relationships—both being outcasts of their society. Jesus reached the hearts of both by affirming their value and inviting them into a personal relationship with him. One of the groups suffering from the brokenness of horizontal relationships is those going through divorce. Our church wanted to care for those in our community going through this pain and lead them to the Caregiver, Jesus. So, we began a group called, Second Beginnings, advertised a divorce recovery seminar we held in our community, and launched a follow up support group. We saw the experience of divorce open hearts to Christ in two ways. Many just needed the unconditional love of Jesus to heal their broken heart and demolished self-esteem. Others wanted to walk closely with Christ, because they knew they needed him to make their marriage work, if they every married again. The human need for belonging and love, if it goes unmet is often a pathway that can connect others to Jesus. 

4. Maslow calls his next level SELF-ESTEEM. I want to call it the desire to be SUCCESSFUL—to fulfill my responsibilities effectively—to make life work. Some years ago, I was building a relationship with my neighbor, I’ll call Sean, who lived along a path I often walked for exercise. He was very successful at his work, but his wife had recently divorced him. Shortly after that, he lost his job. He started his own business, but then it went bankrupt. When we would visit, Sean would often have his dog sitting on his lap, so I bought some treats for the dog, just to build the relationship. A few weeks later, I stopped by again, and Sean’s dog had just died. As I was walking home, I thought about a pair of diagrams I had seen with circles representing our lives. In the middle of one circle was a throne with ME sitting on it. Inside the circle were all sorts of smaller circles in disarray-representing the various areas of life. The other circle had Christ sitting on the throne and all the other areas of life being ordered and in balance in the circle. I visited Sean again and asked, “Sean would you be interested in looking at what the Bible teaches about making life work?”  He said, “Yes.” Those two diagrams became the core of how I shared the gospel with Sean, and he gave his life to Christ.   

5. Maslow’s highest level of human need, he calls SELF-ACTUALIZATION. It is the desire for significance--to know that your life matters. Jesus’ approach to Peter was to enlist him in a great cause. “Follow me and I will make you a fisher of men.”  It is the desire for a fulfilling life that captured my 16-year-old heart on a Young Life weekend. The message I kept hearing was that Jesus said, “I have come that they might have life and have it abundantly.” I had more fun and enjoyment at Young Life meetings, weekends, and camps than I had anywhere else. So, this message rang true in my heart. I told Jesus at Hill Top Ranch “I am all in.”

I am blessed to have been an Evangelism Explosion Trainer, and I have my own set of Christianity Explored videos, which I have used. These are great tools. But those in today’s world who are under seventy don’t find the EE question, “Have you come to the place in your life, where you know for certain that if you were to doe tonight you would go to heaven?” relevant. Christianity Explored is excellent—but most of the lost folks God has surrounded us with aren’t interested in exploring Christianity. But they are experiencing the brokenness of life on planet earth. Jesus pattern in reaching the lost is to identify that brokenness and tailor the good news to how they can be whole. The gospel is about Christ’s ability to start to fix brokenness RIGHT NOW. Most of the time, sweetness and persuasiveness of speech is showing others how Christ is relevant to them NOW. Think about Maslow’s categories of need or your own categories and put that lens over Randy Newman’s intentionally shaped faith story, which he calls his “so what” story.

“I talked about my experience of being a Christian—of how I now sense a purpose and meaning to life, of how I never feel alone, and how—because I feel accepted by God—I more willingly accept other people. I told how being a Christian makes my marriage better, gives me a clear conscience, and fills me with a sense of optimism and hope.” (Ibid)    

I have found that one of the best forms of preparation of readiness to steer a conversation towards Christ is to have spent some time thinking through the various ways that Jesus helps begin to fix our brokenness RIGHT NOW.

B.  The second way to BE READY when we have a chance to talk about spiritual things is intentional prayer. Part of the sinfulness of Gary Yagel’s heart is that I just don’t care about the lost, the way Jesus did. If I did, I would be relentlessly dedicated to praying for my lost relatives, lost neighbors, and lost friends. But I like being the keeper of the aquarium a lot more than being a fisher of men. This week, in exasperation over my own uncaring heart, I opened my Evernote APP to my prayer list and put, “Pray for the heart of Jesus for the lost” at the top. I will tell you, in a few months if it worked. Maybe you need to do the same.

I do know, however, that there is another component of intentional prayer that DOES work. Our ministry helps men get connected over a series of what we call Check 6 questions. The fifth question is: Who are the non-believers you are building relationships with and how can I pray for your strategy to share Christ with them? I believe that the best way for all believers to share Christ is in the context of the relationships God has intentionally surrounded us with. But it is so hard to stay focused on building those opportunities. My brothers and I don’t ask that question of each other enough. But when we have, I’ve discovered that God loves to answer this prayer:

  • After renewing our prayer for each other’s outreach efforts, after the very next match in my racquetball league, my opponent sat down with me for thirty minutes to discuss philosophy and Christianity.
  • On another occasion, after renewing this prayer commitment, the next week my double-oven went out. I didn’t want to pay an installation fee. So, I asked my next-door neighbor to help me move it in and, afterwards we relaxed for a half hour and he opened up about his life and spiritual pilgrimage.
  • Another friend and I renewed our commitment to such prayer and he soon had a discussion about spiritual things with the restaurant owner where he often ate lunch at work.
  • One year as I set goals for the new year, I felt convicted about not sharing Christ enough and my accountability partner and started praying again for outreach opportunities. A few years earlier, I had led a Bible-study in at a pregnancy center for the fathers of the unborn babies. He had married the mother of his baby, but he was now asking me for help in his marriage. My wife and I met with them. His wife had made of profession of faith, but I explained how Christ can help with spiritual strength to love well. I gave him a copy of Mere Christianity, which he read and surrendered his life to Christ.

The command, BE READY, almost implies to me, that we have been asking God in prayer for opportunities. It is a response of being willingly inclined to share Christ wisely. One of the best ways to be so inclined is to have been asking, repeatedly for God to work in that lost person’s life and for opportunities to discuss spiritual things. And if there is any area, I need to be accountable in, it is Check 6 Question # 5: Who are the non-believers you are building relationships with and how can I pray for your strategy to share Christ with them?

C.  The third way to BE READY to move the discussion towards spiritual things is to be seeking the right opportunities. This opportunity is NOT the chance to slip the gospel into the discussion but the chance to listen and ask questions. The third way to BE READY to move towards discussing the gospel is to BE AN INTERESTED LISTENER. We often think that effective evangelism requires looking for someone to share the gospel with. But a wiser approach, especially in the 21st century, is NOT looking for people to talk to but looking for people to listen to. Listening to them well will open a window to their soul. John Leonard, author of Get Real: Sharing Your Everyday Faith Everyday writes:

You will not believe how many people will want to talk to you—if you’ll only take off the sign that reads, “Not interested. Leave me alone.” You will not have to go looking for people. They will find you. There will be many people who will “just happen” to be in front of you or behind you in a line. They may be strangers standing beside you at the bus stop or in front of you at the deli counter. They may ask you, “How’s the pastrami?” but what they are really asking is “Do you care enough about me to listen?” They are desperate to talk to someone. They may believe that no one cares, that no one wants to hear their story. They can’t think of any reason to live or wonder if anyone would care if they chose to end their life. When they look at us, what will they see—the sign that says, “I’m not interested; leave me alone,” or the one that reads, “I care; I’ll listen?”

In many ways, the starting point for being able to talk about Christ and his ability to change our lives begins with asking another how his day has been going in a way that communicates that we have the time and are willing to listen to an answer that is longer than “fine.” We must begin by listening not only to communicate genuine care and concern, but because listening will help us know what the Lord wants us to say to the person that he has brought across our path.  

For Further Prayerful Thought:

1. Does realizing that Jesus tailored the good news to others based on the way they were experiencing the brokenness of life in this fallen world discourage you because it makes sharing Christ harder, since there is no “one size fits all” or encourage you because it helps you realize how wise we are to be about relationships and the uniqueness of every human?

2. Which 2 or 3 of those in your circle of lost associates and friends has God put on your hearts. What might be missing in their lives compared to what you have in Christ?

3. Is God prompting you to be more intentional about praying for and reaching the lost? What might additional intentionality look like for you.

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Myths That Make Us Fear Sharing Christ

Myths That Make Us Fear Sharing Christ

On 21 August, 2025 By Gary Yagel

Hi Men,

This is Gary Yagel, producer of the Mission Focused Men for Christ Podcast/Blog. Today’s episode from a past series is one of my favorites because it shows how our misunderstanding of the word evangelism is at the core of what makes Christians fear sharing their faith. I’m sure that at the end of this episode you will fear sharing your faith far less when you understand what the Greek Word EUANGELIZO, from which we get evangelism, actually means.

Today, we continue our study of the armor of God and come to Eph 6:15, where we’re told to put on, as our shoes, the readiness of the gospel of peace. I think most Christian men want to see God use us in others’ lives to bring the gospel to them. Yet, nearly all would say we fail more in this part of our mission than in any other part. Could it be that it is harder to share our faith than it should be because we have some mistaken ideas of what Scripture says sharing the gospel looks like? That is the question we investigate in this episode.

For many Christians, this is what sharing the gospel looks like: It is having the courage to overcome every piece of emotional intelligence we’ve learned about relationships, and intruding into the life of a co-worker, neighbor, or stranger to tell someone, who doesn’t want to hear it, the gospel message that they are a sinner in need of a savior, and then being willing to suffer rejection if we are accused of being preachy. This “traditional “view has major flaws. It misunderstands the word, evangelism, it misunderstands the gospel, and it misunderstands peace.

The Word Evangelism (EUANGELIZO)

Why have Christians come to this flawed view of personal evangelism that I just read? It may be because the place we look for evangelism models is the book of Acts, which exhibits primarily proclamational evangelism. Joe Aldrich observes, 

The early church was planted because of the strong proclamational ministries of the apostles. They preached in synagogues, on street corners, and in marketplaces. …In a new, unreached mission field, evangelism usually begins with proclamation, moves to persuasion, and then as decisions are solidified and converts grow, the gospel becomes a visible presence….Once a thriving church is established, the starting point for evangelism, increasingly shifts from proclamational (confrontational) to presence (relational) (Life-Style Evangelsim).

Most of the examples of gospel sharing in Acts were public, not personal evangelism. However, to translate EUANGELIZO “preach” gives a wrong impression of what evangelism is. There is another Greek word, KERUSO, for preach. Translating EUANGELIZO as preach the gospel is especially troubling in Acts 8:4: Now those who were scattered (Laymen and women--not apostles) went about PREACHING (EUANGELIZO) the word. But preaching is not what they did and not a part of the meaning of EUANGELIZO. This Greek word is composed of EU, which means good and ANGEL, which means messenger. It means being a messenger of good news, not a preacher. Later in the same chapter, in Acts 8:26-40, the same word, EUANGELIZO is used not to refer to preaching but to describe Philip’s interactive conversation with the Ethiopian Eunuch, which began with Philip asking the Ethiopian Eunuch a question. Author, John Leonard observes that the traditional view of evangelism has unfortunately been shaped by the word, preach, which focuses on delivering content. He writes, Traditional evangelism only takes place when we drive home our point over and over again—when we do all the talking. We have gotten the impression that on every page of the New Testament we are commanded to preach the gospel. We know what preaching looks like because we see it in church. The model for traditional evangelism looks a lot like what preachers do on Sunday mornings….

Leonard then speculates that if we think evangelism is essentially preaching, i.e. one way communication to tell people they are sinners who need a savior, it is no wonder we don’t share our faith! He continues,  We don’t share our faith because preaching is seen negatively in the culture. We have all said, “Don’t preach at me!” or “Preach to yourself!” The one-way communication style of preaching doesn’t communicate that you care much about the person you are speaking to. Instead, this style is associated with a holier-than-thou-attitude.

Faithfulness to our call to share our faith is not primarily seeking an opening to push the content of the gospel into another’s life! Nor does faithfulness to the call to share your faith require you to violate everything you’ve learned about relationships. Jesus wrote the book on emotional intelligence. It is true that at times Jesus spoke harshly to the scribes and Pharisees! But that is because Christ, the Anointed One, filled the office of Prophet—God’s prosecuting attorney to convict his people of their sin. That is not the way Jesus interacted with others in his everyday, private relationships. Instead, he modeled the pattern for communication given in verses like Prov 16: 21, The wise of heart is called discerning, and sweetness of speech increases persuasiveness, and Prov 16:23, The heart of the wise makes his speech judicious and adds persuasiveness to his lips. Jesus wants us to wisely impact our non-Christians friends for him. Evangelism, EUANGELIZO, is winsomely sharing good news.

The GOSPEL We Share

In the traditional view of sharing the gospel that I started with, the hearer must admit he is a sinner who can’t save himself and trust the work of Jesus on the cross as the atoning sacrifice for his sin. Such faith is his admission ticket to heaven. While this is true, it is only two chapters of a four-chapter story—1) the fall, 2) redemption. Failure to see the whole gospel story will cause our gospel message to focus just on another’s sin and Jesus’ death on the cross so he can avoid eternal separation from God in hell. While these two chapters are essential to anyone’s salvation, that is NOT what Jesus referred to as the good news.

A thoughtful examination of the word, gospel, in Scripture shows that the gospel Jesus spoke of was the gospel of the kingdom. Jesus had begun his ministry by calling attention to the cataclysmic intrusion of the kingdom of God into time. “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand” (Mk 1:15). The good news that Jesus preached was not just a message of personal private salvation, but the gospel of the kingdom. “And he went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people” (Mt 4:23). The good news of the kingdom was that the second Adam, Christ, had come to overthrow Satan, sin, and death, the usurpers of Adam’s kingdom and begun to establish his righteousness kingdom over earth, restoring everything broken by sin. The truncated, two-chapter gospel, man has sinned and needs to trust Jesus as his savior completely misses what Jesus said about his “kingdom.” It is only in recovering the entire, four-chapter Gospel, 1) creation, 2) fall, 3) redemption, 4) restoration that Christ’s vital role as the anointed king, (besides being anointed priest, and prophet) makes sense. When we start the gospel story with creation, we quickly learn that the kingdom is Adam’s kingdom, earth. And the fourth chapter (restoration) reminds us that believers aren’t chosen to escape from this world, but to renew this world. Tim Keller writes,

Some conservative Christians think of the story of salvation as the fall, redemption, heaven. In this narrative, the purpose of redemption is escape from this world…If however the story of salvation is creation, fall, redemption, restoration, then things look different...The purpose of redemption is not to escape from this word but to renew it….(The gospel) is about the coming of God’s kingdom to renew all things. (“Our New Global Culture Ministry in Urban Centers” address).

The true gospel is the four-chapter gospel of the kingdom not just the two chapters of fall and redemption-- that we have a plane ticket to heaven, paid for by Christ’s blood on the cross. If that were the true gospel our job right now would be to wait around at the airport. The true gospel is about God’s glorious creation, earth, a mirror of God’s glory, being set free from its slavery to sin and Jesus fixing everything in Adam’s kingdom broken by sin.

The Gospel of PEACE

The Greek word for peace, EIRENE, does not just mean the cessation of hostilities in relationships, but harmonious flourishing in relationships. The corresponding Hebrew word is shalom, which refers to wholeness and health. Going back to creation, God designed humans to have four types of harmonious relationships:

  • Harmonious relationship with God, depending upon his love as our lifeline.
  • Harmonious relationship with self, finding our dignity and worth as God’s image bearers.
  • Harmonious relationship with others, made to connect to others by loving them as we do ourselves.
  • Harmonious relationship with the creation, assigned the job of discovering and developing earth’s potential.

When these relationships are functioning properly, we experience the fulness of life God intended—shalom. But Adam and Eve’s mutiny against God plunged all four of these relationships into disharmony, chaos and decay.

Their relationship with God with God was damaged, as their intimacy with him was replaced with fear; their relationship with self was marred as Adam and Eve developed a sense of shame; their relationship with others was broken, as Adam quickly blamed Eve for their sin; and their relationship with the rest of creation became distorted, as God cursed the ground and the child-bearing process…. Because the four relationships are the building blocks for all human activity, the affects of the fall are manifested in the economic, social, religious, and political systems that humans have created throughout history (When Helping Hurts, Corbett & Fikkert).

Things are not the way they are supposed to be. But the good news of the kingdom is that Christ has come to fix WHATEVER is broken by sin in Adam’s kingdom—to restore harmony in all four spheres of relationship—with God, self, others, and creation. To effectively share the gospel, we must think carefully about all the aspects of human life that have been broken by sin because we are going to see that Jesus tailored the good news of the kingdom to the point of brokenness being felt by his listeners. Joe Aldrich, in his book, Life-Style Evangelism, calls this inductive evangelism, in contrast to deductive evangelism. He writes: Traditionally, evangelism courses teach people one basic approach to witnessing. They are trained to announce a blanket gospel message suitable for all. Lest we be too critical of such training programs, those who have been trained by them are much more “ready” to share their faith than those who have not been so trained. Nevertheless, we must acknowledge that in personal evangelism, Jesus always seemed to follow an inductive model. Aldrich explains:

The inductive model presupposes knowledge of the individual being addressed. The gospel is then tailor-made to his individual needs. The goal is to discover that point in the individual’s life at which the gospel will become good news, and then share it as such. Jesus’ method of dealing with people followed this adaptive, inductive model. To Nicodemus the ruler, he said, “You must be born again.”—he never used “born again,” a highly conceptual metaphor in any other recorded instance in the NT. He talked to the woman by the well about “living water.” But when the rich young man came up and asked what he had to do to have eternal life, Jesus did not talk to him about living water. Knowing that money was this man’s god, he said, “Sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come and follow me. He was basically calling him to a total switch of Gods. On the other hand, he didn’t tell Zacchaeus, the tax collector who went up in a tree, to give away everything he had. He simply said, Zacchaeus….I must stay at your household today.” By the end of the day, Zacchaeus had decided on his own to give half of his possessions to the poor.

The inductive evangelism approach fits hand in glove with understanding that our good news is that King Jesus has come to restore everything broken by sin. It includes broken bodies, broken dignity, broken marriages, broken father/son relationships, broken sexuality, broken values that exalt material prosperity and success over caring for the downtrodden. Jesus tailored the good news of the kingdom to the point of brokenness being felt by his listeners. Let’s do a simple exercise to see how to do this, using a tool, Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to point us to the various categories of human need, because sin has broken everything.

A.  Maslow says mankind’s most foundational need is PHYSIOLOGICAL--for oxygen, water, food, clothing, shelter, and health. But the curse of Adam’s sin upon the ground has caused humans to lack what they need physiologically to flourish. The coming of Christ’s kingdom means that creation itself will be set free from this bondage to sin. Jesus gave a foretaste of this reality by healing the sick, giving sight to the blind, empowering the lame to walk, and himself rising from the dead. Since his kingdom brings the renewal of the physical earth, Jesus taught his true followers to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, house strangers, clothe the naked, and cure the sick if they could (Matt 25:34-36.) The first message of good news for a starving man is bread. That is why the church historically has always cared for the sick, the dying, the poor, widows the homeless—those harmed by the brokenness of the physical world. The genuine, agape love shown by believers in meeting these physical needs is the best way to turn their hearts to Christ.

B.  The next level need that humans seek to satisfy when their physiological needs are met is SAFETY. That is why Christians have founded shelters for battered women, sought to end the sex trade, and founded pregnancy centers to save the lives of unborn children and women from the trauma of abortion. Support groups like Celebrate Recovery are a great way to reach others with the gospel. Addiction to pornography, alcohol, gambling, and drugs have the power to ruin lives. I have spoken to many men who did not come to faith in Christ until they were desperate for his help because an addiction was threatening to destroy their family.

C.  The next level of needs Maslow identifies are for LOVE/BELONGING. Jesus knew that this was the path to the heart of Zacchaeus, the outcast traitor. When Jesus spotted him outside of Jericho in a tree to see above the crowds, all Jesus said to him was, Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today (Luke 19:5). A few moments later, Zacchaeus repented of his dishonesty and Jesus remarked, “Today salvation has come to his house” (vs 9). Jesus identified this same need in the heart of the outcast woman at the well of Samaria, there in the heat of the day, instead of at the time the other women went out to get water. He seemed to recognize her thirst for love and pointed to his ability to give her living water. I’ve personally seen those who are lost come to Christ through marriage seminars, so they can better love each other through Christ’s power. In a divorce recovery ministry, I saw many rejected, lonely people realize how much they needed Christ’s love and come to faith. Through meeting with a couple who wanted to be married and showing them that they need Christ’s power to love each other well, I’ve seen folks open their hearts to Jesus. The gospel is the answer to broken human relationships in countless ways.

D. Maslow’s next level is SELF-ESTEEM. Sin crushes the high view we should have of ourselves because we are God’s image bearers. So, feeling clean inside, i.e. being forgiven of our sins is a felt need for some. I would also place a desire to be successful in our responsibilities here. I have seen many non-Christians come into a seminar I was leading called, Great Dads. About 80% of the way through the material, we show overwhelming statistical data that proves that children do better in every area of life—their friendships, their grades, resisting peer pressure, etc. if they have a strong spiritual/moral foundation. Then we point out that the best way for them to build that foundation is through their example, as dads. I can almost see it on men’s faces. They realize they can’t take their kids where they need to be without getting right with God themselves. I also watched men and boys commit their lives to Christ at a breakfast with Joe Gibbs—just saying he needed Christ in his life to make it whole, to make it work.

E. Maslow’s highest level of human need, he calls SELF-ACTUALIZATION. It is the desire to know that your life matters, that it is more than a shooting star that streaks through the sky for a moment in time and then is gone forever. When Jesus called Peter to follow him, he did not say, “You must be born again,” or “I will give you living water.” He miraculously filled Peter’s fishing nets with fish and then said, “Follow me and I will make you a fisher of men.” Jesus’ approach to Peter was to enlist him in a great cause. Rick Warren’s book, The Purpose Driven Life is the most popular book in the world, outside of the Bible. He appeals to most people’s desire to know, “What is the purpose of life? What am I here for?” His book has brought millions to faith in Christ through appealing to the human desire for significance.

Let me close with a final quote from Aldrich. Effective evangelism begins where people are, not where you would like them to be. As the King’s messengers, our challenge is to help others discover how their needs can be satisfied through a relationship with Jesus Christ (Ibid).

For Further Prayerful Thought:

1. Why is it misleading to understand the Greek word for evangelism (EUANGELIZO) to mean preaching the gospel to others?

2. How does understanding the four-chapter gospel help us realize that Christ’s kingdom power is for more than just an eternal life insurance policy?

3. Can you think of biblical examples not mentioned in this episode of Jesus tailoring the good news of the kingdom to the point of brokenness being felt by his listener?

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How Do We Put on the Breastplate of Righteousness?

How Do We Put on the Breastplate of Righteousness?

On 16 August, 2025 By Gary Yagel

Hi Men, 

This is Gary Yagel, producer of the Mission Focused Men for Christ Podcast/Blog. As you know, the ancient breastplate, just like the modern-day Kevlar vest, was intended to protect vital organs from harm. So, what did Paul mean when he commanded us to put on the breastplate of righteousness? That is the topic of today’s episode from the past, which is the fourth in our current August-September series from Ephesians 6, Arming for Spiritual Battle.

Do you ever feel like our side is losing in the spiritual battle—that the powers of darkness and evil are winning? Perhaps more specific to our own lives, do you ever wonder why the Christian life is so hard, why sin so easily ensnares us, why our whole-hearted resolve on Sunday to love Jesus better by obeying him more has given way to blatant sin by Sunday night? Today we continue our series, Winning Spiritual Battles Because We Use Our Spiritual Weapons. Paul tells us that to fight evil we must put on the breastplate of righteousness. But most of us don’t even know what the breastplate of righteousness is, much less how to put it on. At the end of this episode, we want everyone to have a clear picture of what this piece of armor is and begin winning more spiritual battles because we put it on.

Sir Winston Churchill famously said, "those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it." In the 1181-chapter world history book, the Bible, by just the third chapter, human beings encounter a spiritual enemy who hates us and constantly seeks to lead us down a path to destruction—i.e. rebellion against God. In the Bible’s meta narrative, Satan and the kingdom of darkness enter in chapter 3 and aren’t destroyed until 1176 chapters later, 3 chapters from the end of the Biblical story in Revelation 20. Since that third chapter of Genesis where Adam and Eve allied their kingdom with the powers of darkness, every page of human history is written against the backdrop of the clash between these alien powers and God’s plan to send Christ to free Adam’s kingdom from sin and its devastation.

Paul gives us his perspective of what is really happening on the stage of world history. He writes, For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Do we really think we can stand up against THOSE POWERS without figuring out how to be strong in the Lord by putting on the spiritual armor he’s provided? Is there any reason why THOSE ENEMIES will not tear us to pieces if we do not resist them with spiritual weapons? Could we ever hope to achieve our mission to establishing Christs agenda of righteousness over every sphere of life without taking on the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms who claim this world as their own?

So, let’s dig into our study of the breastplate of righteousness. Right out of the gate, we have a problem. “What is your gut response to the word, righteous?  What comes to mind when you hear, Ryan is consumed with being righteous, or Lauren is focused on her own righteousness?”  This word does not appeal to us at all. The reason is that it has many very unfortunate, very mistaken connotations. Let’s try to distinguish, the rich biblical meaning of this word from our sadly mistaken, default ideas.

A.  First, the biblical concept of righteousness does not at all imply self-righteousness. The Greek word, DIKAIOSUNE,  means, that which conforms to the moral will of God. This word does not carry with it, in any way the idea that this righteousness is earned, that it reflects an over estimation of one’s own righteousness, or that this righteousness is in any way a basis for self-justification.

B. Second, DIKAIOSUNE, the word for righteousness, is not used in the Bible primarily to describe the imputed righteousness of Christ to us. Rather, it’s more common use is a call to righteousness of character. It is true that we are justified by grace through faith, alone. In response to faith as a one-time act of grace, Christ has declared us legally righteous. The law has no claim against us to condemn us for our sin. But the term, righteousness has a much richer meaning in Scripture, than just justification, a one-time act. Jesus urged, Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.

C. Biblical righteousness is not legalism. Legalism’s focus is on outward rule—keeping. It loads its proponents down with extreme applications of the law, which its advocates make binding. “How could any Christian put his kids in public school,” “Everyone should keep the Sabbath the way we do.” “You watched an R-rated movie?” Jesus said, Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness (Matt 23:23). They paraded their righteousness by making it known that they tithed on the smallest of their crops. Their external, self-righteousness, knit-picking over application was not real righteousness at all. 

D. Righteousness is not moralism. Moralism is obeying the moral law as a bargaining chip with God. Moralists might trust Christ for salvation, but are insecure in their love relationship with God. They aren’t sure God will love them if they don’t behave. Instead of the freedom to bask in God’s unconditional love, a moralist has to be good, so God loves him back and God will give him what he wants. Their obedience to God earns them the right to demand that God bless them in the ways they expect blessing. When God doesn’t do that, their faith is shattered. The moral law oppresses them because they have to keep it for God to love them. The reality is, however, as Steve Brown points out, Only those who know God will love them even if they never get better, will ever get any better. When they understand God’s unconditional love, they will love the moral law not hate it, and pursue true righteousness with all their hearts. It is God’s path to life and to pleasing him!

THE APPROPRIATE GARB THAT FITS OUR WORK OF SEEKING RIGHTEOUSNESS

Everyone knows that how he dresses in the morning depends on what he has planned for the day. We put on the breastplate of righteousness because working for righteousness in the world around us is our mission, and it begins with ourselves. Here are 4 reminders that seeking righteousness is our mission:

1. Jesus taught that righteousness is to be our highest priority: Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Christ’s mission was to invade Adam’s kingdom, overthrow its invaders, Satan, Sin, and death, and begin to fix everything broken by sin. Jesus is making everything RIGHT, i.e. free from sin. If we think that pursuing righteousness means keeping a bunch of legalistic rules, we have missed the concept of righteousness—which comes from rightness. It is joining Jesus as he makes right whatever in Adams kingdom was made wrong by sin. Believers love the moral law of God because it shows them how life was designed to be lived. David sang to How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth! Through your precepts I get understanding; therefore, I hate every false way (Psalm 119:103-104).

2. We should seek righteousness in our own lives because that is God’s purpose in redeeming us. Jesus, as he launched his ministry in his hometown of Nazareth quoted the great Messianic passage of Isaiah 61:1-3 which says that God’s purpose was to turn his people into OAKS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. Here is what the kingdom of heaven looks like as we pray for it to spread over earth.

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor, to comfort all who mourn…to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit; that they may be called OAKS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS, the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified.

3. The fourth beatitude, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they will be satisfied shows us kingdom living and the character of Jesus. John Macarthur writes,

This beatitude speaks of strong desire, of driving pursuit, of a passionate force inside the soul. It has to do with ambition—ambition of the right sort—whose object is to honor, obey, and glorify God by partaking of his righteousness. This holy ambition is in great contrast to the common ambitions of men to gratify their own lusts, accomplish their own goals, and satisfy their own egos (The MacArthur New Testament Commentary).

4.  Seeking righteousness of character is not only NOT LEGALISTIC, it is the proper response to God’s grace. It is the way to love God back. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. In the next verse God tells us HOW he wants us to love him with all our hearts. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart (Deut 6:5-6). Jesus taught us the same thing, If you love me, you will keep my commandments (Jn 14:15).

Christ-followers hunger and thirst for righteousness in their lives and over the world, because they know that is what is best for themselves and all creation. They also know that seeking righteousness (DIKAIOSUNE), i.e. that which conforms to the moral will of God is the best way to please him. Putting on the breastplate of righteousness everyday is to renew your commitment to pursue righteousness that day. It is similar to saying, “lead me not into temptation, but deliver me from evil.” Having said that, we must also say loudly, that righteous character and righteous behavior is impossible to achieve apart from being in Christ, depending upon him for strength.

TAKING UP THE BREASTPLATE OF RIGTEOUSNESS IS ASKING FOR CHRIST’S HELP

When Paul challenged Christ-followers to put on the armor of God he was not only thinking of the Roman guards around him but of Isaiah’s prophecy that only the Lord, himself, could come to establish righteousness over the earth: Isaiah’s prophecy tells us that the messiah would put on righteousness as a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation on his head (59:17). We are to passionately pursue righteousness in our character and rightness for the things broken by the reign of sin; but we are reminded that it is only in Christ, i.e. through our abiding relationship with him and using his supernatural armor, that righteousness can prevail. Putting on the breastplate is asking Christ for help.

THE BREASTPLATE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS IS PROTECTION

The breastplate was the piece of armor that ran from the neck to the middle. It protected the vital internal organs, especially the heart. We have seen what righteousness is:  conformity to the moral will of God, i.e. the moral law. We now examine four practical ways that righteousness protects our heart.

1. Imputed righteousness protects our hearts from the devil’s accusations. Knowing that Christ’s righteousness is credited to us (justification) means there is no legitimate accusation against us. The judge himself has declared us doubly “not guilty” 1) because all our sins were laid on Christ and paid for at the cross and 2) his perfect straight A moral report card has Jesus’ name erased and ours written it. If you put this breastplate on, which says across the chest, There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, Satan, the accuser of believers cannot get through to weaken you with words like, “You hypocrite. Do you really think a Holy God wants to hear you talk again with him about your sin? “If you were really sorry, you wouldn’t commit that same sin again.” “How dare you try to be the spiritual leader of your home. If your family knew what you were looking at online they would never follow you.” Putting on the breastplate of righteousness means reminding ourselves that we are “declared righteous” by the judge, himself.

2. Righteous character protects us from harm.

  • Righteousness guards the one whose way is blameless, but wickedness subverts the sinner. (Prov 13:6).
  • In the path of righteousness is life, and in its pathway there is no death (Prov 12:28).

God is not a pragmatist; the ends do not justify the means. Often, we are tempted to fulfill a legitimate goal the wrong way. Making a commitment to be scrupulously honest in business helps protect us from the temptation to bend corners when we have opportunity. Putting their bodies on the altar and making a commitment to God’s standards for sex helps protect a couple from temptation before marriage. Deciding ahead of the party how many drinks are enough helps avoid too many. Job, who was known for being righteous, made a covenant with his eyes not to look lustfully upon a woman, ahead of the temptation. He trained himself to bounce his eyes away from women who are showing way too much of their bodies. Pursuing righteousness brings enormous protection to our lives, just as the breastplate protected Roman soldiers.

3. Righteous character protects us from misunderstanding the Lord's leading. 

  • The integrity of the upright guides them, but the crookedness of the treacherous destroys them (Prov 11:3).
  • The righteousness of the blameless keeps his way straight, but the wicked falls by his own wickedness (Prov 11:5).

When seeking the Lord’s leading, it is vital to settle the obedience issue first—that you will obey God even if it is the decision you do not want. By intentionally putting this decision on the altar (giving God his RIGHT to rule you) it protects your heart from steering you in the wrong direction. Twice, God warns us, There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death (Prov 14:12, 16:25). A prior commitment to doing the right thing is putting on the armor of righteousness. It helps protect our hearts from being seduced by temptation and leading us the wrong direction. Jesus is, of course, the great example, here. The evening before his trial and crucifixion, ahead of all the mistreatment, pain, and temptation to avoid the unimaginable agony of becoming sin on the cross, Jesus’ settled the issue of his obedience. He pled with the father, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not my will, but your will be done” (Matt 26:39). Jesus committed to God’s will either way.

4.  Righteous character protects us from being trapped or snared by sin.

  • An evil man is ensnared in his transgression, but a righteous man sings and rejoices (Prov 29:6).

Consider the differences in the way Joseph resisted the allurement of Potiphar’s wife and the way David yielded to the alluring sight of Bathsheba. When Potiphar’s wife sought to seduce him, Joseph answered her, Potiphar has put everything that he has in my charge. He is not greater in this house than I am, nor has he kept back anything from me except you, because you are his wife. How then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God? It appears by his reasoned response to her that Joseph was already committed to righteousness, before the temptation struck.

In contrast, David did not have a breastplate of righteousness protecting him.  By the time he saw Bathsheba on the roof top, David had been consistently violating God’s command that Israel’s kings must not multiply wives: You may indeed set a king over you whom the Lord your God will choose….He shall not acquire many wives for himself (Deut 17:17). David had already married six women when he looked down on the bathing Bathsheba and decided he wanted her, too. His breastplate of righteousness had gaping holes, when it came to sexuality. Not only

that, but the Biblical account of this tragedy begins, In the spring of the year, THE TIME WHEN KINGS GO OUT TO BATTLE….David remained at Jerusalem. The implication is that David never should have been home but with his troops in battle. It is possible that Bathsheba was in the position of being exposed to eyes on the palace roof because she expected no men to be there. David’s disloyalty to his troops is amplified in the biblical account by its contrast to the loyalty of Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband. David’s scheme to make others think the baby was Uriah’s failed because when Uriah reported home to David, he refused to have sex with his wife out of loyalty to his troops, who were NOT with their wives but on the battlefield. David’s breastplate of rightness—loyalty to his troops—was down. Temptation penetrated his heart and brought devastating consequences.

We all face the same forces that took David down—a deep rooted sinful nature, and powerful spiritual enemies who know just how to get us to yield to sin. In this world, we are all going to fail, a lot. But affirming our commitment to righteousness—to doing things the way God’s moral law shows us to live—is preemptive protection for our hearts. It is putting on the breastplate of righteousness. It is saying, Lord, I wear your righteousness today against all condemnation and corruption. Fit me with your holiness and purity especially in these areas that I foresee tempting me—defend me against all assaults that come against my heart.

 

For Further Prayerful Thought:

  1. What is the motivation for hungering and thirsting for righteousness for one who is confident of God’s unconditional love? How does that contrast with the moralist’s view of the moral law?
  2. What is the difference between seeking righteousness and being legalistic?
  3. How would you summarize Paul’s command to put on the breastplate of righteousness? What stood out to you about HOW to do this?
  4. How is the fourth beatitude (Matt 5:6) a prerequisite for putting on the breastplate of righteousness?
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Loving and Promoting God’s Truth

Loving and Promoting God’s Truth

On 09 August, 2025 By Gary Yagel

Hi Men,

This is Gary Yagel, producer of the Mission Focused Men for Christ Podcast/Blog. Today’s episode from the past wrestles with the challenge of loving God’s trutht--the biblical worldview--so much that we are wise about how we promote that truth in a secular culture. This episode looks back upon the storming of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 to remind us all that zeal for God’s truth cannot allow us to be careless in how we seek to promote it. No doubt this incident was unfairly reported by the media and promoted relentlessly by the political left. Nevertheless, it is a reminder to us to love God’s truth so much that we are wise and not careless in the way we seek to present it in a secular culture.

Today, we want to address the question, “How do we as Christians impact our culture with biblical truth?” As we process what happened in the last election and the storming of the Capitol since, Christians are divided. Eschewing passivity, many believers feel impelled to speak up on the social media to fight a movement rooted in ungodliness, which they see shaping our culture. They are appalled that younger Christian leaders either don’t seem to see this happening or seem to lack the courage to speak up about it. Other believers are horrified at the views they hear expressed by Christians on social media, which exhibit a kind of “Christian Nationalism” and exhibit Christians to be combative towards those with whom they disagree, violating Christ’s clear command, love your neighbor, not to mention, love your enemy. This episode continues our series Winning Spiritual Battles Because We Use Our Spiritual Weapons by examining how to encircle ourselves with the belt of God’s truth, which must be the starting point for sharing that truth in the culture. Then we consider how to be persuasive as salt and light in the culture, and in particular the dangers of being right, but sharing truth in a HARMFUL, rather than a COMPELLING way. 

What do you think is the answer to the question, “Is our mission today, as Christians living in America, to recover America as a Christian nation? In my view, the correct answer can only come from understanding what Jesus meant when he told his followers, “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.”

The kingdom of God, which Jesus proclaimed, and about which Paul spoke (Acts 28: 31), was not the church, a spiritual kingdom up in heaven, a future political kingdom of Israel, or America. The kingdom was Adam’s kingdom, the earth, the development and shaping of which had been assigned to Adam and Eve but usurped by Satan, sin, and death. Jesus, the second Adam, has redeemed Adam’s kingdom from its slavery to these forces and begun to make all things new. The reign of Jesus among human beings:

  1. Begins in the human heart with trusting Jesus’ death alone as the atoning sacrifice for his sins and turning our hearts to love the High King, our Redeemer with all of that heart. That is why seeking first the kingdom begins with leading others to faith.
  2. But Jesus’ summary of kingdom life in Matt 5-7 reflects an astonishing transformation of human attitudes and values, accomplished by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit given to believers as down-payment on the final work of redemption, making us unable to sin, when Christ returns. This transformation of our character to be like Jesus IS KINGDOM WORK. Jesus is much more concerned about fixing OUR HEART ATTITUDES than fixing the rest of the culture.
  3. We are called to seek justice and wholeness over every part of earth by influencing each part of the world around us to be aligned with righteousness (which is synonymous for God’s original design before the fall.) This transformation spreads to the whole earth, not just our nation. Christ-followers cannot view the USA as a special nation that has received a special blessing from God. Our nation is exceptional. It has certainly been blessed by God, because by God’s grace, its founders aligned our constitution with many biblical principles. But we are no more special to God than any other nation. Our efforts in prayer and as responsible citizens to influence our culture towards righteousness please God. That is a core part of our mission. Yet history records that despite fervent prayer and efforts to influence their culture and political system by Christians of every nation, a rejection of biblical truth and an unjust political system prevails, the suffering from which God uses to grow Christ-followers into Christ-like character.

So, the correct view of advancing the Kingdom of God on earth is not being silent on the issues of justice and righteousness in our culture. It is not separating from the culture because God has given up on America and everything is going to go downhill until Christ’s return. Such a view of withdrawal from culture is disobedience to God’s command to Adam and his race to shape culture for his glory. Nowhere does the Bible say God has given up on this world or this culture. At the same time, seeking to influence the culture for truth must never mean doing that in a way that sounds like Christian nationalism. We must not isolate ourselves from opportunities to influence the world around us. Our fundamental calling is TO SHAPE CILUTURE. But now may be a great time to reconsider HOW Jesus taught us to go about influencing those around us with biblical truth.

Advancing Biblical truth in the culture begins by encircling ourselves with the belt of truth and exposing EVERYTHING we believe to the searchlight of God’s Word. Whether we grew up in a majority or minority culture, in material abundance or poverty, inside or outside the church, are white, black, Hispanic or Asian, we must reevaluate the given assumptions we grew up with through the lens of Scripture. Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth (Eph 6:14).

Four Ways to Put On the Belt of Truth and Why We Need to Do It

A.  The belt of God’s truth is needed to fix our wrong thought patterns. One of the consequences of the fall is that our sinful nature unconsciously causes us to suppress the truth. You must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds, writes Paul. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart (Eph 4:17-18).

Putting on the belt of truth means immersing ourselves in Scripture. We must re-program our minds because they have been corrupted by the lies of the evil one and of the fallen middle, lower, or upper class culture, which has shaped us. Do not be conformed to this world, writes Paul, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind (Rom 12:2). Tony Evans in his book, Victory in Spiritual Warfare, writes, When you align your mind, will, and emotions underneath God’s view on a matter—his truth—He will then empower you to fight your spiritual battles with the freedom of great mobility and increased stability. By knowing and functioning according to the truth of God, you will be on your way to experiencing victory over anything or anyone seeking to over-come or defeat you

B.  Putting on the Belt of Truth requires Christ-followers to be known as those who are honest to the core. Both the eighth commandment, You shall not steal (Ex 20:15) and the ninth commandment, You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor (20:16) require us to be scrupulously honest. Paul commands the Ephesian believers, Having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor (4:25). Paul is not saying it is wrong to tell white lies to surprise someone, nor for the offense to try to deceive the defense about what it is doing, nor that we should ignore healthy relational boundaries to share intimate details of our lives with strangers, nor that we have to be so brutally honest that we tell everyone things that might hurt them. But Jesus IS truth and we can not harbor dishonesty and be faithful to him.

C. Putting on the belt of truth means wanting others to help us see truth we don’t see. It begins with a humility that recognizes that we only see part of the picture. For husbands, it means listening carefully to your wife’s opinion about decisions. For majority culture Christians, it means exposing ourselves to brothers and sister in minority subcultures. As we are able, it means knowing how Christians in other countries of the world live out their obedience to seek first the kingdom of God. It certainly means promoting worldwide missions that believe God has gifted every portion of the globe with cultural and natural resources to be developed and enjoyed by the rest of the world, for God’s glory.  In our individual lives, it means seeking wise counsel, having a teachable spirit, and being open to rebuke. Everyday Christian men fail morally, relationally, spiritually, and financially—not because they set out to fail, not because they don’t work very hard, but because of their blind spots. The reality is that our mind has been so corrupted by the fall, and we are so easily self-deceived that we need regular soul contact with a brother in Christ. Speaking the truth in love, writes Paul, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ (Eph 4:15). Poor is the man who has no brother to deliver him from his self-deception by speaking truth into his life.

D.  Putting on the belt of truth means exposing the world and life views around us to the scrutiny of God’s Word. As men, we are to answer God’s calling given to Adam to be protectors of the garden. This means protecting our wives and children from the destructive lies of the Father of Lies, from their own fallen nature, that seeks to suppress truth, and from ungodly thinking from fallen culture, all of which will mold them into a rebel against God if we do nothing. Paul describes this everyday battle and the power of God’s truth to tear down the lies of the culture. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ (2 Cor 10:4-5).

It is worth noting, however that this description of the spiritual battle for truth concerns combat that takes place in the minds of Christians. The context is inside the church. But, is “battling for truth” the right description of what Scripture says about influencing non-Christians around us and shaping our part of culture? In his book, Talk the Walk: How to Be Right Without Being Insufferable, Steve Brown, says, “Being right is extremely dangerous for a Christian, and, in fact, may be the most destructive danger a Christian ever faces in communicating to those who do not want to hear.” In Matthew 23, Jesus says to his disciples and the crowds, The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat, so do and observe whatever they tell you. The Pharisees were right in their orthodoxy. But Jesus said their moral stench was like that of a rotting body. They are the example of what Bible-believing Christians risk becoming like. So, in the remainder of the podcast, I want to address two dangers of being right: 1) the danger of being right but UNDISCERNING in sharing biblical truth, 2) the danger of being right but UNPERSUASIVE in sharing truth.

The Danger of being UNDISCERNING in Sharing Biblical Truth

Jesus said, Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you (Matt 7:6). Jesus is not calling those made in God’s image dogs or pigs; he is focusing on these two creatures’ inability to recognize the value of spiritual truth. Jesus commands us in The Sermon on the Mount not to indiscriminately throw out biblical truth to those who can’t see its value. The depth of the biblical truth we share with others should be linked to the spiritual condition they are in to receive it. That was what Jesus did. He said things like “let him who has ears to hear, let him hear” (Matt 11:15). He spoke in parables to the crowds but explained them to his disciples. He addressed the sins of the scribes and Pharisees one way, and those of the woman at the well another way. When examined about his true identify, by Pilate, Jesus had a meaningful, six-verse discussion about his kingship (John 18:33-38). But when asked the same questions by Herod who was just looking for signs and wonders, Jesus did not speak a word (Luke 23:6-11). Somehow, he detected that Pilate would value the biblical truths about himself, but that Herod’s would not. So Jesus refused to cast his pearls before Herod. How do we follow Jesus’ example?

We Christians must be careful in what we say, how we say it, and even if we are to say it at all. Jesus cautioned that we should not “give dogs what is holy,” nor “throw your pearls before pigs lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you” (Matt. 7:6). The truth we have is precious, dangerous, and explosively powerful in the way it can heal or hurt (Ibid).

Christians should be passionate about standing for righteousness in a culture that they see losing its biblical moorings. Believe me I am still trying to figure what this means and very much admire Christians taking such stands. But it must be asked, “How does posting biblical teaching about God’s design of gender roles, adultery, and homosexuality on Facebook or Twitter follow the principle of only casting biblical truth to those who are ready to value it?” I realize pro-life, Bible-believing Christians are unfairly accused of intolerance. But could it be that Jesus knew that throwing biblical truth out to people in general, before they are ready to value it might actually cause them to stomp it into the ground, where they will never be able to see it again? Here are  some practical thoughts about testing whether a non-believer is at a place where he will value your biblical truth.

When asked, Christians can say, “Yeah, I’m a believer and, and it’s the most important thing in my life. If you ever want to hear about it, just ask and I’ll tell you.” Or in my case as a religious professional, when I am asked what I do, I sometimes answer, “I tell people who want to hear about Jesus.” Or perhaps, when Christians think they have a message that will help someone in trouble, they can say, “If you want me to, I’ll be happy to share it with you.” Permission opens the door to speaking truth. If permission is not given, silence is a good practice. (Ibid)

So the first danger of knowing biblical truth is that, in wanting to stand for righteousness, we may think we are supposed to indiscriminately post God’s truth.

The Danger of Being Right But UNPERSUASIVE in Sharing Truth

Here are 5 mistakes Christians make in seeking to advance the Biblical worldview:

1. Expecting to win people to embrace biblical truth through logical argument. When it comes to influencing culture, I naturally default to thinking this means winning arguments with those espousing an ungodly worldview. But how effective can we expect a logical argument on social media to be when God tells us, The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned 1 Cor 2:14).

2. Thinking that our goal is reaching their head when it is actually to reach their heart. Since our objective must be reaching their hearts, might our time be better spent weeping for the lost, pouring out our tears and prayer for them because they cannot see the destructive nature of their lifestyle—than spent shaping an argument to prove their lifestyle is wrong (which they already know because the moral law of God is written on every heart.) Such prayer will make our hearts tender towards them, and God just might answer those prayers. After all, we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places (Eph 6:12). Moreover, it might just be because our goal is winning the hearts of the lost, that, when Jesus tells us to be salt and light, he doesn’t tell us to use words at all. He says, “Let them see your good works and give glory to your father who is in heaven” (Matt 5:16).

3. Being selective about the sins we confront. Steve Brown says, Christians have to speak truth about what is and what is not sin. However, people will stop listening (and rightly so) when they see how selective their list is (Ibid). Smoking dope, sex outside of marriage, homosexuality make the list, but somehow racial injustice, materialism, self-righteousness, gluttony, and pride tend to get a pass. Such selectivity nearly guarantees that Christians will not reach anyone but church people as they try to influence their culture.

4. The failure to value the common grace God has poured out on our culture. The Doctrine of Common Grace means God prevents Adam’s fallen race from being as evil as we could be. He grants power to all humans to in some measure overcome the race’s total corruption by sin and, being made in God’s image, to impact Adam’s kingdom (earth) in a positive way—helping it reach its full and morally good potential—making good products, passing just laws, rewarding good behavior, caring for the needy, punishing some evil behavior. When Christians never affirm the good accomplished by non-Christians, or the secular culture, but always attack them, it is like saying to a musician friend, “I hate music,” or a football player, “I think football is dumb and teaches violence.” Christians seem to always be putting down non-Christians and their world. How effective is that for winning friends and influencing people?

5. The failure to say “Me Too.” My default thinking is, “To draw people to Christ, I need to grow to be more holy like Jesus. Then they will see him in me.” But in reality, what seemed to draw people to Jesus was not his moral perfection but that he identified with them. The Word became flesh. Jesus sympathizes with weaknesses because “in every respect he has been tempted as we are” (Heb 4:15). What will draw non-believers to us is not our “righteous” life. Many non-Christians think Christianity is for good people and not them. Identification with others builds bridges. If we want our biblical truth to “land” we need to:

  • Identify with being a sinner; be astounded that God loves you anyway
  • Identify with weakness; resist sending the message I have it together.
  • Identify with doubt; I doubt that God is good and the Bible is true, a lot.
  • Identify with being normal; don’t send the message, Christians are weird.
  • Identify with worry; I worry about how my kids are going to turn out a lot.
  • Identify with failure; I mess up so often as a husband it’s a miracle my wife hasn’t left me.

By God’s grace, I may be RIGHT about God’s truth in our culture. But that doesn’t mean anybody is going to listen to me.

For Further Prayerful Thought:

1. Which aspect of fastening the belt of truth around ourselves stood out to you?

2. Why is it important in today’s word to surround our loved ones with truth?

3. How does Jesus’ teaching not to give holy things to dogs or throw our pearls before swine resonate with your experience? Are there times when you have thought that a person is not spiritually in a place to hear this truth?

4. How do Paul and Barnabas follow this teaching from Jesus in Acts 13:44-49. What Thoughts do you have about trying to determine is a potential hearer of biblical truth is in a place to value it or not?

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Praying to Defeat Evil

Praying to Defeat Evil

On 02 August, 2025 By Gary Yagel

Hi Men,

This is Gary Yagel, producer of the Mission Focused Men for Christ Podcast/Blog. Wouldn’t you love to have a vibrant prayer life, to prove repeatedly the mighty power of prayer in your own experience, to taste victory in your battle to see sin overcome, and kingdom righteousness prevail in the spheres where you are praying? Don’t you long for your prayers to bring great glory to God and great consternation and defeat to Satan? This episode completes our study of the six foundational principles that Jesus taught his followers to follow for their prayers to have power. Today’s episode from the past is the second in our current August-September 2025 series, Arming for Spiritual Battle. I think this episode will energize your prayer life just as mine is energized whenever I review these 6 profound principles for praying to defeat evil, taught by our Master.    

Today, we continue the series, Winning Spiritual Battles Because We Use Our Spiritual Weapons. Every guy who gets this blog would stand at the door of his house with a shotgun to protect his family physically. But most Christian men feel inept and inadequate at fighting to protect them, spiritually. As we saw last week, Jesus told his disciples the ultimate weapon for defeating Satan is prayer. But if we are going to use this weapon effectively in spiritual battle, we need to understand it. This episode continues our study of what Jesus taught are the six basic parts of effective prayer, in Matt 6:9-13.

As we seek to follow Jesus’ mission for our individual lives, advancing the righteous reign of King Jesus over our heart loyalties and attitudes, as well as implementing his agenda in our role as husband, father, employee/employer, neighbor, church member, steward of resources, and ambassador of the kingdom, we must displace the kingdom of darkness. Just as a military invasion begins with cruise missiles and bombing runs, our efforts to advance the kingdom on the ground must begin with prayer, the only weapon capable of dislodging the enemy from its strongholds. Prayer is such a potent offensive weapon for advancing the kingdom of Christ over earth, that in Psalm 2 we hear God The Father identify prayer as the way Christ’s kingdom spreads. The Father promises the Anointed One, “ASK of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession.” As Christ-followers join Christ in ASKING that his kingdom would advance, The Father promises to act.

Jesus teaches the same six principles of prayer in Matthew 6:9-13 and in Luke 11:2-4. The only difference is that in Matthew, Jesus gives an explanation of three of the principles. He explains, may your kingdom come, (Matt 6:10a & Luke 11:2) when he continues may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven (Matt 6:10b). He explains lead us not into temptation (Matt 6:13a, Luke 11:4) when he continues, but deliver us from evil (Matt 6:13b). Jesus amplifies forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors (Matt 6:12 & Luke 11:4) two verses later in Matthew 6:14-15, when he says, For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

Last week we saw how radically different prayer for Christ-followers is from the religious repetition of holy sayings regimented for certain prayer times in other world religions. These times in Judaism were 9 AM, 12 PM, and 3 PM. The two rote Jewish prayers to be recited were the Shema, Deut 6:4-9, and the Shemoneh ‘esreh, which means eighteen, because if consisted of 18 rote prayers to be recited. Jesus’ teaching about prayer was entirely different; it was not formal, structured, external, regimented words spoken to God as ritual, but an intimate, heart-driven conversation originating from a living, dynamic relationship with The Father. Let’s review the first three prayer principles, which we examined last week, before digging into the final three. So, by way of summary,

1. The principle of ADOPTION: Matt 6:9 Our Father in heaven, which gives us the ENVIRONEMNT for prayer. His help, and spiritual power don’t have to be pried out of his tight-fisted hands. Through Christ we are God’s adopted children and, as it happens, our particular father LOVES TO GIVE GOOD GIFTS TO HIS CHILDREN, especially spiritual power through the Holy Spirit. Jesus says, What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him (Lk 11:11-13)! It is noteworthy that Jesus had used nearly identical words in his Sermon on the Mount (Matt 7:9-11), but in the Luke account, Jesus substitutes Holy Spirit for good gifts. Both are true. God loves to give good gifts to his children. But the best gift is the power of the Holy Spirit at work in our lives. I believe that Jesus viewed prayer much more as reporting to our forward battle station and launching a prayer assault against the kingdom of darkness for the advance of Christ’s kingdom of righteousness than he does, emailing headquarters with a list of our needed provisions. It is emailing that list, which we will get to in a moment. But prayer, as God designed it, is relentlessly fighting the enemy who wants to destroy you and your family and besmirch the reputation of God. It is being the man, the protector, that God designed Adam to be. “Your sonship,” says Jesus, “means being indwelt by the Holy Spirit, who is the producer of spiritual fruit in our lives. The first prayer principle to remember, is ADOPTION, the environment of prayer. We come to God as his beloved child, calling him Father, a father who loves to give good gifts and especially the power of the Holy Spirt to those who ask.”

2.  The second prayer principle is ADORATION: vs 9 continues, Hallowed be your name. The MOTIVATION for Prayer. May your name be honored. May you be glorified. May your name be held in high esteem by the whole world. Jesus modeled this aspect of praying at the beginning of his prayer in John 17, When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son THAT THE SON MAY GLORIFY YOU.” A few verses later, Jesus reveals that this desire for The Father to be glorified was the focus of his life,  I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do.  (Jn 17:4). At the heart of the request, “May your name be hallowed” is “a burning desire that the whole world may bow before God in adoration, in reverence, in praise, in worship, in honor, and in thanksgiving” (The Sermon on the Mount). The more our prayers are rooted in ADORATION—our desire to see the name and reputation of God honored, the more power they possess.

3. The third prayer principle and one which very often is neglected in our prayers. It is ADVANCING the kingdom: vs 10 May your kingdom come. The PURPOSE of prayer. “The focus of your praying,” says Jesus, “should be the advance of my kingdom of righteousness over earth.” Praying “May your kingdom come (i.e. may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven)” is the primary purpose of PRAYER because it is the primary purpose of Christians’ LIVES. We are to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness in human hearts and in the culture all over the earth, every square inch of which, King Jesus claims as his own.

In the book of Acts, Peter and John were arrested, warned not to proclaim the gospel, and released. In response, the church gathered to battle for the advance of the kingdom through prayer. In this prayer, they quoted Psalm 2. The opening verses of Psalm 2 speak of the cosmic rebellion against Yahweh, Why did the Gentiles rage, and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers were gathered together, AGAINST THE LORD AND AGAINST HIS ANOINTED. Psalm 2 continues, telling us that Yahweh laughs at their supposed power. Why? Because his answer to the rebellion of the kingdom of darkness is to send Christ, the Anointed One, to recover Adam’s lost kingdom. Palm 2:6 records God saying, As for me, I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill. (vs 6) Psalm 2 then describes the words of Yahweh to His Son recorded from the point of view of Jesus. The Lord (Yahweh) said to me (Christ), “You are my Son; today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession (vs 7b-8).

Notice the process to which Yahweh points for the spread of Christ’s kingdom. ASK OF ME and I will make the nations your heritage. What is Jesus doing right now? Scripture tells us, he is ASKING. He is at the right hand of the father interceding. What is he asking for? His church to be empowered to make disciples of the nations. All authority has been given to me, said Jesus. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations (Matt 28-18-19). Starting with our own sinful hearts being transformed, Christ’s kingdom of righteousness expands out into the world from nation to nation through the ASKING of the Son. Whatever his reason, God has ordained that the powers of darkness must be dislodged from the spiritual ground they hold by ASKING, i.e. by PRAYER made in Jesus’ name. In Matt 6:33, part of the same sermon that contains the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus teaches Christians that their main responsibility is to seek first the reign of Jesus righteousness over every aspect of their lives. That means loving Jesus more, praising his perfections more fully as we grow to know who he really is, growing in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, loving my wife well, going on the offensive to pray for those in my circle of friends who are lost, etc. etc. But here is the point: The only way this advance of kingdom righteousness will succeed is by first loosening Satan’s hold on that domain through prevailing prayer. So, Jesus teaches us that a major part of daily prayer is praying, May your kingdom come. May your righteous agenda prevail in my heart attitudes and in shaping every sphere of life where I have influence.

The first three prayer principles express a focus upwards towards the Lord—experiencing his presence, motivated to see his name honored, and seeking to advance Christ’s kingdom in specific ways through our lives. The final three principles focus on our own needs, physically, relationally, and spiritually.

4. The fourth principle of prayer is identified by the word ALL. Pray for ALL I need. Give us this day our daily bread.  We’ve seen the environment of prayer, the motive of prayer, the purpose of prayer. Now we see The DEPENDENCY of Prayer. What a marvelous thought—that the god who created the entire universe, who is the god of all space, time, and eternity, who is infinitely holy and totally self-sufficient, should care about supplying our daily bread. This petition is an invitation to bring every need—physical, mental, emotional, relational, and spiritual to him. Whatever I need TODAY to get me through, is my request to God, my Father, who is also named, Jehovah Jireh, The Lord will Provide. Jesus knew our human propensity to worry and he gives us his prescription for it. Name the things you are worried about. Specifically ask me to provide whatever you need, and you will know the joy of seeing me provide. Paul writes, Don’t worry over anything whatever; TELL GOD EVERY DETAIL OF YOUR NEEDS in earnest and thankful prayer, and the peace of God which transcends human understanding, will keep constant guard over your hearts and minds as they rest in Christ Jesus. (Phil 4:6-7).

One of the best ways to implement this prayer principle is to write down specific requests, keeping a prayer journal. Here are two entries from mine—one from my early days of learning to trust Christ and one from two weeks ago. 1) After graduating from Penn State, I worked two years for the government and saved the money to go to seminary. But as I returned my third year, I was $1500.00 short. When I got back to school, I contracted with a church to pay me $700 for the work study program. Still needing $800, I stopped by the student union to check on mail that might have come in over the summer. In my box was a scholarship check for $800.00.

This past December as we sent out a letter to our financial partners for year-end giving, we faced a daunting challenge. We normally raise about 30% of our budget through yearend giving. Because Covid 19 hurt our donors and stripped away my speaking opportunities, we brought a $15,000 deficit into December causing our year end target to b over $29,000. What was worse, those we could count on to give large year-end gifts were not in a position to give anything. But on December 31, I opened the mail to a notice that a friend of our ministry had donated $15,000 of stock. Others stepped in with the other half and we raised the full amount. God loves to supply our needs. I think I understand that a little bit because as a father, nothing pleases me more than providing what my children need to flourish.

5. The fifth prayer principle is ADMISION of sin. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. This principle focusses on the HONESTY of prayer. Jesus identifies the two most foundational of all poisons to human relationships—a guilty conscience and an unforgiving spirit. This fifth principle of prayer reveals that Jesus’ concern about how past wounds can impact our hearts is so great that he made this matter one of the top six concerns in prayer. “Prayer,” says Jesus, “is listening to your conscience. Have you offended another human?” Jesus has commanded earlier in this sermon, If you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. It is also vital to confess our sins against God regularly to him because we cannot walk with God, who is Light, and continue to walk in darkness. We need to confess our sins to God to maintain open fellowship with him and because the more we seek God’s forgiveness for OUR sins against HIM, the more we are empowered with grace to forgive OTHERS who sin against US. Jesus knows that resentment towards those who have wronged us is a poison that will destroy us from within. Moreover, being forgiving towards others is to Jesus, a distinctive mark of being his follower. Those who are forgiven, must be quick to be those who are forgiving.

Some years ago, on a warm spring evening before Covid, a young Korean exchange student—a leader among the Christian students at the University of Pennsylvania, walked from his flat down to the corner to drop a letter to his parents in the mailbox. Turning away from the mailbox, he stepped into a gang—eleven leather jacketed teenagers who attacked him with their fists, knives, and a lead pipe. Later, when he was discovered by the police, he was dead. All of Philadelphia cried out for vengeance. The DA obtained legal permission to try the boys as adults so they could be given the death penalty. Then a letter arrived from Korea, from the dead boy’s parents and twenty other relatives. It read:

Our family has met together and we have decided to petition that the most generous treatment possible within the laws of your government be given to those who have committed this criminal action….In order to give evidence of our sincere hope contained in this petition, we have decided to save money to start a fund to be used for the religious, educational, vocational, and social guidance of these boys when they are released… We express our hope with a spirit received from the Gospel of our Savior Jesus Christ who died for our sins.

Jesus, knowing that both guilt and bitterness destroy relationships teaches us as a regular part of prayer to confess our sins and search our hearts to be sure we have forgiven others.

6. The final prayer principle given by Jesus is ALERTNESS to temptation. Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. This principle teaches us that ANTICIPATING POTENTIAL TEMPTATION is part of daily prayer. I must admit this expression puzzled me for years. Why would I have to ask God not to lead me into temptation. He is holy. James says, Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. Yet, there has to be something very important here, to be included as the sixth prayer principle. Not only that, but Jesus told his three best friends, Peter, James, and John twice in the Garden of Gethsemane, Pray that you may not enter into temptation (Luke 22:40, 46). I believe the clue to understanding this petition and Jesus admonition in the Garden of Gethsemane is noticing the way that Mark and Matthew translated Jesus words in Gethsemane. They translate whatever Aramaic word Jesus actually used, not just as pray (which Luke did) but as WATCH AND PRAY that you may not enter into temptation (Mk 14:38, Matt 26:41). This admonition is repeated by Peter who commands, Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour (1 Pet 5:8).

I believe that in the Lord’s Prayer, a pattern for daily prayer is given for us to follow. Jesus is saying, Think about the day ahead. Where might you be tempted? Where might God’s providence lead you that you might be tempted and prepare ahead of time to be alert and resist. I’ve been walking with Christ for over fifty years, and the only time I can remember doing this was when an X girlfriend visited my wife and me and I asked my accountability brother, Rick, to ask me about every second she stayed with us. Other than on that occasion, I don’t think I’ve ever thought to do this. Yet, Jesus was very concerned that we do this. Twice, he urged Peter, James and John, “Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation.” Could it be that many Christian men are losing spiritual battles because we don’t realize that this is how Jesus taught us to pray—to start the day with a few seconds of thought about where the temptation to sin might strike?

Prayer, as Jesus taught it, is not a bunch of nice feelings wrapped up in a sweet request to God to heal Lauren’s 83-year-old next door neighbor who fell Thursday. God cares about her. But what Jesus taught is that prayer is WAREFARE. It is the way the kingdom of righteousness prevails over the kingdom of evil. It is the men of today’s church who need to heed this call to arms. It is the men who need to reclaim prayer as the way to fight for our loved ones against the triumvirate, Satan, sin, and death who (though ultimately defeated), if unopposed in this world will bring enormous devastation into their lives. I close with some words that have been an inspiration to me.

Prevailing prayer is the most divine ministry you will ever have. Nothing is more Christ-like or involve more cooperation with Christ. No form of Christian service is so universally open to all and so high in Christ’s priority for all Christians as prevailing prayer. It is Christ’s desire, Christ’s call, and Christ’s command. Lord, teach us to prevail (Mighty Prevailing Prayer, by Wesley Duewel)!

For Further Prayerful Thought:

  1. What would you say to a believer who said he thought that reciting the Lord’s prayer at the end of his daily bible reading is what Jesus taught?
  2. What struck you about Jesus teaching us to tell our heavenly father what our practical needs are? Have you ever thought about keeping a prayer journal?
  3. Why does it make sense that one of the six prayer concerns we should have is looking at past events to see if there is unconfessed guilt or resentment towards another?
  4. How can you be more watchful of temptation coming into your life?
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The Weapon Satan Fears Most

The Weapon Satan Fears Most

On 26 July, 2025 By Gary Yagel

Hi Men,

This is Gary Yagel, producer of the Mission Focused Men for Christ Podcast/Blog. I want to thank you for helping us pass the quarter-million episodes downloaded milestone. We are grateful to God that you are finding the podcast helpful.

Please consider letting other men know about this tool.

Beginning today and continuing through August and into September we will continue to release a new episode every Sunday evening. But they will be former episodes that we think are still valuable in 2025. As we pursue our mission of seeking the spread of Christ’s kingdom agenda of righteousness over our heart loyalties, heart attitudes, and every sphere of our lives, Paul reminds us that this battle for righteousness to rule is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. To win, we must fight with the spiritual weapons Jesus gives us. So, I never tire of being reminded of what these weapons are and how to use them. That is why our new August series from the past is Arming for Spiritual Battle.  

Using the Spiritual Weapon Satan Most Fears

As we seek to run well the race marked out for us i.e. advance the righteous reign of King Jesus in our own lives, the lives of those we love and throughout our world, we must overcome the kingdom of darkness. In his wisdom, God has ordained one, primary offensive weapon that overthrows the kingdom of darkness:  prayer. Jesus said to Peter, “Satan has demanded to sift you as wheat, but I have prayed for you “(Luke 22:31-32). One veteran missionary writes,

There is nothing on earth that Satan so fears as prayer. He cannot triumph over prevailing prayer. Satan is more afraid of your praying than of your pure life or zealous witness. One’s life may be a beautiful witness that cannot be silenced, but prayer is a militant force that has the potential of defeating Satan, destroying his works, and driving him out of places and lives he claims as his own. (Wesley Duewel, Mighty Prevailing Prayer.)

Could it be that we and are loved ones are losing spiritual battles because we’re not really fighting those battles through prayer, as Jesus wants us to? The next two episodes study what Jesus specifically told us are The Six Basic Parts of Prayer.

There was one characteristic of Jesus’ earthly life that seems to have been most striking to his disciples—those who knew him best, for Scripture records just one thing the disciples asked Jesus to teach them about. It wasn’t how to heal, cast out demons, or still the seas. It wasn’t how to counsel more effectively or how to forgive. The one thing they asked Jesus to teach them about was how to pray. Getting alone to pray was something that John the Baptizer was known for too. In Luke 11:1, we read, Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.”

The background for this request is enlightening. Jesus had already taught them how to pray in the Sermon on the Mount, two years earlier in his ministry. Since then, they had been sent out by Jesus with instructions Proclaim as you go, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the leper cast out demons (Matt 10:7-8.) They had returned from one of their missions saying, “Lord even the demons are subject to us in your name.” Yet, afterwards, on a separate occasion, the disciples were unable to cast out a demon. They must have been intrigued by Jesus’ explanation: This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer. (Mark 10:29). Jesus clearly teaches that Satan cannot stand against PRAYER.

In response to his disciples’ request, “teach us to pray,” in Luke 11, Jesus gave six principles for effective prayer. They are the same 6 principles given in Matt 6:9-13 in the Sermon on the Mount, popularly known as The Lord’s Prayer. This teaching is not intended as a rote prayer to be recited in church liturgies; rather it is a prayer pattern that covers the six most foundational truths about prayer, a kind of skeleton that needs to be clothed with specifics of our situation. We know that Jesus did not intend this “How to” model primarily to be recited, because in the two verses immediately before the Lord’s Prayer Jesus said, “When you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” False religions commonly employ the mindless repetition of rote, “sacred” prayer phrases, substituting a kind of self-hypnotism for prayer. The prayer methodology Jesus teaches could not be more different. Let’s dig into these 6 prayer principles from the pattern of Matt 6:9-13.

1. ADOPTION: vs 9 “Our Father in heaven.” The ENVIRONEMNT for Prayer. Prayer, as Jesus taught it, begins by remembering that those who belong to Christ don’t need a Rosary, a prayer wheel, prayer beads or pre-written words to be recited to draw near to God; prayer is coming to our heavenly Father, who loves us more than we can know. We are able to draw near because of our justification, i.e. Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us, turning away the just wrath of God the Judge. Instead, he declares us righteous. But salvation doesn’t end there; it is followed by adoption. As J.I. Packer observes,

Justification is a forensic idea, conceived in terms of law and viewing God as judge…But contrast this now with adoption. Adoption is a family idea, conceived in terms of love and viewing God as father. In adoption, God takes us into his family and fellowship, and establishes us as His children and heirs. Closeness, generosity, and affection are at the heart of the relationship. To be right with God the judge is a great thing, but to be loved and cared for by God the father is a greater thing. (Knowing God).

Because of our adoption, we pray to our heavenly FATHER:

  • Who runs to us, like the prodigal’s father with arms wide open whenever we turn towards him,
  • Who desires to bless us even more than we desire to be blessed,
  • Whose ambition for us transcends our imagination,
  • Who delights in his children, finding great pleasure when we spend time with him in prayer.

“The first prayer principle to remember,” says Jesus, “is ADOPTION, the environment of prayer—you come to God as his beloved child, calling him Father.

2.  ADORATION: vs 9 continues, “Hallowed be your name.” The MOTIVATION for Prayer. Notice that it is also the first request in the pattern Jesus gave us. May your name be honored. May you be glorified. May your name be held in high esteem by the whole world. This desire for God to be glorified was the focus of Jesus’ entire life (John 17:4). No wonder he taught his followers to begin their prayer, “May your name be glorified.” We were created to glorify God. The chief end of man, says the Westminster Shorter Catechism, is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. On the surface this may seem selfish of God; but I believe that whatever most glorifies God will ultimately most benefit us.

Not only are we made for God’s glory, but the deepest longings of our heart are satisfied by loving our Lord WITH A HEART THAT WANTS MORE THAN ANYTHING ELSE TO SEE HIS NAME HELD IN HIGH ESTEEM BY EVERY BEING IN THE UNIVERSE. This petition points to the motivation for our requests in prayer. Lloyd Jones in his classic work, The Sermon on the Mount observes that this petition is rooted in “a burning desire that the whole world may bow before God in adoration, in reverence, in praise, in worship, in honor, and in thanksgiving” (The Sermon on the Mount) What are some practical ways this desire can express itself in prayer?

a. Take a moment early in your prayer to express words of adoration to the Lord. This petition reminds us that our life purpose is to honor God, so why not honor him at the beginning of your prayer by choosing an attribute of his that has been especially meaningful lately and praising him for it.

b. Appeal to God’s honor and reputation in your requests, following Abraham’s and Moses’ example. In Genesis 18, Abraham secured the safety of Lot by reaffirming that God would not slay the righteous with the wicked. Moses, in Deut 9:28, urges God not to destroy the wicked Israelites appealing to God’s reputation—lest the land from which you brought us say, “Because Yahweh was not able to bring them into the land that he promised them.”

The more our prayers are rooted in ADORATION—our desire to see the name and reputation of God honored, the more power they possess.

3. ADVANCING the kingdom: vs 10 “May your kingdom come.” The PURPOSE of prayer. “The focus of our praying,” says Jesus, “is the advance of his kingdom of righteousness over earth.” Even in Jesus’ day, there was confusion over the term kingdom of God. Jesus was NOT saying that one of the six pillars of daily prayer is asking Jesus every day to come back to earth soon! Rather, Jesus explains what “May your kingdom come” means in the next phrase. Verse 10 continues, May your will to be done ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN.” In heaven, there is no sin; righteousness reigns. The kingdom coming refers to the advance of Christ’s kingdom of righteousness over earth. The more that happens, THE MORE THE KINGDOM OF EARTH WILL BE LIKE THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. That is what it means to pray for God’s kingdom to come—that God’s righteousness from heaven will spread over the earth. As we saw last week, this is what Jesus is talking about a few verses later, when in verse 33 he commands, “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness,” It is to SEEK the rule of King Jesus and his righteousness over our heart loyalties and our heart attitudes. It is recovering Adam’s call to develop the potential of the earth while seeking the restoration of rightness—fixing everything broken by sin in every sphere of our lives.

The reason so many Christians today mistakenly think that praying for Christ’s kingdom to come means asking daily for him to come back is that they have been erroneously taught that the coming of the kingdom of God in the NT is primarily future. To the contrary, the NT teaches that the kingdom of God comes in two stages. Jesus has already inaugurated that kingdom but will return to consummate it.  He has defeated the usurpers of Adam’s kingdom. The proof that Satan, sin and death are defeated is Jesus’ resurrection—the curse for Adam’s sin—death and the decay of the physical world—has been ultimately broken. Jesus is the firstborn of the new creation. His ascension means he has taken back the throne of this world. Paul prays that the Ephesian Christians will be able to grasp their power right now to advance Christ’s kingdom.

I pray that you may know… what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all (Eph 1:18-23).

Although Jesus is king RIGHT NOW, during this church age, he allows his kingly authority to be resisted. He has decisively broken the backs of Satan, sin, and death, and taken back Adam’s throne. But these enemies remain during this church age—in a sense conducting guerilla warfare against efforts to advance Christ’s kingdom in Christ’s ascension power. They can only be driven out and overcome in the power of Christ, fighting with the spiritual weapons he gives us. That is why prayer is our greatest weapon. To pray, “May your kingdom come” is to ask God to bring our own heart loyalties and attitudes into submission to the King. It is to request Christ’s power to share the gospel and for his power to enable others to surrender to Christ’s kingship. It is to seek Christ’s power to undergird our efforts to bring about rightness, wholeness in every sphere where we have influence, as we try to implement Christ’s agenda of righteousness.  In this age, the ADVANCE of Christ’s kingdom is accomplished very largely through prayer. Wesley Duewell, one of our generation’s leaders in worldwide prayer writes,

Prevailing prayer is God’s ordained means for extending His kingdom, for defeating Satan and his empire of darkness and evil, and for fulfilling God’s eternal plan and bringing into effect His good will on earth. It is God’s means of covering the earth with his blessings. Prevailing prayer is God’s priority strategy for our (the current church) age (Mighty Prevailing Prayer).

Praying “May your kingdom come (i.e. may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven)” is the primary purpose of prayer because it is the primary purpose of Christian’s lives. We are to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness in human hearts and in the culture all over the earth, every square inch of which, King Jesus claims as his own. As we saw last week, to seek requires an intentional focus, a step-by-step plan. What Jesus is teaching us this week is, “Saturate that plan in prayer. Accompany your PLAN and EFFORT to seek Christ’s righteous rule in a particular sphere of your life with PRAYER that Christ’s righteous rule (KINGDOM) will prevail. Although modern warfare has changed dramatically, the Iraq war provides a useful analogy for spiritual warfare. It began with a full day of bombing, before ground troops invaded. God has ordained prayer as the foundational means of dislodging Satan’s hold on various spheres of life. Here is a great example of kingdom prayer at work:

Some women from a church in Fort Collins, CO understood this truth and began to pray for Christ’s kingdom of righteousness to prevail over a strip club, called The Hunt Club, near their church. One night, Aaron Bekkela received a message from one of his strippers, “My mom and her friends are praying for you.” Several years later he came to faith in Christ. He then felt prompted to prod the two co-owners, his brothers, to sell the business. Instead of continuing the business he sought to find a group of Christians who would buy the property and re-purpose it into a ministry center to the community. A man named Rob Cowless, visited the strip club, and Bekkela’s proposal. In his words.

When we passed through a second doorway, we entered the locker room. Again, it was a dirty, nasty place with only a concrete floor. In the middle was an oversized vanity setup—a mirror some six feet long with bulb lights all around—where the dancers did their makeup before going onstage. Surrounding on all sides were rows and rows of metal lockers. I was stunned as I stared at several with pictures of children taped onto the metal doors. Who were the boys and girls in these photographs? In another moment it hit me; these were the kids these women were trying to feed and clothe by working in this place. A knot began to tighten in my throat. Here, behind the scenery of what men viewed as a sensuous house of glamour, was the total opposite. A lot of these women came here night after night trying to hold their lives together.

Rob Cowless and his wife, Joy, decided to join with Aaron; they began to pray for the kingdom of God to be further manifested on a plot of ground in Fort Collins, CO, known at the time as The Hunt Club. They raised the funds to buy out the three owners. Aaron immediately returned his third to contribute to the renovation of the building. When they closed the doors of the club they were able to assist over twenty of the former employees with transitions to new careers, helping with everything from rent and utilities, to groceries, counseling, and even tuition for going back to school.

A few months later, The Genesis Project was launched from the completely renovated property, with the goal of reaching out both to those who patronized The Hunt Club and those who worked there. Before long they developed after school ministries for the children in the trailer park behind the building and Kids Café so that during the summer, low-income kids who qualified for free lunches during the school year had a midday meal. One man came by the new ministry center with tears in his eyes and said, “I lost my marriage here.” Later, through tears, Aaron told Rob, “In the early days, my job was recruitment of good-looking coeds from Colorado State. I told them that they could graduate debt free by working just a few nights a week. Some would, but I knew most would end up dropping out of school, sucked into the vacuum of the business, destroying their futures.”

Satan claimed a patch of ground in Fort Collins, called The Hunt Club. Christ’s warriors, beginning with a heart-broken mom because her daughter had taken a job as a stripper, fought the kingdom of darkness over that patch of ground through prayer. To pray, “May your kingdom come” is to do a whole lot more than put in a request for Jesus to come back soon. It is to lay hold of tremendous spiritual power promised to the followers of Christ who unrelentingly, PRAY.

For Further Prayerful Thought:

1. Why is it important to you to remember that your prayers are directed to one who has adopted you into his family at great cost?

2. Why is the name of God worthy of supreme honor. How can you increase the passion for your life to bring the Lord honor?

3.  What would you say to gently correct someone who thought that praying, “Thy kingdom come” means to ask Jesus to return to earth soon?

4. What was the most exciting part of the story of the Kingdom of Christ prevailing on a piece of ground in Fort Collins, CO?

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Two Nutrients Daughters’ Hearts Need from Dad

Two Nutrients Daughters’ Hearts Need from Dad

On 02 July, 2025 By Gary Yagel

Last week we observed that no one can nurture a child as well as his own or her own mother. In a similar way our job as fathers is to provide what our girls need to flourish—to become all that God created them to be. This episode examines two ingredients required by every daughter’s heart to be able to thrive.

Twenty years ago, I found myself wrestling with what to do about my exhaustion. I had five children at home, an elderly father with Alzheimer’s living with us, a growing church that had added staff and was requiring more of my time, and an increasing desire on my part to pursue a DMin degree to sharpen my ministry skills to benefit our church. What Ied me to my decision was something obvious; yet, it was something I’d never seriously considered. That is the fact that many other pastors could lead my church, and would lead it when I left. But no one can be a father to my kids but me. My decision was to cut back on the hours I was devoting to the church, and postpone the pursuit of my DMin 7 years until 4 of my 5 children had left home. 

It’s been said that there are three categories of dads:

  1. Uninvolved dads (those physically gone or emotionally disconnected).
  2. Involved dads (most Christian dads fit this category)
  3. Strategic dads (those who proactively seek to understand what their children need from them to thrive)

This episode is intended for strategic dads who want to now how to help their daughter flourish. Strategic dads also have the benefit of believing in creation; so they know that God created males and females to be different, in order to complete each other. Therefore, we understand that some of the needs of daughters will be different than the needs of sons. Michael Farris, the proud father of 6 daughters and 4 sons wrote an insightful book entitled, What a Daughter Needs from Her Dad: How a Man Prepares His Daughter for Life. He underscores a very important principle about understanding a daughter. He writes,  At the foundation of building a proper relationship with your daughter, you must realize that she is a woman in the making. And thus, you will have to realize that her emotional needs and priorities are going to be infinitely closer to those of your wife than to your own.

Sadly, there are Christian fathers who are hearing that making any distinctions between male and female is sexist. Those who believe that myth will fail their daughters. Creation tells us that daughters have to be different from sons because sons, alone, cannot fully bear the image of God. Only sons and daughters, as they complete each other in relationship, can fully represent who God is. Biblical Christians celebrate the uniqueness of femininity; they don’t apologize for it, and certainly don’t demean it.

So, lets return to Farris’ profound point about raising daughters: At the foundation of building a proper relationship with your daughter, you must realize that she is a woman in the making. And thus, you will have to realize that her emotional needs and priorities are going to be infinitely closer to those of your wife than to your own. The rest of the episode examines two needs that Scripture explicitly says husbands are to meet in their wives; so they are needs a father must meet in his daughter’s heart. This information is not only biblical, but 80% of it comes from interviews I conducted with 5 godly women of various ages.

From God’s command to husbands, Love your wives…nourishing and cherishing her (Eph 5:26-29), we want to consider 4 practical answers to the question:

A. How Does a Father Help His Daughter FEEL UNCONDITIONALLY LOVED?

1. By providing the security she needs. The best way to do this is by loving her mom well. This foundation of her family is the love of her mom and dad for each other. If that footing is shaky she will feel insecure. She needs a dad who loves her mom, unconditionally despite what her mom may look like on the outside. Also, a daughter needs to be shown that her father cares. A lot of times Dads can assume they tell their children “I love you” often enough, or that their daughter automatically knows they do; but hearing it and hearing it often means a lot. Here is a quote from a woman I interviewed,

A daughter needs to know that her father’s love for her will not diminish. She needs to feel secure and safe in that love. A father protects and defends with a passion that expresses love that will not change. His love gives strength and comfort. No matter what life brings you know he will be there. My father was in the Coast Guard, so I grew up with ships being part of our life. My Dad’s love was my anchor.

2. The second way a daughter needs to know she is loved is by you proving she is important by relentlessly devoting your time to her. One daughter writes:

I can never remember a time when my father, as busy as he was, was not there for me. One thing that stands out most in my mind is that he never missed a ball game that I played, be it home or away! I played field hockey in the fall, basketball, in the winter, and softball in the spring. My dad always came to every game, and his voice was the one I heard over the crowd cheering me on, or telling me how to play better. It didn’t matter if it was forty degrees outside and raining; he would be the only parent on the sidelines in a field hockey game. In a gym full of opposing fans three hours from home, I remember hearing my dad encouraging me to block out when going for a rebound.

This may not seem like a great deal to many. But to a young girl on the brink of womanhood, unsure, insecure, and a lot of time confused, it was nice being able to look into the stands and see my dad. Always there, always rooting me on, whether it be praise or correction. His actions were a reaffirmation that he was there not only to watch my games, but also to cheer me on in life. I never felt he was too busy for me, even though he was a very busy man. He made time to take an interest in what was important to his little girl. I knew that if he was interested in what I enjoyed, then he must be interested in me as a person. What a great thing to know that your father is always there, always waiting in the stands to cheer you on.

On a practical note, another woman provides helpful insight: I have observed that sometimes dads have trouble finding something in common with their daughters to bond over. You don’t always need something in common- let her tag along with you when you’re running errands, invite her to throw the football or help you wash the car, teach her to ride her bike, or enter her world by playing tea party with her, taking her on “dates,” helping her with her homework, etc.

3.  A third way a dad needs to help his daughter feel unconditionally loved to listen to her heart. To feel loved a daughter needs to know that her dad is listening intently. This seems like common sense, but it is hard to do. One daughter writes, Put away your phone when she is talking to you and make eye contact with her. Show an interest by asking questions, “How do you think you played?” Remind her that she can always come to you and that you always have her back. Try to overcome our masculine tendency to listen in order to fix the problem and, instead, listen to understand her feelings. How did that make you feel. Overcome our male tendency to always teach, and ask for her opinion. What do you think?

4.  A daughter needs her father to set firm boundaries and follow through with consequences always reminding her that he loves her but not her actions. Scripture assigns discipline to fathers and “daddy’s little girl” needs painful consequences for disobedience as much as his sons do. However, in my view, Emerson Eggerichs makes a valid point when talking about the differences in the discipline of sons and daughters. One of our interviewees sums up,

I think the advice from the book, Love and Respect In the Family is good. This is a paraphrase. “Be gentle when correcting her, especially in your tone. Girls take personally what is said to them and how it is sad, and can feel rejected and unloved when they are criticized. Girls are more likely to respond to encouraging or soft methods of correction, not in-your-face coaching or yelling. Also, don’t ask them to stop crying or hold in their feelings.”

So, the first need that our daughter has is the need to feel loved. And we’ve summarized four practical ways for dads to meet that need. The second need to meet in a daughter’s heart, in order for her to flourish is verbal affirmation. We take this need of a daughter from what Prov 31 teaches about the need of wives:

Her husband praises her: “Many women have done excellently, but you surpass them all.”

B. How Can a Father Help His Daughter BUILD A STRONG SELF-IMAGE

1. Constantly affirm her worth and value. She needs to have her father to, first, pay attention to who she is. He needs to notice her interests, strengths and personality, and motivations. He needs to remind her that she is a unique treasure and precious to him and God. The word, treasure, is the epitome of affirming that she is special, valuable, and unique. Her father needs to help her see and develop the gifts she’s been given and pay attention to who she wants to be. One woman describes why this is such a deeply felt need:

Outside of her home, a daughter is constantly bombarded with messages that she is not skinny enough, not beautiful enough, not smart enough, and just not enough. When she can come home to a refuge where she is told she is enough, that is what she needs to be able to go back out in the world of “not enough” messages again. She also needs to know that her dad messes up from time to time, and it’s okay to mess up, too.

2. Affirm both her outward beauty and inward beauty. The majority of the women interviewed said, “She needs to know that her father thinks she is beautiful” (referring to physical beauty). One woman added, “and help her understand that the desire to be beautiful is the way God made her.” It is true that Peter teaches fathers and daughters to see that beauty in a woman is so much more than outward appearance. It is also the unfading beauty of her character. Over-emphasizing her physical beauty can lead to insecurity, because that will fade with age and it is unwise to weigh our physical appearance too heavily in our view of ourselves. In my counseling experience, the most outwardly beautiful women struggle the most with insecurity.

Nevertheless, it is also possible to over-emphasize the inner beauty of character.

Over-emphasizing a daughter’s character can make her feel that it is done because she lacks outward beauty. Furthermore, Peter’s admonition to focus on the inner beauty of godliness, which a woman has greater control over than her physical appearance, should not be seen to condemn a woman’s God-given desire to be physically beautiful (with modesty). Scripture itself calls many women beautiful, referring not to their inner but outer, physical beauty. Christianity does not teach a dualism that makes the spiritual more important than the physical! The beauty of this physical world matters. In fact, my personal opinion is that part of a woman’s fundamental calling in exercising dominion over the earth is to make the world, (starting with herself and her home) beautiful. If women were not involved in the cultural mandate, I believe we would see mostly male functionality in our culture—not a lot of beauty!

I want to close this episode with two true stories given to me by the women who kindly answered my survey: Here is the first, from the world of teenagers:

I teach middle school students, and I see many girls literally fight tooth and nail because someone said some lie about them or called them a name. So, I was surprised at the wisdom that one of my little 6th graders shared with me as she worked on her project during lunch.“You know, I don’t need to wear those short skirts and I don’t need to fight with girls because of the lies they say. I know who I am.” I asked her to explain, and she went on to say her daddy had raised her to know she was beautiful and valued by Christ. If she was loved by her daddy and God, then why would she need to prove her worth by fighting or prove her beauty through the clothes she wore? What you wouldn’t know from just reading this story is that her daddy was at the time incarcerated. But though he was not physically present, he was still active in her life, even calling in for parent teacher conferences. The values he instilled in her had an obvious impact on her.

The second story shares some words spoken by this daughter as she looked back on her father’s life to try to describe what he meant to her.  She writes, At my father’s memorial service I said that even as a grown woman, there was just something about feeling like Daddy’s little girl, knowing that in his eyes I was the prettiest, smartest, funniest, most talented girl in the world. That’s how I felt and that sums it up.

Dad's, we have enormous power to build up our daughter's sense of self-worth!

For Further Prayerful Thought:

1.  In Matthew 3:17, as Jesus, God The Son Incarnate, was about to embark on his career, he heard the audible words of God The Father from heaven saying what every child wants to hear from his or her father. What are those words and how do they related to what we’ve examined about a daughter’s needs?

2.  What stood out most to you about a daughter’s needs?

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The Harm of Undervaluing or Overvaluing Motherhood

The Harm of Undervaluing or Overvaluing Motherhood

On 02 July, 2025 By Gary Yagel

In today's world, many of our female loved ones are engaged in a very personal spiritual battle about their identity and calling as women, and how motherhood fits into that calling. This episode shows how the mistake of overvaluing motherhood will hurt them but also how undervaluing motherhood can be devastating. Only the biblical worldview gets this balance right; so that is our topic today.

Our wives, daughters, and granddaughters recognize intuitively that gender differences are not superficial, but deeply connected to their very sense of identity. Mothers with children at home are torn between their career, which they have devoted years preparing for and their call to motherhood. One woman describes her inner tumult when she got pregnant as a graduate student.

I was profoundly ambivalent about this pregnancy. What would having a child mean for my future? How could I have children and still grow professionally? The only way I knew to pursue my deepest interests, to fulfill my calling before the Lord, was in the world of ideas through academic study. But having a child seemed to pose a profound threat to the possibilities of continuing my studies. When men have families, most are able to continue working in their chosen fields (though admittedly, they often do make tradeoffs between family and career advancement.) At times, I confess, it struck me as decidedly unfair that women should experience such intense pressure to chose between the two major tasks of adult life—between pursuing a calling and raising the next generation (Total Truth, by Nancy Pearcey)

After she had her baby, she, like many career-focused women, was astonished at the intensity of the love bond she formed with her newborn. On the one hand, she did not want to leave him to go back to her career; yet she believed that she had gifts that matched the calling she could only pursue in the world of academia.

This workplace vs home choice, faced by modern women, is not a dilemma that has been faced by woman throughout most of history, because the workplace WAS the home. To illustrate this truth, let’s take a look at family life (in America) before the Industrial Revolution separated the workplace from the home.

In the Colonial period in America, families lived much like they have lived for millennia. The vast majority lived on farms or in peasant villages. Productive work to make a living was done by family households, often including members of the extended family, apprentices, servants, and hired hands. Stores, offices, and workshops were located in the front room. Living quarters were either upstairs or in the rear. (Interestingly that design was followed in building the US White House in the 1790s). The integration of home with work had huge implications for family life. Nancy Pearcey points out:

The husband and wife worked side by side on a daily basis, sharing in the same economic enterprise. For a colonial woman….marriage “meant to become coworker beside her husband...learning new skills in butchering, silversmith work, printing, or upholstering—whatever special skills the husband’s work required.” A useful measure of a society’s treatment of women is the status of widows and historical records show that in colonial days it was not uncommon for widows to carry on the family enterprise after their husband died—which means they had learned the requisite skills to keep the business going on their own.

Of course, as in nearly all societies, women were also responsible for a host of household task, requiring a wide range of skills: spinning wool and cotton; weaving it into cloth, sewing the family’s clothes, gardening and preserving food; preparing meals, making soap buttons, candles, and often developing a “cottage industry” that produced additional family income through her creative skills. Colonial America was not a panacea. Yet the wife partnering with her husband at home, both in earning a living and raising the children, seems quite similar to the portrait of godly womanhood revealed to us in Proverbs 31. The fact that work and child-rearing took place at home meant that mothers were able to combine economically productive work with raising children. It also meant that fathers were much more involve in raising children than they are today. In the colonial period, the husband and father was regarded as the head of the household. Pearcey explains how working at home beside their family members facilitated the fathers’ leadership:

In their day-to-day work, fathers enjoyed the same integration of work and child-rearing responsibilities that mothers did. With production centered on the family hearth, fathers “were a visible presence, year after year, day after day” as they trained their children to work alongside them. Being a father was not a separate activity to come home to after a day at work; rather it was an integral part of a man’s daily routine. Historical records reveal that colonial literature on parenting—like sermons and child-rearing manuals—were not addressed to mothers, as the majority are today. Instead they were typically addressed to FATHERS. Fathers were considered the primary parent, and were held to be particularly important in their children’s religious and intellectual training (Total Truth).

The Impact of the Industrial Revolution on the Family

The Industrial Revolution built a chasm between the workplace and the home. During this era of history (1770-1870), the development of steel, expansion of the railroads for transporting goods, and use of steam as a power source to replace human labor, led to the building of factories and mass production. Whereas men used to work at home with their wives and families, they had little choice but to follow their work out of their households and fields, and into factories and offices. These are some of the results of this transformation of society:

  • The physical presence of fathers at home dropped sharply. Leadership is always based on the quality of the leader’s relationships with his followers. Men, in particular, build relationships by doing things together. The damage to a father and husband’s ability to lead his home by separating home from work has been incalculable.
  • The most striking feature of child-rearing manuals of the mid-nineteenth century (the height of the Industrial Revolution) is the disappearance of references to fathers.
  • Because in America, the home had always been the place where children are taught moral character and religion, women began to be looked up to as those who were custodians of religion and moral character. Kenneth Keniston writes, The family became a special protected place, the repository of tender, pure, generous feelings embodied by the mother, and a bulwark and bastion against the raw, competitive, aggressive, and selfish world of commerce embodied by the father (All Our Children; The American Family Under Pressure.) Men, reflecting the sinful passivity of Adam, were all too willing to leave raising the children and leading the home to their wives.
  • This was a stunning reversal. In colonial days, husbands and fathers had been admonished to function as the moral and spiritual leaders of the household. But now men are being told that they are naturally crude, appetite-driven animals who need to learn virtue from their wives.
  • The identification of religion with women and children begun at this time continues to this day as documented by David Murrow, in Why Men Hate Going to Church. For example, Pew research published an article in 2016, entitled, In the U.S., Religious Commitment is High and the Gender Gap is Wide.
  • The impact of this work/home divide may have been worse for women. The home ceased being a locus of economic productivity. Instead of enjoying a sense of economic indispensability, women became dependent—having to live off the wages of their husbands.
  • Because household industries were replaced by factory products, women at home with their children were no longer able to utilize the full array of their gifts but only those relating to motherhood and household tasks.
  • Not surprisingly, this cultural expectation that women should be at home, and not at work spawned the feminist movement, which was rooted in the rights of women to have their own career outside the home.
  • Wives who used to be economically productive and care for the family with their husbands are now alone in their work; this natural partnership is gone.
  • In short, he woman’s role as a mother became OVERVALUED. She is criticized if she doesn’t find, essentially all of her fulfillment by being home with the kids, and she is now the primary parent, if not the spiritual leader at home, instead of a partner helping her husband to raise the children.

Here is an attempt to put a biblical lens over the damage done by the Industrial Revolution to our culture’s understanding of motherhood and fatherhood.

1. There are some who want to blame the rise of technology for this problem and return to cottage industries. But the most effective way to fulfill mankind’s creation command to develop the potential God build into planet earth is through technology. The ideal is not a return to agrarian society. In fact, technology itself along with Covid 19 are causing more mothers and fathers to work from home and schedule meetings through zoom. Who knows what impact this might have in reversing the trend of work taking both fathers and mothers out of the home!

2. The church failed to adapt to the culture. When the church saw the new economic reality that the workplace was oftem gpoing to be separated from the home, church leaders should have responded by challenging their men to overcome being away so much by putting extra effort into building their relationships with their wives and children and into leading their homes well. Sadly, this never happened, and despite the recent rise of the men’s movement, the majority of churches still don’t equip men to be spiritual leaders at home.

3.  The church never should have allowed the Industrial Revolution confine the exercise of women’s gifts almost exclusively to the homefront. Although God’s curse, which falls on Eve for her sin, is felt in her relationship with her husband and children, revealing her primary calling, Eve is also gifted and called with Adam in Genesis 1 to develop culture, i.e. to exercise dominion over the earth. The call to motherhood can be overvalued, producing feelings of frustration and guilt in hearts of women who don’t feel entirely fulfilled by being wives and mothers.

4.  Overvaluing motherhood can also thoughtlessly wound women who long to be married or long to have children but can’t. The whole concept of a woman finding her identity in being created as a necessary ally for her husband or through her nurturing role as a mother can be extremely frustrating and painful for women who are single or childless. This pain is amplified today because the Industrial Revolution removed the workplace from the home. Single women’s extended families i.e. adult brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews no longer surround her at work. More than ever the church must remind its single and childless women that all the femininity described in the creation of Eve, in Proverbs 31, and in Paul’s letters can be fully lived out within a single woman’s extended family and church home. But she needs our open hearts, sensitivity, and welcoming love to do so.

UNDERVALUING MOTHERHOOD

Sharon Slater has devoted her life to analyzing cultural trends that impact the family. She summarizes radical feminism’s strategy to undermine motherhood:

First convince women that motherhood is meaningless, degrading, and confining, and that childcare is an unfair burden placed on women. Convince them that fulfillment can only be found in competing with men and advancing equality in the workplace. Teach them that postponing or sacrificing professional pursuits for the benefit of their children and family is too much to ask. Better yet, repeal all laws and policies that recognize any differences between men and women. Eliminate special protections or incentives that encourage motherhood, childbearing, or the raising of one’s own child and remove “harmful” symbols that stereotype women, like Mother’s Day (Stand for the Family).

Despite the token visibility given to motherhood because today is Mothers Day, I don’t think there has ever been a time in America when the opinion makers, in our case the social media, have so relentlessly promoted successful womanhood as having a career, while at the same time neglecting mothers who successfully live out a higher calling to motherhood. The biblical worldview is that a woman has gifts that go beyond motherhood, but that motherhood is at the core of her design. Gen 3:20 says, The man called his wife’s name, Eve, because she was the mother of all living (Gen. 3:20). “Eve” sounds like Hebrew for life-giver. Women give physical life to humanity, a task so great and so significant that it cannot be quantified.

A second influential force in our culture that devalues motherhood is the transgender movement. TSER (Transgender Student Educational Resources) promote, a fractured view of human personhood through its Gender Unicorn model. They teach that every individual has the right to determine: 1) his/her biology (through a sex change or hormone treatments), 2) his/her romantic and 3) sexual orientation, 4) his/her gender identity, and 5) his/her gender role. This worldview denies that physical differences (a woman’s womb, breasts, or estrogen) have any significance in determining healthy romantic or sexual attraction, gender identity, or her gender role. Transgenderism is the extreme case of a woman denying the truth that her body reinforces every month; she is designed to be a mother.  

Guys, we need to avoid being passive men and step up to protect our women from these harmful ideologies that are wounding them. Devaluing motherhood injures mothers who often don’t realize that their culture has trained them to overvalue their career and undervalue their home. It is destructive for society, because a mother’s nurture is so vital for physical, emotional, and spiritual health. But it especially harms children. No one can meet her child’s need to be nourished as well as his mother can. She cannot delegate that responsibility. Mother Teresa, a great advocate for mothers, tells the story of a boy whom the sisters found on the streets of Calcutta:

He was living with his mother in a box. The sisters took the boy back to the orphanage, bathed him, fed him, and gave him a clean bed to sleep in. The next day he disappeared. They found him back in the box with his mother. Once again they took him back to the orphanage and once again he ran away. Mother Teresa said she learned a very important lesson that day. A mother, even a mother in a cardboard box, was more important than the physical comforts that the sisters could provide (Ibid).

Whereas masculine love provides whatever others need to flourish, a woman’s love is giving herself—surrounding loved ones with her personal attention and care. It is nurture. Although Western culture has greatly devalued the feminine call to motherhood and to be nurturers, in God’s economy, giving personal care and love to those who surround her life is the highest of callings. So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love (1 Cor 13:13).

For Further Prayerful Thought:

1.  How can understanding colonial culture where work took place at home, help you understand the conflict that today’s mothers have between making a cultural contribution (vocation) and motherhood?

2.  How can you lead the way to help men understand that the separation of home and workplace means they have to work harder to build relationships with their family members, so they can lead their homes well?

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Required for Becoming Godly, Confident, Daughters

Required for Becoming Godly, Confident, Daughters

On 02 July, 2025 By Gary Yagel

At the core of masculinity is helping those around us flourish, i.e. reach their fullest potential. That is what Adam was place in the Garden to do. Today begins a three-week series about helping our daughters and granddaughters flourish. For the first three weeks of May, our topic is Raising Godly, Confident, Daughters and Granddaughters. This episode explains how to help them develop a biblical understanding, sometimes called a biblical worldview of womanhood. Helping her to build this perspective is absolutely vital for her to build confidence in the way she was created, and if called to be a wife, have marriage that honors Christ.

Today’s episode is about shedding any false stereotypes and helping our ladies build a biblical worldview about gender, becoming godly, confident women who understand and celebrate their femininity. We want them to confidently be able to answer the question, “What does it mean that God created them female?” Although daughters will fight tooth and nail (as they should) to defend the truth that girls are equal to boys, deep down those who are healthy don’t want to be like boys: they want to be what they were designed to be…women. They recognize intuitively that gender differences are not superficial, but deeply connected to their very sense of identity. Theologian Paul Jewett, reminds us:

Sexuality permeates one’s individual being to its very depth; it conditions every facet of one’s life as a person. As the self is always aware of itself as an ‘I,’ so this ‘I’ is always aware of itself as himself or herself. Our self-knowledge is indissolubly bound up not simply with our human being but with our sexual being (Man As Male and Female).

Our wives, daughters, and granddaughters need us to affirm God’s creation design of them. Beyond that, in a world where they continually interact with those who espouse other world views, be they feminists, traditionalists, egalitarianists, or LGBTQ advocates, we need to help our female loved ones understand, celebrate, and winsomely articulate the biblical worldview of womanhood. Before we look at the biblical view of gender, though, it is important to identify two mistakes to avoid in helping another develop a biblical worldview.

1. The first mistake to avoid is implying that their generation, i.e. modern secular culture represents the evil world to which Christians must not conform.  Demonizing modern culture in general because many of its worldviews are unbiblical, profoundly misunderstands the biblical view of CULTURE. Because all humans are assigned the creation task to build culture, and all humans are made in God’s image, there is much in modern, “secular” culture that Christians should affirm. Besides farmers, truckers, and grocers whose work is used by God to provide our daily bread, art and music celebrate his creation and technology finds new ways to make life better. The secular world is also quite capable of identifying injustice and opposing it, way before Christians do.

It is true that William Wilberforce, who labored 24 years to abolish slavery in Britain and many of his followers were Christians. So were Harriet Beecher Stowe, who wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and many of her followers. But it is equally true than many non-Christians opposed the evil of chattel slavery before many Bible-believing Christians did. In our day, feminists, who sadly are mistaken in their egalitarian approach to marriage, have rightly seen the injustice of closing doors of opportunity to women and sounded the alarm about Christian women allowing themselves to be beaten by their husbands because of their mistaken understanding of the Biblical teaching to be submissive to their husbands. Feminists have also identified the hurtful way that churches almost always link femininity to marriage and the family, unfairly causing single women to feel like second class citizens. Although my denomination believes leadership responsibility in the home and church family is assigned to men, the culture’s focus on the injustice of denying women the opportunity to use their gifts is fomenting a welcome reexamination (in my view) of some of our traditions. Some would argue that this is a slippery slope, but the church must always examine its practices to see if they are based on Scripture or tradition.

A biblical worldview makes us unafraid to recognize truth, even though it is proclaimed by fallen worldviews. Instead, a biblical worldview recognizes the ring of truth in the injustices that others point out and the validity of their contribution to the culture, as those made in the image of God. Nancy Pearcey, in her book, Total Truth, explains how she learned this lesson at L’Abri in Switzerland.

I returned to L’Abri and discovered how liberating a worldview approach can be. There is no need to avoid the secular world and hide out behind an Evangelical subculture; instead, Christians can appreciate works of art and culture as products of human creativity expressing the image of God. On the other hand, there is no danger of being naïve or uncritical about false and dangerous messages imbedded in secular culture, because a worldview gives the conceptual tools needed to analyze and critique them.

2. The second way to fail when helping a daughter embrace a biblical worldview is to critique another’s unbiblical worldview without a heart of compassion for those misled by it. Pearcy points to the heart of her mentor, Francis Shaefer:

When expressing the pessimism and nihilism (belief that life is meaningless) expressed in so many movies, paintings, and popular songs, he demonstrated profound empathy for those actually living in such despair. “These works of art are expressions of men who are struggling with their appalling lostness,” he wrote. “Dare we laugh at such things? Dare we feel superior when we view their tortured expressions in art?” The men and women who produce these things “are dying while they live; yet where is our compassion for them” (Ibid).

As we seek a biblical worldview of gender, we do it with sorrow in our hearts for human sin, which has corrupted God’s design of humans as male and female. The Bible has been used as a weapon both to justify oppression and justify rebellion. So, let’s turn to a careful examination of the Bible’s teaching about gender so that we are equipped to winsomely guide our loved ones into spiritual health.

The first mention of gender in the Bible occurs with the very first mention of human beings. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them (Gen 1:27). This means that our femaleness or maleness is not incidental to our identity, but constitutes our very essence. Kathy Keller, co-author with Tim of The Meaning of Marriage, writes,

Every cell in our body is stamped as XX or XY. This means that I cannot understand myself if I ignore the way God designed me, or if I despise the gifts he may have given to help me fulfill my calling. If the postmodern view that gender is wholly a “social construct” were true, then we could follow whatever path seemed good to us. If our gender is at the heart of our nature, however, we risk losing a key part of ourselves if we abandon our distinctive male and female roles.

The biblical account shows that Adam and Eve were created with absolute equality. Both are made in the image of God, equally being given the mandate to exercise dominion over the earth. Men and women together, in harmony with one another, must carry out God’s mandate to build civilization and culture. Immediately after making us male and female, God tells us to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth (Gen 1:28). Here, as his image bearers, we are to continue God’s action of creating. But obviously, this calling to create human life is something we can only carry out together! Neither sex has all that is needed. Only in complementary union can we do it. These verses describe the physical reality that points to their total complementarity—they have been designed to fit together perfectly!

Genesis 2 reveals more about Adam and Eve’s complementarity. When God sees Adam alone, a male without a female to complete him, God says, “It is not good.” The aloneness of Adam is the first thing in the universe that God finds imperfect.

No existing animal could complete Adam. So, we read I will make him a helper fit for him. In English, the word helper sounds demeaning, like a low-wage earner who sweeps the floors. The Hebrew, however, has no such negative connotation. The word translated “helper” is ezer, which cannot imply inferiority, since God Himself is called our ezer. The concept is to supply strength that is lacking. Ezer could be translated, suitable helper, necessary ally, or strong assistant. Although many of the interactions between male and female presume the context of marriage, I believe that this revelation of God’s purpose for creating Eve reveals a creation truth. Women are naturally better at partnering with others to accomplish a task than are men. A woman as a CEO in business or on a leadership team may be contributing her femininity to her business through her strength at building, or helping to build, a team.

“Fit for him” or “matching him” translates a Hebrew phrase that literally means “like opposite him.” Kathy Keller explains,

The entire narrative of Genesis 2, in which a piece of the man is removed to create the woman strongly implies that each is incomplete without the other. Male and female are “like opposite” to one another. They are like two pieces of a puzzle that fit together, because they are not exactly alike nor randomly different, but they are differentiated such that together they complete a complex whole. Each sex is gifted for different steps in the same Great Dance.

What a glorious picture! Yet, in our Western democracy, when Scripture applies these creation principles to the Christian home and the church, Paul’s teaching feels harsh, chauvinistic, and unfair:

Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her….(Eph 5:22-25).

Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet (1 Tim 2:11-12).

It has been said that heresy is truth out of balance. Even with the explanation of the creation roots behind these commands, these will likely be rejected by many daughters and granddaughters unless they are taught in balance with the other biblical truths that constitute the worldview. Here are some of those truths.

  • All Christians are commanded to be submissive to one another (deny themselves) in some way. Husbands are to deny themselves by laying down their lives for their wives, wives by yielding to their husband’s leadership.
  • Headship taught by Paul has zero connotation of “lording over” others. Headship is modeled by Jesus in Phil 2:5-11. Though Jesus was equal with God, he emptied himself of his glory and took on the role of a slave. Jesus shed his divine privilege without becoming any less God, and he took on the most submissive role—that of a servant, putting his view of headship into practice by washing his disciple’s feet.   
  • Husbands as heads of their wives are therefore servant leaders; wives are to be strong helpers. Both make themselves slaves to the other, but in different roles. The example for both is Jesus.
  • Godly manhood is defined in creation as a man giving himself up to cause those in the garden to flourish (avad) and be protected (shamar).
  • Women in general are not commanded to be submissive to men in general; rather, Christian wives who say, “yes” to the husband’s promise to love them are choosing to respect his leadership in their home.
  • Submission does not mean silently accepting a husband’s decision when she thinks it is wrong. To the contrary, loyalty to him means telling him when she thinks he is wrong, but in the end trusting God to work through her husband who is accountable to God and takes responsibility for the final decision.
  • In the Church, which Paul calls the household of God, the same pattern of love and order is to be followed as the Christian home: men are to lead.
  • The historical setting in which the women were told to be silent was the authoritative determination by the synagogue elders of the orthodoxy or heresy of a visiting rabbi’s teaching. That authoritative function of serving as an elder was assigned by Paul in the New Testament to men. Woman are welcome to use their gifts in any way that a non-ordained man can.
  • In the two spheres where men are given leadership, the home and the church, they are accountable to the elders of the church for their behavior.

Questions for a Conversation with Daughters or Other Christian Girls/Women

1. What messages do you hear through the social media about womanhood?

2. What do you think the Bible teaches about the value of women?

3. What do you believe the Bible teaches about why Eve was created?

4. What do you think the Bible teaches about differences in roles between husbands and wives in marriage?

5. How would you defend from the Bible the truth that women are equal to men?

6. How does it make you feel when you read Ephesians 5:22 “Wives submit to your own husbands as to the Lord.”

7. If the Bible’s teaching about something as profound as a wife’s role in marriage is not relevant to us because Paul was influenced by his culture, how do you know which other parts of the Bible are not true, because they were shaped by culture?

8. Since the Bible says that Jesus submitted to the Father’s will, do you believe Jesus (God the Son) is inferior to the Father?

9. Does the submission of a citizen to a police officer mean the citizen is inferior to the police officer or the submission of a church members to church elders mean they are inferior to the church leaders? If not, why do some people say that a wife submitting to her husband means saying she is inferior?  

10. Do some of your friends scoff at the Biblical view of marriage roles? How does that make you feel?

For Further Prayerful Thought:

1. The best way to teach female loved ones the biblical worldview of gender is by exhibiting godly manhood. What are some places you can improve your commitment to helping others flourish?

2. What have been the objections you have heard to the biblical worldview of gender. Which parts of the biblical picture might they be missing?

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Countering the Culture’s Devaluing of Marriage

Countering the Culture’s Devaluing of Marriage

On 28 June, 2025 By Gary Yagel

As we close out this Fatherhood Month series, we return to the Andrew Tate phenomenon that is impacting teen guys in our churches, with which we began this series. Tate is a former kickboxing champion-turned-social-media-influencer who has become so popular among young men for his views on masculinity that he has ten million followers on X. Tate’s message to our rising sons about marriage typifies the anti-family messages and policies coming out of Hollywood, progressive government leaders, the media, academia, and corporate America that are impacting our guys. University of VA Researcher, Brad Wilcox, describes Tate’s influence in his excellent book, Get Married. He writes:

“The biggest voice in the online manosphere today—with more than twelve billion views on TikTok alone—is no fan of marriage. Andrew Tate, former kick boxer, who has been described as the ‘king of toxic masculinity,’ has made it clear that he does not think much of our oldest social institution. ‘The problem is, there is zero advantage to marriage for a man,’ said Tate. ‘There is zero statistical advantage. If you use your mind, if you use your head instead of your heart, and you look at the advantages to getting married, there are absolutely none.’” 

But the facts discovered in Wilcox’s research show that Tate is dead wrong. The facts show, for example, that:

  • Both men and women who get and stay married accumulate much greater wealth than people who don’t marry.
  • Married men and women with families report more meaningful lives compared with their single and childless peers.
  • Couples who take a “we-before-me” approach to married life, for instance sharing joint checking accounts—are happier and less divorce-prone than couples who do not.
  • Couples who form “family-first” marriages—with frequent date nights, family fun time and chores done with the kids—enjoy the happiest marriages.

This episode shows how my book, Men Helping Sons, is written to attract our sons to marriage by presenting the biblical worldview of its glorious design.

The Biblical worldview of civilization reveals God’s design for marriage to be the foundation of civilization. To begin with, God’s design of Adam and Eve to complete each other in the loving union of marriage is God’s fundamental purpose for creating humankind—that is, to bear the image of the Triune God. Furthermore, in Genesis, the institution of marriage is given before the institutions of the church or civil government. For this reason, it should not surprise us that marriage and the sexual union that are fundamental to it are under assault by God’s enemy. As protectors of our families, assisting them to take captive every thought making it obedient to the truth revealed in Christ (2 Cor 10:4-5), we must counter the anti-family cultural forces that undermine the glory of God’s design of marriage and the family. Here is a summary of chapter four of Men Helping Sons.

Chapter 4: God’s Creation Design of Marriage

Discuss: Both. As you consider what you’ve heard or know about marriage, why do you think God invented it? What do you think an ideal marriage would look like?

Note: Of course, marriage involves sex, a topic that is embarrassing and private. There are no questions in this section that ask you to reveal private matters. In fact, the leader, not the son is assigned to read all of the section, “The Bible’s High View of Sex.”

Four Biblical Purposes of Marriage

A. A fundamental purpose of the male-female love union in marriage is to reflect the image of God. God exists as the Trinity, the union of three persons who love one another, which is why John tells us that God is love. So, God creates an image of himself—the being called “man.” But that single being “man” exists as the union of two persons, male and female. Notice the way the use of the singular and plural for man parallels God as both singular and plural. Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, in our likeness...’ So, God created man in his own imagine, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. Each gender is designed with deficiencies that only their opposite-gendered spouse can meet. Thus, through the union of marriage, male and female complete what is lacking in the other and, in their union, bear the image of God.

Discuss: Both. Since God designed manhood and womanhood to be incomplete without the other gender, why don’t we celebrate this interdependence and value the other gender more? 

B. A second purpose for marriage is revealed in Genesis 2:18, where marriage is designed by God as the remedy for the aloneness of Adam. The LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him. Each part of the creation narrative closes with God’s statement: “And it was GOOD,” until the creation of man. After Adam is created, God says. “It is NOT GOOD that man should be alone. In naming the animals, Adam realizes that none can be a true partner to him. They cannot alleviate his loneliness. So, God creates woman to be his partner, soulmate, and lover.

God’s plan to eliminate loneliness is for marriage partners to pursue LOVING INTIMACY. Eve is created with a spirit, heart, and body which correspond to Adam’s (“bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh”). Genesis 2:24-25 gives the familiar portrait of marriage; Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. Notice this two-step description of marriage. It is first the joining of lives. The man leaves his father and mother and joins lives with his wife. They share their ideas (minds), their decisions (will), and their feelings (emotions). Then this joining of lives is celebrated by the joining of bodies in sex.

As a gesture symbolic of personal trust and surrender, it requires a setting or structure of perfect surrender in which to take place. It requires the security of the most perfect of reassurances and commitments in which two people enter, which is no other than the loving contract of marriage.

Discuss: Both. How does this paragraph compare to the way sex is portrayed in movies, TV shows, and social media?

So, marriage is the joining of both lives and bodies. But the text doesn’t end there. It continues, pointing to the objective that marriage is intended to achieve. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. Marriage is the one safe arena where husband and wife are naked, body, soul, and spirit—laid bare and vulnerable to each other. Adam and Eve’s like natures, combined with their covenant pledge of unconditional love, makes safe the experience of baring their hearts and bodies to one another. It enables them to experience loving intimacy, i.e. oneness of spirit, oneness of heart, oneness of body that sex is designed to promote.

The Biblical design for loving intimacy in marriage requires the pursuit of BOTH oneness of soul and oneness of body. Joining bodies in sex apart from joining lives in marriage is wrong. But so is joining lives in marriage without joining bodies in sex. Biblically, body and soul belong together. Christians don’t just share the gospel, they feed the hungry. Unlike pagan philosophies like Gnosticism, Christianity has always upheld a high view of the physical body and therefore of sexual union.

C. A third purpose of marriage is to give us a foretaste of the joy we will experience when we are forever spiritually united in love to Christ our bridegroom. We, the church, are betrothed to Christ as his bride. The final return of Christ to receive us to himself is portrayed as the wedding of the lamb. The richest pleasures of sexual union are a foreshadow of the intense joy that will be ours when we are united to Christ, spiritually, forever. This astonishing truth is spelled out by Paul, For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery, but I am talking about Christ and the church. The sexual union of marriage takes Paul’s mind to our spiritual union with Jesus.

Discuss: Leader. When you were growing up, how were you taught to view sex. Did this view rightly or wrongly reflect God’s design?

Discuss: Both. Do you think the average non-believer thinks of God as having a positive view of sex or a negative one?

D. The fourth purpose of marriage is to create a safe environment into which the next generation of God’s image bearers are born and nurtured. We read, And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it.” The family is the most foundational institution on earth. God established it before the church or civil government. The family is the mechanism through which God planned for humanity to continue beyond Adam and Eve.

Headed by one man and one woman united to one another by the covenant of marriage, the family is the environment designed by God for the nurture of children. Only after entering into the covenant of marriage are the perfect conditions met for the creating of a child, conceived as a result of his mother and father’s passionate lovemaking to celebrate their covenant promise never to forsake the other. It is God’s perfect design of the greatest possible security for a child—a family in which both a mother and a father are present to care for him and are in love with each other.

Discuss: Both. God’s design does explain why it is tough raising kids as so many must, as a single parent. What have you observed about the difficulties for kids and parents if both parents aren’t present in the home?

The Bible’s High View of Sex

Here is a summary of the eight points that are read by the adult leader (with the supporting material and interactive questions missing):

A. It is a wonderful, God-designed attraction that drives adult males and females towards one-another. One author notes, Strong sexual feelings are common to all normal men. They are determined more by hormones than by evil desire. They are not sinful in themselves. Sex is designed to be the pleasurable, powerful glue that binds husband and wife together during the tumultuous process of overcoming their selfishness to merge their lives together. It provides the bonding power needed to build their marriage as the foundation of their home.

B. Sex is utter, vulnerable, nakedness—safe only when we expose our nakedness to one who has vowed in a public covenant never to reject us. We all sense the vulnerability of nakedness. We instinctively feel uneasy if we are naked in front of another. Such modesty is God’s way of saying “Total nakedness is not safe (even in romance) until each partner has vowed publicly to unconditionally love the other.”

C. Sex is the outer, physical joining of two bodies, which celebrates the inner joining of two hearts, souls, and lives in marriage. It is like celebrating the sacrament of Communion. We take the bread and drink into our bodies, physically partaking of the bread to celebrate the spiritual reality of being united to Christ. Similarly, in sex we physically partake of each other’s bodies to celebrate the spiritual reality of our hearts and lives being united to our spouse in love. As celebrating communion strengthens and renews our love relationship with Jesus, so sexual union strengthen and renews our love relationship with our spouse.

D. God loves the lovemaking of husband and wife. God not only created sex for our pleasure, but he also URGES us to drink deeply of it! Dennis and Barbara Rainey write, In the Song of Solomon, God enters the bridal chamber, where the newlyweds lay entwined in each other’s arms.  He raises his hand over them and blesses them. His benediction urges them to feast on the joy of their sexual union. “EAT FRIENDS: DRINK AND IMBIBE DEEPLY, O LOVERS.”

E. Married couples are urged by God to be drunk with sexual love for each other. God tells us that the best defense when it comes to married men staying faithful to their wives is a great offense. “May your fountain be blessed, and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth. A loving doe, a graceful deer—may her breasts satisfy you always. May you ever be intoxicated with her love.”

F. The male sex drive is God’s good gift to us. A man naturally desires release regularly, driving a husband to his wife whose arms and body surround him with the love and nurture he needs more than his independent nature likes to admit. Two female writers try to explain the male sex drive to fellow wives this way: “A man has seventeen sexual glands, which is stored in an inner sack in the testes. When the sack fills up, his testes tell his brain, ‘Do something quick before I explode.’ A man’s need for sex is not all in his mind; his sexual command center demands release from the accumulated buildup.”

G. Premarital sex, called fornication was a capital offense in Israel. God’s law is given to protect us from harm. He wouldn’t attach such severe sanctions to sex outside of marriage unless he knew some things that we don’t know about how harmful it is. The joining of the most intimate parts of us to another’s most intimate parts is like glueing two pieces of paper together. But when sex isn’t connected to the permanence of marriage, when the casual partner moves on, it is like trying to separate those two pieces of paper. It can’t be done without tearing both partner’s souls. Sex cannot be emptied of its profound reach into our inner selves. We all know that sexual assault is much more traumatic than physical assault. Our bodies heal from physical assault: but the soul of a woman who is raped may never heal because sex isn’t just physical. We all know that. It touches the deepest inner parts of us.

H. Love for Jesus calls us to put our bodies on the altar as a living sacrifice. After devoting eleven chapters to helping the Romans understand God’s gracious plan of redemption through the death of his Son to atone for our sins, in Chapter 12:1 Paul tells us what the only logical response to such love can be. With eyes wide open to the mercies of God, I beg you, my brothers, as an act of intelligent worship, to give him your bodies, as a living sacrifice, consecrated to him and acceptable by him (J.B. Phillips). Saving sex for marriage is not the result of a low, prudish view of sex, but a high one. It is true that premarital chastity is enormously beneficial to the health of our future marriage. But for the Christ follower, what is even more important is that it honors Jesus.

Men, here are three ways you could help men and high school guys study this booklet together:

  • Ask your men’s ministry to consider studying Men Helping Sons Embrace Biblical Manhood at its monthly men’s breakfasts (from September to January), to which your high school guys are invited. Each of the five chapters would be discussed after breakfast in a group of 5 or 6 guys composed of a mix of men and high school guys, with one of the men leading the discussion.
  • Give it to the father of a high school guy.
  • Give it to a youth pastor to study with his high school guys

Let me close by asking, “How might a Christian high school guy be impacted by these words, which close out Men Helping Sons Embrace Biblical Manhood?”

DARE GREATLY to Show the World Manhood That Is Being Redeemed by Jesus

You have now seen the high bar of biblical manhood. Don’t let it overwhelm you; let it challenge you. There may have never been a time when our nation more needed the rising generation of Christian men to show it Christ’s power to redeem masculinity—restoring manhood to God’s intended design. But, have no illusions. Should you accept the challenge to show the world manhood that is being redeemed by Jesus in a fresh way after completing this study, you will be in for the fight of your life. To sacrificially love others, unselfishly serve others, selflessly protect others while exhaustingly seeking to win their hearts will require you to struggle, daily, to die to yourself. Such a lifelong battle with deeply embedded selfishness is certain to bring many defeats.  

Remember, however, your call to display manhood that is being redeemed by Jesus does not require perfection. But it does require leaving the sidelines and getting into fight! As Teddy Roosevelt said so well,

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes up short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with the timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

Will you tell Jesus you are stepping whole-heartedly into the arena to fight to show the world manhood being redeemed by Him?

For Further Prayerful Thought:

  1. Which of the four purposes of marriage most stood out to you. Why does it make sense that God’s design for conceiving a child is a husband and wife united in the covenant of marriage who have promised to love each other, “till death us do part?”
  2. What stood out most to you in the Bible’s High View of Sex? Which of these truths do you wish you knew earlier?
  3. How do you think this material on marriage and sex might change a high school guy’s view of God and sex?  
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Supporting Sisters by Celebrating Biblical Womanhood

Supporting Sisters by Celebrating Biblical Womanhood

On 21 June, 2025 By Gary Yagel

This past week, the Supreme Court upheld Tennessee’s law, which blocks all transgender medical treatments on those under 18, including puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries. This ruling is an encouraging sign; but it is also a reminder of the torrential flood of polluted messages coming from social media, shouting for the past twenty years that gender identity is fluid, different gender roles are unjust, and same-sex attraction is normal. This entire month our podcast/blog focus is providing help to our boys to withstand the cultural pressure squeezing them into its false, destructive views about masculinity and femininity. This episode might surprise you because it argues that our rising generation of guys needs to understand God’s design not just of their own masculinity—but God’s design of femininity as well.

The Bible teaches that the differences between male and female are not arbitrary or accidental, but intentional. The identity and roles of male and female in Scripture are not interchangeable. They are designed to be different so that they can complete one another. Therefore, you can’t understand masculinity without understanding that we were created to be half of a unit called “man,” which requires womanhood to be complete. Knowing HER strengths are given to cover MY weaknesses, as we PARTNER together helps men live out their calling. For example, when my wife says, “Turn here, watch that car, turn left,” and I am tempted to say, “stop bossing me,” because I feel stupid, I can remember that she was given to me to be my necessary ally; she is just trying to help me, which is her calling. When she stops in front of the mirror when we are running late for church, and asks, “How do I look?” I can conquer my impatience by remembering that she is made to be beautiful and bring beauty into the world. When she is emotionally drained, I can help her by remembering that Eve was the mother of every living thing (Gen 3:20), designed to be a nurturer and recognize that being with her grandchildren, and especially holding her grandbabies, fills her emotional tank.   

The biblical teaching of male and female being intentionally created differently and by their union in marriage, completing one another in love, is visibly portrayed in the way their bodies fit together, making love. This biblical view of intentional male/female differences in Genesis 2 is described by the English word complete, from which we get the word complement. (This is different from compliment, to give praise). To complement is to stand beside and fill the weakness of a partner. The biblical understanding of this creation design is called complementarianism. In their book, The Grand Design, Owen Strachen and Gavin Peacock give a good working definition of this creation concept unmistakably taught in Scripture.

“Complementarity (is) the way in which men and women find happiness in owning their God-given identity and filling their God-given roles. Equal in dignity and worth, men and women share much in terms of Christian discipleship. But we are not the same. Unlike what egalitarianism would argue, men and women have different roles to play in life. We thus cannot agree with the idea that men and women alike lead in the home and church, as our egalitarian friends would say. The gospel of grace does not erase sexual difference and role distinctions: the gospel actually opens our eyes to savor the divine design and our God-formed responsibilities.”

Complementarianism is the antidote to the culture’s gender blender attack upon God’s design of male and female. The significance of this design for all of life is so important to God that of the 1189 chapters in the Bible, God took half of the first chapter (after explaining the six days of creation) and all the second chapter to explain how male and female are equal, different, and to relate to one another as God’s image-bearers. That is, they are two persons joined in married love, imaging the loving union of the three Persons of the Godhead who, in love, are one. Perhaps it should not surprise us that Satan is attacking God’s creation design of male and female to complete each other since God chose it to image him. But why do our sons need an explanation of biblical womanhood?

Six Practical Reasons Men Need to Understood God’s Feminine Design

A. So they know what to look for in a wife. The best path to successful marriage is to marry a woman dedicated to pursuing God’s design of womanhood. That seems obvious. When I was looking for a mate during my college years, I decided I was not going to marry a feminist or a woman who had inclinations in that direction. After I fell in love and was thinking of asking a woman to marry me, I said to God, “She is so strong-willed, I don’t know if I am strong enough to lead her.” But I sensed God saying, “Gary, a strong will is a good thing. What matters is that it be submitted to me and committed to the Bible’s teaching of complementarity.” That definitely described Sandy. I also sensed God saying, “Not only that, but I am calling you into ministry. You need a strong, capable partner.” Forty-four years later, she is just as strong-willed, and just as perfect for covering my weaknesses. So, we need to give sons a portrait of the kind of woman they should pursue.

B. Sons need to understand God’s feminine design so they know how to help a female fulfill her potential. Adam was placed in the garden to work it. The Hebrew word, AVAD, means to help those in the garden reach their full potential. This is the concept behind Paul saying to husbands, Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, …so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. I am to die to myself to help her reach her spiritual potential—inner, spiritual beauty. Understanding God’s design of femininity helps me know what that picture of godly womanhood looks like so I can help her reach it. I can’t help her reach a goal I don’t see.

C. Sons need to understand God’s feminine design so they can love a female well. The word used in the command to husbands is AGAPE. This word does not describe a feeling; it describes a relentless commitment to sacrifice whatever is necessary to meet another’s needs. Such love, therefore, requires understanding how God has designed her in ways that are different than he designed men. The first thing a guy learns in marriage is how different his wife’s needs are than his own! For love to reach its greatest fulfillment, it needs to be coupled with discernment of the other’s needs. Perhaps that is why Paul said to the Philippian Christians: My prayer for you is that you may have still more love—a love that is full of knowledge and wise insight (1:9).

D. Sons need to understand God’s feminine design so they know how to partner best with a female. As we’ve seen, manhood is only half of the unit. A guy needs to know how to best partner with women in general and unless called to remain single, how to partner with his wife, when the day of marriage comes. An effective leader of any partnership discerns the strengths of his team members, so he knows how to delegate and maximize the potential of the entire team. Peter has this partnership in mind in the term, joint-heirs,  when he writes to husbands, Show honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are joint-heirs of the grace of life (I Pet 3:7). Showing honor to women makes sense when we understand their feminine design; we better realize how their strengths are the very ones we lack, thus how valuable they are!

E. Sons need to understand God’s feminine design so they know how to provide the understanding a female needs. As we saw last week, one of the most important needs of a wife’s heart is to feel understood. Part of fallen male culture is to put down women because of their feelings, or because girls in athletics often place “togetherness” above winning. But deep in a woman’s heart is the longing to feel understood. I believe that is the deepest need of a wife’s heart. I can say I love her, but if she doesn’t feel like I know and understand what is going on in her heart, she won’t feel loved, no matter what I say. Perhaps that is why God led Peter to command, Husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way (Ibid). Giving any female the gift of understanding is enhanced by discovering what God has revealed about her feminine design.

F. Sons need to understand God’s feminine design because a godly woman pursuing God’s creation design will be attacked unmercifully. As we saw last week, God placed Adam in the garden not only to be its gardener, but to be its guardian. Adam was assigned to protect those in the garden, including his wife and kids. He should have protected Eve from Satan’s lies before the fall, and Christian men are called to protect their loved ones from Satan’s lies today. Satan is the ultimate egalitarian, having ascended the Mountain of God “to be like God”—to be on an equal footing with God. Here is a text that most scholars believe describes not just the king of Babylon but the Evil One behind his pride.

How you are fallen from heaven, Lucifer, son of Dawn! How you are cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low! You said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; above the stars of God I will set my throne on high; I will sit on the mount of assembly… I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.’ But you are brought down to Sheol. (Is 14:12-15).

Satan rebelled against God’s authority structure and tempted Eve with the same sin, “You will be as God, knowing good and evil.” Unfortunately, a godly woman living out the call to godly womanhood will not only be sneered at by the secular culture but by many inside the church. For example, Beth Barr doesn’t hesitate to attack Dorothy Patterson, the wife of Paige Patterson, former president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, for promoting oppressive patriarchy. “She insisted that a divine hierarchy existed in the marriage relationship," writes Barr. Barr continues to demean Patterson for teaching that sinful secular culture “promoted feminism and blurred the boundaries between male and female roles.” (Actually Dorothy Patterson was exactly right.) The rest of Barr’s book, The Making of Biblical Womanhood, attempts to delegitimize the clear teaching of Scripture, with the same tired argument of the past that the Bible’s authors were corrupted by the abusive patriarchy of their culture and NOT speaking God’s Word. Our girls—sisters, daughters, wives--who dare to fly in the face of egalitarian Western culture deserve our praise for their courage and need our support in their stand for biblical truth.

For the above reasons Men Helping Sons Embrace Biblical Manhood, is written to take our sons through a brief study of God’s glorious design of womanhood. The following is a condensed version of Chapter 3. I’ve included the questions in the text to give you a flavor of the interactive nature of the study. Chapter 3 begins:

Discuss: Both. What are some examples in our culture of women being treated as “objects,” rather than precious human beings of infinite value? What are some of the messages sent to young women on TV and in social media about how a woman finds worth?

The Issue of Submission

Scripture is not apologetic about the call of a Christian wife to be submissive to her husband. Paul commanded, Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. The Apostle Peter was equally clear, Wives, be subject to your own husbands…For this is how the holy women who hoped in God used to adorn themselves, by submitting to their own husbands. Neither does the NT equivocate about the leadership in the household of God, the church, which logically is to follow the same pattern. Paul was clear, I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man 1 Tim 2:12.

It is widely believed in Western culture that these commands prove that Christianity is misogynous—a worldview with prejudice towards women at its core. This accusation brings to mind the words that are often attributed to Mark Twain. “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you in trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so.” It is argued that the Bible teaches a system of oppressive patriarchy, which empowers men with the authority to abuse women and generates an unjust, unequal division of power in the home and church. However, this idea that Christianity mistreats women just ain’t so.

To be sure, some men, claiming to follow the Bible, use their positions and power to horribly abuse women. Many wives holding a mistaken view of biblical submission, stay enslaved in codependent relationships with abusive, alcoholic husbands. But such treatment of women is the opposite of what Jesus modeled and what Christianity teaches.

Contrary to the sexism that biblical Christians are often accused of exhibiting, Jesus modeled a revolutionary treatment of women with counter-cultural respect and dignity. From Jesus’ healing of the woman with an issue of blood, to the raising of the widow’s son from the dead, to his protecting of the woman caught in adultery, to his affirmation of the woman who washed his feet with her hair, Jesus was radical in the way he treated women as the full equals of men—having intrinsic value because they, like men, are fully made in God’s image. Such treatment took place in a culture where the Rabbi’s prayer book said, “Blessed art thou who has not made me a woman.” We should also recognize how radically countercultural Jesus’ invitation to Mary to “sit at his feet,” was. The phrase, “sit at the feet of” was a technical term for admitting a student to formal spiritual training. To the Pharisees, this was scandalous. Rabbi Eliezer the Great famously said to his son that he would rather burn the Torah than teach it to a woman.

In contrast, Christianity has always affirmed that women are full members of the body of Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. Any discussion of the complementary roles that men and women fill in marriage and in the church must begin by affirming the equal status and value of women with men.

Discuss: Both. Evaluate the feminist argument that a submissive role makes you an inferior person. Does an athlete have less human value than her coach? Does an employee who obeys his boss prove that he thinks he is inferior to the boss? Is a human child less valuable than her parents, since the Bible says to obey them?

The argument that submission proves inferiority is false. Any ordered group of humans has a structure of authority and responsibility. The assignment of different roles to men and women in the home and church household is accompanied by a call to mutual submission. Paul’s passage on roles in marriage is part of the “family codes” found in Ephesians 5. It begins, in verse 21, with: submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. Paul then gives specific instructions about how this submissive spirit works in filling paired relationship roles: to both wives and husbands, both children and parents, both slaves and masters. Deference to each other’s roles is required of all believers. One wise wife who realized the freedom she enjoyed because of God’s gender role design, said, “I define submission as knowing when to duck so that the Lord can hit my husband when he needs it.”

It is out of reverence for Christ that a wife submits to her husband and out of reverence for Christ that a husband denies himself to sacrifice for his wife. The glory of the gospel is that Christ has come to redeem our marriages from the devastation of our sin. That is why a godly husband unreservedly and unashamedly embraces Christ’s command to lead his home and love his wife sacrificially. It is why a godly woman embraces whole-heartedly and without apology her calling to be submissive to her husband. It’s for Jesus’ honor!

Eve’s Creation Reveals Her Design

Here is the outline of the second half of chapter 3 from Men Helping Sons:

  1. Eve is designed to be a necessary ally. Then the LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him” Gen 2:18. The Hebrew word, EZER, which is translated “Helper” sounds demeaning, like a low-wage earner who sweeps the floors. The Hebrew, however, EZER has zero such negative connotation. It is used repeatedly in the Psalms to describe God! For example, consider Psalm 46:1 God is our refuge and strength, a very present EZER in trouble. A better translation of helper fit is necessary ally.
  2. The essence of femininity is to be a giver of life, a nurturer. The man called his wife’s name, Eve, because she was the mother of all living Gen 3:20.
  3. A woman is specially gifted to manage her home well. Proverbs 31 portrays an array of feminine gifts that are in this skillset, which are not given to men.
  4. A woman’s specialty is also beauty. Women are called to be beautiful and bring beauty into the world. After God takes Job's children away from him during his trial, God blesses Job with more children. To emphasize this blessing, Job 42:15 says, And in all the land there were no women so beautiful as Job's daughters. As biblical authors appeal to the male compulsion to be strong to call them to the inner strength of character, biblical writers appeal to women’s innate desire to be beautiful but steer them towards the lasting inner beauty of holiness.

Guys, the women in our lives who pursue Godly womanhood are under assault in our gender-blending culture. Twenty-five years ago, when I saw feminism assaulting my twin daughters, I gave them each a book on their 16th birthday that called them to godly womanhood. One was Let Me Be a Woman by Elisabeth Elliot. The other, equally good, was Fearlessly Feminine by Jani Ortland. I want to close with Jani’s call to our beloved females, because as men we must do everything we can to support them in this call. She writes:

“I am calling us to exult in our God-given femininity. We must welcome His Word and His ways in our lives. We must stop bringing to God OUR vision of what a woman should be, as if he didn’t consider our generation and culture when he penned his eternal message to us. I want to help nurture in us a new joy in being what only we can be—godly women, godly wives, godly mothers. I want to help us reclaim territory we have yielded to the feminist movement as we have watched it flit around us. Let’s stop playing with popular culture and by God’s grace, fearlessly embrace all that He honors in a woman.”

May God help us and our sons support our courageous women.

For Further Prayerful Thought:

  1. What are some examples from your world that reveal the gender-blending worldview that is undermining God’s design of creation differences between men and women?
  2. Which arguments for men and young men to understand God’s revealed design of women make the most sense to you?
  3. What do you think of the Gospel Coalition’s argument by John Piper and the late Tim Keller that egalitarianism is a flat-out denial of the teaching of God’s Word, i.e. that there is no exegetical way to support egalitarianism from Scripture?
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Showing the World God’s Glorious Design of Masculinity

Showing the World God’s Glorious Design of Masculinity

On 14 June, 2025 By Gary Yagel

To those of you who have the privilege of being fathers, Happy Fathers’ Day. I want to begin this episode with a question: What do you think of the prayer, “God forgive us for aiming too low and hitting the target every time?” Do you want to go through life aiming low so you can hit the standard of mediocrity? Is that what you want the defining word for your life to be, mediocre? "He was a mediocre father. His commitment to Jesus was…mediocre." If you receive this blog, I doubt very much that mediocre is the adjective that you want describing the caliber of your commitment to godly fatherhood. 

To aim low, when it comes to our efforts to guide our sons into godly manhood is to fail them and to fail the Lord. Toxic, self-centered, masculinity is real in this world; it has harmed countless women. Its only cure is the gospel of Jesus Christ, which transforms. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come (2 Cor 5:17). Answering Jesus’ call to Christian men to show the world his power to fix broken manhood, restoring it to its self-sacrificing design, has never been more important. This episode examines the very high bar of what God designed manhood to be and calls us to pursue it.

Let’s take a moment to review where we’ve come in this June series. In the first episode, we examined the rising popularity of kick-boxing champion Andrew Tate among Christian teen guys as evidence that many in the rising generation of males are tired of being emasculated. With no positive vision of manhood that matches their masculine shape, many boys and men turn to online gurus who assure them, contrary to the message they get everywhere else, that their masculinity is good. The attraction of Christian teens to the broken masculinity of Andrew Tate should be a wake-up call to the church. If the church does not challenge our boys with a call to biblical manhood, they will be attracted to broken ones. To better understand the crisis of identity that young men face today, we identified five obstacles to them embracing the biblical call to godly masculinity.

Obstacle #1: the damage men have done to women by using their positions of power and authority to exploit them. Masculinity would not be under such severe attack if there weren’t so many women harmed by toxic expressions of it.

Obstacle #2: cultural Marxism being spread by Western colleges and universities, which views life through the lens of all men being oppressors.

Obstacle #3: the culture’s embrace of egalitarianism, which defines all structures of authority as oppressive and advances the deception that requiring submission to a boss, police officer, coach, or parent is demeaning (which we all know is not).

Obstacle #4: voices in the church retooling old arguments that attempt to label Paul’s teaching, if not all of the Bible, to be corrupted by surrounding culture, and not God’s inerrant truth.

Obstacle #5: the silence of complementarian church leaders who may express cultural sensitivity to unpopular biblical worldviews in preaching but who might not realize the devasting impact their silence is having on the rising generation of young men who cannot succeed in traveling through the cultural onslaught we just identified without the help of the church.  

Last week, we began with Jesus’ observation that those who ignore God’s Word, building their lives instead upon a foundation of cultural lies, (e.g. about gender and sexuality), build their lives on a foundation of sand—something that as fathers, we must not let our children do. God has ordained that society itself is built upon the foundation of the family, and the family rests upon the foundation of marriage between one man and one woman, the first institution established by God before the church or civil government. The foundation of marriage rests upon the uniting of two different creatures, male and female, whose differences, God went out of his way to emphasize in Genesis 2. We noted last week that God chose an intentional parallel structure to describe his creation of Adam, and Eve:

  • The creation of Adam begins with an explanation of why he was needed. When…there was no man to work the ground then the Lord God formed the man (Gen 2:5-6). Adam is made FOR the ground. The creation of Eve begins with an explanation of why she was needed, Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” Eve is created FOR Adam, to be his companion and lover.
  • Adam is given a name that means ground (ADAMAH). Eve is given a name that means out of the man (Gen 2:23). The word for male is ISH the word for woman is ISHAH.
  • Adam is made from the ground (Gen 2:7). Eve is made from the man. She, unlike any other creature, is fashioned from part of another creature—the rib  of Adam (Gen 2:21-22).
  • Adam’s creation calling is to work the ground (Gen 2:9-15). Eve’s creation calling is to assist the man (Gen 2:18, 20).
  • When Adam sins, what is cursed is the ground (Gen 3:17). When Eve sins, what is cursed is her relationship with the man & his kids.

God created very different scripts for Adam and Eve. But our kids are swimming every day in polluted cultural waters that deny male-female differences and are flooding into the church undermining the difference in roles assigned to Christian husbands and wives—roles that lead to a flourishing marriage and portray Christ and his relationship with his bride, the church.

THE MANHOOD SCRIPT

Excerpts from Chapter 2, Men Helping Sons Embrace Biblical Manhood.

(Remember that questions for the adult and son to interact with each other are sprinkled all through each chapter in the book, which are left out of this excerpt.)

Godly manhood is a calling. Christ wants to redeem every Christian man’s fallen, self-centered masculinity and restore him to the original design God displayed in creating unfallen Adam as a male. Christ came to fix everything broken in this world, including masculinity. In the Second Adam, men are empowered to become the Christ-like man Adam was designed to be. This chapter looks at that man.

A. Adam is placed in the garden to cause it and its inhabitants to flourish. In Genesis 2:15 we are told that Adam is put into the garden to work it (ESV). The Hebrew word is avad, which is also translated cultivate. It means to make fruitful, to cause to reach its full potential. Adam is to provide what the garden (which includes its inhabitants—his wife, kids, and clients) needs to thrive. Men may want to be heroes, ourselves, but Scripture says that successful manhood is measured by the degree to which we are hero-makers. Remember Jesus’ words, “Whoever would be great among you must be your servant.” Life reinforces this truth. Successful businessmen serve their customers well. Successful coaches help their players reach their full potential. Effective managers equip those they lead to be the best they can be.

1. When it comes to providing materially for the family, Scripture makes clear that Eve fully shares Adam’s mandate to build culture through vocation and that her gifts are required for the economic success of the family. However, Adam is assigned the primary responsibility for providing what his family needs, materially, to flourish. Eve loves by nourishing, i.e. the giving of herself. But Adam is more specifically assigned to cultivate the garden. i.e. provide from one part of the garden what another part needs (e.g. water in the garden to irrigate the pear tree, pears from the garden to feed humans, etc.) This refers to a man’s vocation. Scripture says God created us with specific work in mine.

2. Adam’s call to provide also means supplying what his loved ones need emotionally to flourish. Here are a few ways to fill their tanks:

  • Listen with understanding. Christian counselor Paul Tournier observes, “No one can develop freely in this world and find a full life without feeling understood by at least one person. Perhaps that is why Peter commanded; Husbands live together with your wives in an understanding way.
  • Use words to affirm. When Jesus began his ministry, he heard the audible voice of his heavenly father say the two things every son and daughter most want to hear from their fathers; I love you and I’m proud of you. “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”
  • Cultivate compassion. Jesus wins our hearts as the Great High Priest who sympathizes with our struggles.  For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are. Jesus was known for his compassionate heart.

3. Adam’s call is also to provide what his wife and children need spiritually to reach their full spiritual potential. In Ephesians 5:25-27, Paul challenges husbands to sacrifice themselves to present their brides to God as spiritually beautiful, without spot or wrinkle. A man is also to provide what his sons and daughters need to thrive spiritually. Such a calling is clear in Genesis18:19 when God says, For I have chosen him (Abraham), that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice. In the NT, Paul reflects this same understanding of the creation calling of fathers when he says, For you know how, like a father with his children, we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God. God makes husbands and fathers responsible for their families’ spiritual growth.

We know that leading requires being out in front, So, we have great incentive to follow hard after Jesus, so we can lead from our lives. But remember, spiritual leadership is not so much perfection as it is direction. Effective spiritual leaders still fall, and our families are well aware of that fact. But effective leaders get back up quickly heading back in the same direction—following Jesus.

B. Adam is placed into the garden to protect it. Genesis 2:15 continues, The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and KEEP it. The Hebrew word is shamar, which also means to guard, watch-over, and protect. The word is used of soldiers, shepherds, priests, custodians, and government officials. Rick Phillips writes, “This calling to keep rounds out the masculine mandate of the Bible. A man is not only to wield the plow but also to bear the sword. Being God’s deputy lord in the garden, Adam was not only to make it fruitful but to keep it safe” (The Masculine Mandate).

To appreciate this aspect of Adam’s calling, we Westerners must think outside our own culture, where birth control is widespread and infant mortality is low. In God’s design, the female in this male/female union is the one to bear children. In most historical settings, she would continually be pregnant during her child-bearing years. How perfect is God’s design for her partner to have the calling and ability to be her provider (avad) and protector (shamar), when her special calling to motherhood makes her especially vulnerable throughout much of her adult life.

1. Men are called to protect their families physically. On July 14th, 2024, Army Reserve Veteran and volunteer firefighter, Corey Comperatore, was sitting in the bleachers behind the podium at a political rally with his wife, Helen, and daughter, Allyson. As the speaker, Donald Trump, turned his head to look at the screen on his right, Comperatore heard the crack of a rifle. He immediately dove on top of his wife and daughter. After the ensuing chaos, as Helen and Allyson pushed out from under Corey, they discovered that one of the bullets had fatally hit him. His obituary includes these words:

"Corey's life was a reflection of his faith. He was a man of God who loved Jesus with every fiber of his being. His actions were guided by his unwavering belief and he inspired those around him to live with purpose and grace. His ability to lift the spirits of everyone he encountered was unparalleled. His courage was not the boisterous kind; it was the courage of quiet resilience, the strength to be vulnerable, and the bravery to lead with love. Corey's legacy is not just in the major milestones he achieved but in the small acts of kindness that marked his everyday life."

2. Men are called to protect their families from destructive ideas. Ideas have consequences; bad ideas have victims. Here are some examples of evil ideas resulting historically in great suffering.

  • Whites are superior to blacks—racism, slavery and segregation.
  • Males are superior to females—infanticide of baby girls.
  • The Arian race is superior—Nazism’s holocaust slaughter of 6 million Jews.
  • The wealthy are rich because they stole the poor’s share of the pie—Marxism’s Slaughter of over 85 million people.

Because ideas have such consequences, Paul makes clear that spiritual leaders must protect their followers from destructive ideas that can enslave them, just as the above evil ideas have enslaved their adherents. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ. Here are a few false, anti-biblical worldviews in our culture. 

  • Humanism: The elevation of the welfare of humans and opinions of humans to the highest level of importance, in disregard of God.
  • Egalitarianism: A denial of the God’s creation of marriage roles and authority structure for the home and church. It is based on the false notion that anyone commanded to submit to authority is inferior to the one assigned authority
  • Moral Relativism: The belief that truth, morality, and other values are culturally determined, and that absolute right and wrong do not exist.
  • Naturalism: The denial of the truth that the order of the creation points logically to an orderer from outside of creation, a creator to whom humans are accountable for their actions.

3. Men are also called to protect their families from spiritual attacks, which Adam failed to do. The ESV Study Bible points out: “The man’s role is to be not only a gardener but also a guardian. As a priest, he is to maintain the sanctity of the garden.” Adam was standing right next to Eve when she was tempted. He remained silent, passive. The ESV study notes continue, “Adam’s sin was both an act of conscious rebellion against God and a failure to carry out his divinely ordained responsibility to guard or ‘keep’ (Gen. 2:15) both the garden and the woman created as a ‘helper fit for him.’” A big part of protecting our family members, spiritually, is praying for them. Jesus said to Peter, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.

C. Adam is called to leave his home to pursue his wife. After God reveals the first two parts of Adam’s masculine calling in Genesis 2:15 and explains Eve’s creation in verses 18-23, God wraps up Adam’s calling with regards to Eve, specifically. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. He is one who pursues her.

1. Pursuing her means we are the initiator; she is the responder. C.S. Lewis noted, “God is so masculine that all of creation is feminine in comparison,” meaning that God is the initiator and creation answers by coming into existence. Manhood initiates in the pursuit of a woman. We risk rejection by asking her out, asking her to dance, and eventually asking her to be our wives. She decides how she will respond. The world of classic dance understands the creation design. A great male dancer leads; a great female dancer knows how to seamlessly follow.

2. We pursue her to pour out our love for her. We all know Paul’s command to husbands: Love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. The Greek word for “love” is agape, which describes, sacrificial, loyal, fierce, undeterred devotion. This is the call to manhood—the relentless sacrifice of ourselves for the sake of another. Love is a choice not a feeling. When we love her no matter what we are feeling, putting our arms around her even when she has just hurt or disappointed us, we make it easy for her to love us back. God created a woman to be a natural responder.

The best preparation for marriage is for a man to learn to love others with this agape (self-sacrificial) love. Paul gives us a concrete picture of it.  This love of which I speak is slow to lose patience—it looks for a way of being constructive. It is not possessive: it is neither anxious to impress nor does it cherish inflated ideas of its own importance. Love has good manners and does not pursue selfish advantage. It is not touchy. It does not keep account of evil or gloat over the wickedness of other people. On the contrary, it is glad with all good men when truth prevails (1 Cor 13:4-7).

D. Men are called to strength. At the end of King David’s life, he summoned his son to his bedside and said: Be strong, and show yourself a man, and keep the charge of the Lord your God, walking in his ways and keeping his statutes, his commandments, his rules, and his testimonies that you may prosper in all that you do and wherever you turn. At the close of Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth he wrote, Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. The Apostle John, addresses subgroups of people in the church praising the young men for their strength. I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one. Neither David, nor Paul, nor John was talking about working out. They refer to inner strength of character and fighting a spiritual battle. Solomon is challenged by his father to faithful, unwavering obedience to God’s Word. Paul challenges the men in the Corinthian church to be strong warriors in the spiritual battle, being watchful and unrelenting in raising the shield of faith. John commends the young men for being strong spiritual warriors in combatting The Evil One.

Men, here is a portrait of manhood as it was designed to be. Let's lead our sons to join us in setting the bar high, showing the power of Christ to restore broken manhood because in doing so, we show Jesus, the perfect man, to the world. Jesus is worthy of the best effort we can offer him.

For Further Prayerful Thought:

  1. Why not go easy on ourselves and set the bar of masculinity that we live out low. After all, who likes to serve and sacrifice for others?
  2. When you consider that the first call of manhood is to sweat so others prosper and die to ourselves so that others flourish, does that inspire a sense of noble calling or inner resistance to living a life of sacrifice for others?
  3. Which component of the call to protect loved ones from destructive ideas, stood out most to you. How can you do a better job with such protection?
  4. Since men want to be strong, why does the call to spiritual strength given by David, Paul, and John not inspire Christian men better to be spiritual warriors?
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Why Recovering God’s Manhood Script Matters

Why Recovering God’s Manhood Script Matters

On 07 June, 2025 By Gary Yagel

Jesus closed his most famous message, the Sermon on the Mount, with the warning that those who ignore his words build their lives on the worst possible foundation—sand. Our sons, daughters, and grandchildren who build their marriages and families by ignoring God’s design of created gender differences and assigned gender roles build on a foundation that is bound to collapse like sand. In contrast, said Jesus, are those who build their lives on obedience to his Word, which would include God’s delineation of created gender differences in Genesis and assigned gender differences in responsibility in their marriages and homes. This group builds their family on a foundation as solid and secure as rock.

Which foundation will your sons, daughters, and grandchildren build their marriage and family upon? You can have a lot to do with the answer. This month’s series, Men Helping Sons Embrace Biblical Manhood, explains a tool by that name. It is a five-week study for high school sons led by dads, youth leaders or men’s ministries, which you can use or help promote. Today we examine six reasons that helping our sons follow God’s Manhood script MATTERS.

Walter Trobisch, in his book, I Loved a Girl, recounts a legend from India about the creation of woman:

The Creator created woman and gave her to the man. After one week, the man came back and said, "Lord, the creature that you have given me makes my life unhappy. She talks without ceasing and torments me intolerably, so that I have no rest. She insists that I pay attention to her all the time and so my hours are wasted. She cries about every little thing and leads an idle life. I have come to give her back to you, because I can't live with her."

The Creator said, "All right," and he took her back.

After a week passed, the man came back to the Creator and said, "Lord, my life is so empty since I gave the creature back to you. I always think of her—how she danced and sang, how she looked at me out at the corner of her eye, how she chatted with me and snuggled with me. She was so beautiful to look at and so soft to touch. I liked her laugh so much! Please give her back to me."

The Creator said, "All right." And gave her back.

But three days later, the man came back again and said, “What shall I do? I can't live with her, and I can't live without her!”

The legend observes that males are BOTH frustrated by females and attracted to them. The reason is that they are so different from us. We can’t live with them easily, because their way of operating is so opposite to ours. But we can’t live without them, because we are powerfully attracted to them as negatively charged electrons in a battery race through the circuit, towards the opposite, positive pole.

The very first mention of human beings in God’s creation account stresses that his creation design of human beings is binary. He made them male and female. There is no hierarchy of value; both share equally the dignity of bearing God’s image. Both share in the cultural mandate, to exercise dominion over their kingdom, earth. As the Triune God is three different persons joined in love, God created his image, “man” as the union of different beings to complete one another. Notice that “man” is both singular and plural, just as God is both. Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. Since he exists as the loving union of the tree distinct Persons of the Trinity, God designed the unit called “man” to be the loving union of two distinct persons, man and woman to complete one another in love. This union of two separate beings is exhibited in the way their bodies fit together in the sexual union of marriage.

Both the differences that frustrate us and those that generate male-female magnetism result from God’s deliberate design of males and females differently. He intentionally created Adam with weaknesses that only a woman could fill and Eve with weaknesses that only a man could fill. By design, each gender provides what the other lacks. Eve completes Adam by supplying what he lacks, and Adam completes what is missing in Eve. God calls this unit “man” It is worth noting that

God devoted just five verses in Genesis 1 to emphasize Adam and Eve’s equality, but twenty-one verses in Genesis 2 to emphasize their differences. Their differences are intentionally highlighted by God’s parallel structure of Adam and Eve’s creation:

  • Adam is made for the ground. The creation of Adam begins with an explanation of why he was needed. When…there was no man to work the ground then the Lord God formed the man (Gen 2:5-6).
  • Adam is given a name that means ground (Gen 2:7). Here the word for the man is ADAM and the word for ground is ADAMAH.
  • Adam is made from the ground (Gen 2:7).
  • Adam’s creation calling is to work the ground (Gen 2:9-15).
  • When Adam sins, what is cursed is the ground (Gen 3:17).

In a perfect parallel structure, God explains Eve’s creation:

  • Eve is made for the man (Gen 2: 18,20). The creation of Eve begins with an explanation of why she was needed, Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” The next verses summarize a search through creation for such a helper with ended with the words, But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.
  • Eve is given a name that means out of the man (Gen 2:23). The word for male is ISH the word for woman is ISHAH.
  • Eve is made from the man (Gen 2:21-22).
  • Eve’s creation calling is to assist the man (Gen 2:18, 20).
  • When Eve sins, what is cursed is her relationship with the man & his kids.

God’s design for humans is that each gender delight in what the other gender brings into the relationship to complete it. For this reason. God emphasizes the equality of Adam and Eve in the first chapter of Genes; both bear his image and exercise dominion over their kingdom, earth. But God puts even more emphasis on each gender valuing the other by devoting four times as much space to emphasizing how different male and female are designed to be. God wrote different creation scripts for men than he did for women. Those scripts are fundamental to living out what we have been created for. But as Owen Strachan & Gavin Peacock observe:

“Today, the sexes have lost the script for their lives, and so many of us don’t know what role to play in life. Try asking a male friend at a coffee shop, ‘What is your manhood for? What is the purpose of being a man?’ Or try querying a young woman at the local university, ‘What meaning does womanhood have? Does it matter at all?’…Outside of affirming feminism, transgender identity, and shape-shifting sexual orientation, it’s taboo today to speak of manhood and womanhood in any fixed way. This is true in secular circles and it’s increasingly true even in Christian circles” (The Grand Design: Male and Female He Made Them).

WHY RECOVER GOD’S MANHOOD SCRIPT?

(The rest of this text is taken from the new booklet, Men Helping Sons Embrace Biblical Manhood, but the interactive questions are left out.)

A. The first reason is that God thinks it is important. There are 1189 chapters of the Bible, God’s revelation to us. After the creation of the world God devotes part of the first and almost all the second to explaining how Adam and Eve are fully equal, created to be different, and are to relate to one another. Understanding these truths is of utmost importance to God!

B. Healthy males want to develop their masculine identity. Author David Murrow makes this point in summarizing what psychology tells us about men. He writes,

“Boys grow up in a feminine world. A boy spends his first nine months inside a woman’s body, and after he is born, a multitude of women—his mom, babysitters, nursery and daycare workers, and schoolteachers—care for him. At some point, however, a boy must break from the feminine and begin to define himself as something different from the mother, from whose body he sprang. Psychologists call this separation/individuation. A boy must reject…her feminine ways and take his place in society as a man. A male who fails to separate, psychologically from his mother faces a lifetime of gender confusion, abuse, or dysfunction. “

Every one of the thirty trillion cells in a male body has XY chromosomes and in the female body XX. Embryologists now know that at eight weeks, the presence of the XY chromosome in the human embryo causes the male’s whole body to develop differently than a female’s body, including his brain. One scholar points out, “Sexuality permeates one’s being to its very depth; it conditions every facet of one’s life. As the self is always aware of itself as an “I,” so this “I” is always aware of itself as himself or herself. Our self-knowledge is indissolubly bound up not simply with our human being but with our sexual being” (Jewett, Man as Male and Female).Understanding God’s design for manhood matters to males because we are hardwired with an inner compulsion to be masculine. 

C. Godly males want to attract godly females. God created the magnetism between female and male. So, it stands to reason that the more we become godly men the more a godly female will be drawn to us. For example, in the dance of man with woman, God has assigned the man the role of taking the initiative, just as Jesus, our Bridegroom, took the initiative to leave heaven to pursue us, drawing us to himself with the cords of love. A woman naturally finds her heart drawn to masculine men who are not passive, or tentative in pursuing them but consistently take the initiative in each new phase, as the relationship grows.

Have you ever noticed how often a beautiful woman marries an average-looking guy? I think I know why. Whereas a man looks for a woman to love, a woman looks for a man who will love her. Her attraction to him is much less related to his looks than it is to his confident ability to love her consistently, making her feel treasured, cherished, and loved.

This truth has tremendous implications for guys getting ready to date. Smart guys put more energy into learning how to be attentive to a girl’s needs and make others feel valuable than into worrying about their looks. The masculine strength to consistently love her is just one part of God’s masculine design of manhood. Women can’t help but be attracted to the godly masculinity to which God designed them to be drawn.

D. Understanding God’s creation design of male and female is essential for making male-female relationships in general work throughout life. Although marriage is not on the minds of most high school guys, picking up what they can about the feminine creation design is valuable before marriage. After marriage may be a bit late; most divorces are filed for by unhappy wives whose husbands did not realize how different their wives’ needs were from their own. In fact, not learning about a woman’s emotional makeup ahead of marriage has caused a large majority of female divorcees to say that their married years were the loneliest years of their lives (Stephen Arterburn and Fred Stoeker, Every Woman’s Desire).

Not only is understanding femininity essential before marriage; it is invaluable for preventing potential male-female misunderstandings in general. At one stage in my marriage, I read a Christian counselor’s observation that men tend to use words to communicate decisions and ideas, but women tend to use words more to communicate feelings. Thankfully, that realization came to mind in a critical conversation with one of my twin daughters.

Both girls had decided independently to go to Covenant College, but Karen took a while longer than her sister to decide. Fast forward. As we pulled up the driveway to drop off the girls at Covenant College with my five kids in my van and a u-hall trailer behind, Karen said, “I don’t want to be here.” Every part of my masculine soul wanted to turn around and say to her, “Don’t you think it’s a little bit late to say that?” But I actually realized she wasn’t questioning her decision; she was telling me how she felt. She was afraid—afraid her college roommate might not like her, dreading being eleven hours away from our close-knit family, fearful that she wouldn’t fit in with the girls on her floor. I held my tongue but then heard her seven-year-old brother say through tears, “I just don’t know why you have to go to college so far away.” We all had a big cry and moved on.

God says the wisdom of Scripture is more precious than jewels, and nothing you desire can compare with her. Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. This claim is certainly true in understanding what God has revealed about his glorious design of femininity and masculinity. It leads to pleasant paths of shalom, which is the Hebrew word for flourishing. 

E. Discipleship is the call to show the power of Christ to restore manhood and womanhood, broken by sin, to the pre-fall, creation design. The target of male discipleship is restored godly manhood. The target of female discipleship is restored godly womanhood. When both Peter and Paul call Christ-followers to discipleship, their challenges to women and men are different. Consider Peter’s way of motivating Christ-like character in women. Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear--but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart. How motivating is this appeal to you? Compare such words with Paul’s appeal to male leaders at Corinth. Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.

F. A fractured view of sexual personhood has captured the minds of many teens today, leading them down a destructive path. The fifth reason for understanding God’s gender design is to be able to thwart a view of sexual personhood harming those we care about. This view is being promoted by Trans Student Education Resources, through their Gender Unicorn graphic. This fractured view of sexual personhood splits apart five aspects of sexuality, proclaiming that every human is free to choose and change all five. He/she then lives a fractured existence. Here is their definition of each fractured part:

  • Gender identity: deciding for yourself that your identity is male, female, or bisexual regardless of your anatomy.
  • Gender expression (role): the way you express your gender, adoption of expectations for your gender.
  • Sex assigned at birth: the designation on your birth certificate as male or female was merely the opinion of parents/doctors.
  • Physical attraction: sexual orientation, same-sex, heterosexual, or bisexual attraction. This is distinct from emotional attraction. So, a man can be in love with his wife but do his sexual thing on the side with a fellow homosexual.
  • Emotional attraction: romance. Separating emotional attraction from physical attraction is the basis for prostitution and the sexual abuse of women and children. It is evil.

Some Christians argue that love requires us to embrace feminism’s attempt to overthrow the Bible’s “unjust patriarchy” and our transgender friends’ attempts to choose their genders. But Paul said love does not rejoice at wrongdoing but but rejoices with the truth. As Christ-followers, whose eyes have been opened to the truth of God’s Word, we see both the destructive power of the Gender Unicorn view of sexual personhood and the glory of God’s design of male and female differently to complete each other. Our conversion causes us to savor, not apologize for God’s gender design. Strachan and Owens observe:

"When we trust Christ as our Savior, the beauty of God’s design comes into view. Our conversion opens our eyes to the nature and purpose of our God-given sex. We see the body not as a blunt instrument for our lusts, but as the gift of God for his glorification. We see our relationships with the opposite sex not as a power play, but as an opportunity to serve others in the name of Christ. We see the plan of complementarity, the roles we have the privilege of filling, not as a sentence to misery but as a summons to happiness" (The Grand Design).

Not only does the comparison between the Gender Unicorn view of sexual personhood and God’s gender design lead us to embrace God’s design ourselves. It also urges us to take a stand in our culture. Jesus assigned us to be light to the world and salt that retards the decay of sin on earth. Strachan and Owens, again rightly point out: "When it comes to understanding gender, Christians have something far, far better to offer our children and culture. It is not human disintegration—the splitting apart of one’s biological sex from one’s sexual identity and sexual role, or the separation of physical attraction from emotional attraction. It is an integrated view of body and soul that sees God’s design of male and female to be glorious. Our culture desperately needs to hear our message" (Ibid).  

For Further Prayerful Thought:

  1. It is hard to overstate the prominence that God gives to his manhood and womanhood scripts in the first two of 1189 chapters of his revelation. Why do you think Christians today don’t think more about those scripts?
  2. What do you think of the statement, “Healthy males want to develop their masculine identity?” How is the identity of a male Christian like the identity of a female one and how is different?
  3. Which of the six reasons given that God’s “manhood script” should matter to high school guys most stood out to you?

WOULD YOU HELP US SPREAD THE WORD?

The content above is from the first chapter of the new booklet, Men Helping Sons Embrace Biblical Manhood. How valuable do you think it would be for a teen  guy to process this content with some older guys, especially his father, but also a youth pastor or other men in the church? Can you imagine what would happen if just ten percent of the Christian dads in America pursued this journey to biblical manhood with their sons—how that would radically change their relationship, the impact it would have on our culture, how the world would see Jesus through self-giving manhood displayed by Christian guys? 

One way you can help us is by posting a message like the following on your Facebook page with the link to our bookstore along with copying the book cover below. Here is some possible wording:

“A Christian ministry I support is celebrating Fatherhood Month by letting the Christian community know about a new 5-week journey to biblical manhood for high school guys, which they have just published, to be led by fathers, youth leaders, or men’s ministries.  It is Men Helping Sons Embrace Biblical Manhood: A Five-Week Study for High School Guys Designed for Dads or Youth Leaders to Lead.”

Here is the link to our bookstore and below is the  image of the book cover to be copied to your Facebook page. Thanks so much for your help.

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Why is Andrew Tate Popular with Young Christian Men?

Why is Andrew Tate Popular with Young Christian Men?

On 31 May, 2025 By Gary Yagel

Thanks for joining us for our June Fatherhood Month celebration series, Men Helping Sons Embrace Biblical Manhood. We begin this series with a look at a new phenomenon that is impacting young Christian men. Evangelical Pastor, Seth Troutt, ran into this phenomenon while speaking at a junior high winter camp. He saw eight eighth grade boys sitting in a circle in the woods during free time. He walked up to them and asked, “What are you gents talking about?” For a few moments, they resisted answering. But one caved and answered, “we’re watching an Andrew Tate video.” A few months later a pastor of a large church full of college students said to Troutt “We’re having an Andrew Tate problem, especially among our high school and college boys.”

For those unfamiliar with Andrew Tate, he is a former kickboxing champion-turned-social-media-influencer who has become popular among young men for his views on masculinity. Tate has become a phenomenon among young males including many Christians. He has over ten million followers on X. According to one U.K.-based market research consultant, in 2023, one in three 16 to 25-year-old men said they had a positive view of Andrew Tate. Regarding his influence on American Christian teen boys, Nancy Pearcey, author of The Toxic War on Masculinity, wrote recently on X: A former graduate student of mine now teaches at a high school, and she sent me an email saying, “All my male students are fans of Andrew Tate. They are even including quotes from Andrew Tate in the yearbook.” I asked, “Where do you teach?” She answered, “At a classical Christian school.” I believe that young Christian men are paying attention to Andrew Tate because he is pushing back against the cultural pressure that is emasculating men. This episode examines closely five identifiable components of that pressure, coming not only from the culture but from the church.

Let's begin by digging deeper into the Tate phenomenon. Shane Morris, of the Colson Center, puts his finger on the attraction of young males to Andrew Tate’s message. He writes, “Mainstream culture, under the influence of progressive and feminist ideas, has for years dismissed everything distinctive about men as “toxic.” Male strength, competitiveness, and physicality have been denounced in pop culture and medicated in schools. The idea of fathers leading a home has been mocked ceaselessly on television, and boys have been subtly taught there’s nothing they can do or aspire to that girls can’t do better” (Andrew Tate’s Counterfeit Masculinity, January 29, 2025).

As one Tate interviewer said, “Our culture’s message to young boys today is, ‘Stop being yourself. Sit still. Stop joking. Suppress your aggression. Share your feelings. Obey. Female qualities are virtuous, masculine qualities are oppressive.’” Many in the rising generation of males are tired of being emasculated. With no positive vision of manhood that matches their masculine shape, many boys and men turn to online gurus who assure them, contrary to the message they get everywhere else, that their masculinity is good. The attraction of Christian teens to the broken masculinity of Andrew Tate should be a wake-up alarm to the church. If we do not present our boys with a biblical call to masculinity, they will be attracted to broken ones.  I want to say that again. If the church does not challenge our boys with a call to biblical manhood, they will be attracted to broken ones. 

FIVE OBSTACLES TO BOYS EMBRACING BIBLICAL MANHOOD

A. The Reality of Toxic Masculinity. In 2017 the public was shocked and repulsed to learn that many high-profile men were acting as if they were sexually entitled to a degree that no one realized. The hedge fund billionaire, Jeffry Epstein, got away with trafficking young women for many years with the collusion of high level celebrities and politicians. USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar sexually abused hundreds of young girls. Following the exposure of numerous sexual-abuse allegations against film producer Harvey Weinstein in October 2017, the #MeToo movement began and spread virally as a hashtag on social media. This exposure has been a welcome force for righteousness.

But the #MeToo movement was just a visible, culture-wide recognition of the awful abuse of women that has taken place in every culture of the world. Every Calvinist must agree that men have had the positions of power in every culture and because of their depravity, have abused women. Not only has the church been slow to address this evil in the culture, but it has also been slow to address this evil in the church, especially churches with all male leadership. In the past, extreme views of male headship have caused Bible-believing pastors to counsel wives to remain submissive to their husbands despite being abused, the church leadership being way too slow to demand repentance of abusers or else be excommunicated. Too often Christian wives have been counseled to “forgive” their husband’s unfaithfulness and take him back sexually, when she should never do that without strong evidence of his repentance. Forgiving does not mean trusting an untrustworthy man enough to give yourself to him. The harm that toxic male behavior and bad male leadership have caused to girls and women even inside the church is immeasurable. No wonder so many women object to Biblical teaching about masculine authority. No wonder so many women are driven into the feminist fold. Consider the story of Nancy Pearcey, author of The Toxic War on Masculinity. She writes,

I had two fathers, a Public one and a Private one. I loved and admired my public father. He was a respected university professor with a strong work ethic. He was willing to pay steep tuition costs for all six of his children to attend a Lutheran elementary school. On Sundays, he made sure we were all neatly lined up in church at the front of the sanctuary. Dad was ambitious, intelligent, and charming.

My Private father was a completely different man. At home he frequently went into rages that terrorized the entire family: shouting, punching and kicking. He would call us pigs and stupid idiots. He was open about his violence, saying, “Do this or I’ll beat you.” Then he carried through on his threats….He was careful to hit us where the bruises would be covered by our clothing, so that no one at school or church ever suspected. Watching my siblings get beaten was as traumatic as experiencing it myself…About halfway through high school, I abandoned my childhood religious upbringing. Not surprisingly, given my experience with my father, I was drawn irresistibly to the feminist movement, devouring all the classic books, from Betty Friedland’s, The Feminine Mystique to Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, to Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics, and many more.

I have yet to meet a feminist who has not been deeply wounded by a man. Men use their power to harm women. That fact has created a cultural and personal reaction to any traditional or biblical views that assign men authority or power.

B. The Influence of Critical Theory in Today’s Culture. Critical theory, also known as cultural Marxism, is rooted in Karl Marx’s worldview that the definitive lens for viewing culture is conflict between two classes, the oppressed, proletariat workers and the oppressor, rich, bourgeoise land and factory owners. Class struggle against the oppressing privileged class in this worldview justifies the murder of business owners and seizure of their property. Under Moa Zedong, Marxism enflamed violent hatred in Chinese peasants towards the wealthy, justifying the brutal annihilation of factory and land owners. History reveals that eventually 65 million Chinese lost their lives through Mao’s evil Marxist policies.

Cultural Marxism (critical theory) began with Italian Marxist Antonia Gramsci, who extended this oppressor/oppressed lens into every aspect of culture. Thus, not only are laborers oppressed by business owners, but the poor are oppressed by the rich, blacks are oppressed by whites, women are oppressed by men, homosexuals and transgendered oppressed by cisgendered people. Poor nations are oppressed by wealthy nations, immigrants wanting to cross our borders are oppressed by Americans citizens who want closed borders. Palestinian Muslims are oppressed by Israel giving Palestinians the right to be antisemitic and call for the annihilation of Jews “from the river to the sea.” Gramsci called the force that enables these oppressors to oppress “unjust, cultural hegemony,” which means the social, cultural, ideological, or economic influence exerted by a dominant group.

This ideology was embraced by the Frankfurt school, which in 1935 crossed the Atlantic and settled in at Columbia University, in NYC. These critical theory proponents expanded Marx’s oppressor/oppressed economic lens to every sphere of social injustice. All inequities are caused by the cultural power of the OPPRESSORS, which these OPPRESSORS cling to through their religious, political, social, and cultural structures. These structures, such as Christianity, the US Constitution, the free market, accurate history, and the structure of the family bestow unjust privilege and so, must be torn down to accomplish social justice. Any legitimacy given to the structures that give power to the oppressors to oppress, must be destroyed. Patriarchy is at the top of the list.

We’ve seen that individual fallen men have exhibited toxic masculinity. But part of the insidiousness of critical theory is that guilt is assigned not for individual acts of oppression but for simply belonging to critical theory’s determined “oppressor class.” By definition, males are the oppressor class of females. Nancy Pearcey recounts that a student of hers received a message from a female classmate that said, “You are a white, privileged male. You have nothing to say, so just shut up and listen.” Masculinity, according to critical theory, is, by definition, oppressive. And patriarchy, which gives males privilege must be torn down. The culture in which the rising generation of men swims daily tells them that their manhood is repulsive, automatically making them evil oppressors.

C. The Culture’s Widescale Embrace of Egalitarianism. For over fifty years, Second Wave Feminism has been teaching through social media platforms and woman’s studies curricula in colleges and universities that the Bible teaches an unjust patriarchy. It is argued that since Eve is created to assist Adam and since leadership in the home and church is assigned to men, the Bible reflects the oppressive patriarchy of unenlightened biblical writers. Here is a sample of accusations cited by Pearcey against the biblical teaching of complementary roles:

  • “At its core, complementarian theology is one of inequality and hierarchy. And inequality breeds abuse” (The Huffington Post).
  • “The theology of male headship, ‘feeds the rape culture that we see permeating Christianity today’” (cofounder of #ChurchToo).
  • “Because complementarian theology promotes a power differential between men and women, it fosters the sort of abuse of power that devolves into sexual abuse” (The Huffington Post).
  • “The inherent logic of patriarchy says that if men have the right to power and control over women and children, they also have the right to enforce that control. It is this control-over component of patriarchy which makes it vulnerable to violence and abuse” (Sexual Abuse in Christian Homes Churches).

The problem with these accusations is that they ignore the data from the social sciences. Objective data shows that it is the biblical view of godly manhood that causes flourishing. Pearcey cites irrefutable evidence. “Compared to secular men, devout Christian family men who attend church regularly are more loving husbands and more engaged fathers. They have the lowest rates of divorce. And astonishingly, they have the lowest rates of domestic violence of any major group in America" (Ibid).

D. The Assault on God’s Gender Design from Inside the Church. Here are a few examples:

  • “It is no secret that abuse is prevalent in conservative churches that embrace headship theory” (Adventist Today).
  • “Complementarian theology ‘is a breeding ground for abusive marriages.’ The problem is not just an occasional ‘rotten apple’ but a ‘rotten theological tree,’ giving rise to sexism and misogyny” (Religion Dispatches).
  • “I believe that male headship theology makes abuse more possible and more likely. I believe that power differences between equals are emotionally, physically, sexually, and spiritually destructive” (Christians for Biblical Equality).

The most recent egalitarian attempt to undermine God’s design of masculinity and femininity is Beth Barr’s book, The Making of Biblical Womanhood. Here is a summary of her argument from Kevin DeYoung, writing for the Gospel Coalition. “The idea of ‘biblical womanhood’ is nothing other than Christian patriarchy, and the only reason it continues to flourish is because women and men blindly continue to support it (p. 216). For too long, Barr argues, the system of Christian patriarchy has place[d] power in the hands of men and take[n] power out of the hands of women" (The Making of Bibilical Womanhood: A Review Volume  46--Issue 2 Gospel Coalition).

Barr never even tries to refute clear biblical teaching that can't be ignored, texts like Ephesians 5: 22-24: Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Barr simply pushes these clear complementarian texts aside and attempts to discredit those who faithfully hold to them like John Piper. For example, she argues that Paul’s use of feminine images like a pregnant mother, a mother giving birth, and even a nursing mother “easily refute” Piper’s position. But as DeYoung points out, she never answers a single one of Piper’s arguments that:

"God has revealed himself to us in the Bible pervasively as King, not Queen, and as Father, not Mother. He argues that the Son of God came into the world as a man, that the priests in Israel were men, that the apostles were all men, that men are given the responsibility to lead, protect, and provide. Piper acknowledges that emphasizing a “masculine ministry” can be seriously misunderstood and misapplied. He also underscores several times that a “masculine ministry” is for the flourishing of women and that women contribute in fruitful partnership to the work of ministry. Again, Barr has every right to disagree with Piper’s vision for ministry, but that disagreement should deal with his specific arguments…Time and again, Barr quickly pushes aside any evidence that might challenge her thesis" (Ibid).

The egalitarian denial of gender roles in the home and church is serious.

  • The author of egalitarianism is Satan, himself, whose rebellion was rooted in his refusal to submit to God’s order of creation desiring to be equal to God.
  • When God cursed Adam for his rebellion, God began not with because you ate the fruit, but with the words, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree.” God begins with his displeasure at their reversal of the created order. Adam was to be Eve’s head. Eve was to rule over the reptile kingdom, exercising dominion with Adam over the earth. But in eating the forbidden fruit, Adam followed Eve and Eve followed the serpent. In Genesis 2:15, Adam was assigned responsibility to protect the garden and its inhabitants. But when the garden and Eve were attacked by Satan, he remained passive. Our rising generation of sons does not need the help of egalitarians to be passive. It is part of the fallen nature we inherited from Adam. 
  • Egalitarians set up a straw man of biblcal patriarchy. They substitute the concept of Roman patriarchy, which was literally, father rule (PATER ARCHOS) for what the NT teaches. Roman fathers had the power of life and death. If a Roman father did not like the look of his newborn child and turned his thumb down, the child would immediately be taken out and drowned. Such absolute power was NOTHING like the fatherhood descrubed in the OT and NT, which followed the rule of law. OT fathers were accountable to obey the Law of Moses. NT fathers were accountable to NT church elders to treat their wives and children with Christ-like love.
  • Egalitarian efforts to set up a variety of straw men they can shoot down is made easy by our "sound bite" culture. How can we blame a teen girl who rejects what the Bible says about gender roles when she says, “The Bible says that Eve was made to be Adam’s helper, and I don’t accept the idea that my calling in life is to wash floors and clean toilets for men.” Full biblical gender-role teaching is extensive, glorious, and calls men to sacrificial love. But phrases and statements taken out of context are easily used to generate doubts about biblical gender teaching. The Hebrew word for helper is in fact EZER, which is used numerous times in the Psalms for God himself being mankind’s helper. There is NOTHING demeaning about the word—but that is not the way it comes across, especially when manipulated by egalitarians.
  • Egalitarianism destroys the masculine motivation to lead.

E. The Silence of Complementarian Pastors. I understand that proclaiming the Word of God needs to be done pastorally and sensitively. In egalitarian Western culture, to speak about wives submitting to husbands will be offensive to many. And it can be reasonably argued that a sermon on countercultural topics like abortion, or God’s gender design risks causing the lost members of the audience to think they must adopt a pro-life political position or embrace complementarianism to come to faith in Christ. But this episode is a reminder to pastors, ruling elders, and fathers, that there is another group sitting in the pews on Sunday mornings, besides a few unbelievers. That group is young men, who are being crushed by the attack on their very identify as males. They need US to point them towards the glorious, biblical vision of godly manhood. They don't need us to be apologetic about God's gender design of male and female differently to complete one another; they need us to celebrate that design because God has chosen it to image himself. Is your church leadership committed to doing that?

This month you’ll be hearing about a new tool available on our website called, Men Helping Sons Embrace Biblical Manhood. It is an interactive, 5-week study designed for fathers, youth leaders, or men’s ministries to go through with their high school sons. From the perspective of creation, fall, redemption, restoration, it examines what Scripture says about masculinity, femininity, sex, and marriage in a format that is rich with questions to generate interact with high school guys.

The Andrew Tate phenomenon is real. It shows us our teen boys' desperate need to understand God’s design of themselves as they are about to become men. Whether or not your church preaches complementarianism from the pulpit or finds a way to use this new resource—please don’t be silent about God’s gender design. I think you will agree with Martin Luther’s observation that shrinking back from proclaiming all of Scripture, because part of it is counter-cultural, at some point becomes unfaithfulness to Jesus. Luther said,  If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at the moment attacking, I am not CONFESSING Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Our boys need their church leadership to proclaim the whole counsel of God.

For Further Prayerful Thought:

  1. What are your thoughts about the growing popularity of Andrew Tate even among Christian men?
  2. Which parts of the secular culture’s attack on masculinity stood out most to you?
  3. Which parts of the church’s egalitarian attack on biblical teaching or Bible- believing church leaders reticence to celebrate the glory of God’s gender design bother you the most?
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You Can’t Ignore the Holiness of God and Experience His Presence

You Can’t Ignore the Holiness of God and Experience His Presence

On 25 May, 2025 By Gary Yagel

The great theologian Augustine prayed famously, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.” King David would have been the first to affirm Augustine’s observation about human nature in general and his own longings. He begins Psalm 63 with the words. You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you. David knew that he was created to enjoy a love relationship with God. But the event from David’s life that we study in this episode reveals David learning an important lesson about God’s presence: You can’t enjoy that presence if you ignore the holiness of God. 

As you know, the foundation of this podcast is the belief that God designed men to be mission-focused. If we capture men’s hearts with the greatness of our mission as Christ-followers, men are hard-wired to sacrifice what it takes to accomplish that mission. But most Christian men have a fuzzy view of what that mission is.  

Certainly, that was the case for me. When I began a career as a pastor and church planter, I realized that I could too narrowly define my mission as the success of the church I was planting, instead of defining my mission as dying to myself to meet my wife’s needs, devoting myself to helping my kids reach their full potential, glorifying God through the spiritual fruit of my attitudes, and sharing Christ with a neighbor who never ends up coming to my church. I knew that the best safeguard against becoming a workaholic pastor was to define my mission holistically as a Christ-follower. So, I retreated with the Lord and studied every passage I could find that addresses our mission. I discovered that every one of these numerous descriptions can be placed into one of three categories. First and foremost, we are called TO Christ to enjoy a love relationship with him. Second, we are called TO BE LIKE Christ, to exhibit Christ-like attitudes. Third, we are called TO EXERCISE DOMINION for Christ, i.e. to spread his kingdom rule over ever sphere of human life. In thirty years of helping men stay focused on their mission, I’ve never been able to improve upon this three-fold understanding of our call from Jesus.

Today’s episode addressed the first component of our mission—called TO Christ to enjoy a love relationship with him. This mission imperative was summarized by Jesus as the Great Commandment. "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength” (Mk 12:30). God’s commands to us are always for our benefit. Since we were created FOR a personal, love-relationship with God, Jesus commands what is best for us. “Love the LORD your God,” says Jesus, “That is your mission.” God’s presence in our lives is what Jesus’ atonement for our sins has accomplished both now and for eternity. The Father sent Jesus to remove the guilt that separated us from him so that we could experience a personal relationship with him. Scripture uses metaphors of the two closest human relationships that exist—that of a husband’s delight in his bride and of a father’s delight in his child to describe what Christ’s death has accomplished. Before we look at what David learned about God’s presence with him, let’s think about the significance of God’s personal presence in our lives.

GOD’S PRESENCE IN OUR LIVES MEANS EVERYTHING TO US

A. God’s presence with us completes us. We were created FOR a relationship with God, which is only possible because we, unlike the rest of creation, are made in his image. We have the spiritual and moral capacity to know and love God, which no other creature has. Blaise Paschal described this heart hunger for fulfillment as “a God-shaped-vacuum.” Fallen human nature seeks to fill that vacuum with false gods that fail to fill a vacuum that only God truly can. David expresses this yearning in Psalm 63:1-2, my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

B. God’s presence fills our love tank. We are not designed to walk through the ups and downs of life alone. As the space-walking astronaut outside the space capsule needs to be attached through an oxygen line to the ship, humans need a constant supply of love. Though sin broke the lifeline, the cross restores it. We can breathe in and out companionship with the God who loves us, just as Adam and Eve walked with God in Eden in the cool of the day. As we saw last week, David constantly poured out his heart to God knowing that what he was feeling was understood. Later, Scripture would reinforce this one-on-one privilege, urging us to draw near to Jesus, our Great High Priest. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin (Heb 4:15). Although Scripture tells us that we need companionship with humans, not just God, the significance of this life-transforming intake of God’s love is hard to overstate. Instead of being unconsciously impelled to have to vent our experiences, feelings, and opinions in conversations with others, Christians with love tanks filled through fellowship with God are released from self-preoccupation to take an interest in others, listening to their experiences, feelings, and opinions. David’s Psalm 63 words to describe his love tank being filled were in verse 3, Your constant love is better than life.

C. God’s presence reinvigorates our soul. God did not create us to be bored. He gave us hearts with passions that need to be ignited. He gave us hearts that need to be reinvigorated. In my work with guys struggling with porn, we recognize that lust often strikes a bored heart. The very nature of sexual arousal is to get our hearts beating fast. God knows that the merging of two lives together in marriage requires enormous work and self-denial. So, he gives couples the thrill of sex—not always a twenty-one-gun salute but nevertheless a thrilling experience of explosive pleasure that gets the heart racing. Paul seems to be aware of the boredom vulnerability of our heart, which exposes us to sexual temptation. He both urges couples to keep satisfying their spouses sexual cravings and points out that there is a greater thrill for Christians—the thrill of knowing and being loved by the God of the universe. “You were made for God and God is the answer to your deepest longings” (1 Cor 6:13). David compares the pleasure of praising God to other great pleasures in life when he says, My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food, and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips (vs 7).

D. God’s presence gives us daily connection to our purpose. What a privilege it is to get up in the morning and say, “Good morning, Lord. How can I honor you today?” How awesome to talk with my CO throughout the day about his mission for me, knowing that HIS MISSION MATTERS ETERNALLY. Everyday, God’s presence in our lives reminds us of our calling to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, i.e. to surrender to him with my heart allegiance,  with my inner attitudes—and by seeking to accomplish his agenda in every sphere of my life in all the spheres where he has given me influence. Notice David’s sense of purpose in the first verse of Psalm 63. O God, you are my God; earnestly I SEEK you.

E. God’s presence in our lives is a source of strength. It is walking with God personally all day long that provides the instinct to go to God for help. Both externally, because of the relentless demands made upon us, and internally, because of inner brokenness and reflexive wrong attitudes, the presence of God with us is the avenue to the strength we need. We are walking daily with the one who is the Great High Priest, so it is natural to with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need (Heb 4:16). In Psalm 63, David refers to constantly depending upon God for help in verses 7-8. for you have been my help, and in the shadow of your wings I will sing for joy. My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me.

GOD’S PRESENCE IN THE OT

The Bible is God’s story of the four chapters of the Gospel of Jesus, creation, fall, redemption, restoration. Chapter one, creation, shows Adam and Eve designed FOR a personal relationship with God. But as we all know in chapter two of the Gospel story (fall), Adam and Eve’s rebellion caused them to be thrown out of the Garden and the presence of God. In Genesis 12 God begins the process of redeeming his people from sin and restoring them to intimacy with him by establishing a covenant of belonging with Abraham and his children summarized in the phrase “I will be your god, and you shall be my people.” 400 years later Moses continues to foreshadow this restoration to his presence by establishing the Priesthood and building the tabernacle. Inside this portable, roofless tent was the place where sacrifices were made for sin. The innermost portion, called the Holy of Holies, contained the Ark of the Covenant, a wooden chest, overlaid with gold which was the mercy seat, the throne on which Yahweh sat.  Two gold cherubim faced each other with their wings covering the mercy seat. On it the shekinah glory cloud was seen to dwell during the day and the pillar of fire at night.

When it comes to our topic, the presence of God, the tabernacle communicated two truths that were in some ways a paradox. On the one hand, the portable nature of the tabernacle communicated that God was with his covenant people wherever they went. The shekinah glory cloud led them by day and pilar of fire by night. The cloud and fire hovered between them and the Egyptian army protecting them before God parted the Red Sea. When Israel set up camp, the cloud and pilar of fire visibly dwelt over the Ark of the Covenant. On the other hand, the entire priestly system instituted by Moses was a divinely inspired drama to communicate that without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin and without remission of sin, no one could enter the holy presence of God.

All this is background for 2 Samuel 6. As we come to this chapter, David has defeated the Jebusites, taken Jerusalem as his capital, and completed the construction of his palace there. The presence of God meant as much to David and his kingdom as it does to us. So, he decides to bring it to Jerusalem.

David again gathered all the chosen men of Israel, thirty thousand. And David arose and went with all the people who were with him …. to bring up from there the ark of God, which is called by the name of the Lord of hosts who sits enthroned on the cherubim. And they carried the ark of God on a new cart and brought it out of the house of Abinadab, which was on the hill. And Uzzah and Ahio, the sons of Abinadab, were driving the new cart, with the ark of God…And David and all the house of Israel were celebrating before the Lord, with songs and lyres and harps and tambourines and castanets and cymbals. 

And when they came to the threshing floor of Nacon, Uzzah put out his hand to the ark of God and took hold of it, for the oxen stumbled. And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzzah, and God struck him down there because of his error, and he died there beside the ark of God. And David was angry because the Lord had broken out against Uzzah… David was afraid of the Lord that day, and he said, “How can the ark of the Lord come to me?” So David was not willing to take the ark of the Lord into the city of David. But David took it aside to the house of Obed-edom the Gittite. 

So, David declares a national holiday and puts together the parade to beat all parades. The whole nation lines the streets for this once-in-a-lifetime experience. The popcorn and hotdog venders are making a killing. The news media has its cameras stationed all along the parade route. Bret Baier has done an interview with Abinadab, the man who stored the ark. As the parade makes its way to Jerusalem you hear it coming from miles away—hundreds upon hundreds of cymbals crashing, tambourines shaking, trumpets blaring. The King, himself, leads the parade whooping it up, running, jumping, acting like a mad man. Then, sitting on a brand-new oxcart you see it, the throne of Yahweh, in all its regal splendor, its gold cherubim ablaze in the sun. Behind it are thirty thousand top war heroes in David’s army, decked out in their dress blues, boots polished to a spit shine, swords glistening in the sun. Closer and closer they come, the volume of the crowd nearly deafening you. You notice the oxcart tip to the one side slightly and suddenly a hush comes over the crowd. David wonders what’s wrong. He turns back and begins to run towards Uzzah who is on the ground. When he gets there, Uzzah is not breathing. An onlooker tells David, “He reached up, took hold of the ark, and instantly fell to the ground dead.” Now David is angry. He’s not sure who to be angry at. Uzzah? God? Himself? David continues on to his palace in Jerusalem and spends three months figuring out what went wrong.

THE LESSON DAVID LEARNED: YOU CANNOT EXPEREINCE GOD’S PRESENCE AND IGNORE GOD’S HOLINESS

The explanation for the disastrous death of Uzzah was that David, in seeking the Lord’s presence in Jerusalem, failed to take into account the most fundamental characteristic of God—his holiness.

A. David discovered that, because of God’s holiness, God had given Moses very specific instructions about how to move the Ark that were ignored by the priests. It was NEVER to be touched. The Ark had rings at each of the four corners through which two poles were to be inserted by the two Kohathites carrying the ark by the poles. The Ark should never have been on the cart.

B. The lesson is that what is unclean cannot be in God’s holy presence and live. That reality had been repeatedly communicated by God to his people.

  • When God was in their presence visiting Mount Sinai to write the Ten Commandments with his own finger, the people were warned “Even if a beast touched the mountain it shall be stoned” (Ex 19:16).
  • Moses, known as the friend of God, was not permitted to see God’s face. God explaining, “you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live” (Ex 33:20).
  • The only human allowed into the Holy of Holies where the Ark dwelt was the high priest once per year, and then only after he had undergone an elaborate cleansing ritual and made numerous sacrifices for his sins.
  • The priests were very aware that God’s holiness could kill the priest if he touched the ark. So, they sewed little bells into the high priests garment and on the Day of Atonement, when he entered the Holy of Holies, they listened for the jingling of those bells so they could tell if he was still alive and moving. If it went quiet, and he were struck dead, they were prepared because they tied a rope around the High Priests leg so that if he were struck dead, they could pull his body out from the Holy of Holies.

C. At the core of Uzzah’s vocation was understanding the holiness of God. Remember Uzzah was a Kohathite. Here is their job description:

This is the service of the sons of Kohath in the tent of meeting: the most holy things. When the camp is to set out, Aaron and his sons shall go in and take down the veil of the screen and cover the ark of the testimony with it. Then they shall put on it a covering of goatskin and spread on top of that a cloth all of blue, and shall put in its poles…. And when Aaron and his sons have finished covering the sanctuary and all the furnishings of the sanctuary, as the camp sets out, after that the sons of Kohath shall come to carry these, but they must not touch the holy things, lest they die. 

The full-time job of everyone in their tribe was the care of the sacred objects kept in the tabernacle. For years, he’d been schooled in the disciplines of his calling. He knew that the cardinal rule in his work was never touch the Ark of the Covenant. Like an electrician for whom the mere touch of the high voltage wire meant certain death, Uzzah, if he had understood God’s holiness as any Kohathite should have, he would have known that touching the Ark meant instant death.

D. Uzzah’s death reveals what real filth is, in they eyes of God. R.C. Sproul writes,

Uzzah assumed that his hand was less polluted than the earth. But it wasn’t the ground or the mud that would desecrate the ark; it was the touch of man. The earth is an obedient creature. It does what God tells it to do. It brings forth its yield in its season. It obeys the laws of nature that God has established. When the temperature falls to a certain point, the ground freezes.  When water is added to dust, it becomes mud, just as God designed it. The ground doesn’t commit cosmic treason. There is nothing polluted about the ground. God did not want his holy ark touched by that which is contaminated by evil, that which is in rebellion to him, that which by its ungodly revolt had brought the whole creation to ruin and caused the ground and the sky and waters of the sea to groan together in travail waiting for the day of redemption. Man. It was man’s touch that was forbidden.

THREE TAKE-AWAYS

A. We need to celebrate God’s holiness. This Hebrew word, QUDASH, means to cut, or to separate. Among the implications of this attribute is that God’s moral characteristics are infinitely greater than ours. We may love; but compared to the excellence of God’s love there is a great chasm. God’s goodness is so good, there is a chasm separating it’s moral perfection from human goodness. God is “set apart” from humans in his moral perfections. The consistency of God’s moral perfections is an enormous blessing to us and contrasts to the false God, Allah, who can change his mind and character upon any whim.

B. We need to learn to hate evil. Because God is holy, holiness is required for the health of every component of life on planet earth. Every sin is a step towards destruction. I smile inside at those who are afraid that if we fully understand God’s grace it will lead to sin. Nothing could be further from the truth. The greater my understanding of the depth of my own sin—the heinousness of it, the destruction of it—the more I celebrate grace, being mercifully delivered from the consequences of it. Having been delivered from such tyranny, why would I ever want to pursue such destruction again? Envy of the wicked reveals a very shallow understanding of sin. Sin is the antithesis of LIFE.

C. Reflecting upon God’s holiness ignites our passion to know the Word of God and live it, everyday. Uzzah was part of a tribe that had neglected the clear teaching of Scripture, to their peril. David said to God, With my whole heart I seek you; let me not wander from your commandments! I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you (Ps 119:10-11).

For Further Prayerful Thought:

  1. What does God’s presence in your life mean to you?
  2. How would you summarize the lesson David learned when Uzzah was struck dead as they moved the Ark to Jerusalem.
  3. What are your thoughts about remembering the holiness of God in our everyday lives. Why might that be important?
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Restoring Spiritual Passion When We’ve Failed

Restoring Spiritual Passion When We’ve Failed

On 18 May, 2025 By Gary Yagel

Here is a truth taken from our own lives: YESTERDAY’S spiritual passion doesn’t supply TODAY’S spiritual energy. Fired up hearts through Scripture inspiring us or by seeing God’s hand answering our prayers ignite our passion for the moment or day. But all too quickly, that passion cools, as the rain from a new day’s storms falls—circumstances that go all wrong, obstacles that make simple tasks harder than they should be, our own disappointing failures. Spiritual passion seems to dissipate quickly, and before we know it, we are discouraged, disheartened, and unmotivated.

The classic example of the ebb and flow of spiritual passion is of course, Elijah. I don’t know what the etymology is of the phrase mountaintop experience, but certainly Elijah’s showdown with the prophets of Baal on Mt Carmel fits that description. It was the culmination of 3.5 years of intense prayer for the nation of Israel to repent from its idolatrous worship of Baal so that God would remove the curse of the drought upon the land. After Baal is unmasked as a false God who could not send fire to consume the sacrifice, the fire of Yahweh fell. We read, And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and said, “Yahweh, he is God; Yahweh, he is God.” And Elijah said to them, “Seize the prophets of Baal; let not one of them escape.” And Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon and slaughtered them there (1 Kings 18:38-40). Elijah prayed intently and the rain came, ending the curse of the drought. Elijah was so energized by this massive spiritual victory that he ran 18 miles down the mountain to Jezreel.

But at the bottom, Elijah slammed into a jolting reality check. One key person in Israel had not repented, Queen Jezebel. She vows to execute him within 24 hours, sending him running for his life and overwhelming him with such discouragement that he pleads with God to take his life. Such dramatic spiritual highs and lows are not confined in Scripture to Elijah; we see the same pattern in the life of David as well. This episode looks at one of the lowest points in David’s life, how he recovered his spiritual passion, and the lessons we can learn from him.

Two characteristics that I love about Scripture are that it is logical and that it is realistic. Because God is the most fantastic being in the world and loves us more than we can comprehend, logic demands that I love him back passionately every moment of everyday of my life with all my heart and mind and soul and strength. Yet, realistically, that ain’t happening. My passion for God ebbs and flows. That is why I am excited about this episode. Apart from his later sin with Bathsheba, this episode finds David at one of the lowest points of his life—and shows him fighting his way through his despair and depression to recover his confidence in God.

Let’s set the stage. This crisis takes place before David becomes king of Israel, when he is still being hunted by Saul who sees David as a threat to his throne. David reasoned that his best chance to stop Saul from hunting him down was to move into Phillistine territory, where he and his six hundred men became mercenaries for Achish, the King of the Phillistine city of Gath. Achish, in turn, gave him the nearby city called Ziklag where David, his two wives, his 600 men and their families settled down. Because they are Achish’s mercenaries and bodyguards, when Achish seeks to join forces with the other Philistine Kings in battle against Saul and Israel fifty miles away, David and his men travel with Achish to the battle lines. But the other Philistine Kings will have none of David and his men. They refuse to trust David’s troops and send them and David home. We pick up the story in 1 Sam 30:1.

Now when David and his men came to Ziklag on the third day, the Amalekites had made a raid against the Negeb and against Ziklag. They had overcome Ziklag and burned it with fire and taken captive the women and all who were in it, both small and great. They killed no one, but carried them off and went their way. And when David and his men came to the city, they found it burned with fire, and their wives and sons and daughters taken captive. Then David and the people who were with him raised their voices and wept until they had no more strength to weep. David's two wives also had been taken captive, Ahinoam of Jezreel and Abigail the widow of Nabal of Carmel. And David was greatly distressed, for the people spoke of stoning him, because all the people were bitter in soul, each for his sons and daughters (vs 1-6a).

DAVID’S DEPLETED CONDITION

  • He and his men were physically drained from their return trip.
  • He was overcome with the grief of losing his entire family—both wives and all his children.
  • He must have been doubting himself. How could he have been so stupid to have left such a small force to protect the city when he knew the Amalekites weren’t that far south of Ziklag?
  • He couldn’t rely on his own friends for support since he knew many of this group were complaining about David’s bad decision.
  • He faced a possible insurrection with some speaking of stoning David. He had lost his men’s respect, which was just about all he had to offer them.
  • His own confidence in Yahweh must have been shaken. How could God let this happen? David had refused to lift his hand against Saul, and strategically won the confidence of Achish, who had been Israel’s enemy, to find a safe place for his men and their families. After David outsmarted these two enemies, God allowed a third enemy to rise, up who wasn’t even on David’s radar, burn down his city, and take every wife and child of his men as Amalekite slaves. How many pounds of David’s flesh did God want?

And yet, we read in the rest of verse 6, But David strengthened himself in the LORD his God. What a powerful tribute to David’s character. Tough times don’t last. Tough people do. Let’s consider David’s history, and the rest of Scripture to discover how and why, with his spiritual and emotional tank on “E”, David strengthened himself in the LORD his God.

DAVID STRENGTHENS HIMSELF IN THE LORD: 4 LESSONS FOR US

A. David had built the habit of being honest with God about his feelings. David weeps all day because of his grief. David models a vital truth for maintaining a healthy relationship with God in his Psalms—he starts out by telling God how he really feels. That includes the spiritual highs and the spiritual lows. Note this pattern in just a few of the numerous examples from Psalms.

  • Psalm 3:1-2. O Lord, how many are my foes! Many are rising against me; many are saying of my soul, “There is no salvation for him in God.”
  • Psalm 9:1-2. I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart; I will recount all of your wonderful deeds. I will be glad and exult in you; I will sing praise to your name, O Most High.
  • Psalm 10:1. Why, O Lord, do you stand far away? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble
  • Psalm 13:1. How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?
  • Psalm 17:1-2. Hear a just cause, O Lord; attend to my cry! Give ear to my prayer from lips free of deceit! From your presence let my vindication come!
  • Psalm 18:1-2. I love you, O Lord, my strength. The Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge.
  • Psalm 22:1-2:  My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?  O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest.

The Psalms are flooded with examples of David taking his emotions to God.

B. When David faced trials, he had built a pattern of looking back and remembering God’s past faithfulness. David could have recalled how God gave him victory over Goliath, or how he and his men were surrounded by Saul who was closing in on them when Saul suddenly got a message that the Philistines were getting ready to attack Israel. We also see this component of David’s walk with God in the Psalms. In psalms that reveal David’s faith being tested, David nearly always recalls God’s faithfulness in the past to renew his confidence for the future.

  • Psalm 3:4. I cried aloud to the Lord, and he answered me from his holy hill. 
  • Psalm 34:4-6. I sought the Lord, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears. Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed. This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles.
  • Psalm 56:13. For you have delivered my soul from death, yes, my feet from falling, that I may walk before God in the light of life.
  • Psalm 138:3. On the day I called, you answered me; MY STRENGTH OF SOUL YOU INCREASED.

C. David strengthens himself in the LORD by understanding what Peter and Paul would later teach about God’s determination to test his loved one’s faith. In Psalm 11 for example, we see David's refusal to think the solution to trials is to flee from them. Instead, he trusts God's sovereignty and recognizes God’s determination to test the character of the righteous. He writes, The Lord is in his holy temple; the Lord's throne is in heaven; his eyes see, his eyelids test the children of man. The Lord tests the righteous (vs 4-5). Peter would later make the same point writing to first century Christians, You have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ (1 Pet 1:6-7). James, the brother of Jesus, stresses the same truth to his readers. When all kinds of trials and temptations crowd into your lives my brothers, don’t resent them as intruders, but welcome them as friends! Realize that they come to test your faith and to produce in you the quality of endurance. But let the process go on until that endurance is fully developed, and you will find you have become men of mature character with the right sort of independence (James 1:2-4).  

It is likely that David strengthened himself in the LORD his God by knowing that the horrific trial of losing his home and family was part of a three-stage process God employs to grow our faith. In fact, wise observers recognize that nearly every successful endeavor has these 3 stages, a) beginning to pursue the objective, b) encountering and overcoming opposition, c) accomplishing the objective.

Anne and Ray Ortland, in their book, You Don’t Have to Quit, pose this question: “Is there a secret that could help you stick it out through your darkest, most trying situations, until you emerge truly victorious?” They then suggest that the answer to overcoming despair and rekindling the passion needed to endure trials may be understanding the three stages of nearly all significant accomplishments. They continue, “When you think about it, everybody’s had those periods of dark trying situations. And the people who have made it have come through a time sequence—a time sequence that could be the clue to your making it, too: A) They began, in some new situation or effort; B) They hit problems and somehow worked their way through them; C) They came out on top.” The Ortlands point to many biblical examples of this three-stage reality including the rebuilding of Jerusalem’s wall by Nehemiah.

In prayer, God gives Nehemiah a vision for rebuilding the wall around Jerusalem. That’s stage A. God provides all that he needs, and Nehemiah ingenuously captures the hearts of the people to rebuild the wall. But before they even start, they hit stage B—opposition—the demoralizing efforts of Sanballat and Tobiah the Ammonite. The people push through these efforts to discourage them and quickly build the wall to half its needed height. But then they find out that Sanballat and Tobiah had formed a band of warriors to attack them as they worked—even stronger resistance. So, Nehemiah splits his workforce in half—one group building the wall—the other holding weapons. But resistance from Sanballat and Tobiah continues. They try four times to trick Nehemiah into meeting with them to kill him and falsely accused Nehemiah of wanting to be king of Jerusalem as his motive. But the people persevere all the way through stage B until in Nehemiah 6:15 we read, “So the wall was finished in 52 days.” They got to stage C. I can’t help but think of the quote of Vince Lombardi, “Press on. Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.”  It may feel like we are losing. But the most meaningless statistic in a ball game is the score at halftime.

As we often mention in this podcast/blog Christ-followers are called to BE LIKE Christ—to demonstrate Christ changing the attitudes of our hearts. So, stage A is setting out to exhibit Christ-like attitudes. Stage B is encountering tough circumstances that test our heart attitudes, especially our faith, but choosing to trust God with a biblical perspective that leads to Christ-likeness. Stage C is letting endurance grow so that in Jame’s words, we have become men of mature character with the right sort of independence. David, son of Jesse began the process of becoming Israel’s king, stage A, with his anointing by Samuel and defeat of Goliath while a teenager. For probably 15 years, David endured stage B, while Saul chased David around Palestine trying to kill him—the very unjust actions that had driven David and his men to King Achish and the establishment of their families and homes in Ziklag. But David reached stage C!

D. The fourth step to strengthen ourselves in the Lord is to seek God’s leading and then releasing God’s renewing power by choosing to act on that leading. David’s story continues.

And David said to Abiathar the priest, the son of Ahimelech, “Bring me the ephod.” So Abiathar brought the ephod to David. And David inquired of the Lord, “Shall I pursue after this band? Shall I overtake them?” He answered him, “Pursue, for you shall surely overtake and shall surely rescue.” So David set out, and the six hundred men who were with him….

God then providentially led them to an Egyptian slave who knew where the Amalekites had camped.

And when he had taken him down, behold, they were spread abroad over all the land, eating and drinking and dancing, because of all the great spoil they had taken from the land of the Philistines and from the land of Judah. And David struck them down from twilight until the evening of the next day, and not a man of them escaped, except four hundred young men, who mounted camels and fled. David recovered all that the Amalekites had taken, and David rescued his two wives. Nothing was missing, whether small or great, sons or daughters, spoil or anything that had been taken. David brought back all (vs 16-19).

When God promises us strength, we’ve got to choose to believe it is there and act. Faith, we are told in Hebrews 11:1, is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. It is being sure of something even though we don’t see it. If God is calling us to persevere through an experience that we know we don’t have the strength to endure, God has promised us what we need. “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor 12:9).

HOW TO FAIL F0RWARD

We would be negligent in examining this passage if we did not identify it as a great example of David coping with his failure—the failure to leave enough troops behind to protect the city he was responsible to protect. Though we don’t know what specific lessons David learned through failure, here is a wise, biblically-rooted, perspective about failing, from John Maxwell.  

1. Appreciate the Value of Failure. Each time you fail, know that you’ve traveled another mile farther on the road to your potential. Soichino Honda, the founder of Honda Motors, offers this insight: “Many people dream of success. To me success can be achieved only through repeated failure and introspection. In fact, success only represents one percent of your work that results from 90 percent of that which is called, failure.”

2. Don’t Take Failure Personally. If you are in the habit of assassinating your own character or questioning your talent every time something goes wrong, stop it. Making mistakes is like breathing; it is something you will keep doing as long as you’re alive. So, learn to live with it and move on.

3. Make Failure a Learning Experience. Failure isn’t failure unless you don’t learn from it. Thomas Edison said, “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.” He also said, “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” 

4. See the Big Picture. Failure is not final. There will be other days. Almost every successful person has overcome failure. For example, Tom Landry, Chuck Noll, and Bill Walsh accounted for nine of the fifteen Super Bowl victories between 1974 and 1989. Guess what else they have in common? For years, they also had the worst first-season records of any head coaches in NFL history. If they had based their potential for coaching success on the snapshot of their first season they probably would have quit. But life is not a snapshot—it’s a moving picture.

5. Don’t Give Up.  Over two centuries ago a young fellow at age 22 lost his job as a store clerk. The next year he became a partner in a small store, which failed. The next year he fell in love and courted a girl for four years who then said, “no.” At 37 in his third try he was elected to the state legislature, but two years later he lost the reelection. At age 40, he had a nervous breakdown. At age 41, his four-year-old son died. At age 45 he was defeated for the Senate. At age 47, he was defeated for vice president. AT age 49 he was again defeated for the Senate. At age 51 he was elected president of the United States. Of course, his name was Abraham Lincoln, considered by many to be the greatest president we have ever had.

6. Trust God's Grace.  I want nt to add to Maxwell’s list this further point. God let David fail by leaving Ziklag not properly guarded. But God also sovereignly caused the other Philistine Kings to refuse to include David and his men in the battle against Saul, sending them home just in time to be able to still track the Amalekites down to get their families back.

For Further Prayerful Thought:

  1. What aspects of David’s depleted condition in 1 Samuel 30:1-6 stand out to you? With which of them do you most identify?
  2. What stood out most to you about the four ways that David strengthened himself in the LORD his God?
  3. Why might it bring encouragement to those facing trials to realize that nearly every worthwhile endeavor has three stages
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Chemotherapy for Sin

Chemotherapy for Sin

On 10 May, 2025 By Gary Yagel

One of the most dreaded words in the English language is cancer. And, if one receives this diagnosis, a second dreaded question arises: Has it spread? We all know that, if a tumor is malignant, it is critical to remove all of it.

In the beatitudes, Jesus paints a portrait of spiritual vitality and health into which Christ’s kingdom members are being transformed. But at the root of that transformation process is cutting out the cancer of sin. Such excision of sin requires both confessing it, the first beatitude, and grieving over it, the second beatitude. The combination of these two attitudes is called repentance.   

The problem is that Christians can be lured into a kind of shallow, incomplete repentance that is destructive. It might be compared to surgery to remove the cancerous tumor that misses part of the tumor. Paul calls it “worldly sorrow that leads to death.” In contrast,” says Paul, is “godly sorrow leading to repentance.” This godly sorrow corresponds to getting all the tumor and then using chemotherapy to destroy what is microscopic and missed. This kind of sorrow is the heart attitude Jesus refers to in the second beatitude. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” It is an attitude that is exhibited by David. It is described in unmistakable detail in Psalm 51, which he wrote after being confronted with his sin of adultery with Bathsheba and murder of her husband, Uriah. It is chemotherapy for sin.

 As we saw last week, in Jesus’ portrait of kingdom living in Matthew 5-7, Jesus identifies eight foundational heart attitudes that characterize his kingdom members, introducing each one with the Greek word, MAKARIOS, which scholars translate, blessed. But “blessed” is inadequate to capture the meaning of MAKARIOS. “Blessed” sounds like God will like me better if I have these attitudes. But MAKARIOS means much more than favor with God. It describes the richest possible fullness, happiness, and contentment. Right off the bat, Jesus teaches us that happiness, i.e. pleasantness in life is NOT determined by our circumstances. It is determined by our inner attitudes. This truth is expressed in Proverbs 15:15, All the days of the afflicted are evil, but the cheerful of heart has a continual feast. Cheerfulness is an attitude choice as is complaining or thankfulness. We might ask, “why is choosing the attitude of sorrow for our sins, i.e. heartfelt contrition, a life-giving attitude?” I believe that fully grieving over our sins, as David demonstrates in great detail in Psalm 51 cleanses us. It is like chemotherapy, completing the process of full repentance.

Last week, we began to put a magnifying glass over this heart attitude that David revealed in Psalm 51. We continue to examine the structure of this Psalm with a review of last week:

A. DAVID RECOGNIZES THE AWFULNESS OF HIS SIN

Verses 1-6

We observed five components of this admission in verses 1-4.

  • Our sin is too severe to ever excuse, leaving us no hope but the mercy of God.
  • We feel dirty in the presence of a holy God because we ARE dirty, the only detergent for our cleansing being the blood of Jesus.
  • Our sin was not a slip up. To the contrary, sin has spread to every part of us including our desires.
  • Our sin is not merely breaking an impersonal law in some rulebook but a personal violation of our relationship with our God.
  • God is 100% justified in his punishment of our sin, which means that the more we grasp the depth of our sin the greater will be our love for Jesus because he who has been forgiven much, loves much.

In verses 5-6, David summarizes these four verses, saying “Instead of being one in whom truth and wisdom dwell, I am one in whom sin dwells.” I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.

B. DAVID SEEKS RESTORATION OF HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD

Verses 7-9

Sinful choices not only destroy us, they put a wall between ourselves and those we’ve offended. This fact of human life rests beneath Jesus’ command to his followers. If you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. It is interesting that this command comes in the context of Jesus' warning against anger, and sharp, demeaning words that cut into the tenderest part of a human— his self-esteem. As husbands and fathers, we need to remember that when we sin against our wives or kids, asking God’s forgiveness is not enough; we must seek theirs. We need to keep the pathway between our hearts open, not blocked by wrongs we’ve never owned and apologized for or resentment will build incrementally, putting permanent distance between us and our loved ones hindering our leadership.

But, of course, Psalm 51:7-9 addresses the wall David’s sin built that stops access to the Holy God. This break is experienced ultimately and permanently with the non-believer who refuses to repent and trust Jesus’ death alone for his salvation. But it is also true that the failure to repent puts a distance into our fellowship with God in this life. David addresses the break in fellowship. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow (7). One commentator observes:

“Purge me with hyssop alludes to the cleansing of the leper, sprinkled seven times with the sacrificial blood into which the bunch of hyssop was dipped as a sprinkler. Or it may refer to ritual cleansing for those who had come into contact with a dead body. In either case, it ended with the forthright pronouncement, ‘and he shall be clean’ a promise which David takes up in the first person.”

In both cases the unclean person who was cut off from the assembly was restored to fellowship. David continues in verse 8, Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have broken rejoice. Think of all the Psalms David had written that were filled with the joy of praising and worshipping God. e.g. Psalm 100. Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth! Serve the Lord with gladness! Come into his presence with singing! Know that the Lord, he is God! It is he who made us, and  we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise!  Give thanks to him; bless his name! For the Lord is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.

That was the kind of joy David was missing because of his offensive sin to his God. David’s phrase, “Let the bones that you have broken, rejoice” refers to a custom of Palestinian shepherds. When they had a strong-willed lamb who kept going astray, who would not listen and follow the shepherd, they had to take drastic measures, or the lamb would be eaten by predators. As a last resort, the shepherd would break the front legs of the lamb so it could not wander from the flock. When the flock moved, the shepherd would carry the lamb over his shoulders. In this way, a bond would form with the lamb and when his legs healed, he wouldn’t stray but would follow the shepherd’s voice.

I suspect that there isn’t a man who gets this podcast/blog who hasn’t had to have God break his front legs at some point—all we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way. And God carried us and still might be carrying us so that we get familiar with his voice.

Verse 9 continues, Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. David loves God so much that he can’t bear to have God look upon him in his sins. He is so ashamed of his failure to love God with the obedience God deserves, that he begs God to hide his face from the revulsion of his rebellion. He can’t bear to be repulsive to God when he so desperately wants to be loved by God. His only hope is to cast himself upon God’s mercy. David has zero power to earn forgiveness—no ability to make the horrible guilt go away. He begs God to do what only he can, Blot out my sins. This of course is the story ultimately of the cross.

C. DAVID SEEKS RENEWAL THROUGH GOD’S GRACE AT WORK WITHIN HIM

Verses 10-12

Just as Jesus taught that heart transformation, i.e. spiritual fruit is produced by abiding in Jesus the Vine, David looks to his relationship with God to provide the spiritual might he needs going forward. Notice his six requests:

  1. Create in me a clean heart—God only you can change the selfishness of my heart motives.
  2. Renew a steadfast spirit within me—God strengthen me inwardly with the strength I’ve known before with unwavering obedience to you.
  3. Do not cast me from your presence—God don’t shut me off from yourself for you are the very source of spiritual power to please you.
  4. Don’t take your Holy Spirit from me—God, I know that past victories have only come from your Holy Spirit’s power. Please don’t take away that help.
  5. Restore me to the joy of your salvation—God, joy has always come from the victories by which you brought Israel and me your salvation. Make salvation from slavery to lust bring the same joy.
  6. Grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me—God my heart is desperately wicked. I will rebel if left to myself. Please give me a willing spirit to sustain me or I will be right back here confessing my horrible sins again.

D. DAVID KNEW THAT SALVATION INCLUDES RESTORATION IN THIS LIFE

Verses 13-15

David understood that the gospel is not just that sinners are forgiven but that they are restored and participate in that restoration in the culture. Notice how David looks forward to being used by God to promote righteousness.

  1. Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will turn back to you. David’s influence for the kingdom of righteousness will be restored.
  2. Deliver me from blood guiltiness, O God of my salvation, and my tongue will sing aloud of your righteousness. David knew he deserved to die for murdering Uriah. But God’s forgiveness for this horrible crime would not lead to David cheapening the moral law. Being saved from the punishment he deserved would make him sing of God’s merciful salvation and the glory of God’s righteous law all the more.
  3. O Lord, open my lips and my mouth will declare your praise. Perhaps because David knew the truth Jesus would later speak, “one who is forgiven much loves much,” David tells God that his heart will be so tuned back into adoration of God that all God needs to do is pry open David’s mouth and praise will automatically flow.

E. RESTORATION IS ALSO A FOCUS OF THE SECOND BEATITUDE

In Matthew 5:4, Jesus not only taught that training our heart into an attitude that mourns over our own sins and the harm done to the world because of sin is a foundational attitude for flourishing, in the second half of the beatitude, we read that part of the blessing for this kind of mourning is BEING COMFORTED. What does Jesus mean by this statement? I believe that Scripture teaches that God, himself, will comfort us and he will comfort us three ways.

1. We will be comforted by total, complete forgiveness. For the one who has owned up to his sin with a contrite heart, recognizing his spiritual poverty and need of the shed blood of Christ to cleanse him from his sin, there is TOTAL forgiveness.  We are doubly declared righteous (justified). Christ-followers trust Christ’s death as payment for the punishment we deserve. The law has no further claim against us because our debt is paid. But also, Christ’s perfect life of obedience is imputed to us, meaning that at the top of Christ’s straight A moral report card, his name is erased and ours is written in. I love the way the Phillips paraphrase translates Romans 8:33-34. Who would dare to accuse us, whom God has chosen? The judge himself has declared us free from sin. Who is in a position to condemn? Only Christ, and Christ died for us, Christ rose for us, Christ reigns in power for us, Christ prays for us!

2.  The second way God comforts us is giving us hope that God can still weave together the dark threads of our sin into a beautiful tapestry that glorifies him. Our comfort lies not only in forgiveness, but in the fact that even though every decision we have made to disregard God’s law has brought destruction into our lives, if we repent, God has given us his amazing promise to turn those ugly scars into beauty marks. Jesus came not just to forgive but to restore, beginning his ministry by reading the great messianic text, Isaiah 61 that described his ministry of restoration. Notice the words, comfort, and mourn.

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor, to comfort all who mourn;  to grant to those who mourn in Zion—to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit; that they may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified (Is 61:1-3).

The ESV Study Notes explain the fuller picture behind Jesus’ claim to be fulfilling this prophecy of the Messianic Suffering Servant. “Jesus’ mission includes proclaiming good news to the poor and liberty to the captives (in the OT this meant release for those enslaved in exile, but more is included here, since “liberty” elsewhere in Luke—Acts refers to forgiveness of sins.) Sight to the blind includes both the physically blind and the spiritually blind. Liberty for those who are oppressed included, in Jesus’ ministry, healing the sick, casting out demons, forgiving sins, and ethical teachings that promote social justice.”

Notice the way Jesus' work of fixing everything broken by sin is portrayed as restoration in the Isaiah text:

  • Jesus was sent by the Father to bind up the broken-hearted. The Hebrew says literally, “He comes to put a bandage on the heart’s wounds.” Though many are celebrating their mothers today there are many mothers grieving over the loss of their children and children grieving the loss of their mom. In this life, Jesus, HIMSELF promises to bind up the broken hearts of all who grieve the loss of loved ones. I know several men in their forties who have lost sons in their twenties. I cannot fathom their pain. I can only find hope in the promise that Jesus will personally bind up their torn and broken hearts.
  • Notice how closely this Isaiah 61 language matches what Jesus taught in the second beatitude. The Messiah comes to comfort all who mourn; to grant to those who mourn in Zion—to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit. God is in the business of restoration. His specialty is comforting those in pain because of sin. By his grace he is turning our lives around to give us a diadem of honor instead of the ashes of repentance and shame on our heads. He is restoring us to the life he intended for us to experience—enjoying the oil of gladness upon us instead of regret and remorse for our sins. He is reshaping and redirecting our lives so that we go through life wearing a cloak of renown instead of being clothed in feint-hearted self-doubt. This glorious triumph over sin and its effects begins with a broken and contrite heart over our sin and that of others.

3.  The third way God comforts us is with the joy of our future destiny, when there will be no more death, or mourning, or crying, or pain. The more sin breaks our hearts because of its destruction in our loved ones, our world, and in our own hearts, the more precious is the truth that IT DOES NOT WIN. John, in his great vision of the destiny of those who belong to Christ, wrote:

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first 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 I 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. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away (Rev 21:1-4).

F. FINAL THOUGHTS ABOUT BROKEN HEARTEDNESS OVER SIN

Verses 16-17

Psalm 51:16-17 continues with a summary of what David has said up to that point. For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. This message is identical to the second beatitude, which we might translate this way: O the bliss of the man whose heart is broken for the world’s suffering and over every particle of his own sin, for he will taste the joy of restoration to what he and this world were created to be. And be will be undergirded by the joy of knowing that one day everything broken by sin will be remade, renewed, and restored to even greater glory and beauty.

For Further Prayerful Thought:

  1. How would you defend the argument that confessing our sins is not enough; we need to grieve over them?
  2. What most stood out to you about David’s confession of his sin in Psalm 51?
  3. How does Jesus’ claim to be the messianic suffering servant whose ministry is described in Isaiah 61 show that his mission goes beyond going to the cross so we could be forgiven for our sins? What clues in Isaiah 61 and the second beatitude point to Jesus’ current work of restoration—fixing whatever was broken by sin?
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The Second Most Christ-like Attitude

The Second Most Christ-like Attitude

On 04 May, 2025 By Gary Yagel

Early in Jesus’ ministry, on a small mountainside outside of Capernaum, Jesus picked up his verbal pen and painted a portrait of human life when it is restored to the way it is intended to be, by his power to overthrow sin. This portrait of kingdom life begins with eight heart attitudes that comprise righteousness. Today we examine the second of these beatitudes, not only because it is so fundamental to spiritual flourishing, but because it was clearly portrayed in King David’s heart after he was confronted with his adultery with Bathsheba and murder of Uriah by the prophet Nathan. This priceless attitude is a broken and contrite heart. Jesus said, Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted (Mt 5:4).

Jesus began his portrait of kingdom life, called the Sermon on the Mount, with a cameo of eight, character qualities of kingdom members, called the beatitudes. They are a picture of what the human heart looks like when King Jesus rules our attitudes. He telegraphs to us the fact that they are the path to human flourishing by beginning each beatitude with the word, blessed (MAKARIOS). This Greek word was the term used to describe the island of Cyprus, known as “The Happy Isle” because it was thought that Cyprus was such a paradise that one would never have to go beyond its coastline to find the perfect, happy, completely fulfilled, life.

The first and most important beatitude explains the secret that opens all the resources of Christ’s kingdom—recognizing our own desperate spiritual poverty. Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Then Jesus moves on to the far less understood but second most important beatitude, Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted (Mt 5:4). When we realize that “blessedness,” i.e. MAKARIOS refers to heart satisfaction, well-being, and joy, the startling paradox of Jesus’ words in this beatitude becomes apparent. It is as if he is saying, Happy are the unhappy. Happy are the sad. So, we must ask, “What kind of sorrow can it be that Christ wants us to experience, and which brings MAKARIOS—the joy of Christ’s blessing?

We must answer emphatically that Jesus is NOT talking about human pain and sadness in general; he is not a masochist! He is not talking about the disappointment of losing a ball game or not getting the job you hoped for. He is not talking about the broken heartedness of your mate rejecting and divorcing you. He is not talking about the grief of losing a loved one, the mourning that takes place in a funeral home. Rather, the mourning he is referring to is broken heartedness over sin and the devastation it brings. We know this is the kind of mourning Jesus has in mind for three reasons:

1. The context. The first beatitude is acknowledging our spiritual poverty as those enslaved by sin. The second beatitude quite naturally follows, i.e. grieving and mourning over that spiritual poverty—that sinful inclination. Using theological terms, we say the first beatitude is about confession. The second beatitude is about contrition. The first beatitude is about our mind acknowledging sin, the second beatitude is about our heart grieving over that sin. This is the heart described by David in his Psalm 51 confession of adultery and murder, when he says “a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise” (vs 17).

2. The second reason we know that the sorrow Jesus commends is grief over sin is the verb tense of the word, mourn. The verb tense indicates “habitual action,” a regular mourning that is part of everyday life. It is unlikely that Jesus was saying, “happy are those who must go through the agony of losing a loved one over and over again.” It is more likely that he was referring to those who deeply grieve over their sins as a regular part of their walk with him. This attitude of mourning over sin is explained by James, who writes, Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you (4:8-10).

3. The third clue about the mourning to which Jesus refers is Jesus’ own mourning over human sin. Why did Jesus weep at the grave of Lazarus when he knew he was about to raise Lazarus from the dead? I believe that at that moment, Jesus looked down the corridors of time to the tears shed at funerals time and time again because of heart-wrenching sorrow; and it was ALL brought about by human sin. As we observed a few weeks ago, on Jesus’ way into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, Luke recounts,

And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation” (19:41-44).

Jesus wept over the consequences of Jerusalem’s sin. Their sinful, hardened hearts caused them to refuse to recognize Jesus as the Messiah. Jesus saw the cost of that sin and when he foresaw that pain, he wept.

Kingdom people, says Jesus, are those who weep inwardly over sin…their own sin and the sin of others. Sin is spiritual cancer. It always destroys. The wage it always pays is spiritual, emotional, physical destruction. Paul wrote to the Galatians,

Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own sinful nature will FROM THAT NATURE REAP CORRUPTION, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life (6:7-8).

The second beatitude teaches us both to mourn over our own sin and to mourn over the way sin brings devastation across the globe. Let’s consider sin’s impact on the culture and our response to it.

JESUS TAUGHT THAT SIN IN OUR CULTURE SHOULD PRODUCE GRIEF IN US

As you hear often on this podcast, Christ calls us to engage culture, partnering with the Holy Spirit in his work to restore it to righteousness. Jesus goes on in this same sermon to call believers to hunger and thirst for righteousness to invade their own hearts and spread across the land (5:6) to take a stand for righteousness despite persecution (5:10-12), to be the righteous salt that retards the decay of sin, to cast the light of truth onto every dark corner of evil in our culture (5:13-16), and above all to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. But BEFORE we seek to spread righteousness over the earth in these verse (5:6-6:33), WE ARE COMMANDED TO WEEP OVER THE WAY SIN HAS BROKEN US AND EVERY HUMAN. These repeated calls to be agents of restoration in our culture are preceded by the call to first get our heart right toward sinful humans and broken culture, by weeping for the way sin has enslaved and broken us all. It is noteworthy that Jesus followed this pattern when he entered Jerusalem for his final week. He first allowed his heart to be broken with grief over the sin that had enslaved his beloved people, weeping for Jerusalem. ONLY THEN did he cleanse the temple to restore righteousness. The order of Jesus’ teaching in this sermon matters. Grieving over my own sin and the suffering it brings must precede the building of other godly attitudes, like hungering and thirsting for righteousness to spread over the earth or suffering persecution for righteousness’s sake.  

The significance of the second beatitude is underscored by the recognition that there are many wrong ways Christians can respond to evil in the culture. 1) We can envy those who seem to get away with violating God’s law—like couples in love who just sleep with each other instead of fighting the tough battle to wait until marriage for sex or the non-tithing neighbor who just bought the Jaguar convertible. 2) We can be judgmental towards the sinners around us who don’t go to church, use bad language, drive recklessly, and corrupt the morals of our kids. 3) We can be angry and hostile towards the sexually broken members of the LGBTQ community, especially the social activists who are harming children by pushing their destructive, immoral agenda. We must stand against their efforts, but when Christ reigns in our hearts, our attitude towards evil in the world is to weep.  Weep over our own awful disloyalty to our creator and Lord—and weep over the horrible devastation and pain that sin brings into the lives of others. John Stott, in his book, Christian Counter Culture, writes:

Jesus wept over the sins of others, over their bitter consequences in judgement and death, and over the impenitent city which would not receive him. We, too, should weep over the evil in the world, as did the godly men of biblical times. “My eyes shed streams of tears,” the psalmist could say to God, “because men do not keep your law.” Ezekiel heard God’s faithful people described as those “who sigh and groan over all the abominations that are committed in Jerusalem.”

So, it is mourning over sin, that Jesus both models and calls his followers to exhibit in the second beatitude. It is grief over the impact of sin in our culture. But it begins for members of Adam’s fallen race, with grief over our own sin.  This heart jewel—broken-heartedness over our own sin—has numerous facets that we can see reflected in Psalm 51, all of which are marks of true repentance. Let’s seek to bring those facets into the light. 

RECOGNIZES THE AWFULNESS OF HIS SIN.

When thinking about having the right attitude, it is helpful to realize that our attitude is always determined by our perspective. For example, if I am on my phone crossing the street and a stranger, grabs me shoving me to the street where I tear my pants and cut my knee, my attitude will be anger….until, a split second later I see a Mack truck go flying over the spot on the road where I was just standing. With that perspective, my heart attitude becomes gratefulness. The godly sorrow Jesus talks about results from changing our perspective about sin. David has much to teach us about how to rightly view our sin. Reaching that bar make take some “perspective realignment” on our part.

A. Perspective adjustment #1. My sin is so offensive that my only hope is your mercy. Verse 1: Have mercy on me O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. Be gracious to me according to….what?

  • because I deserve your forgiveness
  • because I’ve had a tough life
  • because I slipped and didn’t really mean it
  • because I’ve done great things—won many battles—for you
  • because in other areas of my life, I try to please you.

No. According to only one thing—God’s willingness to forgive.

  • According to Your steadfast love
  • According to Your abundant mercy

David is saying, “God if you are not merciful, I am finished.”

B. Perspective adjustment #2. Feeling intensely dirty because I am. Verse 2: Wash me thoroughly from my guilt. And cleanse me from my sin. There are two Hebrew words that David could have used for “wash me.” The one means “wash by rinsing.” The other means “wash by scrubbing.” David chose “wash by scrubbing.” David is saying, “The dirt, the evil, the filth in my heart is deeply ingrained.” Jesus would later say, Out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, acts of adultery, other immoral sexual acts, thefts, false testimonies, and slanderous statements. These are the things that defile the person (Mt 15:19-20). Jesus makes crystal clear that sin is not just an action, it is corrupt desires.

This component of true repentance is extremely relevant to a movement led by Preston Sprinkle and Greg Johnson today who, in an attempt to be compassionate towards those who experience same-sex attraction, are promoting what has been called Side B gay Christianity. Side B gay “Christians” admit that homosexual sex is sin, and don’t practice it. But they accept the assumptions borrowed from cultural Marxism that their “identity” is to be gay. Thus, same-sex desire is not repented of; it is elevated as a category of victims for whom it is normal to experience same-sex desire but heroically remain celibate. However, this heretical movement does not promote true repentance. True repentance is to hate same-sex attraction itself because it is evil, not excuse it as normal. Paul was very clear that Christians are to actively seek to put to death sinful DESIRES, not just BEHAVIOR. Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. True repentance grieves over same-sex attraction. It might look to others with the same struggle with this sin as brothers in a common battle with sin. But it would never use that sinful struggle to suggest that it be the basis for their identity, link evil, same-sex attraction with the name of Christ, much less celebrate that identity as normal for them.  

C. Perspective adjustment #3. This was not a slip up—I have the disease. It has invaded my life. Verse 3: For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. David is saying, “God, you know me. I have a rebel’s heart.” This is what the term total depravity means, not that I am as evil as I can possibly be, but that sin is in my bloodstream, throughout every part of me. David knows that he is like the little girl who might look outwardly obedient. When her parents tell her to sit down or be spanked, she stubbornly sits down. But then she says, “I may be sitting down to you, but I’m standing up in my heart.” It is not just actions that are sinful but heart attitudes.

D. Perspective adjustment #4. Sin is not just breaking a law in some impersonal rulebook; it is the violation of a person—GOD. Verse 4a: Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight. Our sin is a personal offense against the being who

  • who created us
  • who delights in us
  • who wants us so much he adopted us
  • who loves to give us good gifts to enjoy
  • who went to hell for us so we wouldn’t have to

It is God in whose face we spit when we sin. It is

  • his command we disobey
  • his goodness we doubt
  • his promise we refuse to believe
  • his love we distrust
  • his name we dishonor

Perhaps David’s words Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight are the more striking because it wasn’t against God alone that David had sinned. He violated Bathsheba, destroyed her marriage and murdered Uriah. But the grief he had brought to God’s heart seems to have been felt so intensely by David that it pushed aside EVERYTHING. His mourning over his sin consumed him. That is a contrite heart.

E. Perspective adjustment #5.  I deserve every ounce of punishment my sin has brought. Verse 4: I’ve done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment. Nathan had delivered to David, the message from God of what his punishment would be. Notice God’s justice

  • David’s wives would be given to someone else who would lie with them in broad daylight/ This was done by David’s own son Absolam.
  • A sword would never depart from his house—one of his sons murdered another of his sons.
  • The child conceived would die, breaking the heart of Bathsheba.

My God, who is the most wonderful being in the universe, is deserving of utter trust in the goodness of his command. My creator, to whom I owe each breath, has the right to expect complete surrender to his purpose for creating me. My redeemer, who purchased me from destruction by shedding his own blood is worthy of nothing less than total allegiance. And yet my heart rebels. I am guilty of cosmic treason. I deserve to be cast out of God’s presence forever.

The more it dawns upon me that I deserve hell, the greater my allegiance to Jesus will be. Let’s close this examination of true repentance with one of the best examples of it—one of everyone’s favorite stories, from Luke 7:36-47.

Jesus went into Pharisee's house and reclined at table. And a woman of the city, who was a sinner, when she learned that he was reclining at table in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment, and standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment. Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner.” And Jesus answering said to him, “Simon, I have something to say to you.” And he answered, “Say it, Teacher.” “A certain moneylender had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they could not pay, he cancelled the debt of both. Now which of them will love him more?” Simon answered, “The one, I suppose, for whom he cancelled the larger debt.” And he said to him, “You have judged rightly.” Then turning toward the woman he said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not ceased to kiss my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven—for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little.

For Further Prayerful Thought:

  1. How would you summarize the meaning of the second beatitude, Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted?
  2. Jesus called us to grieve over our own sin and the destruction sin brings into others’ lives before he presses on to the call to spread the kingdom of righteousness over the earth. Why might this order be important?
  3. As we looked at five perspective adjustments that we might have to make about the awfulness of our sin, which are expressed by David in Psalm 51 which ones stood out to you most.
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How David Was Defeated By Lust

How David Was Defeated By Lust

On 18 April, 2025 By Gary Yagel

Men hate to lose at anything. Vince Lombardi said, Men, winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing. As we continue our series on the life of David we examine how David lost a battle that brought devastation into his own life and great suffering to his family.

On one occasion a bird watcher spotted a golden eagle. Locking his binoculars on it he watched as the magnificent creature soared in majesty—nothing but regal eloquence in flight, climbing, gliding, soaring higher and higher almost effortlessly. Such a sight is a great analogy for the early years of King David’s life, as he climbed from the place of lowly shepherd boy to the heights of national leadership as king. In thirty years, David experienced unparalleled success as he rose to power. No king of Israel would ever be as well loved by the people, as victorious in battle, or as faithful to the Lord.

But as our ornithologist continued to watch the golden eagle’s flight, something went terribly wrong. The majestic creature stopped soaring higher and then began a sudden plumet. Moments later it lay dead on the ground. Bewildered, the observer found his way to the lifeless mass, wondering what had happened. As he examined the eagle, he discovered the answer. Still curled up in its talons was a weasel, no doubt the prey that the eagle was expecting to provide it the pleasure of a meal. But as the weasel was drawn close to the big bird’s body for flight, it had managed to sink its teeth into the breast of the eagle sending the majestic creature crashing to earth. 2 Samuel 11 is the chapter that records the deadly bite of the weasel in David’s life. What he expected, as he drew Bathsheba to his body, was a feast of pleasure. What he got in the end was a deadly wound that sent him crashing downward. David was taken down by temptation, specifically by sexual lust. Let’s look at how lust defeated him.

In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab, and his servants with him, and all Israel. And they ravaged the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem.  It happened, late one afternoon, when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king's house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful. And David sent and inquired about the woman. And one said, “Is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?” So David sent messengers and took her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. (Now she had been purifying herself from her uncleanness.) Then she returned to her house. And the woman conceived, and she sent and told David, “I am pregnant” (2 Sam 11:1-5). Let’s make some observations:

1.  David had been sowing the seeds for this kind of defeat for years. Back in 2 Sam 5:13, we read, And David took more wives and concubines from Jerusalem, after he came from Hebron, and more sons and daughters were born to David. David had placed himself above God’s law as an exception to God’s design of marriage between one man and one woman. Ever since David took a second wife, he had been violating Dt 17:15-17, You may indeed set a king over you whom the Lord your God will choose.…he shall not acquire many wives for himself. The man who saw Bathsheba naked from a roof had never leaned to say “no” to his sexual appetite.

We might think that if any man in Israel should be able to turn away from the temptation to have sex with another man’s wife, it would be David. With multiple wives and concubines his sex drive had to be sated, right? But that is not how lust works. God seems to have designed sex so that satisfying our sexual desires sinfully inflames our illicit sexual desire, making it harder to resist temptation next time. The more we indulge our sexual appetite in the wrong way, the stronger that appetite becomes. Applying this principle to the use of porn, Jerry Kirk writes,

"At the University of California, Irvine, Dr. James L. McGaugh has conducted research suggesting that memories of experiences that occurred at times of sexual arousal are difficult to erase.  Thus powerful, sexual memories keep reappearing on his mind’s memory screen—stimulating and arousing him.  Every time he masturbates to those fantasies, he is like one of Pavlov’s dogs, rewarded by his orgasm, which reinforces the memory" (How Pornography Harms). 

So, the first truth from David’s example is that losing the battle with lust today strengthens lust for its next battle with me, tomorrow. By NOT winning the battle with illicit cravings NOW, but giving in, I guarantee a harder battle with illicit cravings IN THE FUTURE. The only alternative to sexual self-control is increasingly out-of-control sexual cravings.

2. When the temptation struck, David had no Jonathan in his life. Jonathan had been killed years before on Mt Gilboa. David, like most powerful leaders, had no one in his life watching his back. He had no one sit him down years before this incident with Bathsheba and say, “David your military success is great, but what about Deuteronomy 17:16, which says clearly that Israel’s kings must not have more than one wife. What are you doing, thinking about taking a second wife?” And when David sent Joab out to lead the army in his place, no one said, “I know you are getting older, but when a king sends warriors out to battle, they need their king leading the way.”  When it comes to battling lust in the twenty-first century, the stakes are too high, the battle too fierce, the enemy too wily, the attacks too frequent, the cost of defeat too severe for any Christian man to fight his spiritual battles alone—yet many are trying to do so. The second observation from David’s example is that David had no one watching his back. Do you? 

3. When temptation struck, David was not where he should have been. That fact is certainly emphasized as this story begins, In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David stayed at home. David’s loyal soldiers lay on rocky ground inside a tent; David was taking a nap in his luxurious palatial bedroom. David’s men left the comforts of home for the hardship of war; David left the hardship of the war he instigated to enjoy the pleasures of home including his harem. David’s men fought till they had no energy left; David slept till he was bored. David was in the perfect situation to fall to the pull of lust. When Jesus taught us to pray, “lead us not into temptation” he was teaching us that it is wise to think through the situations that bring us temptation. Over the years, I compiled this list for the battle with lust.

OUTER Conditions When the Craving for Illicit Sexual Pleasure Is Most Appealing

  • Something sexually stimulating crosses your path. (Can’t do much about this).
  • You are alone with the opportunity to pursue illicit sexual pleasure. Your wife is gone for the weekend and porn sites pull on your desires.
  • You are far away from anyone who would know about your little private pleasure excursion. I knew a man away on a business trip who drank too much and had a one-night stand with a woman from work. He lost his entire family because his wife divorced him and got custody of the kids.
  • It is the middle of the night, and you can’t sleep.
  • You are in a situation that has a past association with sexual pleasure.

INNER Conditions When the Craving for Illicit Sexual Pleasure Is Most Appealing

  • Your emotional tank is on “E.” Pleasure replenishes the emotional tank.
  • Boredom—sexual stimulation gets the heart beating.
  • Anger—perhaps towards wife who is repeatedly sending “busy” signals.
  • Discouragement—bad feelings cause a yearning for pleasure (good feelings).

So, our third observation in contrast to David’s example is to be alert to situations where temptation might strike, so we can avoid them or anticipate the temptations they could bring.

4. David notices naked Bathsheba and continues to feast his eyes on her. Archibald Hart describes the male sex, drive, Strong, urgent, forceful, and impatient, the sex drive dominates the mind and body of every healthy male. Strong sexual feelings are common to all normal men.  They are determined more by hormones than by evil desire (The Sexual Man). The blunt truth is that because of David’s multiple wives and concubines, David had been feasting his eyes on lots of naked women; why should Bathsheba be any different? Unlike the godlier Job, David did not bounce his eyes away from the scene of this exposed woman. He did not protect her dignity. Job 31:1 tells us that Job made a covenant with his eyes not to look lustfully at a young woman. This discipline of bouncing our eyes away from half dressed women is vital for two reasons. 1) If I gawk at sexually provocative images, it trains my daughters to think that what gets a man’s attention is dressing provocatively. 2) Continuing to gaze, as David did, opens the door to lust. The best strategy for defeating lust is beating it when it is furthest from my heart—at the beginning, when it just requires bouncing my eyes, before my sexual engine starts revving up. This, of course, is what David did not do.

5. David’s sexual desires are ignited. The more David watches, the more the weasel sinks its teeth into David’s flesh. I’m reminded of James’s description of temptation, Each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it has run its course, brings forth death. (1:14). The word for lust is EPITHUMIA, which means, literally, over-desire, or run-away desire. We associate lust mainly with intense sexual desire, but the word means any kind of intense desire. What James is saying is, each one of you is tempted after your normal desire becomes run- away desire, which then entices you to sin. It is a normal desire to want to have order in your home, but when that desire becomes a run-away desire causing you to explode at your kids because they made a mess, you sin. The fruit in the garden of Eden was desirable to Eve, but when her desire for it became run-away desire, she sinned. Any red-blooded man would have been attracted to Bathsheba’s beautiful body, but David’s continued look enabled Satan to fan the embers of God-given sexual desire into blazing run-away desire.

Dietrick Bonhoeffer writes: "In our members, there is a slumbering inclination toward desire, which is both sudden, and fierce. With irresistible power, desire seizes mastery of the flesh. All at once, a secret, smoldering fire is kindled. The flesh burns and is in flames. It makes no difference whether it is sexual desire, or ambition, or vanity, or revenge, or love of fame or power, or greed for money" (Temptation). Temptation begins by stoking sexual desire into out-of-control lust.

6. Temptation provides the OPPORTUNITY to satisfy the desire UNRIGHTEOUSLY. Notice the opportunities: 1) Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband was away. 2) The text implies that her bathing was ritual bathing marking the end of her period—so David knew she wasn’t having her period, 3) He could easily find her through his servants. 4) His status as King enabled him to require her to come to his palace. 5) Only a few servants would have to keep this secret since the palace was relatively deserted. Back in James 1:15, we read, after lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin. Lust is conceived by the sperm of intense desire meeting the egg of opportunity. David chooses to step across the line of the moral law giving birth to sin. Again, Bonhoeffer describes the process. "At this moment, God is quite unreal to us…The devil doesn’t fill us with hatred of God but with forgetfulness of God. The lust thus aroused envelops the mind and the will of man in deepest darkness. The powers of clear discrimination and decision are taken from us. It is here that everything within me rises up against the Word of God." (Temptation).

When the craving for sexual gratification is ignited and there is opportunity for sexual sin, there is only one alternative: FLEE. Joseph flees from the seductions of Potiphar’s wife. Paul writes to the Corinthians, Flee fornication (1 Cor 6:8), and to Timothy, Flee youthful lusts. But David doesn’t do that. His run-away desire for Bathsheba is controlling him. He asks about her and even, when he discovers that Bathsheba is the wife of Uriah, one of his thirty Mighty Men, the most courageous and loyal men in the nation, it makes no difference. The weasel’s deadly teeth are squeezing tighter. David must have her. And so, he does.

7. David seems to get away with his sin, but he does not. One of the deadliest parts of sin is that its destructive consequences almost never happen immediately. David thinks he’s gotten away with it, but Bathsheba gets pregnant. It has to be his baby, since she had just finished her period. He schemes to bring Uriah home to sleep with his wife, so everyone thinks it’s his. Let’s pick up the story there, 

When Uriah came to him, David asked how Joab was doing and how the people were doing and how the war was going. Then David said to Uriah, “Go down to your house and wash your feet.” And Uriah went out of the king's house, and there followed him a present from the king. But Uriah slept at the door of the king's house with all the servants of his lord and did not go down to his house. When they told David, “Uriah did not go down to his house,” David said to Uriah, “Have you not come from a journey? Why did you not go down to your house?” Uriah said to David, “The ark and Israel and Judah dwell in booths, and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord are camping in the open field. Shall I then go to my house, to eat and to drink and to lie with my wife? (2 Sam 11:7-11).

Can you imagine the dagger of guilt that must have pierced David’s heart at that moment? Out of unwavering allegiance to David, Israel’s army, and Israel’s God, Uriah would not go near his own wife. This picture could not contrast more sharply with David’s lust, contempt for God and his law, scorn for his troops, and betrayal of Uriah the pilar of loyalty to David, in taking URIAH’s wife. What more could God do to open David’s eyes to his sin than to show him this stark contrast? But David’s heart was so hardened by sin, that instead of falling to his knees and begging his loyal subject’s forgiveness, he ends up deciding to murder him! I want to tell you, when I think of this conversation, and see the way sin blinded David’s conscience, IT TERRIFIES ME. David doesn’t get away with his sin. His sin hardened his heart so much that he murders one of the most loyal, faithful men in Israel.

TAKE-AWAYS FOR US FROM DAVID’S FAILURE

A) We need to hate evil and maybe FEAR it. Paul commands the Romans, Abhor evil (12:9). He warns the Galatians, Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap.  For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap life that continues forever (6:7-8). The pain that David caused himself and others would take three or four podcasts to cover; it was enormous. One of his sons rapes one of his daughters, another son murders that brother—it was awful. I want to tell you; the reason I have an accountability partner and some of the men I know have accountability partners is FEAR, in particular FEAR of LUST. We KNOW it can take us down IN AN INSTANT, crushing those we love, and bringing shame on the name of the One who died for us.  

B) When we must say “No” to our sexual appetite because we are single or are married to a wife who is sending busy signals, we need to put an end to the childish thought that God’s laws about fulfilling our cravings are unfair. Listen to the grieving heart of God because David did not trust him enough to obey him. After citing all that he had done for David, God says AND IF THIS WERE TOO LITTLE, I WOULD ADD TO YOU AS MUCH MORE. Why have you despised the word of the Lord, to do what is evil in his sight? (2 Sam 12:7-8). God’s heart as our father is to lavish us with good gifts. The truth is that God wants married husbands and wives to be drunk on sexual love for each other (Prov 3:19). So, what do you do when your sex drive craves sex 3 times a week and she wants sex once a month? The answer is NOT what some Christian counselors say, “Suck it up you don’t need sex.” According to the Word of God a thriving sex life is part of a flourishing marriage. And God’s design is for each spouse to give to his spouse the gift of his or her body for the mate’s enjoyment. But what if that isn’t happening?

TRUST GOD. He knows about the mismatch. In a fallen world nothing is perfect in marriage. But God is in the business of moving what is broken, selfish, and a source of conflict towards healing and restoration and fulfillment. Trust God and ask him to move the sexual part of your marriage towards his design for fulfillment. Then watch what he does!   

C) King David was that soaring golden eagle, the best Israel had to offer. But the best king broke four of the ten commandments in just this one story: You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife (10th), you shall not commit adultery (7th), you shall not steal (8th), you shall not murder (6th). The primary lesson of the story of David and Bathsheba is that sin is too strong for any human, even a man after God’s own heart. ONLY JESUS can defeat sin. This is a liberating truth, because it gives us the courage to bring our struggles with lust into the open. God never intended any man to fight his spiritual battles alone. To do so is TO LOSE THEM.  Joe Dallas says, "Sexual sin thrives in the dark. If you’re caught up in any sexual vice, one thing is certain; the secrecy surrounding your behavior is what strengthens its hold on you.  However ashamed you may feel about admitting your problem to another person, the reality is this:  YOU CAN’T OVERCOME THIS ON YOUR OWN.  IF YOU COULD, WOULDN’T YOU HAVE DONE SO BY NOW?" (Every Man’s Battle Workshop).

D) We must let failure drive us towards Christ and not away from him. After being confronted by Nathan, and told that God forgave him, David took his failure to God writing Psalm 51. One of the names of Satan is “The Accuser of the Brothers” because he wants to heap shame upon us because of our sin—especially sexual ones. Don’t let him get away with that! A veteran warrior in the battle with lust points out:

"It isn’t the sinless man who makes it to the end; rather, it’s the man who’s learned to pick himself up after he stumbles.  If your struggle seems relentless, remember this; when you commit yourself to sexual integrity, you commit yourself to a DIRECTION, not to PERFECTION.  You may stumble along the way—that’s no justification for sin, just a realistic view of life in this fallen world. What determines the success or failure of an imperfect man is his willingness to pick himself up, confess his fault, and continue in the direction he committed himself to.  Remember Paul’s approach: 'Forgetting those things that are behind, I press on towards the mark of the high calling'" (Ibid).

For Further Prayerful Thought:

  1. How is the story of the weasel taking down the eagle similar to lust’s takedown of David?
  2. What are the outer conditions and inner conditions when sinful sexual lust is most appealing to you?
  3. How would you summarize the price tag of David’s sexual sin?
  4. How is David an example of letting his failure drive him TO God and not AWAY from God. (You might want to look at Psalm 51—written after David was confronted by Nathan.)
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The Resurrection of Jesus’ BODY Not Just His SOUL Matters

The Resurrection of Jesus’ BODY Not Just His SOUL Matters

On 18 April, 2025 By Gary Yagel

A pair of scholars has made it a practice to poll Christians to see if they grasp what Jesus said his mission was. They report,

"We have asked thousands of Evangelical Christians in numerous contexts this most basic question—why did Jesus come to earth?—and fewer than 1 percent of respondents say anything even remotely close to the answer that Jesus Himself gave. Instead, the vast majority of people say something like 'Jesus came to die on the cross to save us from our sins so that we can get to heaven.' While this answer is true, saving souls is only a subset of the comprehensive healing of the entire cosmos that Jesus’ kingdom brings and that was the centerpiece of his mission" (Corbett & Fikkert, When Helping Hurts).

Jesus described his purpose in the following words, when he launched his ministry. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor” (Lk 4:18-19).

Was Jesus claiming to be the Messiah promised by Isaiah who would usher in a kingdom unlike anything the world had ever seen? Could Jesus be the king in whose kingdom justice, righteousness, and peace would prevail forever? Would Jesus’ kingdom bring healing to the parched soil, the feeble hands, the shaky knees, the fearful hearts, the blind, the deaf, the lame, the brokenhearted, the captives? Would his kingdom bring the year of jubilee for the poor? Jesus’ answer to all these questions was a resounding “yes.” Jesus came to do more than die on the cross to save us from our sins. If we miss that, we will never be able to be faithful to the mission our Master assigned us.

The Messianic prophecy that Jesus claimed in his hometown synagogue to be fulfilling portrays Christ’s Kingdom of wholeness and righteousness prevailing over all creation. Jesus came to overthrow the tyrants who had usurped Adam’s throne of Kingdom Earth and brought devastation into every sphere of it—Satan, sin, and death. Jesus came not to rescue Christians from this sin-infested earth by giving his followers a ticket to heaven but to restore this sin-infested earth through the power of the resurrection, using us to spread this restoration. That is the true gospel, the Gospel of the Kingdom, which Jesus preached. But as Fickkert and Corbett discovered, many Christians today, especially those with Fundamentalist roots, have reduced the true gospel to a partial gospel. They would define the gospel as these two fundamental truths:

  • I must recognize that I am sinful and broken.
  • I cannot fix my own brokenness, so I need a savior, Jesus, to redeem me.

While sin and personal salvation are undeniable realities, they are not the complete gospel. They are not the gospel of the kingdom, which, as we saw last week, is the only gospel that Jesus proclaimed. If personal sin and salvation are all that is important to Christians, we have settled for a two-chapter gospel: 1) the fall, 2) redemption. If you think about it, this gospel doesn’t require Jesus’ physical, bodily resurrection. Since he paid for our sins at the cross, he could have just risen spiritually and ascended to heaven, where he stands at the gates of heaven and admits into the holy presence of God those who have trusted in his atoning work at the cross and turn away those who trust in their own works for salvation.

However, the resurrection of Christ’s physical, material body shows that God’s story from Genesis to Revelation is a four-chapter gospel about his creation. The resurrection of Christ’s physical body speaks volumes about the meta story of God’s plan for creation and our part in it. Understanding that story has practical consequences for our everyday lives. It answers significant questions that most humans have: Why am I here? What is God’s purpose for my life? Why is the world so broken? It teaches that eternal life is not US getting to HEAVEN but HEAVEN coming to EARTH to renew it and prepare it to be the eternal seat of God’s throne.

The fact that Jesus’ resurrection was not just a spiritual resurrection, but the resurrection of Jesus’ physical body is so important that when the Council of Nicaea convened in the 4th century, it intentionally refuted this two-chapter, spiritualized gospel (Docetism) in the creed it wrote to insure that believers understood that Jesus’ incarnation and resurrection took place in real, physical flesh. The importance of this truth is still recognized today, in the Apostles’ Creed, “I believe in the resurrection of the body and in the life everlasting.” It is noteworthy that this council, in seeing how precious God’s physical creation is to him, issued a mandate that all the towns in Christendom big enough to have a cathedral were to build hospitals to care for the physical body.

Belief in the bodily resurrection of Christ tells us that God has begun to redeem his whole CREATION from the decay of sin. Although today’s "two-chapter gospel" Christians do affirm the resurrection of the physical body, many have lost the understanding of its significance. God’s original intent to have man rule over and develop the potential of CREATION, and the biblical teaching that the second Adam will ultimately restore all of CREATION are inadvertently left out of the gospel story by many Christians today. Here are the four chapters of the true gospel.

1. CREATION (the way things were, along with God’s intention for Adam & Eve to develop its potential, rule it for God, developing culture that reflects God’s image)

2.  FALL (the reason the world is so broken—Adam’s kingdom rule usurped by Satan, sin, and death)

3.  REDEMPTION (God’s people set free by King Jesus from slavery to Satan, sin, and death—tasting and showing the world the way things could be)

4.  RESTORATION (the way things will be—creation renewed with no more sin, sorrow, or pain.)

The four-chapter gospel answers the questions of meaning, origin, and ultimate purpose. It restores to Christians raised on the two-chapter gospel the importance of creation. Tim Keller writes:

Some conservative Christians think of salvation as the fall, redemption, heaven. In this narrative, the purpose of redemption is escape from this world; only saved people have anything of value, while unbelieving people in the world are seen as blind and bad. If, however, the story of salvation is Creation, Fall, Redemption, Restoration, then things look different. In this narrative, non-Christians are seen as created in the image of God and given much wisdom and greatness in them (cf Ps. 8) even though the image is defaced and fallen. Moreover, the purpose of redemption is not to escape the world, but to renew it…It is about the coming of God’s kingdom to renew all things. (cited in All Things New, by Hugh Whelchel.)

Much of the Bible-believing church today has its historic roots in a form of Christianity that held a two-chapter view of the gospel. Here is what results from devaluing creation. You might recognize some of these strains.

A.  The two-chapter gospel doesn’t give a clear picture of our true destiny. Instead, it puts the emphasis on “going to heaven” when the complete story is that heaven comes down to renew the earth. King Jesus comes down from heaven to overthrow the tyrants ruining Adam’s kingdom, Satan, sin, and death. Those who have died before Christ’s final return will be united with their physical bodies and we will dwell eternally with God himself on a renewed earth where there is no more sin or decay.

B.  The two-chapter gospel doesn’t give a full picture of what we were created FOR—our mission.  Christian discipleship often completely ignores God’s creation mission for Adam and Eve. A true understanding of redemption is that Christians recover their creation calling to “secular” vocation—to develop the potential of God’s creation. God created humans in his image to be workers, just as he is. Sin corrupted our work ensuring that humans toil and sweat in their labor. Our redemption in Christ means recovering our original calling to our vocation—knowing that salvation is not escaping from this earth but being a part of God’s four-chapter plan to renew creation. T. M Moore describes the four-chapter gospel view of work:

"So the creation has been “subjected to futility,” Paul says, and we who have become the sons and daughters of God, who understand his purpose for his work, have been called in our work to repair, renew, and restore the original beauty, goodness and truth of God….Our work only takes on full significance when we see it in this light, as part of God’s ongoing work to bring everything to a higher state of goodness (Rom 8:28). So, no matter what our job, or whatever your work may be, God intends that you should devote your labors to something greater than personal interest, economic prosperity, or social good, alone. God intends your work to contribute to the restoration of the creation, and the people in it, to raising life on this planet to higher states of beauty, goodness, and truth, reflecting the glory of God in our midst." (TM Moore, “Work, Beauty and Meaning: A Biblical Perspective on the Daily Grind.”)

C. The two-chapter gospel creates a false sacred/secular divide. By ignoring the significance of creation, the two-chapter gospel creates a divide between what is spiritual and what is secular. Hugh Whelchel, in his booklet, All Things New, writes, "This divide is responsible for the popular mindset that our relationship with God is compartmentalized to church-related events and activities. Quite the contrary, our response to God should reverberate into every facet of life: at home, at work, in our families, in our communities and at church." Christ claims every part of our lives and every square inch of creation as his and wants us to pursue his righteous rule there. That is what seeking first the Kingdom of God means.

D. The two-chapter gospel leads to separation from the world that God commanded us to shape FOR Him. Since humans are made in God’s image and God is the supreme ruler, God gave humans a kingdom to rule. Genesis 1 reveals God’s command to the first humans, “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.”  But in some circles, Christians have completely abandoned this calling because of a misunderstanding of John’s command, “Love not the world, neither the things of the world.” This command has been mistakenly understood as a call to separate from non-Christians and their activities. Here are some reasons why this interpretation cannot be correct.

  • John the author of this prohibition in his letter is the same author who said in his gospel that God so LOVED the world that he gave us his only begotten son. He uses the same word KOSMOS. God loves his creation. So, world cannot refer this material, physical creatioin, which includes the lost.
  • John qualifies exactly what he means by the “world” we are NOT to love. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. He is referring to the fallen world-system of evil. We are to avoid the desires of the flesh (SARX). This is not the word for body, which is SOMA but describes our fallen, corrupted desires. We are to avoid the lust of the eyes, which seems to refer to over-desire for material things that we set our eye upon, which can lead to idolatry, envy, covetousness, materialism. We are to avoid the pride of life, also translated, vainglory, which is a corrupted view that over-desires respect, success, and accomplishment. John clealy uses this term, world, not for the sphere where humans live but for the sphere under Satan and evil's influence. 
  • John’s command in his letter to “love not the world” is best understood in terms of what he recounts Jesus saying in his gospel in John 12:31, Now is the judgment of THIS WORLD; now will the ruler of this world be cast out. It is the world corrupted by Satan and sin that we are to never love.

Christians should be careful about identifying the current culture as “the world.” The culture is not the world we are to hate. The culture is made up of ideas and inter-personal relationships that we are to love so much that we actively seek to redeem it, because God loves his world and appointed us to shape it. Cultural values are a composite of both biblical truths and the lies that emanate from Satan’s kingdom of evil. That is the part of culture which we are never to love or compromise with.

E. The two-chapter gospel leads to an escapist view of redemption.  It views salvation as private, personal salvation only, a bus ticket to heaven. Christians are left with no understanding of what they are supposed to do while they wait for the bus, except to not be worldly and evangelize. This translates into a negative attitude towards non-Christians and the culture. Missing chapter 1 of the gospel, creation and chapter 4 of the gospel, restoration of creation, "two-chapter gospel" adherents miss the value of God’s creation, including unbelievers who bear the image of God. Ignoring God’s command to develop culture, they have no inclination to partner with non-believers who, through common grace, have much to contribute in God’s work to repair, restore, renew, and develop the glory of his creation. The true gospel calls us to spread Christ’s kingdom of shalom, reweaving the fabric of the culture in which all the key relationships that make up culture have been torn by Adam and Eve's sin. As Fikkert and Corbett remind us, 

"Their relationship with God was damaged, as their intimacy with him was replaced with fear; their relationship with self was marred as Adam and Eve developed a sense of shame; their relationship with others was broken, as Adam quickly blamed Eve for their sin; and their relationship to the rest of creation became distorted, as God cursed the ground and the child-bearing process…because the four relationships are the building blocks for all human activity, the effects of the Fall are manifested in the economic, social religious, and political systems that humans have created throughout history" (When Helping Hurts). 

Jesus’ mission was to overthrow sin’s reign everywhere in culture, not just in the personal lives of believers. That is what it means to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. That is what it means to be salt and light in the culture—as salt, to retard decay, as light to expose injustice and show the kingdom of righteousness to the world. It is to join in God’s redemption of his glorious creation right now. God has strategically placed each of us in our specific family, job, church, neighborhood and community so that we can repair, restore, renew, and develop the glory of his creation right there and right now.

F.  The two-chapter gospel reduces our mission as Christian men to sin management. If your vision of Christianity is sin management, how much does it capture your heart?  Although fighting for righteousness in our own lives is a high calling and central to our mission, battling personal sin is not a big enough vision to capture the hearts of men in the same way that the four-chapter gospel does. Dave Murrow, in his book, Why Men Hate Going to Church points out, “Every man wants to be a hero, to become a great man. Boys do not dream of sitting in a cubicle; they dream of slaying the dragon, rescuing the princess, and absconding with the treasure.“ Males want to be engaged in a mission that is worthy of the best they have to give. Buried in men’s hearts is a willingness to make great sacrifices for a mission that is worthy of their full devotion; but too often in our churches the remnants of the two-chapter gospel are producing a vision of discipleship that fails to engage that capacity. If discipleship is primarily about our personal struggle with sin, it will not capture their hearts.

In contrast, the four-chapter gospel has the power to connect the dots between men’s willingness to fully devote themselves to a great cause and the great cause for which Jesus came to planet earth—the overthrow of Satan, sin, and death—and the establishment of his righteous kingdom over the planet. Jesus began his ministry by calling attention to the cataclysmic intrusion of the kingdom of God into time. “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand” (Mk 1:15). Jesus came into the world to recover Adam’s kingdom from the usurpers of Adam’s throne—Satan, sin, and death— and reverse the curse brought upon the cosmos because of sin. In the same way that the curse spread decay, brokenness, and death throughout Adam’s entire kingdom, so Jesus’ mission to bring healing and restoration is cosmic in its scope.

As Christ-followers, we enlist in the great cause of our master, seeking the reign of Christ’s kingdom of righteousness over every square inch of life. King Jesus has come to reconcile to himself all things (Col 1:20). He is putting into right relationship everything he has created. He is using his power to fix everything in the universe that was broken by sin. Tim Keller writes, “The kingdom of God is the renewal of the whole world through the entrance of supernatural forces. As things are restored under Christ’s rule and authority, they are restored to health, beauty, and freedom.” (Ministries of Mercy: The Call of the Jericho Road). The four-chapter gospel is the reason that this podcast/blog, Mission Focused Men for Christ, defines our threefold mission as Called TO Christ—to whole-hearted loyalty to our king’s rule in our lives, Called TO BE LIKE Christ—to surrender to Christ’ righteousness in our heart attitudes, and Called TO EXERCISE DOMINION FOR CHRIST—to seek, in every sphere of our lives, to bring about kingdom righteousness and kingdom flourishing. Our mission is a little bigger than overcoming our personal sin.

Christopher Wright, in his book, God’s Mission: The Key to Unlocking the Bible’s Grand Narrative, summarizes the four-chapter understanding of our mission: "Our committed participation as God’s people, at God’s invitation and command, in God’s own mission within the history of God’s world for the redemption of God’s creation…This is THE STORY that tells us where we have come from, how we got to be here, who we are, why the world is in the mess it is, how it can be (and has been) changed, and where we are ultimately going.”

The resurrection of Christ’s physical body calls us not just to a private, spiritual relationship with Christ, but to do our part in Christ’s cosmic mission to fix everything in creation broken by sin.

For Further Prayerful Thought:

  1. Celebrate the fact that your calling from Christ is to part of the biggest enterprise in the history of the world—Christ’s overthrow of Satan, sin, and death and establishment of his kingdom of righteousness over nook and cranny of earth.
  2. The Council of Nicaea countered the heresy that Christ’s resurrection was just spiritual, by insisting that Orthodox Christianity believes in the resurrection of the body. It also decreed that all towns with cathedrals also build hospitals. How are these two decisions related to one another?
  3. How does the two-chapter gospel deny what Jesus said was his reason for coming to earth when he quoted Isaiah 61, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor”?

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Palm Sunday Reveals Our Mission as Christ’s Disciples

Palm Sunday Reveals Our Mission as Christ’s Disciples

On 13 April, 2025 By Gary Yagel

One of the most remarkable incidents in the life of King David led, a thousand years later, to the Triumphal entry of the Son of David, the promised Messiah through the gates of Jerusalem on the day we celebrate as Palm Sunday. You might even say, “the story of Palm Sunday began in the heart of David with his allegiance to his God.” 2 Samuel 7 tells us that after David took Jerusalem, built his palace on the high ground, and moved the Ark of the Covenant (God’s throne) there, he said to himself, “It’s not right that Yahweh should have a tent (the tabernacle) while I live in a cedar palace.” David wanted to build a house for Yahweh. But God’s answer was, “No, David, I don’t want YOU to build MY HOUSE. I am going to build YOUR HOUSE.” God says,

When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom… I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever…. And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever (vs 12-13, 16).

Though we associate Jesus’ arrival on a donkey with children and palm branches, those actually with Jesus who shouted, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord” saw his arrival as the coming of the promised Messianic King who would fully and finally overthrow their enemies. This episode is devoted to better understanding the nature of Christ’s kingship and kingdom, which was not only misunderstood by the crowd and his disciples but is misunderstood by many Christians today.  

David and his kingdom are a physical type pointing to spiritual realities just as Hebrews tells us the earthly tabernacle and earthly priesthood “serve as a copy and shadow of the heavenly things” (Heb 8:5). The Palm Sunday crowd not only connected the Messiah to David as his descendant but connected his coming kingdom to David’s kingdom, as well. Those who went before and those who followed were shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David! Hosanna in the highest!” (Mk 11:9-10). Let’s examine three themes from the establishment of David’s kingdom that parallel Christ’s Kingdom and can illuminate our understanding of it.

THEME #1—THE DEFEAT OF SATAN & HIS KINGDOM

A. David defeated Israel’s earthly enemies in the power of the Lord. David knew that according to God’s Covenant mediated by Moses, God would defeat their enemies if they obeyed God but allow their enemies to subjugate them if they violated the covenant sanctions. Here are some of the words from Scripture that he, no doubt, meditated upon while keeping his father’s sheep.

And if you faithfully obey the voice of the Lord your God, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you ….The Lord will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before you. They shall come out against you one way and flee before you seven ways…But if you will not obey the voice of the Lord your God or be careful to do all his commandments and his statutes that I command you today, then all these curses shall come upon you….The Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You shall go out one way against them and flee seven ways before them (Dt 28).

David knew and modeled two truths. 1) The battle is the Lord’s. Goliath came at him with sword and spear and javelin, but David said “I come to you in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied…. For the battle is the Lord's, and he will give you into our hand.” 2) Israel’s failure was not a failure of MILITARY MIGHT but a failure of MORAL MIGHT. Remember David’s words in Psalm 1:

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away.

God gave David military success for Israel wherever he went but that went hand in hand with turning his nation back to covenant faithfulness to God. Israel’s true enemy was the kingdom of darkness.

B. Ezekiel’s remarkable prophecy of the “son of David” to be Israel’s Messiah, given 580 years before the birth of Jesus, reveals that the Messianic King would defeat the kingdom of evil. Ezekiel 37. They shall not defile themselves anymore with their idols and their detestable things, or with any of their transgressions….My servant David shall be king over them, and they shall all have one shepherd. They shall walk in my rules and be careful to obey my statutes. Right in the midst of Ezekiel’s remarkable prophecy was that the real subjugating power that needed to be overthrown for Israel was not Babylon or Rome but Satan presenting himself as a false god in the form of an idol.

C. Jesus’ Triumphal Entry. In Luke’s account we see that, perhaps unknowingly, the crowds proclaimed that this messiah would bing a cessation of hostilities in heaven. The whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen, saying, "Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! PEACE IN HEAVEN and glory in the highest!” Heaven is often used in Scripture to describe the place surrounding God’s throne where there is no sin. But it is also used to describe the place where the battle between the Kingdom of Darkness and the Kingdom of Righteousness takes place. For example, we read in Revelation 12:7-8. Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon. And the dragon and his angels fought back, but he was defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven.

The expression, peace in heaven, proclaimed by the crowds on Palm Sunday is only found one other place in the NT. That text, Colossians 1:20, also talks about Christ making peace in heaven. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in HEAVEN, MAKING PEACE by the blood of his cross. Only Messiah Jesus can bring about peace in heaven, because only he can vanquish the Evil One and his angels. The Apostle, John, tells us that overthrowing Satan was central to Jesus’ mission, The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:8b). Paul’s version of the same truth is stated in Col 2:15) He (Christ) disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them at the cross (Col 2:15).

D. Our Mission. The Palm Sunday story reveals that Jesus’ mission is to destroy Satan’s work. As followers of Christ, we need to ask ourselves, “What are we doing to fight Satan?” Spiritual warfare is not just for church leaders and Charismatic Christians; it is fundamental to our calling as Christ-following men. The great Ephesians 6:10-20 passage on spiritual warfare can be summarized: BE STRONG IN THE LORD in 2 ways:

  1. (vs 11-17) Defensively, we are to stand against Satan’s assault by putting on our armor. 
  2. (vs 18-19) Offensively, we are to fight through prayer for righteousness to prevail, in the hearts of our loved ones, and over the planet.

Here are practical ways to fight spiritually in prayer for those you care for:

  • Pray for them to resist specific temptations they might face. Pray then like this….lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil (Matt 9, 13).
  • Pray for them to be spiritually strengthened. May he grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being (Eph 3:16).
  • Ask for specific spiritual fruit to be produced in them. “Lord, empower Jim with self-control today.” “Lord, please produce the fruit of joy in Sally’s heart today.” If you abide in me, and my words abide in 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 (John 15:7-8).
  • Pray for believers to have the winsome boldness to share their faith if the opportunity arises. Paul wrote, Pray….also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel (Eph 6:19).

THEME #2—THE DEFEAT OF SIN THROUGH CHRIST’S ATONEMENT & ASCENSION

In order for sin to be ultimately defeated, it had to be atoned for, and the Second Adam had to retake Adam’s throne ascending to the right hand of God providing the spiritual authority and power by which Christians can make disciples of the nations. This defeat of evil, including atonement for sin, is pre-figured by David, alluded to in Ezekiel’s prophecy, and portrayed in Jesus’ triumphal entry riding on a donkey. John tells us in Revelation 1 that Christians are a kingdom of priests.

A. David brought the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem and built a rudimentary tabernacle for it, reinstituting the offering of sacrifices as atonement for sin.

And they brought in the ark of the Lord and set it in its place, inside the tent that David had pitched for it. And David offered burnt offerings and peace offerings before the Lord. And when David had finished offering the burnt offerings and the peace offerings, he blessed the people in the name of the Lord of hosts and distributed among all the people, the whole multitude of Israel, both men and women, a cake of bread, a portion of meat, and a cake of raisins to each one. Then all the people departed, each to his house (2 Sam 6:17).

B. Ezekiel’s prophecy is amazingly clear about Yahweh’s role in defeating sin both in making atonement for and giving them power to overcome their backslidings.

But I will save them from all the backslidings in which they have sinned, and will cleanse them; and they shall be my people, and I will be their God. They shall dwell in the land that I gave to my servant Jacob, where your fathers lived. They and their children and their children's children shall dwell there forever, and David my servant shall be their prince forever. I will make a covenant of peace with them.

Compare this with Romans 5:1, Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

C. Jesus’ Triumphal Entry. At the beginning of his final week, Jesus deliberately instructed his disciples to borrow a donkey colt for him to ride to fulfill Zechariah’s Messianic prophecy, which was widely known, Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!  Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey (Zechariah 9:9). The crowd had added the powerful miracles they’d seen Jesus perform to his decision to deliberately fulfill Zechariah’s prophecy and concluded that he was the promised king from David’s descent, the long-awaited Messiah who had finally come to overthrow Rome and establish his kingdom. They expected a military/political kingdom. Yet, in the details of the triumphal entry, were clues about the true nature of their enemy and his kingdom.

Some suggest that riding a donkey instead of a warhorse implies that the King’s arrival was bringing peace. The crowd’s shouts must have proclaimed “peace on earth” as well as in heaven because a few minutes later, Jesus wept over Jerusalem, saying “Would that you, even you, HAD KNOWN ON THIS DAY THE THINGS THAT MAKE FOR PEACE!  The only true peace that can be achieved in the human race is through the eradication of sin. Scripture tells us, The works of the flesh are ….enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy (Gal 5:20-21).  Jesus wept for the citizens of Jerusalem, because they did not understand this truth. Their enemy was not Rome but their own sinful hearts that had blinded them to the truth of their sin and to who Jesus really was.

D. Our Mission. Harmony comes from aligning life with God’s design, given in his moral law. Harmony in human relationships is the fruit of Jesus overthrowing sin, ascending to heaven, and sending the Holy Spirit to indwell his people, to root out the works of the flesh and produce the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, and self-control. That is the formula for peace and flourishing--shalom!  But such fruit is only produced by abiding in Christ. Jesus said to his followers, Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.

THEME #3—EARTH IS RESTORED & PREPARED TO BE THE LOCATION OF YAHWEH’S ETERNAL THRONE

A. David defeated the Jebusites and made Jerusalem the capital city of Israel. The battle to take this ground appears to have had everlasting consequences. In John’s Revelation vision of the final return of Christ, he wrote,

And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I 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 I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. (Rev 21:2-3,22).

B. Ezekiel 37 prophecy. Notice that this prophecy is linked to specific land (promised to Abraham) on which God would one day locate his throne, the same reality portrayed in Revelation 21. David my servant shall be their prince forever. I will make a covenant of peace with them. It shall be an everlasting covenant with them. And I will set them in their land and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary in their midst forevermore. My dwelling place shall be with them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people (Chapter 37).

Too many Christians today think that when we die, we go to heaven to spend eternity there. This half-truth goes right along with the half-truth that Christians should separate from “this world” by withdrawing from contact with non-Christians. This is a flat denial of our call in Genesis 1 to shape the culture of planet earth FOR the high king and of Jesus' command to make disciples of the nations, not just Christians within the nations. The truth is that when we die our souls go immediately into God’s presence, but we will spend eternity on earth, which right now is being restored and prepared to be the location of Yahweh’s eternal throne. The gospel is not that WE go to HEAVEN for eternity: it is that HEAVEN comes to EARTH for eternity.

C. Jesus Triumphal Entry. The truth that the gospel is more than a ticket to eternal life is a fundamental part of the Palm Sunday story, but it is often missed. When the crowds started to chant, “Glory to God in the Highest,” some Pharisees told Jesus to rebuke his disciples. Jesus answered, “I tell you, IF THESE WERE SILENT, THE VERY STONES WOULD CRY OUT.”  What did Jesus mean? The curse upon the ground because of Adams sin was about to be reversed at the cross and creation itself redeemed! Listen to Paul’s explanation. The creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now (Rom 8:19-22). The gospel is that Adam’s kingdom, earth, subjected to God’s curse because of Adam’s sin has been set free from the curse by the Second Adam who has ascended to take over earth’s kingdom and is fixing everything broken by sin.  

D. Our Mission is to put on display the Kingdom of Christ as it invades, transforms, and fixes earth. Here are a few examples of fixing what has been broken by sin.

In South Central Los Angeles FCM Baptist Church began training volunteers to work in the neonatal intensive care unit of the overburdened and underfunded Martin Luther King Hospital. After completing their training, these “Rock n’ Hold” volunteers began to spend hours in the hospital nursery, holding the twitching, afflicted babies who had been born addicted to the crack that their mothers consumed. Rocking and holding the babies, some of whom were born with AIDS, they love them, sing them lullabies, and show the hospital staff Jesus.

Tenth Presbyterian Church located in a part of downtown Philadelphia with numerous gay bars and homosexual meeting areas began running a two-line advertisement in the Philadelphia Inquirer, “Homosexuals and Lesbians can change,” followed by a phone number to this outreach ministry arm, Harvest. Besides some crank calls, hundreds of people called Harvest, where they have received tender love, and real hope, some coming to faith in Christ.

Kingdom disciples display Christ’s kingdom, which overcomes the kingdom of evil and the brokenness that sin has brought. That is the message of Palm Sunday!

For Further Prayerful Thought:

  1. What stood out to you from David’s foreshadowing, Ezekiel’s prophecy or Jesus’ triumphal entry that emphasized our calling to fight Satan?
  2. What stood out to you from David’s foreshadowing, Ezekiel’s prophecy or Jesus’ triumphal entry that emphasized our calling to battle our sinful nature and strive for godly attitudes?
  3. What stood out to you from David’s foreshadowing, Ezekiel’s prophecy or Jesus’ triumphal entry that emphasized our calling to join in Jesus restoration of everything on planet earth broken by sin?
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David Models Three Marks of Spiritual Maturity

David Models Three Marks of Spiritual Maturity

On 02 April, 2025 By Gary Yagel

Christian author, Dave Murrow, writes, “Men want to succeed at everything then do. Competence is very important to them. They never stop to ask for directions because doing that would call their competence as a navigator into question. Men are also competitive. They want to win in every situation” (Why Men Hate Going to Church).

When it comes to following Jesus, Paul tells us what winning looks like. His goal in ministry is—that we may present everyone mature in Christ (Col 1:28). Our life target is spiritual maturity. Today’s episode from David’s life helps us all lock on to a concrete picture of just what spiritual maturity looks like in everyday life!

Let’s take another look at David’s walk with God. His humanness draws us to him as one moment he fails God spectacularly but the very next time we see him, David is raising the bar on making righteous choices out of faithfulness to God. Observe I Samuel 24:2-7.

Then Saul took three thousand chosen men out of all Israel and went to seek David and his men in front of the Wildgoats' Rocks. And he came to the sheepfolds by the way, where there was a cave, and Saul went in to relieve himself. Now David and his men were sitting in the innermost parts of the cave. And the men of David said to him, “Here is the day of which the Lord said to you, ‘Behold, I will give your enemy into your hand, and you shall do to him as it shall seem good to you.’” Then David arose and stealthily cut off a corner of Saul's robe. And afterward David's heart struck him, because he had cut off a corner of Saul's robe. He said to his men, “The Lord forbid that I should do this thing to my lord, the Lord's anointed, to put out my hand against him, seeing he is the Lord's anointed.” So David persuaded his men with these words and did not permit them to attack Saul. And Saul rose up and left the cave and went on his way.

Don’t you love how real the Bible is! This incident takes place in front of “Wildgoats’ Rocks.” King Saul slips into the cave to take a dump. Saul just goes far enough into the cave to be out of sight of his troops. But David and his guys, who are deeper in the cave, see his silhouette against the light. Let’s put ourselves in David’s shoes.

You have been a national hero. You’ve known the thrill of cheering crowds and women singing of your achievements in the street. Now, because of one man’s jealousy, you are a national fugitive, always on the run, always hiding, always fearing that one of your countrymen will betray you. Falsely accused of disloyalty to the king, you’ve been hiding in filthy caves and sleeping on hard ground. You are hungry, thirsty, and exhausted, always on the move, always fearing that one man who was trying to hunt you down like an animal. David can’t even remember a home-cooked meal, a soft bed, the arms of Mikal around him, or even a full night of sleep without the anxiety of being discovered.

This one man’s unjust pursuit of you has forced you to leave your dearest friends, your father’s household of brothers, sisters-in-law, nieces and nephews—and even forced you to leave your wife, Mikal. And you are lonely…so lonely. This one man, Saul, has made it his sole purpose to track you down and kill you. He is possessed by the single goal of putting you to death; he won’t stop until the day you die or he dies. All of this in spite of what God had promised you years ago—that you would replace this man as king. God promised that he will give this man’s kingdom into your hands.

Your heart skips a beat when you hear Saul’s troops outside the cave. Suddenly you see a dark figure at the mouth of the cave coming in. Your heart begins to pound. Perhaps he is an advance scout searching the cave making it certain you will be discovered. Being trapped, you and your troops would be slaughtered. Your eyes squint to make out who it is against the backlighting of the cave’s entrance. As the figure comes closer, you rub your eyes. You can’t believe what you see. It is THAT MAN, ALONE, UNGUARDED, and UNARMED. Joab, one of your men whispers, “Do you believe this? Yahweh is putting your enemy right in the palm of your hand?”

What a clearcut situation. Killing your enemy before he killed you was ingrained in the culture. God had told David that he was to be ruler in place of Saul. What better situation could Yahweh orchestrate to deliver his enemy, Saul, who was unjustly trying to murder David, into David’s hand? Even David’s men realized that God was handing David the chance to end Saul’s miserable life and insane pursuit of them all. Yet, when these compelling circumstances would have led almost any man to take Saul’s life, David would not do it. Why not? David was inner-directed by his conscience, not outer-directed by circumstances and the opinions of his men. Notice the reasoning process he rejected:

1. The end justifies the means. God had already anointed David to be king and Saul was getting in the way by trying to kill David. Here was the opportunity to get him out of the way so God’s will would be accomplished.

2. These circumstances are so perfectly designed, they have to be God saying to kill Saul before Saul kills him.  While it is true that God is sovereign over circumstances, their perfect alignment can be deceptive. Sarai misread the circumstances of God’s long delay to cause her pregnancy. So she convinced Abram to obtain what God promised by following local customs and getting her handmaid, Hagar, pregnant. It is not overstating the case to say that the very Middle East conflict today between Hamas and Israel traces back to Ismael the father of Arabs being fathered by Abraham as well as Isaac the father of the Jews, and conflict between the two ever since.

Circumstances do play a role in discerning God’s leading. But that place is close to the bottom of things to consider. A better order is:

  --after asking, “What is and is not my responsibility?”

  --after asking, “Which biblical principles apply here, especially moral prohibitions?”

  --after asking, what my wife’s thoughts are (after helping her see the whole picture.)

  --after seeking counsel from others, not those who will just tell me what I want to hear, but give wise, biblical counsel.

  --after using common sense to list the pros and cons.

3. He also rejected the peer pressure of his men. They urged him to do the obvious, take Saul’s life. But a godly man can never be a pragmatist, which is the philosophy that the end justifies the means.  

Mark # 1 of Spiritual Maturity: Developing & Submitting to A Mature Conscience

David listened to his conscience. Clearly this is the reason David did not take Saul’s life. David arose and stealthily cut off a corner of Saul's robe. And afterward David’s heart struck him, because he had cut off a corner of Saul's robe. It appears that David’s conscience had already led him not to slay Saul but to prove to Saul that he could have done so—by cutting off a piece of Saul’s robe. But David’s conscience was so sensitive that he even felt guilty about cutting off a corner of Saul’s robe.

A. Understanding the function of our conscience as Christians. The human conscience is the nervous system that keeps us from damaging ourselves, spiritually, just as our physical nervous system keeps us from damaging our bodies. Touching a hot stove burns our finger; the nervous system produces pain that causes us to stop. Leprosy destroys the nerves, which means a leper could put his hand in a pot of boiling water, feel no pain, and destroy his hand. Our conscience functions similarly. When we start to do something wrong—our conscience bothers us. It hurts, telling us not to keep going down that path or it will further damage our lives. So, our conscience is a warning system that is our friend.

B. Four kinds of consciences mentioned in the New Testament.

A good conscience. Acts 23:1—Paul said, “Brothers, I have lived my life before God in all good conscience up to this day.” Paul is not saying that he never sinned or violated his conscience but that when his conscience spoke, he responded promptly and properly. (Besides warning us, the conscience also convicts us of sin so that we confess our sins and seek forgiveness. We will examine this role of conscience after David’s adultery with Bathsheba and murder of Uriah.) Notice also that Paul linked his conscience to living “before God,” not to living before men.

A seared conscience. 1 Tim 4:1-2 speaks of hypocritical liars who seared their own consciences. Skin that is burned at first hurts, but if the pain is ignored the nerves are destroyed and hardened scar tissue replaces it. This word, seared, points to a profound truth about the human conscience. It is crucial to listen to it because if we violate it repeatedly, it becomes more insensitive, like scar tissue. That is why psychologists tell us that, sometimes, hardened criminals who have murdered others, no longer experience the sensation of guilt. In Titus 1, Paul uses another word to describe the way the human conscience is corrupted by sin—defiled. Both their minds and their consciences are defiled. They profess to know God, but they deny him by their works. They are detestable, disobedient, unfit for any good work. Both a seared and defiled conscience no longer function clearly. This is another way of saying that sin causes us to suppress the truth in unrighteousness (Rom 1:18).

A weak conscience. In 1 Corinthians 8:9-12, Paul interestingly calls an overly active conscience a “weak” conscience, signifying his belief that our conscience has an important role of assuring us that it is clear, either because we have not sinned against another or because we have obtained forgiveness from them. Paul says it is a weak conscience that causes a person to feel guilty about eating bread, which was offered to idols. An overly sensitive conscience usually arises from legalism. It often results from making your application of Scripture equal to Scripture itself, e.g. since I home-school, anyone who puts their kids in public school is compromising.

Historically, legalism was part of fundamentalism, which unbiblically defined separation from evil as not drinking alcohol, not dancing, and not going to movies. The same level of legalism arose in the Corinthian church. So many members had come from backgrounds of sexual brokenness that even the married couples viewed sex as dirty. Paul knew that their weak conscience corrupted the truth that sex is God’s rich creation design to express the joining of hearts and lives by husband and wife, a pleasure that points to the eternal pleasure of us being united to our Bridegroom, Christ. Although Paul emphasized loving each other in the Body of Christ by respecting those with a weak conscience, his entire letter to the Galatians was written to show Christians the centrality of grace. Taking grace from our heads to our hearts is the only way to silence a faulty conscience, whose voice is amplified by Satan, the accuser of the brethren who keeps accusing those of us who are washed in Christ’s blood and clothed in his righteousness of guilt/  

A clear conscience. Paul expresses numerous times that a clear conscience is foundational for our lives and work. In 1 Timothy 1, he writes, The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. Later, in his charge to Timothy, he reminds him that he had been sent out to battle for the right armed only with your faith and a clear conscience. A clear conscience is maintained three ways: 1) by sharpening and correcting our conscience through the Word of God, 2) by getting an understanding of grace from our heads to our hearts, 3) by practicing what Jesus taught—to make peace with our brother before offering God our gift.

So, David provides us a powerful example of the maturity Jesus wants for us. He had developed a sharp and accurate conscience, which he listened to.

Mark # 2 of Spiritual Maturity: David Recognizes God’s Hatred of Rebellion.

The rock of biblical truth that anchored David so firmly that neither circumstances nor peers could push him away from it is articulated by David. “The Lord forbid that I should do this thing to my lord, the Lord's anointed, to put out my hand against him, seeing he is the Lord's anointed.”  This same countercultural respect for those in positions of authority is required of all Christ-followers. (Rom 13:1-5)

Be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God's wrath but also for the sake of conscience.

It is worth noting that Nero was ruling the Roman empire (54-86 AD) when Paul wrote this letter (57 AD). Nero’s persecution of Christians was horrific, lighting them on fire as human torches in his garden. Yet Paul was so aware of the evil of fallen man’s natural rebellion to authority that he makes this extraordinarily broad statement. There is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. The evil of authority never justifies rebellion. I realize this text of Scripture was misapplied in Germany when some argued that the church must support Hitler and that over-support of government authority has led to some Christians accepting racism and a serious failure to oppose injustice that victimizes the poor and marginalized. Nevertheless, Paul said it for a reason.

One of the defining marks of an EVIL call for justice for the poor and marginalized is its support of LAWLESSNESS. The current ideology guiding the political left is Cultural Marxism. Christians today need to understand that there is a reason why Antifa and Black Lives Matter advocates burned down cities in 2020; it is the same reason that extremists are setting Tesla dealerships on fire. Cultural Marxism justifies violence against the evil class it has demonized because that’s what Marxism does. Mao’s Red Guard led in the slaughter of over 85 million farm and business owners, while the same Marxist evil led Pol Pot to slaughter nearly half of his population—those who held any kind of leadership position in Cambodia. In my view, Christians need to increase our compassion for immigrants, even for those who crossed the border illegally but are otherwise law-abiding. Nevertheless, Christians must not be associated with any anti-ICE actions. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement is exactly the kind of legitimate authority about which Paul wrote in Romans 13. To undermine it is evil and it needs to be identified as evil.

Mark # 3 of Spiritual Maturity: David Leaves Balancing the Scales of Justice to God. As David follows Saul out of the cave, we see him demonstrate two other parts of spiritual maturity—he leaves retribution to God, but he still pleads his case for justice. Back in 1 Samuel 24:8-12.

Afterward David also arose and went out of the cave, and called after Saul, “My lord the king!” And when Saul looked behind him, David bowed with his face to the earth and paid homage. And David said to Saul, “Why do you listen to the words of men who say, ‘Behold, David seeks your harm’? Behold, this day your eyes have seen how the Lord gave you today into my hand in the cave. And some told me to kill you, but I spared you. I said, ‘I will not put out my hand against my lord, for he is the Lord's anointed.’ See, my father, see the corner of your robe in my hand. For by the fact that I cut off the corner of your robe and did not kill you, you may know and see that there is no wrong or treason in my hands. I have not sinned against you, though you hunt my life to take it. May the Lord judge between me and you, may the Lord avenge me against you, but my hand shall not be against you.

All Christians must forgive others. Forgiveness never means talking ourselves into thinking the offense against us wasn’t real. Forgiveness is NOT making an excuse for another’s sin. Our sense of right and wrong won’t let us do that. We know it was wrong. We know it was unjust. Rather the key to forgiveness is knowing that since God forgave us for sins against him that are much worse than any person’s sins committed against us—must forgive others. Our sins against others force us to relinquish the right to demand perfection from another.

Another part of forgiveness is leaving it to God to balance the scales of justice—to leave retribution to God, as David so clearly did. Nevertheless, this trust in God to bring about justice does not mean passively accepting the status quo. David was being treated unjustly. He forgave Saul and trusted God to bring retribution instead of taking justice into his own hands. But he did make a passionate appeal to Saul. Can you hear his heart. See, my father, see the corner of your robe in my hand. For by the fact that I cut off the corner of your robe and did not kill you, you may know and see that there is no wrong or treason in my hands. I have not sinned against you, though you hunt my life to take it.

David challenges us to raise our bar of spiritual maturity. It is shaping our conscience by the Word of God and training ourselves to listen to it. It is grasping the inherent evil of the human heart, which gravitates towards rebellion against authority and choosing submission to God’s ordained structures of authority. It is recognizing that forgiveness does not mean saying that an evil committed against us was not evil. But it is leaving it to God to balance the scales of justice.

For Further Prayerful Thought:

  1. How can you better follow David’s example of listening to a biblically trained conscience even in the face of overpowering circumstances and peer pressure?
  2. If you think about it, Satan’s revolt and Adam and Eve’s sin were a defiance of God’s authority. How can Christians oppose injustice by those in authority but guard against movements that play upon sinful envy or rebellion against authority?
  3. What do David’s words to Saul teach you about how to forgive one who is unjustly harming us?
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Helping Loved Ones Weather Their Fears

Helping Loved Ones Weather Their Fears

On 29 March, 2025 By Gary Yagel

God made men to be protectors. God put Adam in the Garden to keep it. This Hebrew word, SHAMAR is used of soldiers who watch over others to protect them. Every guy reading this blog would take a bullet for his family. But many of us haven’t thought much about protecting our families, not just physically but emotionally. Feelings of depression, worry, bitterness, worthlessness, and fear can devastate our loved ones. One of the most eye-opening questions a husband can ask his wife is, “Are their fears that sometimes grip your heart?”

This episode is designed to help us know how to cope with our own fears and know how to help our kids and wives deal with theirs. We will sit at the feet of David and see what he learned when terror filled his heart because he was captured and taken to the king of Gath—the ruler of the hometown of Goliath whose head David had cut off.

One of the most reassuring promises of Scripture is from 1 Corinthians 10:13. No trial has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your ability, but with the trial he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it. The word for trial, PEIRASMOS is often translated temptation. It is used for trials designed to lead to sin, i.e. temptations, but also for trials with a beneficial purpose and effect. The story we come to in I Samuel 21 is not only the story of David’s trial of being terrified by falling into the hands of his Philistine enemy wanting revenge for killing Goliath; it is also the story of God providing a path of escape. 1 Samuel 21:10-15.

And David rose and fled that day from Saul and went to Achish the king of Gath. And the servants of Achish said to him, “Is not this David the king of the land? Did they not sing to one another of him in dances, ‘Saul has struck down his thousands, and David his ten thousands’?” And David took these words to heart and was much afraid of Achish the king of Gath. So he changed his behavior before them and pretended to be insane in their hands and made marks on the doors of the gate and let his spittle run down his beard. Then Achish said to his servants, “Behold, you see the man is mad. Why then have you brought him to me? Do I lack madmen, that you have brought this fellow to behave as a madman in my presence? Shall this fellow come into my house?” David departed from there and escaped to the cave of Adullam.

DAVID IS TERRIFIED

The ESV study notes say: “David apparently had the idea of serving Achish as an anonymous mercenary.” But his high-risk plan, which presumably required him to disguise himself, backfired. He was discovered and seized by some of Achish’s men who pointed out that this was the famous killer of Goliath about whom the Israelite women sang. David was then terrified. The always wooden Hebrew puts it this way: David took these words to heart and was much afraid.

I’m sure I have never faced a situation that invoked such terror. David had humiliated the Philistines—as a teenage boy—by defeating their champion, Goliath and leading a route of their army. Now he was in the hands of Goliath’s hometown soldiers, who had to be salivating with plans to torture David in revenge. Our fears and those of our loved ones may not be as severe, but the lessons we can learn from David’s example are powerful.

DAVID TAKES HIS FEAR TO GOD

We are fortunate to have a first-hand account of how David dealt with the terror that seized him because he wrote Psalm 56, while in captivity, which shows us. The subscript of this Psalm reveals, “A Miktam (probably a musical term) of David, when the Philistines seized him in Gath.” David takes his situation to God. Psalm 56 provides a great pattern to follow when overwhelmed by negative emotions.

A. He seeks the mercy of God in sharp contrast to the treatment of him by his enemies. Psalm 56 begins, Be gracious to me, O God, for man tramples on me; all day long an attacker oppresses me; my enemies trample on me all day long, for many attack me proudly (vs 1-2).

B. David then directly takes his fear to God choosing to trust God for help. When I am afraid, I put my trust in you. In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I shall not be afraid. What can flesh do to me? (vs 3-4).

C. David next takes the injustice of his situation to God. All day long they injure my cause; all their thoughts are against me for evil. They stir up strife, they lurk; they watch my steps, as they have waited for my life. For their crime will they escape? In wrath cast down the peoples, O God! (vs 5-7).

D. David then finds enormous comfort knowing that his suffering matters to God. Don’t miss the wisdom of this step. You have taken account of the misery of my wanderings. Put my tears in Your bottle. Are they not in Your book? (vs-8).

E. David next reaffirms that God is worthy of his trust. This I know, that God is for me. In God, whose word I praise, in the Lord, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I shall not be afraid. What can man do to me? (vs 9-11). I wonder if this Psalm led to Paul writing in Romans 8, “If God is for us, who can be against us?”

Despite David’s numerous failures throughout his life, when fear, anxiety, or discouragement pressed hard on him, David knew to take that pressure to God. Hudson Taylor, the founder of China Inland Mission modeled the same pattern. He wrote: “It doesn’t matter really how great the pressure is; it only matters where the pressure lies. See that it never comes between you and the Lord. Then the greater the pressure, the more it presses you to His breast.”

GOD PROVIDES A WAY FOR DAVID TO ESCAPE

So he changed his behavior before them and pretended to be insane in their hands and made marks on the doors of the gate and let his spittle run down his beard. We have no idea why Achish did not put David to the sword for cutting off Goliath’s head. Perhaps in that culture it was considered cruel to execute an insane person. In any event, it appears that due to God’s intervention, the hostility of Achish was directed more at his servants than at David. Then Achish said to his servants, “Behold, you see the man is mad. Why then have you brought him to me? Do I lack madmen, that you have brought this fellow to behave as a madman in my presence?” God does what Paul will later promise the Corinthians he will do when he sends trials—provide a way of escape.

Perhaps, because believers face similar tough trials that easily overwhelm us, Scripture provides much detail in this story of David facing overpowering fear from his life being threatened. Not only does Psalm 56 reveal David's actual words of trust in God, Psalm 34, written after he had escaped to the cave of Addulam, records how this faith-testing trial had renewed and strengthened his faith.

PSALM 34: A PICTURE OF DAVID GROWING FROM THIS TRIAL

A. DAVID RENEWS HIS CONFIDENCE IN GOD’S FAITHFULNESS. In verses 1-3, he sings, I will bless the Lord at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul makes its boast in the Lord; let the humble hear and be glad. Oh, magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together! To “bless” means to speak well of. It is a foundational component of loyalty. Its opposite is to complain. David had every reason to complain of God’s treatment of him. He had been minding his own business when he got sent by his father to the front lines in the battle with the Philistines and took down Goliath. He wasn’t asking for fame, but God prospered him in battle to such an extent that the young women were singing, "Saul has slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands." He was completely innocent of the charge of trying in any way to usurp Saul’s throne. It was Saul’s evil envy, not anything David did, that was ruining David’s life. And yet, while hiding in a cave, David sings, “I will bless the Lord at all times.” What incredible loyalty to God.

Despite the severe terror of being captured by Achish, in these verses David returns to his calling, “his praise shall continually be in my mouth.” Praise is telling God which of his characteristics we think are awesome and why. Celebrating who God is not only gives God a gift, it also fills our own emotional tanks, generating more confidence in God’s nature as we face life’s challenges. The author to the Hebrews challenges Christ-followers, Through (Jesus) then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name (13:15).

Seeing God faithfully deliver him from Achish seems to have returned David to the most foundational of all attributes required to walk with God—humility. My soul makes its boast in the Lord; let the humble hear and be glad. God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. God is not our genie in a bottle to serve us; we were created for his glory. The WCF first catechism question reminds us, “The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.” Jeremiah reveals to us exactly which human heart attitude delights God:

Thus says the Lord: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the Lord” (9:23-24).

As Psalm 34 continues, David reclaims the passion that should grip all who know God. Oh, magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together (vs 3)!

B. DAVID CELEBRATES THE EXAMPLE OF GOD’S FAITHFULNESS HE JUST WITNESSED. I sought the Lord, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears. Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed. This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and delivers them (vs 4-7). Notice that God not only delivered David from Achish; he delivered David from his fear. God can just as easily deliver us and our loved ones from ours:

  • Fear of failure to raise our kids correctly
  • Fear of failure on the job or losing our means to support our family
  • Fear of physical harm
  • Fear of losing a spouse or of never getting married
  • Fear of making a terrible mistake that harms others
  • Fear of pain.
  • Fear of death

Fear is not sinful unbelief. It is the God-given emotional response to what the mind sees as a threat that can harm us. But if we, or our loved ones, allow it to remain, its nature is to grow stronger until it controls us, just as jealousy, resentment, and anger can simmer, grow, and overpower us. But as we saw in Psalm 56, David took the situation that created terror in him to God. And David gives us the result. Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed. David testifies that when God empowered David to trust him, even his face radiated confidence because God will never shame one who trusts in him. God will never let you crawl out on a limb of trust in him and saw it off. Believe me, it can feel like it. David’s faith was put to the severest of tests when captured by enemies who by every measure would have been expected to run him through with a sword.

David finishes recounting his story of God’s faithfulness by contrasting his lack of resources to the powerful resources of God to protect him. This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and delivers them. "How foolish, it would have been," argues David, "to trust myself when the angel of the Lord is on call to protect his beloved." That is a great reminder for us!

C. DAVID URGES OTHERS TO TRUST GOD’S FAITHFULNESS. Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him! Oh, fear the Lord, you his saints, for those who fear him have no lack! The young lions suffer want and hunger; but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing. It strikes me that this invitation to test the Lord’s goodness in your own experience may be the best of all approaches to evangelism. John the Baptizer and Jesus were God’s prophets. They began their ministries, “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” But so often Jesus did not start gospel conversations with his hearer’s sin. He started with the subtle invitation to taste and see that the Lord is good.

  • Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst (Jn 6:35).
  • Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (Jn 4:13-14).
  • The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly (Jn 10:10).

During twenty minutes of silence at a Young Life Camp named Hilltop, in response to Jesus’ words in John 10:10, I told Jesus I was all in with him. It is worth noting that when Peter issues the most direct command to share our faith, he essentially says, “Be ready to share with others how you have tasted and seen that the Lord is good.” I say this because Peter’s actual words are, “always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you.” The Greek word “hope” (ELPIS) means anticipation and expectation of what is certain. The Christian’s hope DOES include deliverance from punishment for our sins; but it means so much more. It is restoration to the rich life of fellowship with God and rich wholesome relationships with each other—to God’s original GOOD design. To come to Christ is to taste this future restoration that the cross has inaugurated and see that the Lord IS good. Christ-followers expderience of foretaste in this life of the full restoration of the life to come. 

D. DAVID URGES OBEDIENCE BECAUSE OF GOD’S FAITHFULNESS. As Psalm 34 continues, David addresses the widespread loss of perspective that trials always bring—that God has designed life so that keeping his ways leads to prosperity but violating them leads to death. We see this often-repeated truth in Psalm 1.

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the Lord and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away.

Knowing that what you spiritually sow you shall reap is the biblical concept called the fear of the Lord. It means knowing that God is such a heavyweight that you never get away with breaking his law. Notice some of the ways David emphasis this in Psalm 34: He pictures himself as a tutor, saying, Come, O children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the Lord. He then appeals to every person’s desire for a prosperous life. What man is there who desires life and loves many days, that he may see good? He then urges obedience to God’s commands and trusting God even though we must endure hard times.  

Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit. Turn away from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it. The eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous and his ears toward their cry. The face of the Lord is against those who do evil, to cut off the memory of them from the earth. When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles. The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit (vs 13-18).

Don't let trials make you doubt that God's face is always towards those seeking to obey him and away from those in rebellion against him.

E. DAVID URGES: DON’T LET AFFLICTION MAKE YOU DOUBT GOD’S FAITHFULNESS/

David wants his experience to impact us. His deliverance from Achish proves God’s faithfulness to his people in this life. David knows that our trials can easily cause us to look at the lives of those who are not following Jesus, feel like they have it easy, and wonder if it is worthwhile. Through this Psalm and David’s deliverance from Achish, David is shouting that walking with God is the path to a rich, satisfying life in this temporal world. But this world isn't all that matters. David closes, with the same lesson that Asaph learned in Psalm 73. He reported “For I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked… until I discerned their end.” Similarly, David closes Psalm 34:19-22. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all. He keeps all his bones, not one of them is broken. Affliction will slay the wicked, and those who hate the righteous will be condemned. The Lord redeems the life of his servants; none of those who take refuge in him will be condemned. 

It is about as counter cultural as it can be to think about eternity. But last time I checked it was a long time. Don’t ever forget Paul’s perspective. This life is full of trials and afflictions. But we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. (2 Cor 4:16-17).  

For Further Prayerful Thought:

  1. Although the pressure point you have faced may not be fear but another strong emotion, what can you learn from the first Psalm we studied, Psalm 56 about trusting God with the situation, the emotion in order to rest in God?
  2. Notice that as David pens Psalm 34, which looks back on the terrifying experience of being captured by the Philistines, he voices intense determination in the very first verse, to bless the Lord at all times. How do you think his experience of being captured and rescued from Achish strengthened this determination?
  3. What do you think of the idea that David’s invitation to everyone in Psalm 34, “taste and see that the Lord is good” is an excellent approach to evangelism. How might this idea shape our efforts to share Christ with those around us?
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David—Big Successes Bigger Failures

David—Big Successes Bigger Failures

On 22 March, 2025 By Gary Yagel

Christian men want a faith that is real, that works where they live out their everyday existence—in the physical world. Life teaches them everyday not to believe salesmen’s hype, leaders’ overly rosy predictions, and coworkers’ excuses. They live in the bottom-line world, trusting only what they can measure and identify as corresponding to reality. Perhaps that is why men who get to know the Bible, love it so much. The Bible tells it like it is, with shoe-leather reality. It is the unvarnished story of the very flawed. Author Alan Redpath expresses what most of us feel about the Bible’s honest portrayal of its figures, “I find it tremendously comforting that the Bible never flatters its heroes. It tells the truth about them, no matter how unpleasant it may be, so that in considering what is taking place in the shaping of their character we have available all the facts clearly that we may study them” (The Making of a Man of God). Such a hero was David who had big successes but even bigger failures. In 1 Samuel chapters 19-23, we see David pass a big test of his faith with flying colors and then fall flat on his face, doing evil, which led to enormous suffering due to his unbelief.

As we pick up the story of David, in 1 Samuel 19, God has already anointed David to be the future king of Israel and launched him into national prominence through his defeat of mighty Goliath. Saul has appointed him top general in Israel, and chapter 18 ends with the words, The commanders of the Philistines came out to battle, and as often as they came out David had more success than all the servants of Saul, so that his name was highly esteemed. But as we saw last week, David’s success fills Saul with envy and Saul decides to murder him. The story continues,

Saul sent messengers to David’s house to watch him, that he might kill him in the morning. But Michal, David’s wife, told him, “If you do not escape with your life tonight, tomorrow you will be killed.” So Michal let David down through the window, and he fled away and escaped. Michal took an image and laid it on the bed and put a pillow of goats’ hair at its head and covered it with the clothes. And when Saul sent messengers to take David, she said, “He is sick.” Then Saul sent the messengers to see David, saying, “Bring him up to me in the bed, that I may kill him.” And when the messengers came in, behold, the image was in the bed, with the pillow of goats’ hair….Now David fled and escaped, and he came to Samuel at Ramah and told him all that Saul had done to him. (I Sam 19:11-18).

One of the most distinctive characteristics of God is that he relentlessly tests the faith of those he loves. Peter explained  this reality, when he wrote to Christians who had also been displaced from their homes, You have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. God is like a football coach who makes his players run wind sprints in August, not letting up until they drop from exhaustion. He knows that on game day, they will be glad they endured such painful trials. God is relentlessly committed to what will matter most to us on the day of Christ’s return—praise, glory, and honor going to him. The Day of Christ extends into eternity, which means our eternal joy will be linked to how we have honored Christ with our lives. God loves us too much to sacrifice that eternal joy to give us the ease, and comfort we crave now! Scripture tells us that David wrote Psalm 59 during the episode of his life that we just read about.

Psalm 59—David’s Model Response to His Faith Being Tested

As David realized he was surrounded by Saul’s troops who were waiting for daylight to execute him, he took his impossible situation to God. Someone has said, “We are all faced with a series of great opportunities for our faith to grow stronger, brilliantly disguised as impossible situations.” Maybe you are facing one right now. The challenge before you is just too big; you don’t have the resources to meet it. We know that David took the fact that he was trapped by his enemies seeing no way out to God that night because Scripture tells us so. Notice the flow of thought: 1) requesting God’s help, to 2) remembering God’s character, to 3) resolving to trust God in the future.

A. David REQUESTS God’s help. (Notice these second person direct appeals.)

  • Deliver me from my enemies, O my God (vs 1).
  • Protect me from those who rise up against me (vs 1).
  • Deliver me from those who work evil (2).
  • Save me from bloodthirsty men (2).
  • Awake, come to meet me, and see (4).

B. David REMEMBERS God’s character.

  • You, Lord God of hosts, are God of Israel. Rouse yourself to punish all the nations; spare none of those who treacherously plot evil (5).
  • There they are, bellowing with their mouths with swords in their lips—for “Who,” they think, “will hear us?” But you, O Lord, laugh at them; you hold all the nations in derision (7-8).

C. David RESOVES to trust God for the future.

  • O my Strength, I will watch for you; for you, O God, are my fortress (9).
  • My God in his steadfast love will meet me (10).
  • God will let me look in triumph on my enemies (10).
  • My enemies wander about for food and growl if they do not get their fill. But I will sing of your strength (16).
  • I will sing aloud your steadfast love in the morning. For you have been to me a fortress and a refuge in the day of my distress (16).
  • O my Strength, I will sing praises to you, for you, O God, are my fortress, the God who shows me steadfast love (17).

David’s Unbelief Leads to a Sin of Omission

The Bible teaches that sin is not only an act of commission, e.g. stepping across the moral line to harm another; it is also an act of omission, e.g. not caring that a poor man has no food. The next chapters of David’s life reveal a significant sin of omission. After he escaped from his home with his wife, Michal’s help, he never went back for her. We might say, “Wait a minute, David spent the next 10 years running around the countryside fleeing from Saul.” But that did not stop David from taking another woman as his wife, Ahinoam of Jezreel, during these years and then Abigail as a second wife. The binding nature of the marriage covenant has been true since God brought Eve to Adam! Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. David abandoned his responsibility to provide for her, protect her, and pursue her. We might say, “But would not David having Michal at his side put her at risk of harm from her father’s wrath? Yes. But could not the God who protected David from the paw of the lion and bear, from Goliath’s sword, and 15 years of Saul’s attempts to kill him also have protected his wife, Michal?

In fact, David’s mistreatment of his wife Michal was even worse than abandoning her. After David failed to return for Michal, Saul had given his daughter, David's wife, to Palti the son of Laish, who was of Gallim. Fifteen years later, after Saul and Jonathan’s death, David demands that Saul’s son give Michal back to him as his wife. Then David sent messengers to Ish-bosheth, Saul's son, saying, “Give me my wife Michal, for whom I paid the bridal price of a hundred foreskins of the Philistines.” And Ish-bosheth sent and took her from her husband Paltiel the son of Laish. But her husband went with her, weeping after her all the way to Bahurim (2 Sam 3:14-16). It is very likely that David wanted Michal back as his wife for political reasons, supporting his claim to be the rightful heir to Saul’s throne. Whether this was his motivation or not, David violated the sanctity of his marriage bond to Michal. There is no denying such massive failure on the part of a husband.

David’s Unbelief Leads to a Sin of Commission

Human beings have been compared to sponges. Squeeze them and the pressure causes what is inside to come out. As we come to 1 Samuel 21, David has just confirmed that Saul is so intent upon murdering him that he exploded in fury against his own son, Jonathan for siding with David. The pressure is on. We read,

Then David came to Nob, to Ahimelech the priest. And Ahimelech came to meet David, trembling, and said to him, “Why are you alone, and no one with you? And David said to Ahimelech the priest, “The king has charged me with a matter and said to me, ‘Let no one know anything of the matter about which I send you, and with which I have charged you.’ I have made an appointment with the young men for such and such a place.

This is a boldfaced lie. The text continues.

Now then, what do you have on hand? Give me five loaves of bread, or whatever is here.” And the priest answered David, “I have no common bread on hand, but there is holy bread….So the priest gave him the holy bread, for there was no bread there but the bread of the Presence, which is removed from before the Lord, to be replaced by hot bread on the day it is taken away. Now a certain man of the servants of Saul was there that day, detained before the Lord. His name was Doeg the Edomite, the chief of Saul's herdsmen.

Common bread, which might be eaten by anyone, is distinguished from holy bread, eaten only by the priests in a holy place. So, Ahimelech was bending the rules. However, Jesus endorsed Ahimelech’s act of putting mercy before ceremonial law. David’s request for bread was not the problem; it was his brazen lie as to his purpose for traveling to Nob. As the ESV text notes point out, “Though David normally acted like an upright man, the Bible does not hesitate to record honestly his instances of wrongdoing.” David’s sin of deceit had horrific consequences.

Then the king sent to summon Ahimelech the priest, the son of Ahitub, and all his father's house, the priests who were at Nob, and all of them came to the king.  And Saul said to him, “Why have you conspired against me, you and the son of Jesse, in that you have given him bread and a sword and have inquired of God for him, so that he has risen against me, to lie in wait, as at this day?” Then Ahimelech answered the king, “And who among all your servants is so faithful as David, who is the king's son-in-law, and captain over your bodyguard, and honored in your house? Is today the first time that I have inquired of God for him No! Let not the king impute anything to his servant or to all the house of my father, for your servant has known nothing of all this, much or little.” And the king said, “You shall surely die, Ahimelech, you and all your father's house.” Then the king said to Doeg, “You turn and strike the priests.” And Doeg the Edomite turned and struck down the priests, and he killed on that day eighty-five persons who wore the linen ephod. And Nob, the city of the priests, he put to the sword; both man and woman, child and infant, ox, donkey and sheep. (1 Sam 22:11-19).

Hard Lessons for David and Us

Lesson # 1: Our sins harm those we love. One member of the priestly family escaped the slaughter and fled to David to explain the genocide. David responded, “I have occasioned the death of all the persons of your father’s house.” David’s lie led to the slaughter of 85 priests, every one of their wives and children, and the death of everyone in the city of Nob. As you can see from their quick obedience to King Saul, Ahimelech’s courageous rebuke of Saul’s unjust persecution of David, and his innocence from wrongdoing, Ahimelech and the priests were some of the finest of God’s covenant people. Yet David’s lies got them all killed.

The wage of sin is death. Our sins have consequences for others. We men understand that the world in which we live operates on the basis of cause and effect. We reap what we sow. Our sinful choices harm those we love most. As leaders of our homes, we need to take Paul’s advice, Abhor evil, cling to what is good (Rom 12:9). and God’s advice to arguably the most successful man in the entire OT Joshua, This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success (Josh 1:8). Leaders have influence. Bad choices harm.

Lesson # 2: Despite God’s sovereignty, in this world, the innocent suffer. Scripture does not hide the horrific murder of the entire priestly city of Nob Similarly, this podcast can’t avoid the hard question “How could God let this happen?” Here are three biblical perspectives that help us cope with this mystery.

1. We must approach this question with humility, recognizing that we may not have the mental horsepower to understand how suffering can be good. As Tim Keller argues, “If you have a God great and transcendent enough to be mad at because he hasn’t stopped evil and suffering in the world, then you have (at the same moment) a God great and transcendent enough to have good reasons for allowing it to continue that you can’t know. Indeed, you can’t have it both ways!”

2. Jesus’ love poured out on the cross matters. Again, Keller observes,

Christianity alone among the world’s religions claims that God became uniquely and fully human in Jesus Christ and therefore knows firsthand despair, rejection, loneliness, poverty, bereavement, torture, and imprisonment. On the cross, he went beyond even the worst human suffering and experienced cosmic rejection and pain that exceeds ours as infinitely as his knowledge and power exceeds ours. Why did he do it? The Bible says that Jesus came on a rescue mission for creation. He had to pay for our sins so that someday he can end evil and suffering without ending us… If we again ask the question, “Why does God allow evil and suffering to continue?” and we look at the cross of Jesus, we still do not know what the answer is. However, we now know what the answer isn’t. It can’t be that he doesn’t love us.

3. The goodness of suffering can only be seen from eternity. The biblical answer to suffering is resurrection—the renewal and restoration of everything broken by sin. In Matthew 19:28, Jesus spoke of his return to earth as the palingenesis, a Greek word that means “the renewal of all things.” Jesus insisted that his return will be with such power that the entire universe will be purged of all decay and brokenness. As Sam suspected in The Lord of the Rings, once he saw Gandolf alive again, everything sad is going to come untrue. C. S. Lewis writes, “They say of some temporal suffering, ‘No future bliss can make up for it,’ not knowing that Heaven, once attained will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory (The Great Divorce). This is the ultimate defeat of evil and suffering. It will not only be ended, but so radically vanquished that the evil that has occurred will be reversed and bring about greater good. The suffering of a single woman who always wanted to be married will make her marriage to Jesus in eternity richer than it ever would have been if she had married and I believe the infants and children whose lives were cut short by Saul’s genocide at Nob will enjoy an even richer quality of adult life than they would have experienced had they not been slaughtered as infants.  

Lesson # 3: Only grace can help us forgive ourselves when our failures have harmed others. I cannot fathom what it would be like to live each day knowing I had aborted my baby, killed another person through drunk driving, or caused another’s death through making a mistake at work. I do know what it is like, however, even though striving hard to be a faithful father to the five precious children entrusted to me, to have fatherhood regrets, as most men do. I know the truth that if God’s will for our kids depended upon us always getting it right as fathers, we would all be in deep weeds. Nevertheless, we are men. We know the laws of cause and effect. We can’t easily discard the thought, “If only I had done such and such, that negative outcome would not have taken place.” David, the young, passionate, heart-driven writer of the Psalms admitted to Ahimelech’s son that he was responsible for the death of his entire family and city. That fact must have crushed David. How could he forgive himself for what he had done?

We don’t know. But we do know that when David later committed adultery and murder, which cost his own child’s life, David went to the only one whose mercy was powerful enough to undo his guilty conscience. On that occasion his cry was, Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin! For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me…. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow (Psalm 51).

Hyssop was the branch dipped in the blood of the lamb of sacrifice. The blood of the High Priest’s sacrifice—ultimately the blood of Jesus—is the only force on earth capable of granting us forgiveness when our sins have deeply harmed others. By the authority of The Holy One of Israel, if you are in Christ, YOUR CONSCIENCE IS WHITE AS SNOW—even if your sin caused another’s death. Your sin also caused Jesus’ death and God has forgiven that.

For Further Prayerful Thought:

  1. How is David typical of most Christian men?
  2. Consider the three steps David took in Psalm 59. Why might these steps enable us all to pass the test of our faith when we face impossible situations?
  3. David learned some hard lessons through his dishonesty which cost the lives of the priestly families at Nob. Which of these most stands out to you?
  4. Has your sin hurt another so badly that you have trouble believing that Jesus’ blood can really wash it away. If so, ask Jesus to help you. Remember, every person sitting beside you in church is a murderer because it was our sin that sent Jesus to the cross
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How King Saul’s Envy Rotted His Soul

How King Saul’s Envy Rotted His Soul

On 15 March, 2025 By Gary Yagel

Christian tradition records envy as one of the seven deadly sins, along with lust, greed, pride, gluttony, wrath, and laziness. God warns us, Envy makes the bones rot (Prov 14:30b). This episode examines how King Saul’s envy of David steadily eroded the health of his soul.

Some years ago, I observed one of the mom’s overseeing a home-school soccer game. She said to the kids, “Okay kids, it doesn’t really matter who wins, so we are not going to keep score.” I knew that she had just killed the interest in the game for my two sons, if not for all the boys. Males want to win at everything they do. But we must put a biblical lens over such competitiveness. Isn’t the desire to win driven by pride—wanting to triumph OVER another? Doesn’t Scripture exhort Christians to exalt one another above ourselves, not prevail over them by beating them?

Certainly, the desire to win can be motivated by, and produce sinful pride. But I don’t think men love competition because of their pride or that wanting to win is inherently selfish. Rather, I believe men love competition because they love challenges. Adam was designed to make an impact. He was put in the garden to make a difference—to change it, to accomplish a goal—bringing out its potential. Keeping score in games is just a way of measuring how we are doing in overcoming the challenge we have accepted—defeating whatever the opposition is.

Nevertheless, there is a place where that sense of competition does become sinful rivalry, jealousy, or envy. In fact, after the fall of Adam and Eve, the first sin recorded in human history was caused by envy—Cain’s murder of Abel. Envy is an insidious moral disease. In the words of Rosaria Butterfield, “If you do not deal with envy in the infantile stage, it will devour you. It will eat you from the inside out. Envy transforms a person into a monster” (Five Lies of Our Anti-Christian Age). Mao Zedong, like all Marxists, appealed to class envy to motivate young devotees of his “Cultural Revolution” to violently overthrow the land and factory owners so their stolen wealth could be redistributed to the laborers. Sixty-five million Chinese were slaughtered by this appeal to class envy of the wealthy in China.   

God gives us a sober warning about envy in Proverbs 3:31. Let not your heart envy sinners but continue in the fear of the Lord all the day. Asaph, the author of Psalm 73, acknowledged his struggle to obey this admonition. For I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. As a product of our sinful nature, envy is associated directly in the NT with strife, hatred, dissention, and malice. In our study of the life of David we see sinful jealousy arise in the heart of King Saul after David’s defeat of Goliath, an internal envy that brought destruction in its wake, as envy always does. I Samuel 18:5-16).

David went out and was successful wherever Saul sent him, so that Saul set him over the men of war. And this was good in the sight of all the people and also in the sight of Saul's servants. As they were coming home, when David returned from striking down the Philistine, the women came out of all the cities of Israel, singing and dancing, to meet King Saul, with tambourines, with songs of joy, and with musical instruments. And the women sang to one another as they celebrated, “Saul has struck down his thousands, and David his ten thousands.” And Saul was very angry, and this saying displeased him. He said, “They have ascribed to David ten thousands, and to me they have ascribed thousands, and what more can he have but the kingdom?”

And Saul eyed David from that day on. The next day a harmful spirit from God rushed upon Saul, and he raved within his house while David was playing the lyre, as he did day by day. Saul had his spear in his hand. And Saul hurled the spear, for he thought, “I will pin David to the wall.” But David evaded him twice. Saul was afraid of David because the Lord was with him but had departed from Saul. So Saul removed him from his presence and made him a commander of a thousand. And he went out and came in before the people. And David had success in all his undertakings, for the Lord was with him. And when Saul saw that he had great success, he stood in fearful awe of him. But all Israel and Judah loved David, for he went out and came in before them.

We must begin this study, as we often must do, with some definitions. Jealousy can describe a virtue that is often used for God’s desire to hold first place in the affections of our heart. This is righteous hostility towards rivals. God is rightly jealous of other idols who would steal away our affections, as any husband would be hostile towards an illicit lover seeking to lure his wife away from faithfulness to him. But jealousy is also used in the sinful sense of hostility towards a rival who experiences some advantage you don’t have. This is unrighteous hostility towards rivals. It angered Saul that David received greater praise than he.

Envy is even more insidious than sinful jealousy. It is painful or resentful awareness of an advantage enjoyed by another, joined with a desire to enjoy the same advantage or at least have the advantage taken away from one’s rival. Jealousy says, “I want what my rival has.” Envy says, “I don’t have to have what my rival has; just don’t let him have it.” Envy is evil, ill will towards a rival. Years after the incident we are studying, the wisdom of Solomon was displayed through his recognition of envy in a woman’s heart. You remember the story:

One day two women came to King Solomon, and one of them said: Your Majesty, this woman and I live in the same house. Not long ago my baby was born at home, and three days later her baby was born. Nobody else was there with us. One night while we were all asleep, she rolled over on her baby, and he died. Then while I was still asleep, she got up and took my son out of my bed. She put him in her bed, then she put her dead baby next to me. In the morning when I got up to feed my son, I saw that he was dead. But when I looked at him in the light, I knew he wasn't my son. “No!” the other woman shouted. “He was your son. My baby is alive!” “The dead baby is yours,” the first woman yelled. “Mine is alive!” They argued back and forth in front of Solomon, until finally he said, “Both of you say this live baby is yours. Someone bring me a sword.” A sword was brought, and Solomon ordered, “Cut the baby in half! That way each of you can have part of him.” “Please don't kill my son,” the baby's mother screamed. “Your Majesty, I love him very much, but give him to her. Just don't kill him.” The other woman shouted, “Go ahead and cut him in half. Then neither of us will have the baby.” Solomon said, “Don't kill the baby.” Then he pointed to the first woman, “She is his real mother. Give the baby to her, (1 Kings 3:16-27).

Solomon saw that a heart filled with envy cannot be filled with love. Envy is self-focused; love is other-focused. Paul puts it bluntly, love does not envy. (I Cor 13:4). Let’s make five observations about Saul’s envy.  

A. It is directed towards one within our circle of relationships. Saul had made David the commander of his army who was suddenly hanging out with Saul and the other warriors. Usually, it is with those close to us that we feel competitive. The envy that overpowered Cain was towards his brother, Abel. Joseph’s brothers were jealous of the fact that he was Jacob’s favorite son; so, they sold him into slavery. Sibling rivalry never seems to leave families—whose kids turn out the best, who is the most successful at work, who has the nicest house. At work, it is usually not those way up the management rung from us but peers with whom we may feel competitive. It is not seeing some guy in a commercial who leaves for golf in his Jaguar convertible that generates envy in me. It is my neighbor doing so, while I push my lawnmower and sweat, because I have not been as financially successful as he.

B. Envy surfaces when our rival is exalted over us. It was one thing for David to be popular. Up until verse 7 there is no mention of Saul being anything but pleased with David’s popularity. But as soon as David was exalted OVER Saul, jealousy sprang up in Saul’s heart. He said, “They have ascribed to David ten thousands, and to me they have ascribed thousands.” Until then, Saul had been the great warrior in Israel. He was the number one warrior in the people’s eyes, but now he was relegated to number two. In Genesis, to solve the problem of her barrenness when God had promised Abram that he would be the father of a great nation, it was Sarai who suggested to Abram that they follow the local custom of Abram getting her handmaiden Haggar pregnant on her behalf. But when Hagar flaunts her pregnancy with Abram’s child, rivalry kicks in and Sarai treats Hagar harshly.

C. Envy surfaces when others have something we want. Saul wouldn’t have been jealous of the fact that David was getting more attention than he was if Saul didn’t care about attention. But in reality, Saul craved attention. In 1 Samuel 15, as an act of judgement against the Amalekites who practiced infant sacrifice and were likely spreading venereal disease, Saul is explicitly commanded by God to put to death all humans and all sheep, and oxen. Saul didn’t do it. The excuse he gave God for his disobedience is revealing, “I was afraid of the people and gave in to them.” Saul became addicted to popularity. His jealousy was provoked when he saw David experiencing the immense popularity that he craved. In 1 Kings 21 we read the story of how envy consumed King Ahab who wanted the vineyard of Naboth. When Naboth refused to sell it, Ahab’s wife, Jezebell, plotted to murder Naboth so Ahab could have his vineyard. Eny often surfaces first as covetousness.

One of the greatest historical examples of envy is Karl Marx’ “conflict theory” of history. He saw history as the conflict between the wealthy bourgeoisie who controlled the means of production and business, and the proletariat workers who depended on the bourgeoisie for employment and survival. Marxism foments hostility towards the rich bourgeoisie through class envy. Assuming falsely that a society’s economic pie-size is fixed, Marxism enflames envious hostility toward any rich person because, by definition, he has stolen part of the poor person’s pie. Marxism is not only based on a thoroughly wrong understanding of economics, it stirs up the covetous envy of the poor towards the rich, which leads to violence.

Rosaria Butterfield, called to faith in Christ out of radical lesbianism, sees transgenderism as rooted in envy—wanting what the other gender has. "We see how the sin of envy pulses through the concept of transgenderism. People obsessed with having a gender and sex that is not rightly theirs, and people who are willing to mutilate themselves and manipulate others to get this are under the control of envy” (Five Lies of Our Anti-Christian Age). Eny surfaces when others have something we want.

D. Envy corrupts spiritual perception. One of the most sobering components of Saul’s envy was that it eroded his conscience, causing him to cling to a false narrative to justify his hostility to David. The false narrative is revealed, in I Samuel 18:8 They have ascribed to David ten thousands, and to me they have ascribed thousands, and WHAT MORE CAN HE HAVE BUT THE KINGDOM?” Saul rationalized his attempts to kill David and even tried to convince Jonathan to join him by seeing David as a threat to his throne. But, as the rest of 1 Samuel demonstrates in spades, that was false. David had several opportunities to take Saul’s life and was urged to do so, by his men. Yet David steadfastly refused to raise up his hand against God’s anointed; Saul could not have been more wrong.

Consider what envy did to Cain’s conscience. Cain was jealous of Abel because God had regards for Abel’s offering from his flock but not for his offering from the land. If ever envy started out in a good way, this was it. Cain wanted God to be pleased with his offering. Perhaps when God wasn’t, Cain might have pursued God to ask, “why not.” But what galled Cain was that God WAS pleased with Abel’s offering and that wasn’t fair because Cain’s vocation was farming and Abel's was keeping sheep. But what started out as a desire to please God was overtaken by the sin of envy, which dulled his conscience, and filled him with such angry hostility that he overrode that conscience to murder his own brother.

The sin of envy has had a huge impact shaping the most widespread anti-biblical worldview in our culture—critical theory—corrupting its adherent’s sense of right and wrong. Based on Marx’s “conflict theory,” critical theory (aka cultural Marxism) changes the goal of justice, which is receiving what your actions dictate that you deserve to the goal of equity, i.e. equal outcomes. This is a radical descent into evil and radical injustice. As legendary economist Thomas Sowell notes, “This conception of fairness requires that third parties must wield the power to control outcomes overriding rules, standards, or the preferences of other people” (Voddie Baucham, Fault Lines). Pursuing the cultural Marxist goal of equal outcomes destroys human freedom. It is an invitation to totalitarianism—which is exactly what this process of replacing the concept of just equality of opportunity with the concept of equity as equal outcomes has done, producing Mao, Lenin, Stalin and Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. Class envy in cultural Marxism devolves into the call to steal what rightly belongs to others and to violently overthrow all existing institutions. 

Critical theory’s class envy, furthermore, mindlessly accuses every person who is non-poor, male, white, cisgender, American-born, and able-bodied to be an oppressor and labels all who are not, victims. Consider what this class envy has done to the consciences of some politicians who justified burning down cities in protest of racism, who want open borders because the US is the rich oppressor and all immigrants are the poor oppressed (including rapists, Mexican drug cartels, and terrorists), and who unjustly allow men to compete in women’s sports because transgender people are the oppressed and cisgender people are the oppressors. The deterioration of the conscience of those who cling to cultural Marxism’s class warfare envy is apparent, everywhere.

E. Envy leads to virulent hostility towards others. Envy opens Saul’s heart to an evil spirit. The next day a harmful spirit rushed upon Saul, and he raved within his house while David was playing the lyre, as he did day by day. Saul had his spear in his hand. And Saul hurled the spear, for he thought, “I will pin David to the wall” (1 Sam 18:10-12). The fruit of sowing envy is reaping hate-filled actions. Cain murdered Abel. Ahab murdered Naboth. Sarai sent Hagar away from her home once temporarily and once permanently. But perhaps the expression of envy that was the most wicked of all was the insistence of the chief priests and elders that Jesus be crucified. Mathew tells us that even the pagan ruler, Pilate “knew that it was out of envy that the chief priests had delivered him up” (Matt 27:17). Envy leads to horrific evil. In the 1990’s, scholars documented the total number of those murdered through the Marxist ideology that used class envy to incite the overthrow of government and slaughter of the wealthy. It was between 85-100 million people worldwide. Class envy produced virulent hatred for the rich and we are seeing the same class-warfare hostility today fomented by critical theory advocates.

Attacking Four Roots of Envy in Our Hearts

The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light (Rom 13:12).

Root #1: PRIDE. Life is about me.

Puff off:  exalting ourselves, wanting attention, wanting to be recognized as the best, self-absorption, subtly wanting to impress. 

Put on:   exalt others, follow Jonathan’s example, focus on hero-making, embrace the upside-down kingdom truth that greatness is serving.

Root #2: LOW SELF-ASSURANCE. Relationships with others shaped by needing others' acceptance.

Put off:  doubting God’s love. He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things (Rom 8:32).

Put on:  trust in God’s unconditional love. The young lions suffer want and hunger; but those who seek the Lord shall not be in want of any good thing (Ps 34:10). Trust is a            choice—to put off doubt and put on faith in God’s proven love. The righteous shall live by faith. (Rom 1:17)

Root #3: LOW SENSE OF WORTH. Somehow, we feel like we must prove our worth by being better than others.

Put off:   doubts about our worth. Jealousy happens because we lack confidence in our own value compared to others. But Paul says, When they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they are not wise (2 Cor10:12). It is folly to compare ourselves to others because we each run the unique race God has marked out for us.

Put on: confidence in our design. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them (Eph 2:10). We are God’s artwork. Our worth is not based so much on what we look like as WHO painted us.

Root # 4:  LOW LEVEL OF CONTENTMENT. Envy has difficulty invading a contented heart just as covetousness has. 

Put off: complaining, discontentment, grumbling. Complaining is public disloyalty to God.

Put on: gratefulness. Grow in gratefulness through the discipline of continual thankfulness. In everything give thanks; for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus (I Thes 5:18).

Let’s ask God to search our hearts to put his spotlight on any seeds of envy and preempt it by putting off these attitudes of darkness and putting on the amor of light!

For Further Prayerful Thought:

  1. What new observations about competition, jealousy, and envy stood out to you?
  2. What stands out most to you about the way envy got control of Saul?
  3. We observed four roots of envy: pride, which wants to be exalted, low self-assurance that you are loved, so you need peer acceptance too much, low self- esteem so you must prove yourself, and discontent, which makes you prone to wanting what others have. Which root concerns you most about your own life?
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David and Jonathan’s Extraordinary Bond of Brotherhood

David and Jonathan’s Extraordinary Bond of Brotherhood

On 09 March, 2025 By Gary Yagel

As I’ve mentioned often on this blog, it is for our wives and children that Christian men are to pour out sacrificial love. We are called to die for them. But this episode is about the masculine longing for someone to die with. As Stu Weber points out, “something inside us longs for someone to die with… someone to die beside…someone to lock step with. Another man with a heart like our own.” David had such a brother. Today, we examine what we can discover about building our own brotherhood bonds from the famous example of David and Jonathan.

The book of 2 Samuel opens with the death of Saul and his son Jonathan in battle. David laments:

Saul and Jonathan, beloved and lovely! In life and in death they were not divided; they were swifter than eagles; they were stronger than lions. You daughters of Israel, weep over Saul, who clothed you luxuriously in scarlet, who put ornaments of gold on your apparel. How the mighty have fallen in the midst of the battle! Jonathan lies slain on your high places. I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan; very pleasant have you been to me; your love to me was extraordinary, surpassing the love of women. How the mighty have fallen, and the weapons of war perished (vs 23-27)!

Army Ranger Veteran, Stu Weber, ponders the moving words of this lament.

“YOUR LOVE TO ME was more wonderful than the love of a woman.” What words are these? Perverted words? Twisted words? The words of some pathetic sexual deviate? No. A war-hardened veteran penned these words after his best buddy fell in battle. They were written by a warrior, with the piercing grief only a soldier mourning for a comrade-in-arms could begin to understand. David wrote these words after the death of his friend Jonathan on the bloody slopes of Mount Gilboa. What the son of Jesse expressed without shame in that lament was something that has burned deep in the soul of every man in one way or another for generations beyond memory. A desire for friendship, man to man. A desire for friendship with nothing between. A yearning for friendship so real, so strong, so compelling, it is willing to share everything about itself and make deep and powerful promises. Down deep at the core, every man needs a friend. Down deep at the core, every man needs a brother to lock arms with” (Locking Arms).

As many of you know, I have written an entire book, Forging Bonds of Brotherhood, to make the case that God never intended for a man to fight his spiritual battles alone. The OT wisdom literature is clear: Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up! Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him—a threefold cord is not quickly broken (Eccl 4:9-12). The way the NT brotherhood functioned was equally clear: Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near (Heb 10:24-25). God has been pleased to use our ministry to help thousands of men build the kind of brotherhood experienced by Jonathan and David. Let’s observe four characteristics of this attractive brotherhood connection:

A. Their Souls Were Knit Together. In 1 Samuel 18:1, after Jonathan witnessed David’s victory over Goliath, Scripture tells us that his soul was “knit together” with David’s. A look back at the fourteenth chapter explains why.

Jonathan said to the young man who carried his armor, “Come, let us go over to the garrison of these uncircumcised. It may be that the Lord will work for us, for nothing can hinder the Lord from saving by many or by few….And the men of the garrison hailed Jonathan and his armor-bearer and said, “Come up to us, and we will show you a thing.” And Jonathan said to his armor-bearer, “Come up after me, for the Lord has given them into the hand of Israel.” Then Jonathan climbed up on his hands and feet, and his armor-bearer after him. And they fell before Jonathan, and his armor-bearer killed them after him. And that first strike, which Jonathan and his armor-bearer made, killed about twenty men. And there was a panic in the camp, in the field, and among all the people. The garrison and even the raiders trembled, the earth quaked, and it became a very great panic.

Notice the similarities between this story of Jonathan’s victory and David’s defeat of Goliath. Like David, Jonathan could not stand the passivity of the Israelite army. Like David, he understood that the battle was the LORD’s, saying to his armor-bearer, “Come, let's go over to the outposts of those uncircumcised fellows. Perhaps the LORD will act in our behalf. Nothing can hinder the LORD from saving, whether by many or by few.” Like David, he courageously faced an overwhelming Philistine force. Like David, he prevailed against enormous odds, killing some twenty men with the help of just his armor-bearer. Like David, his victory caused the entire Philistine army to be routed.

In short, Jonathan and David were kindred spirits, warriors who were jealous for God’s honor, willing to take the battle to his enemies, depending upon his power for victory. They are an inspiring pair of comrades-in-arms, whose earthly battles are an Old Testament picture of the invisible, spiritual battles Christian men fight.

B. Jonathan Loved David as Himself. In Romans 12:10, Paul commands Christians, “Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor.” There is no clearer Biblical picture of such love than Prince Jonathan’s love for a shepherd boy named David. In 1 Samuel 18:1 we read that Jonathan loved David as himself. To love someone “as yourself” means to be as committed to meeting his needs as you are to your own. Practically speaking, that means when your brother has a need, you drop what you are doing and go.

Jim and Bill were best friends who enlisted together in World War I. During the long, muddy days of trench warfare, the battle became a stalemate. Every so often, the men would be ordered over the top to move up to the next trench; but in this new era of the machine gun, row upon row would be mowed down. On one particular occasion, Jim and Bill were ordered over the top to advance to the next trench. Enemy fire broke out and Jim fell mortally wounded. Bill worked his way back in retreat to the previous trench with his commanding officer. He could hear Jim out on the battlefield crying, and wanted to go rescue him. But his commanding officer said, “No, don’t risk your life. Didn’t you see where he was hit? He’s a gonner.” But when the C.O. turned away, Bill went out of the trench into the fire to be with his friend, Jim. A little bit later, he returned alone to the trench in a hail of bullets.

The C.O. snapped, “Why did you do that?  I told you he wasn’t going to make it.  He’s dead, isn’t he?”

Bill said, “Yeah, he is.”

The C.O. replied, “That was the stupidest thing you could have ever done.”

Bill mumbled, “But he was alive when I got there.”

“He was—well what did he say to you?”

Bill answered, “He said, ‘I knew you’d come…I knew you’d come.’”

Back in the text, Jonathan’s love for David went even beyond loving him as himself. Verse four of 1 Samuel 18:4 reads, “Jonathan took off the robe he was wearing and gave it to David, along with his tunic, and even his sword, his bow and his belt.” What a picture of fulfilling Paul’s later admonition, “In humility count others more significant than yourselves.” Jonathan was royalty; David was a peasant and as a shepherd, one of the lowliest at that. Furthermore, there was every reason for Prince Jonathan to see David as a rival and threat, just as his father, Saul, did. After all, Jonathan was not only the crown prince, but a great warrior like David in his own right.

But Jonathan overcame masculine rivalry, stripped himself of the royal robe he wore to put it on David, also giving David his royal sword and bow. The gift of his sword was especially striking, since the Philistines had removed nearly all the swords from Israel so that they could not be used in a revolt. Jonathan was willing to step aside and make way for his friend. Several chapters later, he even says to David, “You will be king over Israel, and I will be next to you” (I Sam. 23:17). Such a radical commitment to honoring the other is behind our ministry’s recommendation that brotherhood meetings over lunch begin with the question, “What encouragements or successes have you had this week?” Celebrating each other’s wins is a strategic way to keep men’s natural competitiveness from hindering brotherly love.

C. Jonathan Formed a Covenant with David. One night, while sleeping-out in the treehouse we had just finished building, my best friend and I took out our pocketknives, slit our fingers, and mingled the blood. We became intentionally committed to each other as blood brothers. Little is known about the nature of Jonathan’s covenant with David, except that David honored it by always welcoming Jonathan’s descendants to his table, when he became king. The one thing we do know, however, is that, as in my friendship with my best friend, Jonathan and David wanted to be intentional about their commitments to each other as friends. This same intentionality, in his commitment to form a closer bond with a few other men, was exhibited by Jesus, who intentionally singled out Peter, James, and John with whom to go deeper than he did with the rest of the disciples. Our ministry has been challenging men to follow the example of Jesus in forming brotherhood connections with a few other brothers.

The covenant with a blood brother or marriage partner, however, does more than single out others for a special, deeper relationship. A covenantal relationship has structure, promises and obligations, an example of which we hear in the vows that make a marriage covenant. A covenant is both organic (i.e. subjective—I choose you) and organizational, (i.e. structured.) With brotherhood connections, this principle means being intentional to go deeper with some men but also implementing the structure of regular meetings for breakfast, lunch, or a zoom call. Even those meetings have both an organic part--small talk to begin and adjustment of the agenda based on a brothers pressing need--and a default of structured questions that get men beneath the superficial into sharing their spiritual battles.     

D. Jonathan Had David’s Back. When Saul told Jonathan of his intent to kill David, Jonathan went to David and warned him, “My father Saul is looking for a chance to kill you.  Be on your guard tomorrow morning; go into hiding and stay there.  I will go out and stand with my father in the field where you are. I’ll speak to him about you and will tell you what I find out.” (I Sam. 19:2-3) Later, he fervently interceded with his father, arguing vehemently on David’s behalf.

Jonathan, like any good soldier, understood the importance of watching his brother’s back. He saw David’s susceptibility to being attacked by his father and acted. In the military, “I’ve got your six” is all about protecting your brother’s back, which is his point of greatest vulnerability. But in spiritual warfare no one can see the attacker stalking a brother. The only way we can have his back is for the brother to have exposed those points of weakness to us, asked for our help in those battles and leaned on us for strength by asking us to hold him accountable.

Years ago, a pastor came to me who was a retired Marine Corps helicopter pilot. He said, “I inherited a church with strong couples’ small groups. But I know men. They do not open up in front of another guy’s wife. In fact, they don’t even open up in front of their own wives. I’ve got a bunch of guys working at the Pentagon. Could you write some questions for them to use over lunch that would get them connected below the surface. I returned with a series of six questions that we call Check 6. Printed on a wallet card, thousands of men have been using them.

  • Check #1: What encouragements or successes have you had this past week?
  • Check #2: What Biblical insight or verse from your quiet time has stood out to you recently?
  • Check #3: What has been the most difficult part of being the spiritual leader at home lately?
  • Check #4: Personal Accountability: Choose what you want your brother(s) to ask you about next time?
  • Check #5: Who are the non-believers you are building relationships with and how can I pray for your strategy to share Christ with them?
  • Check #6: What other spiritual battles can I help you fight through my prayer for you?

Tom Joyce, the men’s pastor at Immanuel Bible church expects every one of his men to meet with at least one other man for prayer, encouragement and accountability. Tom saw the power of accountability—even among unbelievers—while serving as a squadron commander in the US Navy, shortly after the Navy Tailhook scandal took place. This scandal refers to a series of incidents in which U.S. Navy and U. S. Marine Corps aviation officers were alleged to have sexually assaulted numerous female coworkers. Against that backdrop, Tom writes:

The predominant number of guys who got involved in the Tailhook scandal were from the West Coast F14 community. So, I was hand-selected to go to this squadron since the commanding officer and executive officer had both been relieved of their duties because of their involvement in things surrounding Tailhook. As soon as I had the opportunity, because we were going into our first port visit, I got all my guys together—thirty-six officers—in the Ready Room.  I said, “I know what the background of this squadron has been. You’ve lost a CO and XO because of that. But things have changed. Here’s what I’m going to do. We’re heading into a port visit tomorrow, and if it comes to my attention that any one of you men has done anything immoral behind your wife, or girlfriend’s back, I’m going to send you home. I don’t care where we are on the deployment, I’m going to send you home and one, you will pay your own way home, and two, you can knock on the door and explain to your wife or girlfriends why you came home.” You could have heard a pin drop in that room. The meeting ended. A young lieutenant came up to me and asked, “Permission to speak frankly, Sir?”

I said, “Sure.”

He said, “You’re an idiot!” I wasn’t expecting that much frankness! He continued, “You can’t dictate your morals on us. You can’t tell us what we can and can’t do on our own free time in port.”

I told him, “Number one: adultery is a violation of the Uniform Military Code of Justice. It’s against the law. Number two: go ahead and push me. You’ll be the first to go.” For the next few weeks, it was difficult. But we got into a combat zone and operations spiked up. Everything got back to normal—just as a fighter squadron should be—a really, really, close-knit group of guys.

We came home six months later, on December 23rd. I led a ten-plane formation over the flight-line of Miramar Naval Air Station with thousands of family members and friends waiting for us to come in. As the CO, I landed first. So, as each pilot took his flight gear off, I went up, shook his hand, and said, “On behalf of a grateful nation, I welcome you back to the United States. Thanks so much for your great work and encouragement to me following my leadership. Now go see your family and Merry Christmas.” But before they walked away every one of these guys—they didn’t want to say it publicly—but nearly every one of these men would shake my hand, grab me close, and say, “Thanks for holding me accountable. Thanks for helping me do the right thing.” Not all of Tom’s flyers believed it at first. But as his officers had headed into port for some R & R, he still had their back. And when they got home to their girlfriends and families, they were glad he did.

In today’s world, every Christian man needs a band of brothers who will help him fight his spiritual battles and have his back. Jonathan was that kind of brother to David. Some have speculated that if Jonathan had not died in battle, David’s affair with Bathsheba would have never happened. Jonathan would have had his friend’s back. He would have been in David’s face about taking more than one wife in the first place and later about staying back at the palace while his troops were out in the field. With Jonathan’s kindred zeal for God’s glory, it is likely that their friendship would have strengthened David, making him less vulnerable to his lust. We’ll never know. But we do know that Jonathan had David’s back. As warriors battling Satan, the world's anti-biblical worldviews, and our sinful nature, we need someone watching our six, just as David did.

What an attractive picture--having a brother with whom you share a deep bond, your souls knit together by a common loyalty to the High King of Heaven, a common passion for his honor, and a common willingness to fight for his cause. I believe that kind of brotherhood is what Jesus modeled with the inner three. Do you have that kind of brotherhood connection?

If you would like help knowing how to better build a brotherhood connection with one or two brothers, you will find great help in my book, Got Your Back, which is available in paperback, Kindle, and Audible versions on Amazon. Also, the Check 6 wallet cards are available in our online bookstore.

For Further Prayerful Thought:

  1. What stood out to you the most about Jonathan and David’s friendship?
  2. What do you think of Stu Weber’s statement, “something inside us longs for someone to die with…someone to die beside…someone to lock step with. Another man with a heart like our own?” Have you ever had a friend like that?
  3. What steps do you need to take to build or to maintain the kind of brotherhood connection David and Jonathan had and Jesus modeled?
  4. What can you do to help the other men in the church get out of isolation and into brotherhood connections in the Body of Christ?
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In the Fight or On the Sidelines?

In the Fight or On the Sidelines?

On 01 March, 2025 By Gary Yagel

A Union officer from Rhode Island named Sullivan Ballou wrote a love- letter to his wife on the eve of the Civil War Battle of Bull Run, a battle he sensed would be his last. He speaks tenderly to her of his undying love, of “the memories of blissful moments I have spent with you.” He grieves the thought that he must give up “the hope of future years, when, God willing, we might have lived and loved together, and seen our sons grown up to honorable manhood around us.” Yet despite his love for her, the battle calls and he cannot turn away from it. “Sarah, my love for you seems to bind me with mighty cables that nothing but Omnipotence could break,” and yet a greater cause “comes over me like a strong wind and bears me irresistibly on with all these chains to the battlefield.”

Sullivan Ballou was killed in battle the next day. God has shaped our masculine hearts to respond to a mission that both involves and transcends even home and family. I believe that John Eldredge is right when he says, “A man must have a cause to which he is devoted even unto death, for this is written into the fabric of his being (Wild at Heart). The adage is true, “If a man doesn’t have a cause to die for, he doesn’t have a cause to live for.” This episode is about the greatest cause in the history of the world—the kingdom of Jesus defeating the kingdom of evil and spreading righteousness over earth.

In Genesis 2:15, God reveals that he placed Adam in the garden to protect the garden and its inhabitants from harm. The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and KEEP it. The Hebrew word for “keep” is SHAMAR which means to protect from harm. As Genesis unfolds, we discover an enemy, Satan, who hates God and his image bearer. He is described by Jesus as a thief “who comes only to steal and kill and destroy.” As C.S. Lewis said, “enemy occupied territory, that is what the world is.” In Ephesians 6 Paul explains that most of our calling to protect our family and the garden (the world) requires us to fight spiritually. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places (vs 12). This episode challenges us all to rethink whether we are standing on the sidelines or engaged in some spiritual fight against a Goliath that God wants us to fight to spread Christ’s righteous agenda. The subject of our study is David’s defeat of Goliath, which is physical picture that is loaded with truths about spiritual warfare. Let’s dig in. (1 Sam 17 summary.)

A champion named Goliath came out of the Philistine camp. His height was six cubits and a span. Goliath stood and shouted to the ranks of Israel, “Why do you come out and line up for battle? Choose a man and have him come down to me. If he is able to fight and kill me, we will become your subjects; but if I overcome him and kill him, you will become our subjects and serve us.  On hearing the Philistine’s words, Saul and all the Israelites were dismayed and terrified.

Three of David's brothers are stationed there so David is sent to them by his father with food. David arrives. As he was talking with them, Goliath, the Philistine champion from Gath, stepped out from his lines and shouted his usual defiance, and David heard it. David asks, ‘Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God?’ What David said was overheard and reported to Saul, and Saul sent for him. David said to Saul, ‘Let no one lose heart on account of this Philistine; your servant will go and fight him.’ Saul replied, ‘You are not able to go out against this Philistine and fight him; you are only a young man, and he has been a warrior from his youth.’ But David said to Saul, ‘Your servant has been keeping his father’s sheep. When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, I went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth. Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living God. The Lord who rescued me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will rescue me from the hand of this Philistine.’ Saul said to David, ‘Go, and the Lord be with you.’

Then he took his staff in his hand, chose five smooth stones from the stream, put them in the pouch of his shepherd’s bag and, with his sling in his hand, approached the Philistine…who said to David, ‘Am I a dog, that you come at me with sticks?’ And the Philistine cursed David by his gods. ‘Come here,’ he said, ‘and I’ll give your flesh to the birds and the wild animals!’  

David said to the Philistine, ‘You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the Lord will deliver you into my hands, and I’ll strike you down and cut off your head. This very day I will give the carcasses of the Philistine army to the birds and the wild animals, and the whole world will know that there is a God in Israel. All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the LORD saves; for the battle is the LORD’s, and he will give all of you into our hands.’ As the Philistine moved closer to attack him, David ran quickly toward the battle line to meet him. Reaching into his bag and taking out a stone, he slung it and struck the Philistine on the forehead. The stone sank into his forehead, and he fell facedown on the ground. Than David cut off his head.

GOLIATH AND WHAT HE REPRESENTS

Goliath’s armament was the best that the highly skilled Philistines could obtain either by manufacturing or by trade. The shield was a large standing shield that covered the whole body. Most of his armament was bronze except his spear’s head of iron—this was just the beginning of the Iron Age. It weighed about 15 lbs. His coat of mail weighed 125 lbs. Six cubits, and a span is about 9 feet 9 inches.

Goliath was:

  • An enemy against whose strength God’s people felt powerless.
  • An enemy who defied God’s people to conquer him.
  • An enemy whose very presence struck fear in the heart of God’s people.
  • An enemy whose daily defiance of God’s people paralyzed them for they knew their strength was no match for his.

In the battle between the Kingdom of Darkness and Christ’s Kingdom of Righteousness, Goliath represents sinful habits, desires, fears, and doubts that defy our efforts to bring them under the Lordship of Christ in both our own personal lives and in our culture. At the personal level, some years ago, after a men’s retreat that focused on the battle with porn, the weekend closed with the chance for men to share what they had gotten from the weekend. Rising to his feet, Bob spoke through his tears, “I want to confess to you brothers that I need help with my Internet porn problem. I’ve only been married two years. I thought marriage would fix the problem. But it hasn’t.” Slowly, Sam got to his feet and confessed the same struggle. Then Bill. Then Brian offered to lead a group to join together in battle with this Goliath. Your Goliath may be any idol that regularly defies your efforts to control it, not just lust, nicotine, sugar, alcohol or gambling but anger, bitterness, a sharp tongue, lack of discipline, or time-wasting pleasures.

But the Goliath God may want you to fight may not be personal but cultural. Some years ago, a friend of mine named Ellen, was challenged with the question from this text, “What is your Goliath?” Her’s was abortion. She had walked in on an abortion as a Candy Striper. Ellen determined to fight abortion in her area of Gaithersburg, MD. She located two other prolife friends to help her start a pregnancy center. They prayed, built their team, raised their money, and found an ideal location. Ellen had the time to put into this pursuit because she was a nurse who was recently married and had been praying for a daytime position so it would not take her away from her new husband. Plans went forward and Ellen decided to become the volunteer director of the center. But the weekend before Shady Grove Pregnancy Center was to open, a daytime nursing position became available right next to the office building where her husband worked. But she turned it down. Shady Grove Pregnancy Center was born and has been operating at that same location now for over forty years saving lives and leading fathers and mothers with unwanted pregnancies to faith in Jesus. Ellen refused to sit on the sidelines. She got into the fight. Is there a Goliath, personal or cultural that God might be using this episode to call you to fight?

DAVID’S STRATEGY FOR DEFEATING GOLIATH

A. Preparation for the Battle. The skill David used to defeat Goliath was developed through David’s faithfulness in fulfilling the lowly task he was assigned as the youngest brother—caring for the smelly sheep. Not only would that skill be developed by driving predators away from the flock, he developed the courage to go after the lion or bear who had stolen away one of his lambs. In his own words to Saul, When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, I went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it. The Lord who rescued me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will rescue me from the hand of this Philistine. Faithfulness in the mundane tasks assigned to us is preparation for bigger things.

Not only that but David’s preparation for this battle took place when David began putting the Torah to music using his harp (which would later become the Psalms) while out in the fields keeping the sheep. No doubt, one of the lessons he saw in the Torah was the principle that the battle against Israel’s enemies had always been the Lords.

B. Passion for God’s Honor. I believe that what moved David to action is the same force that can propel us to leave the sidelines to take on a Goliath in our sphere—passion for God’s honor, zeal for God’s reputation, such overpowering allegiance to God that nothing matters as much as the name of our God being exalted. Listen to David’s incredulity at the way Israel’s soldiers were allowing their God to be shamed. David asked the men standing near him, “What will be done for the man who kills this Philistine and removes this disgrace from Israel? Who is this uncircumcised Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God (vs 26)? David saw the powerlessness of Israel’s army to stand up to Goliath. Yet it was Israel who claimed to worship the true God. In those days, the true God was clearly the one who gave his followers victory. David saw that it was the reputation of God, himself, that was at stake in Goliath’s defiance of Israel.  

When you love someone, you can’t tolerate his reputation being trashed. In fact, God explicitly teaches us this principle. The first four of the Ten Commandments explain how to love God (the second six, how to love our neighbor.) The third commandment is to respect God’s name. “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain (Ex 20:7). Wanting God’s name to be revered is at the core of loving him and at the core of David asking God to defeat Goliath. In fact, years after David had died, God tells us that he empowered Israel’s evil King Ahab to win a great military victory, for one reason: God’s reputation was at stake. And a man of God came near and said to the king of Israel, “Thus says the Lord, ‘Because the Syrians have said, “The Lord is a god of the hills but he is not a god of the valleys,” therefore I will give all this great multitude into your hand, and you shall know that I am the Lord (1 Kings 20:28).

Jesus appeals to this devotion to God’s honor as motivation to defeat evil and bear the fruit of righteousness when he says. By this is my father GLORIFIED, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. Similarly, the very starting point for praying as Jesus taught us to pray is passion for the honor of God’s name. “Our father in heaven, may your name be hallowed, may your kingdom come and your (moral, preceptive) will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” The song of those captured by heart-driven allegiance to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords is Oh, magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together (Ps 34:3)!

C. Trust in God for the Power to Win. What is surprising in this story may not be David’s faith but Saul and his army’s lack of faith. From the beginning of Israel’s history and throughout, God had over and over and over again shown Israel that victory came not by the might of Israel’s army but from the Lord.

  • It was God who changed Pharoh’s heart so he would let them leave Egypt.
  • It was God who dried a path through the Red Sea, & drowned the Egyptian Army
  • It was God who made the walls of Jericho fall.
  • It was God who gave Deborah and Barak victory over Canaanite King Jabin.
  • It was God who gave Samson victory over the Philistines despite his major character flaws.   
  • It was God who told Gideon to cut his army from 32,000 to 300 saying “The people with you are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hand lest Israel boast over me saying ‘My own hand has saved me’” (Judges 7:2). God then gave Gideon’s army of 300 victory over an army of 5000.

If there was anything that any Israelite should know about warfare—it was that the battle is the LORD’s. Yet, there stood Saul and his men on the sidelines, feeling powerless, afraid, disheartened before Goliath because all they thought about was their own strength. Are there any Goliaths in your world that God might want you to fight that are intimidating you?

D. Use of Intelligence to Fight. Faith does not mean jettisoning reason.

  • David detected that the one place Goliath was vulnerable was his face.
  • While others saw Goliath’s size as too big to defeat, David saw his massive face as too big to miss!
  • Goliath’s reach meant he had to be attacked from a distance.
  • Although he knew he had the skill to hit Goliath in the face, David knew he could miss and might need to fire again. So, he took five stones.
  • David knew that smooth stones would least alter the direction of his hurl.
  • He knew that wearing Saul’s armor would hinder his sprint towards Goliath to increase the velocity of the stone as he hurled it so it penetrated his head.  

Attacking your Goliath takes every bit of cunning, wisdom and intelligence that you can muster. The horse is made ready for the day of battle, but the victory belongs to the Lord (Prv 21:31). The fight to defeat lust, for example, requires being smart.

  • Anticipate the outer conditions when lust is most likely to strike.

--You are alone with the opportunity to pursue illicit sexual pleasure.

--You are out of town with the opportunity to pursue illicit sexual pleasure.

--You can’t sleep.

--You are in a physical location associated with past sexual pleasure.

  • Anticipate internal conditions when lust strikes (boredom, loneliness, depression, discouragement, anger towards wife.)
  • Remember sin thrives in the dark. To defeat it requires accountability.

E. Marshalling the Courage to Act. David stepped onto the battlefield. In the greater Richmond area, a friend of mine, named Bob, met a Christian woman (I will call Cindy), whose Goliath was the filthy, explicit, sexual content in the children’s section of the regional library. Though Bob had many other things to do, he left the sidelines to get into the fight against this evil Goliath. An opportunity arose to gain control of the Board of Trustees, which by a 5-4 margin had supported such explicit content and the American Library Association promoting it. One of the five was up for a second term. Cindy asked Bob to run for that open seat. He met with every other board member and secured the endorsement of another high-ranking official, all the while Bob and Cindy bathing what they did in prayer. When the vote came, the board member who favored the explicit material lost what had always been a certain election by former board members to a second term. Bob was elected, instead. Since then, the library board majority members have endured public assaults on their character and a fight with the director who was promoting the filth, finally getting him to resign. The majority is currently not only putting controls on the explicit sexual content that is available to children but working to change the structure to ensure that the content decisions are not determined by the American Library Association but by the local parents. Goliath was defeated, but the battle to prevent the rise of another Goliath continues, which leads to the final strategy that David was forced to employ.    

F. Celebrating the Win but Expecting Continued Fighting. David won one of the best-known battles in the entire world. It was a great victory for Israel and for the reputation of the LORD. It launched David into prominence, building support for God’s calling upon him to be Israel’s king. But the story is incomplete without mentioning another part. King Saul became insanely jealous of David because of his victory over Goliath. If David was fifteen when he killed Goliath, David spent the next fifteen years fleeing from his king who was trying to kill him. Perhaps the NFL has it right when it comes to “today’s victory.” They celebrate it tonight and maybe tomorrow but then get right back to preparing for the next gridiron battle.

The need to head back into the fight need not discourage us. Men are created to be warriors. That is our calling. But our disheartening defeats send us to the sidelines. One such man admitted to his friend. “I’d love to be William Wallace in Braveheart, leading the charge with a big sword in my hand. But I feel like the guy in the fourth row with a hoe.” Perhaps that describes you. But consider the friend’s response, (which is as biblical as it can get).

"That’s a lie of the Enemy—that your place is really insignificant, that you aren’t really armed for it anyway. In your life, you are William Wallace—who else could be? There is no other man who can replace you in your life, in the arena you’ve been called to. If you leave your place in the line, it will remain empty. No one else can be who you are meant to be. YOU are the hero in your story. Not a bit player, not an extra, but the main man."(Eldredge, Wild at Heart).

For Further Prayerful Thought:

  1. Do you think ther are some sins in Christian men’s lives that they have been so overpowered by that they give up fighting? What might they be? How can this story of David and Goliath give them faith to step onto the battlefield?
  2. Do you think there are cultural battles that many men believe reflect such spiritual power from the kingdom of darkness that they are reluctant to launch intentional fights against them?
  3. Which of the six principles exhibited in David’s defeat of Goliath stood out most to you?
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Bad Ideas Make Our Kids Victims

Bad Ideas Make Our Kids Victims

On 23 February, 2025 By Gary Yagel

A mom and dad whose daughter was away at college received this letter from her: 

“Dear Mom and Dad,

I just thought I’d drop you a note to clue you in on my plans. I’ve fallen in love with a guy named Jim. He quit high school after grade eleven to get married. About a year ago he got a divorce. We’ve been together for two months and plan to get married in the fall. Until then I’ve decided to move into his apartment, (I think I might be pregnant). At any rate, I dropped out of school last week although I’d like to finish college sometime in the future.”

On the next page she continued: “Mom and Dad, I just want you to know that everything I’ve written so far in this letter is false. NONE it is true. But Mom and Dad, it IS true that I got a C- in French and flunked Math….it is true that I am going to need some more money.”

Pretty smart girl. She knew that even bad news can sound like good news if it is seen from a certain vantage point. She could shape her parent’s attitude towards her minor failure by shaping their perspective; at least she didn’t screw up big time! One of the great truths of life is that one’s mental perspective is what determines one’s attitude. Eve believed the lie that God’s command not to eat the fruit was selfish and that God was keeping something to be desired—the knowledge of good and evil—from her. That perspective led to the attitude of rebellion which led to the action of sin. This episode seeks to better understand how wrong thinking leads to wrong attitudes, which is why we need to protect the rising generation from the destructive ideas invading their lives.

Let’s dwell a bit more on the life-reality that our attitudes are determined by our perspective. Suppose you are at a busy street corner in Manhattan. The “walk” light turns green, you step off the curb, and someone grabs you from behind yanking you back, causing you to lose your balance and fall to the sidewalk ripping the knee of your suit pants. You will be angry at the guy who grabbed you, but only until you notice a car that had run a red light fly right over the spot where you were standing. Then your anger will turn to extreme gratefulness. You have the same bruised knee and torn suit pants—but the opposite attitude. Perspective—the way we view life—has an enormous impact on the way we live. We observe this truth in Jesus’ portrait of kingdom living, the Sermon on the Mount. He begins with four kingdom attitudes. Notice how each one depends upon the right perspective.

RIGHT ATTITUDES RESULT FROM RIGHT PERSPECTIVES

A. Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. The correct view of YOURSELF. I am utterly destitute when it comes to righteousness.

  • I cannot earn salvation. Attitude: gratefulness, indebtedness to God.
  • I cannot serve Jesus in my own strength—in weakness his power is shown the more completely. Attitude: humility, dependency.
  • My brokenness means I must be open to reproof. Attitude: teachability.
  • I cannot be unforgiving. I cannot demand that others never hurt me by their sin when I, myself am so sinful. Attitude: forgiveness, patience.

B. Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted. The correct view of SIN.

  • Seeing our sin against God as a personal afront to him which demands profound repentance and sorrow.  Attitude: grieving over sin.
  • Knowing the wage of sin is always death and destruction. Attitude: mercy, and grace towards others who sin.
  • Recognition that those who promote evil values and lifestyles in our culture are not the enemy but held captive by the enemy, sin. Attitude: love for ideological enemies.
  • Realizing that we do not so much break the law as the law breaks us. Attitude: compassion for those broken by their sin.
  • Knowing that God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. Attitude: the fear of the Lord, hating sin.

C. Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth. Correct view of YOUR RIGHTS.

  • Knowing we have been purchased by the precious blood of Jesus we do not belong to ourselves but Jesus. Attitude: trust in God’s character, loyalty
  • Having transferred ownership of ourselves to God and knowing he takes good care of what belongs to him. Attitude: Inner peace, generosity.
  • Knowing I was put on earth for God’s glory. Attitude: meekness, endurance.
  • Seeing time as an earthly trust from God, which invested wisely will produce eternal treasures. Attitude: faithfulness, stewardship.

D. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be satisfied. Correct view of the relationship between THE MORAL LAW and LIFE.

  • Knowing that obedience is God's love language (If you love me keep my commandments) we hunger to obey what is right. Attitude: love for God, allegiance.
  • Knowing as followers of Jesus that the discipleship call to “be careful to do all that I have commanded you.” cause us to hunger and thirst to do what is right. Attitude: obedience, thoroughness.
  • Remembering that God gave us the Law as the path to life, we humger to know that path. Attitude: love for God’s Word.
  • Knowing that sin broke creation and Christ has come to restore it caues us to hungering for that restoration. Christians have a vital role in God’s creation to retard the decay of evil as salt and to reveal evil by shining the light of truth. Attitude: resisting apathy, engaging culture.

Ideas have consequences. Bad ideas have victims. That is why the third function of successful spiritual leadership in the home (which we’ve been studying)—EQUIP—requires us to teach our teens to identify the culture’s worldviews, analyze them through the lens of Scripture and winsomely oppose their influence.  That is why in Romans 12:2, after Paul says that the right response to the gospel is to offer ourselves to God, the next command he gives is. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind. Let’s consider three key words in this command, conformed, this world, and transformed.

DO NOT BE CONFORMED

A. This Greek word, SUSSCHEMATIZO, means to shape or fashion one thing according to another. It suggests being shaped from the outside in. Its focus is on the human inclination to want to fit in. Phillips translates this concept in Romans 12:2, “Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mold.” Let’s consider how a teen girl named Grace was squeezed into the world’s mold.

As a 12-year-old, Grace began posting her artwork, along with her friends on the website called DeviantArt. She noticed the Gay is good message, which started to seep into her thinking. She heard the word, transgender for the first time and asked her mom what that was. Her mom did have a willingness to say, “We Christians don’t agree with that.” But she did not take time to explain the folly of the transgender worldview. Grace had the courage to post to her Facebook page, God created people male and female. But the response of her LGBTQ friends was not to shun or reject her but to put their arms around her and invite her to their GSA (Gender & Sexuality Alliance club). The key theme of this group of 12-13-year- old girls was feeling uncomfortable in their bodies as they started through puberty. Through the guidance of online “trans coaches” Grace decided one Saturday to send a text to her parents: “Mom and Dad, I’m not actually a girl. My pronouns are they and them. I am coming out today as transgender.”

Being conformed to the destructive idea that you decide your gender and not your anatomy has taken place among thousands of girls. And this is just one of the lies capturing the minds of children in our church and culture. Why does this kind of thing happen to Christian kids? Their parents are naïve about how anti-biblical worldviews are capturing the hearts of rising teenagers and they fail to grasp the truth that the spiritual battle that rages around them is the battle of IDEAS. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ (2 Cor 1-3-5).

(DON’T BE CONFORMED) TO THIS WORLD

The Greek word translated “world” is significant. It is not COSMOS meaning the physical earth but AION which means this age. It is Paul’s way of describing the current cultural values that are seeking to squeeze our loved ones into their mold. It is our job to stop this process both as our family’s protectors and because God assigns us the same task, which he assigned Abraham: that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice (Gen 18:19).

Most of the destructive anti-biblical world views of our culture can be identified by the word suffix ism. This suffix transforms a word into a worldview in which that word reveals the highest value. For example, the word, secular is a good word, which describes the non-spiritual sphere of life. Secularism is a worldview that makes ultimate the secular sphere of life over any spiritual part of life. These ism’s catch our attention because the very first commandment, You shall have no other God’s before me tells us that nothing is to have more ultimate significance than God himself. But since humans are created to be worshippers, when sinful man refuses to submit to God’s authority, he will fill that need for something to be ultimate with a person, statue, false religion, or false ideology.

BE TRANSFORMED BY THE RENEWAL OF YOUR MIND

Scripture makes clear that our race’s fall corrupted our thought process. There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death (Prov 14:12). Let's examine some current ideologies and put a Biblical lens over them.

Ideologies in Our Culture with Biblical Response

Humanism: The elevation of the welfare of humans and opinions of humans to the highest level of importance in disregard of God. The biblical view is that the value of a human is rooted in his identity as an image-bearer of God accountable to him.

Naturalism: The elevation of this physical world of nature and its study, science, to the ultimate place of arbiter of truth. Scripture highly values this material world as a mirror of his glory and because God commands us to develop its potential. Science, by definition, deals only with the material and not the supernatural. So it is unqualified to answer the question of the existence of the spiritual. But science is the discovery of the order of creation, which points to an orderer who is outside of creation and the behavioral sciences point to aspects of human experiences such as beauty and love, which can't be explained by the argument that the material order is all that exists.

Moral Relativism: The belief that truth, morality, and other values are relative to a person's perspective or culture, and thar absolute truth does not exist. An example is the argument that same-sex attraction and homosexual sex are not wrong but reflect cultures that misunderstood it. The biblical view is that truth is objective, that objective holiness exists in the nature of God, and that the objective law of God is written on the hearts of all men. However, humans suppress that truth because sin has polluted their entire being, including their sexuality.  

Subjectivism: A philosophical view that holds that reality is shaped by our perceptions, beliefs, and feelings. If you believe Budha saves you, that is true for you. If you believe you are a boy in a girl’s body that is true for you. The biblical view is that truth is objective. True truth is rooted in the unchanging nature of God. The natural world is an objective expression of his unchanging attributes.

Pragmatism: What is of ultimate importance and highest value is getting results. Technically, truth is measured by results. “Pragmatic” is sometimes confused with practical application of truth, which Scripture highly affirms. But Scripture collides head on with pragmatism. How we get a result, whether righteously or unrighteously matters. The ends do NOT justify the means.

Egalitarianism: Equal treatment is elevated to the highest value in disregard of the biological differences between men and women, the importance of teaching obedience to children at home, and the need for structural accountability in society. The biblical view is that men and women, adults and children, leaders and followers have equal worth as those made in God’s image. The impulse to rebel against God’s structure of authority began in the heart of Lucifer the first egalitarian. He said, ‘I will ascend to heaven, above the stars of God. I will set my throne on high; I will sit on the mount of assembly… I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High’ (Is 14:13-14)

Cultural Marxism AKA Critical Theory: What It Teaches

Summary: Critical Theory is a way that some in our culture try to explain and confront power structures. To understand Critical Theory, we need to understand its two primary claims. 1) First, everyone can be divided into two groups—those who have power—and  those who don’t. 2) Those who have power always OPPRESS those who don’t. How do we know who the oppressed and who the oppressors are? According to Critical Theory the categories of oppressed and oppressor are based on your group identity. Membership in categories of race, gender, religion, immigration status, income, sexual orientation, and gender identity determine whether we are oppressed or one of the oppressors.

Historical Roots: It traces back to Karl Marx’s view of history as class conflict and parallels his view of animosity between the oppressed proletariat (workers) and the oppressor bourgeoisie the (business owners). He defined capitalism as the exploitation of the masses and predicted that the workers in the industrialized nations would revolt and overthrow the capitalist establishment. Marx died in 1888. Though his ideology led eventually to the bloody Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 in Russia and execution of millions of landowners by Mao Zedong in the 1950’s, this revolution never took place in the industrialized west. Why not?

The answer was supplied later by one of Marx’s followers, Antonio Gramsci, cultural hegemony. The word hegemony is normally used of nations that exert dominance, authority, or influence over other nations. But Gramsci applied this term, hegemony, to the capitalist establishment who, he argued, unjustly gained cultural power and dominance, (not just economic dominance as Marx argued) and has victimized everyone else. Gramsci defined cultural hegemony from Marx’s class warfare perspective, as: Domination or rule maintained through ideological or cultural means. It is usually achieved through social institutions, which allow those in power to strongly influence the values, norms, ideas, expectations, worldview, and behavior of the rest of society (Voddie Bauchem, Lecture: Cultural Marxism). The oppressed worker that Marx predicted would revolt against capitalism didn’t, because that worker was also oppressed by cultural hegemony.

Have you ever wondered why women, who outnumber males in the world, are considered a minority? Because women are not seen as part of the cultural hegemony. The cultural hegemony in US culture is based on unjust patriarchy. So, the cultural hegemony in our society is white, male, heterosexual, cisgender, able-bodied, non-poor, and born in the USA. EVERYONE who IS that is part of the PRIVILEGED OPPRESSIVE CLASS and corresponds to Marx’s hated bourgeoisie. Everybody who IS NOT that (which corresponds to Marx’s proletariat) is a victim of the cultural hegemony (including, especially racism) established by THE PRIVILEGED CLASS, and ought to be at war with the privileged class.

Biblical Lens. Scripture DOES validate the INTENT of Christians who support CRT, though not CRT’s ideology. Here is why it is anti-biblical:

  • Critical Theory offers a wrong view of human personhood. It argues that our identity is rooted in categories like race, gender, income, economic status--all features that differ from one another and become the basis for hostility towards one another as oppressors or those who are victims of such oppressors. Scripture bases human identity upon all being made in God’s image. CT deliberately fuels class warfare and reverse racism. The Bible says, "love your neighbor as yourself."
  • Critical Theory teaches a wrong view of oppression. Oppression is not the result of being born into privilege. Nowhere does the Bible teach the Marxist class division and warfare making white, male, heterosexual, cisgender, non-poor, able-bodied, natively born, by definition, oppressors. Jesus was a white, male, heterosexual, cisgender, able-bodied Jew. I guess this makes Jesus an oppressor. Oppression is using whatever power you have to harm another. The Bible teaches that every race oppresses others. Oppression comes from human, sinful nature. Now the works of the flesh are evident: … enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy (Gal 5:20-21).
  • Critical theory teaches a foolish view of truth. The degree to which you are oppressed gives you the moral authority to make truth claims. This is silly. No one lives this way. If you have a stomachache, you don’t find someone from the most oppressed group to find out what is wrong; you go to the doctor. Such folly is from the world of academia, which is disconnected from reality.
  • The CT definition of oppression turns the loving action of being truthful with someone on its head. Critical Theory advocates see practices like discipleship, leadership, correction, and reproof as sinful assertions of power if the speaker’s identity group is among the oppressors.

The impact of cultural Marxism upon the rising generation of Christians is enormous. Just this past week one of the national leaders of my denomination, the PCA, publicly repented of allowing lawlessness to have been encouraged on our website for ministry to immigrants. Why did this happen? Could it be the result of the influence of Cultural Marxism, which sees immigrants as the victims and ICE as the oppressors?

For Further Prayerful Thought:

  1. What examples most stood out to you about the way our mental perspective determines our attitude?
  2. Of the eight ideologies identified and evaluated through a biblical lens, which ones do you see most clearly in the culture? Which ones do you think are most deceiving teenagers?
  3. What are the evil parallels between Marxism and cultural Marxism? Why do you think that otherwise mature Christians who are calling the church back to a concern for social justice are falling into some of its evil tenets?

Resources

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Developing Champions

Developing Champions

On 16 February, 2025 By Gary Yagel

This episode addresses an aspect of stewardship that you may have never thought about, at least I didn’t until this week. Stewards are those entrusted with great resources. The parable of the Ten Talents teaches us that we are to cause a treasure entrusted to us to be developed and utilized for the kingdom. Scripture tells us that preachers are stewards of the mysteries of God, every Christian is a steward of the gifts of grace given him, and overseers are stewards of every lamb entrusted to their care. In a parallel sense, I believe that fathers are assigned the stewardship responsibility by God of developing the potential of our children. They are precious treasures entrusted to us. But like gold that needs to be refined, or rough diamonds that need to be cut and polished, they need us to develop the full potential that God built into them.

When we consider God’s call to the first man in Genesis 2:15, we recall that Adam was put into the garden to cultivate it, i.e. to develop the potential of the garden and its inhabitants. Developing that potential is a man’s calling as a husband, father, and in broader society, a worker in his vocation. This episode answers the question, “What do dads need to do to develop their child’s potential, i.e. to be faithful stewards of this treasure entrusted to us, not just because we love them, but because God has important contributions for them to make to his world.”  

Being a “steward” of our children’s potential is another way of calling attention to the third function of spiritual leadership in the home, which we’ve been studying—EQUIP and EMPOWER. We’ve seen that the first leadership function is to stay focused on the goal of growing in Christ, so that we lead from our lives. We then examined the second function of leadership, which is building our relationship with our followers. Leaders gain the influence they need by winning the hearts of their followers through intentionally serving them and caring for their needs.

At present we are in a study of the third function of leadership, one that is often neglected by Christian fathers, equipping and empowering them with what they need to move down the path of spiritual maturity. Feb 2nd, we examined how to use the ultimate equipping tool—the Word of God. Today, we want to examine three additional practical ways to equip and empower our kids and grandkids to keep walking down the discipleship path following Jesus. When we consider this often-neglected function of fatherhood, it is mind-boggling to realize that we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars putting our kids through college to equip them to reach their potential vocationally but in most cases give little thought to how to equip and empower them spiritually.

THREE WAYS TO EMPOWER OUR KIDS FOR SPIRITUAL SUCCESS

A. Help them discover and celebrate their unique God-given design. After working with teens for over twenty years at his Christian sports camp for teens, Joe White came to a powerful conclusion—every tragic teen problem has a common root: low self-esteem. Research shows what they are up against:

  • Parents give 10 negative comments to every positive one
  • Schools give 18 negative statements to every positive one.
  • By the time kids graduate they’ve heard 15,000 negative statements
  • When kids enter 5th grade, 80% of them feel good about themselves but when they leave, just 10% feel good about themselves.

The answer is not, everybody gets a trophy or failing kids get a passing grade. The starting point is to help them know they have been shaped perfectly by God for their mission. The. Psalmist sang,

For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made…I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them (Ps 139:13-16).

Notice the connection between the weaving together of the child and the days that were written for him. He has been perfectly designed FOR what he will be doing each day. Paul captures this thought when he explains that although good works don’t earn our salvation, they are what we were saved FOR. He writes,

For by grace, you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them (Eph 2:8-10). Each of our children has been perfectly designed to accomplish the good works that God prepared beforehand that he should accomplish.

Shaping our child’s self-image by repeatedly reminding him of these truths is foundational, but it only goes so far. What is much more powerful is for our child to see his unique giftedness. Here are some practical ways to do this. First help him discover which of the seven spiritual gifts given in Romans 12:6-8 best match him. All Christians are commanded to discover and use their spiritual gifts.

Spiritual Gifts of Romans 12

1. PROPHET: (PROPHETES) which means “to speak forth openly.” He was the mouthpiece of God, prosecuting his covenant lawsuit against his people for their sin. The OT prophet often supernaturally predicted the future consequences of Israel’s sin. The NT prophet also warns of the consequences of sin  but he uses God’s written Word. He is God’s oncologist, identifying evil and cutting through rationalizations to remove the cancer of sin, calling for repentance. Peter seems to have had this gift. Some sample characteristics are:

  • Quick to detect and point out sin.
  • Tendency to be blunt.
  • Set and demand a high standard of moral behavior by believers.
  • Very convictional and will not compromise when they believe they are right.

2. SERVER (DIAKONIA). This is the inward motivation to express Christ’s love by meeting practical needs. People with this gift love the touch of the physical—they like mowers, mops, wrenches, saws, drills, pots, pans, soundboards and computers. Some sample characteristics are:

  • Having radar that sees practical needs with a motivation to immediately meet them to assist others.
  • Finding joy in taking care of practical needs to free up those they love to do other things.
  • Very happy being in the background, which they prefer but do need to feel appreciated.

3. TEACHER (DIDASKALOS) Just as Microsoft Office’s Word has spell check, those with this gift are the doctrine check for the church. In fact, the root meaning of DIDASKALOS is doctrine. This person is not so much one who loves teaching (as perhaps a schoolteacher) as one who loves to do detailed research, like a PhD professor. The DIDASKALOS’ focus is always on the accuracy of what is being taught. Dr. Luke seems to have had this gift. He introduces his gospel with the words: Just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you…. THAT YOU MAY HAVE CERTAINTY concerning the things you have been taught. Some sample characteristics are:

  • Their teaching is often so detailed that it is boring.
  • They care about the details of the context of a verse and the related doctrines that are guardrails for the text’s correct interpretation.
  • Unlike exhorters, they are typically not good at applying Scripture

4. EXHORTATION (PARAKLESIS) from PARA along side + KALEW to call to the side. The exhorter is given by God to the church to help believers apply Scripture to everyday life. It is noteworthy that this spiritual gift is the same word used to describe the Holy Spirit (PARAKLETE) whose role in the plan of salvation (planned by the Father and carried out by the Son) is to apply the work of salvation. Some sample characteristics are:

  • Have an innate ability to apply Scripture to life.
  • Focused on helping others build Christ-like character.
  • Love the book of Proverbs, the Sermon on the Mount, and the book of James for their practical wisdom to make everyday life work as God intends.
  • Focused on helping the church get its members discipling one another.

5. GIVING (THE ONE WHO CONTRIBUTES) Those with this gift play a vital role in God’s plan to finance the work of ministry. That plan is: 1) Christians who tithe, 2) emergency, crisis-giving such as we see in Acts 2 to care for new converts who had come to faith on the Day of Pentecost, but were outstaying their money supply to hear the Apostle’s further teaching, 3) those in the Body of Christ with the gift of giving contributing financially as a primary spiritual motivation. Matthew may have had this spiritual gift. Those who have it are very conscious of the resources required to finance a call from God. Matthew was the only gospel writer who mentioned the treasures brought by the Magi, described Mary’s ointment as very precious, and Joseph’s tomb as new. Some sample characteristics are:

  • Usually, have the ability to earn above average income.
  • Personally frugal to free funds for kingdom work but generous to others.
  • Resist pressure appeals for funds. Give quietly to kingdom projects.
  • Often, very interested in overseas mission work.

6.LEADERSHIP (PROISTEMI) to stand before. This is the God-given ability to enlist a group of people to help accomplish a task that honors Christ. This is not the same as administration—it is the ability to influence others to come with you in your pursuit of kingdom objectives. Some sample characteristics are:

  • Goal focused.
  • Have the ability to win a following and build a motivated team captured by a vision that matters to them.
  • See clearly the talent and resources needed to reach the goal.
  • Accurately evaluate how their team members’ strengths do or do NOT match their personnel needs and are committed to getting the right people in place, and removing the wrong ones.

7. MERCY SHOWER (ELEO) to feel sympathy for the misery of others. It has been suggested that the mercy shower is mentioned after everyone else in the Body has done their ministry, because the mercy shower binds up the wounds of those hurt in the process. God gives his heart of mercy to some in the Body of Christ for the purpose of sensing those who are in emotional turmoil to gently, tenderly bind up their wounds. John, known as the Apostle of Love, and the disciple Jesus loved, appears to be a mercy shower. Some sample characteristics are:

  • Primary motivation is to care for others, not reach a program objective.
  • In his view, oneness, fellowship, and love ARE the objective.
  • Keeps calling the church to ministries of mercy to the poor, oppressed, suffering, and disenfranchised.
  • Thinks, relationally, about everything. Caring for each other trumps all.

Why not print out these seven gifts and read them to your children asking them which gift they think they match best? 

Helping your children see how they match one or two of these descriptions is beneficial both for you to understand them and for them to understand themselves. Another lens through which we can help our children value their gifting is Gary Chapman’s book, The Five Love Languages. Chapman identifies five biblical ways of showing love to one another and speculates that each of us tends to lean towards one of those ways to both give love and feel the love of others. I remember sitting at breakfast with my kids and asking them, “Which of these do you think would make you feel most loved? Giving you: words of encouragement, a big hug, quality time together, help with something hard they had to do, or a nice gift?” My son Brian shot up his hand and asked, “How big is the gift?” I knew what he was thinking. “That new Nintendo 64 would make me feel very loved!” I wrote down all their responses and have used them over the years to understand and love them.

Two additional categories of tools can help equip our kids with confidence that they are perfectly, uniquely designed for their mission. First, surveys that help link their interests to specific vocational pursuits. We found the YES--Youth Exploration Survey very helpful for guiding our kids, vocationally. The second category is temperament surveys like DiSC and Myers Briggs. One year, on our family vacation, my son and daughter-in-law got us all to take the online Myers Briggs survey. It reminded us that this son and wife are INTROVERTS, which is why they wanted us all to take the online survey since introverts need time alone, disengaged from people to emotionally replenish. God made us all differently and the non-introverts in the family now realize their need to disengage from the family.

B. Invest in your one-on-one relationship with each child. In Paul’s first letter to the church at Thessalonica, he was defending himself against the charge that he did not care about them. His response was to remind them of his treatment of them when he had been with them. For you know how, like a father with his children, we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory. (I Thes 2:11-12) What a great picture of the multifaceted benefit of investing in our personal relationship with each child. Notice three different ways that fathers use words to individually motivate their children.

  1. I exhorted each of you. This Greek word is a combination of PARA which means beside and KALEO, which means to call. It refers to one-on-one support, another beside you to give direction, encouragement, and motivation. In fact, the root of the English word, “exhort” is incite, which means to move to action, to stir up, to spur on.
  2. I encouraged each of you. This Greek word is a combination of PARA, beside or near, and MUTHIA speech. It is often translated console or comfort. It refers to more intimate words spoken with tenderness because the one hearing them is vulnerable or in pain. These are words like “I know it hurts; but you’ll get through this,” “If anybody can get through this it is you,” “I know its crushing; but God won’t let go of your hand as He walks with you through this.”
  3. I charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory. This is the same Greek word as bearing witness. It seems to mean appealing to the gravity of a situation. The English word "charge" means literally to put under a load. A verbal charge appeals to the weightiness of a situation, its solemnity and significance.

All three of these categories of fatherly words suggest a one-on-one conversation. We get one-one-one opportunities through intentionality, either putting them on the calendar or utilizing opportunities that are already there. Before my kids got busy with high school activities, I took a different one out to breakfast on my day off. There are millions of ways to get one-on-one time. One of my sons and I would ride our bikes up to the center of town for a coke. But along the way we would stop and rotate reading pages from a book in the My Magic Treehouse series. I wanted to equip him to read a little better, and knowing how active he was by nature this was my approach. So, the second way to equip our kids is to invest in one-on-one time.

C. Empower them for spiritual success by supplying them with spiritual power. As we know, their spiritual journey following King Jesus is opposed by three evil forces—their sinful nature that seeks to overpower them, the fallen world that seeks to entice their hearts away from Jesus, and Satan who lies to them.

When it comes to us empowering them for this journey, it is valuable to remember that even Jesus did not have enough personal influence to take his followers down the path to spiritual maturity—without praying for them. Jesus unveiled this truth, when he said, Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers. Our kids need not only to be equipped for their growth as disciples of Jesus but EMPOWERED, which is why Paul urged us to see what Jesus saw. We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore…..be praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints.

James makes the same appeal pointing to one of the mightiest defeats of evil in the entire OT—Elijah’s obliteration of Baal worship. James says, The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit. Do you ever feel helpless in steering your children or grandchildren down the path towards surrender to Jesus? We are not. Praise God we can pour out our love for each child, child’s spouse, and each grandchild by praying for them, which has great power. James uses two words to describe the might of prayer because one is not enough. The adjective is strong. This is strong power. The word for power is ENERGES, from which we get energy. Prayer gives to our loved ones the spiritual energy they need for their battles. But THEY will not receive it if WE don’t ask God to give it to them. You have not, because you ask not (James 4:2).

For Further Prayerful Thought:

  1. As you read through the descriptions of the seven spiritual gifts in Romans 12, were there some people who seemed to match some of the gifts? How might understanding these gifts help Christians and family members better get along?
  2. Do you agree that one-one-one time is indispensable for building a father/child or father/grandchild relationship? Which category of words do you need to use more—words that incite action, tenderly console, or give a sober challenge?
  3. When God makes such staggering promises about the power of prayer, why don’t we practice if more to give our loved ones more spiritual energy to follow Jesus? If you are wondering what to pray for, here are some of Paul’s prayers (Ephesians 3:14-19, Philippians 1:9-11, Colossians 1:9-11).
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A Valentine’s Day Tool to Enrich Marriage Intimacy

A Valentine’s Day Tool to Enrich Marriage Intimacy

On 08 February, 2025 By Gary Yagel

This week in preparation for Valentine’s Day coming up this Friday, I decided to interrupt our series on Effective Spiritual Leadership at Home to post a special Pre-Valentine's Day episode that we produced in 2021 to examine a huge cause of marriage failure that sneaks up on many men, even Christian men, who never see it coming.

A careful examination of what divorcees say was missing in their marriages reveals time and again that what was lost was the closeness that we call intimacy. Of course, there are many factors that contribute to the loss of closeness, but here is a primary one. During the dating and engagement phases of a relationship, sharing hearts and lives is easy. Feeling close is effortless. So, we enter marriage expecting intimacy to just happen, especially with the additional benefit of living together and having regular sex. But it doesn’t just happen. The intimacy required for successful marriage happens because a couple devotes themselves to pursuing that intimacy in their relationship. This episode looks into Scripture for the wisdom to know how to do that.   

Our topic today is God’s design of marriage. I know that this topic does not leave the single guys out because I, myself did not marry until I was 31—but in my single years I wanted to learn as much about successful marriage as I could, BEFORE I made the plunge. If you are married, this episode might be also be one that you want to share with your wife. 

GOD’S DESIGN OF MARRAIGE

A. A fundamental purpose of the male-female love union in marriage is to reflect the image of God. Man cannot fully bear God’s image in isolation. God exists as the Trinity, the union of three persons who love one another, which is why we are told, God is love (1 John 4:8). So, we read in Genesis, Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, in our likeness...’  So God created man in his own imagine, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. (1:26-27).

B. A second purpose of marriage is to give us a foretaste of the joy we will experience when we are forever united in love to Christ our bridegroom. We, the church, are betrothed to Christ as his bride. The final return of Christ to receive us to himself is portrayed as the wedding of the lamb. The richest pleasures of sexual union are a type, a foreshadow of the intense joy that will be ours when we are united to Christ. This astonishing truth is spelled out by Paul, For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery, but I am talking about Christ and the church (Eph. 5:31-32).

C. A third purpose for marriage is revealed in the creation account, where marriage is designed by God to overcome the aloneness of Adam. Each part of the creation narrative closes with God’s statement: “And it was GOOD,” until the creation of man. After Adam is created, God says. “It is NOT GOOD that man should be alone. In naming the animals Adam realizes that none can be a true partner to him.  They cannot overcome his loneliness. So, God creates woman to be his partner, soul mate, and lover. The LORD God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone.  I will make a helper suitable for him. (Gen 2:18).

These three purposes come together in a single, clear, focus:  God’s goal for marriage is a LOVING INTIMACY between husband and wife! Eve is created with a spirit, heart, and body which correspond to Adam’s. She is bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh. Marriage is the joining together of two lives (mind, will, and emotions) and the joining of bodies: Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh (Gen 2:24). Marriage is given as the one safe arena where husband and wife are naked, body, soul, and spirit--laid bare and vulnerable to each other.

Adam and Eve’s like natures, combined with their covenant pledge of unconditional love, make safe the experience of baring their hearts and bodies to one another. It enables them to experience LOVING INTIMACY, i.e. oneness of spirit, oneness of heart, oneness of body. The goal of marriage, then is to be able to be naked, body and soul, and be so loved and accepted that you never feel ashamed. The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.  Gen. 2:25. An old-fashioned way to express God’s goal for our marriages is the word intercourse. Intercourse means, literally, connection between persons. It is both conversational interaction that connects two SOULS, and sexual interaction, which connects two BODIES. God wants Christian couples to proactively pursue his goal for their marriage—INTIMACY—both the union of soul and union of body. Let’s dig a little deeper.

1. Loving each other in a God-honoring marriage means pursuing CONVERSATION, which leads to oneness of SOUL. Sharing our experiences, feelings, ideas, plans, hopes and dreams is the path to the oneness of soul God wants married couples to enjoy. It requires making time regularly to talk in a relaxed way that allows mates to open their hearts to one another and active listening, seeking to understand our mate’s feelings and ideas. It means overlooking our mate’s weaknesses and deficiencies, so they are not afraid to be known as they really are but instead feel safe, accepted, and valued. It is to know the joy of sharing with another the deepest secrets of each other’s hearts and feeling understood. It is to never feel alone because you are walking through life hand in hand with your soul mate. Barbara Rosberg, in her book jointly written with her husband, gives us a crisp picture of the target:

The word, “intimacy” comes from a Latin word that means “innermost.”  What this translates into for those of us in the marriage relationship is a vulnerable sharing of our inner thoughts, feelings, spirit, and true self.  Both men and women need to feel secure in this sharing and confident of their spouse’s support.  This support is achieved through listening, empathy, prayer, or reassurance. (The 5 Love Needs of Men and Women).

2. Loving each other in a God-honoring marriage will also mean pursuing LOVE-MAKING, which leads to oneness of BODY. Numerous studies show a strong correlation between a couples’ satisfaction with the marriage and their satisfaction with their sex life. In Song of Songs, God enters and the bridal chamber, where the newlyweds lay entwined in each other’s arms and urges, ‘Eat friends: drink and imbibe deeply, O lovers (5:1). Sexual union is the outward, physical expression of the inner emotional and spiritual reality of ONENESS. It is similar, in this sense, to communion. The wine and bread are OUTWARD PHYSICAL signs and seals, which point to an INNER SPIRITUAL reality—feeding on Christ for spiritual nourishment.  Sexual union is an OUTWARD PHYSICAL joining of two bodies which express the INNER SPIRITUAL union of two hearts—giving each other the nourishment of love. Just as celebrating communion strengthens our love relationship with Christ, so sexual union strengthens our love relationship with our spouse. Pastor’s wife, Anne Ortland points out:

Lovemaking is the most practical, binding, and enriching experience of all married love. There is one person who knows you and wants to know you more, better than anyone but God.  And that’s why God gave you sex, to interact at the deepest possible human levels. Your sex life as a married couple will make your self-esteem go up or down.  (Sex in a Growing Marriage audio).

The Biblical design for loving intimacy in marriage exalts BOTH oneness of soul and oneness of body. Biblically, the human body is not considered inferior to the soul, nor the soul inferior to the body. Joining bodies in sex apart from joining lives in marriage is condemned as wrong (1 Thes 4:3). Joining lives in marriage without joining bodies in sex is also condemned as wrong (1 Cor 7:5). Biblically, body and soul belong together. Unlike pagan philosophies like Gnosticism, Christianity has always upheld a high view of the physical body and therefore of sexual union. There is no biblical reason to think God takes any less pleasure in a married couple’s sexual union than in their spiritual union. God designed them for both.

THE INTIMACY MISCONNECT

Christian counselor Gary Rosberg observes this reality in the counseling room. He writes, “No matter how many times I hear couples lament their differences in the counseling room, or at conferences, it is the same story.  Men spell intimacy S-E-X, and women spell it T-A-L-K. (The Five Love Needs of Men and Women).

A. Normally a WIFE’s deepest yearning is for intimacy of HEART and SOUL. A wife longs for spiritual oneness and emotional closeness. She yearns to share at the level of the heart. Barbara Rosberg, in the same book, reveals, After, ‘unconditional love,’ women indicated that emotional intimacy was their second most important need. For a wife, spiritual/emotional oneness precedes sexual desire. She needs to feel in love, in order to want to make love. Sex is a celebration of the closeness she already feels, which enables her to open up her body to him. Rosberg tries to explain this feminine hardwiring to husbands,

Men, your sex drive is connected to your eyes; You become aroused visually. Your wife’s sex drive is connected to her heart; she is aroused only after she feels emotional closeness and harmony…You feel less masculine if your wife resists your sexual advances.  Your wife feels like a machine if she doesn’t experience sexual intimacy flowing from emotional intimacy (Ibid).

B. In God's design a HUSBAND’s strongest INTIMACY yearning is usually for oneness of BODY—sex. What makes him feel intimately connected to his wife is sex. Her eagerness to make love to him makes him feel loved and wanted. The yearning for oneness that God put into him is felt by him primarily as a yearning for sexual union. For him, sexual union brings back his feelings of closeness to his wife and feelings of love for her. He needs to make love in order to feel in love. Sexual arousal stirs his feelings for his wife. Her receptivity assures him that he is wanted.  Sexual release makes him feel one with his wife inclining him to open up to her about other things he is feeling. God built husbands with hormones that drive most men to desire sexual release frequently. Writers, Linda Dillow and Lorraine Pintus try to explain the male sex drive to wives:

A man has 17 sexual glands. Like millions of Energizer Bunnies these glands work day and night, producing semen, which is stored in an inner sack in the testes.  When the sack fills up, his testes tell his brain, “Do something quick before I explode.” A man’s need for sex is not all in his mind; his sexual command center demands release from the accumulated buildup (Intimate Issues).

In a perfect world, making love refills the husband’s emotional tank. He feels his love for his woman, which helps him think of her, make time to listen to her heart, etc. which makes her feel close to him. Her feelings of oneness with her husband awaken her desire to make love, so she eagerly welcomes his advances, etc.  Ideally, this wonderful cycle fills their hearts with love for each other.

REAL MARRIAGE

A. Emotional intimacy gets harder to maintain. When the “honeymoon phase” is over, our differences and the self-centeredness of our fallen nature begin to make themselves felt. Busy schedules and long to-do lists replace the delightful hours of sharing during courtship. Intimacy of HEART and SOUL begins to fade. It gets harder and harder to find time to talk. Conversation begins to center around the decisions and needs of the family—not the deep feelings of the heart. Disagreements on some subjects place them off limits for discussion, which further contributes to isolation. Career responsibilities increase, demanding greater time and energy. Couples drift more and more into their own worlds. In one study, 83% percent of women felt that their husbands don’t even know the basic needs of a woman for emotional intimacy (Arterburn & Stoeker, Every Woman’s Desire.) Unintentionally, husbands rob their wives of the companionship and closeness they need in marriage. In view of how our wives are hardwired, here are two vital commitments we, husbands need to make to Christ, if we are to love them well:

1. Commit to the time and energy required to hear and understand what is going on in her heart and to share what is going on in yours. The first achievement for the condition of understanding is the will to understand, writes Paul Tournier, the second condition is expressing oneself…In order to express oneself, there must be a feeling of warm and kind receptivity and of attentive listening (To Understand Each Other). What husbands don’t realize is that just as their wife’s eagerness to make love to him makes him feel loved, HIS EAGERNESS TO LISTEN TO HOW HER DAY WENT makes her feel loved.  And just as her lack of interest in sex makes him feel rejected, HIS LACK OF INTEREST IN HEARING WHAT IS GOING ON IN HER HEART makes her feel rejected.

2. Don’t allow yourself to become too emotionally close to a woman who is not your wife. The fact that emotional closeness precedes the awakening of a woman’s sexual desires is a sobering warning to us. So is the fact that so many married women are not having their emotional intimacy needs met by their husbands. Other than perhaps a drunken one-night stand on a business trip—affairs almost never start with sex but with getting too close as friends. Men, we have to have emotional boundaries, and help our wives set emotional boundaries that protect our hearts. Here are a few:

  • Don’t get into an ongoing discussion with a woman about her marriage or yours.
  • Be known as a warm, caring, listening guy—but don’t treat any one woman at work specially. Being made to feel special IS romance to a woman.
  • Be especially guarded with either a woman you work with closely in your job or ministry, or one you know happens to be especially attractive to you.
  • Don’t talk to a woman other than your wife about sexual things.

B.  In real marriage before long, SEXUAL intimacy also becomes less frequent and passion begins to cool. Busy schedules and tired bodies leave less energy for sex. Lovemaking can become infrequent, predictable and boring. Often, lovemaking slips to low priority. A wife’s sexual desires get buried under the weight of the responsibility she feels for the kids, her home, her career, church, etc. Husbands often express affection only when they want sex rather than regularly filling their wives’ emotional tank with non-sexual affection. Wives can feel used and start to lose interest in sex. Husbands can get resentful, feeling that their wife takes care of everyone else’s needs, but that their sexual needs (which, righteously ONLY SHE can satisfy) are low priority. A reluctant wife causes even Christian men to think “It’s just easier not to bother my wife. I’ll find sexual release through porn and masturbation." Here are two commitments to help our marriages to stay sexually vibrant.

1. Get into an accountability relationship with a brother who asks, “Have you looked this week at sexually explicit material?” Our sex drive is a precious gift to be shared only with our wife or future wife. Love her too much to let Satan get away with corrupting your sexual desires. (But don’t ever let such accountability be shame-based but built upon a grace-driven understanding that Christ’s shed blood and love are more powerful than the ugliest of my sexual sins.)

2. Commit to helping your wife understand that the biblical goal of marriage is intimacy from pursuing both conversational interaction, which connects two hearts, and sexual interaction, which connects two bodies. Specifically, help her understand the biblical teaching that for married Christians in the battle for sexual purity, the best defense is a great offense. In Proverbs 5, God says to married men fighting for sexual purity, Rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love. Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman (vs 17-19)? Help her understand God’s design of your sex drive. Very few women realize that although they need to FEEL in love to want to MAKE love, their husbands need to MAKE love to FEEL in love. The masculine sex drive is not just an itch that men want scratched; it is God’s physiological design to drive them back into the arms of their wives where, surrounded by thir welcoming warmth, acceptance and care, they realize again how precious their woman is to them and renew their desire to love her with all their heart.

I want to close our time by letting you know about some tools to help you and your wife pursue emotional and sexual intimacy together. One is the short, 75- page booklet, Intimacy: God’s Design for Marriage: Three Conversational Dates to Rediscover Intimacy in Your Marriage, written by my wife Sandy and me after we pushed through a major intimacy misconnect in our marriage. It is written so it can be read and used in the form of three dates together. It is available only on my website forgingbonds.org where you can read just a few of the many stories of marriages impacted by this book. A second, FREE resource is a series of questions for you to go through together, perhaps on Valentine’s Day that will help you get on the same page in the pursuit of emotional and sexual intimacy. These questions are below.  

For Further Prayerful Thought:

  1. What stood out to you about the purposes for which God’s design for marriage?
  2. What is the significance to you of remembering that marriage is both the joining of two lives (mind, will, and emotions) exhibited by leaving home, and the joining of two bodies in sex?
  3. When it comes to emotional intimacy, do you have more trouble opening up to your wife about what is going on inside or in helping her open up about what is going on inside her?
  4. If you are married, is there another woman in your spheres of life with whom you need to be more vigilant—not to allow yourselves to get too emotionally close?

VALENTINE’S DAY QUESTIONS FOR COUPLES

FUN

1. What’s the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to you?

2. If you could be any cartoon character for a day, who would you be and why?

3. What’s the funniest movie you’ve ever seen?

4. If you could have an unlimited supply of one thing for the rest of your life, what would it be?

5. If you could have any animal as a pet, no matter how wild, what would you choose?

WARM UP

1. What do you remember most about your first date?

2. Share two things you most appreciate about your mate.

EMOTIONAL INTIMACY

Husband to Wife

1. What regular tasks in taking care of the family do you dislike the most or find most difficult?

2. How can I help you shoulder your load at home?

3. How can I better help you share your heart with me?

4. What family problems do you feel need to be addressed?

5. What are the worries and concerns that are weighing heavily on your heart?

6. How can I best help you feel cherished by me?

7. How can I support your use of your gifts that go beyond the home?

Wife to Husband

1. How best can I help you when your emotional tank is on empty?

2. What gets you down most at work? When there is something weighing heavily on you at work how can I best help you share it?

3. How can I support your spiritual leadership in our home.

4. Do I tell you often enough what I admire and respect about you?

SEXUAL INTIMACY

1. How do you feel about discussing sexual intimacy on this date?

2. Why do you think God invented sex?

3. What is one thing you appreciate about the other as your lover?

4. What sexual activities do you find most exciting?

5. Is there anything else about our love-making that you want to tell me?

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A Treasure That Causes Our Kids to Flourish

A Treasure That Causes Our Kids to Flourish

On 01 February, 2025 By Gary Yagel

If God said to you as a dad, “There is one investment you can make in your child’s future that I guarantee is more precious than gold, that will bring him a lifetime of enjoyment, a lifetime of protection from harm and a lifetime in which he is richly rewarded,” would you pay attention?  The fact is that God has made such a promise—the question is whether or not we will take him up on it!

In our study of spiritual leadership at home, we have used a right triangle to depict the three parts and processes of successful leadership. We observed that it begins with an arrow between the leader and the mission across the X axis, the first function of leadership being to FOCUS/MODEL. Then, the past two weeks, we studied the arrow between the leader and his followers up the vertical Y axis, the second function of leadership being to BUILD HIS RELATIONSHIP with his wife and children. Today, we begin to examine the third arrow across the hypotenuse between the followers and the mission, being to EQUIP/ASSIST his followers to reach their full potential in Christ. Even if a leader is good at the first two functions, staying focused on his mission and building relationships with his followers, he will still fail if he does not equip them with what they need to reach spiritual maturity. The most neglected step of leadership at home may be equipping our followers to become all they can be in Christ. While the church and our wives are tasked to assist fathers, WE are the ones charged by God with the responsibility to equip children for life by teaching them the ways of the Lord.   

Today’s episode focuses on the one most foundational equipping tool for spiritual growth, the Word of God. It is described by Paul in 2 Timothy 3:16, All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be THOROUGHLY EQUIPPED for every good work. How do we get the Word of God into our kid’s lives?

HELP THEM SEE GOD’S WORD AS A TREASURE CHEST OF RICHES

In Psalm 19 God’s people celebrate his revelation of himself in creation (called general revelation) and his revelation of himself in his Word (called special revelation), notably what pleases him revealed in his Law. Verses 7-11 reveal the way God’s moral law is like a precious jewel refracting light into every facet of human life.

The Law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever; the judgments of the Lord are true; they are righteous altogether. They are more desirable than gold, yes, than much pure gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb. Moreover, your servant is warned by them; in keeping them there is great reward.

A. The Law of the Lord is perfect restoring the soul. The term, Law of the Lord refers here to the general life principles taught throughout Scripture. Perfect refers to completeness. It contains all we need. The purpose of the overall Law of the Lord is to restore the soul. Remember that one of the most foundational biblical doctrines is that sin causes us to suppress the truth in unrighteousness (Rom 1:18), that our fallen hearts are darkened in their understanding (Eph 4:18), that there is a way which seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death (Prov 14:12). This darkened understanding includes not just our thinking but impacts our attitudes and feelings as well. There is only one way for a broken soul—mind will, and emotions—to be restored to what God created it to be—through the Word of God. Here are some examples of how this works:

  • We think: The path to wealth is to hold on to what we have and add to it. God says, “Give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, it will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you” (Lk 6:38).
  • We think: The path to sexual satisfaction is surrendering to urges. God says:  The path to satisfaction is always choosing the righteous path to satisfy desires. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be satisfied” (Matt 5:6).
  • We think: God won’t prosper my efforts because I am too weak and sinful. God says: “In your weakness my power is shown the more completely: (2 Cor 12:9).
  • We think: When we’re hurt by another’s criticism we need to withdraw and shut another out so he or she will treat us with more grace in the future. God says: “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy” (Matt 5:7).
  • We think: The path to respect is achieving. God says: The path to respect is helping others achieve. “Whoever would be great among you must become the servant of all” (Matt 20:26).

Because our child inherits our sinful nature, her soul has a broken understanding of life. We need to use the Law of the Lord to restore her soul to wholeness.

B. The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. Testimony refers to true life accounts in Scripture. Those stories make Gods Word sure, cementing into our mind the principles of Scripture. For example, when we see what happened to David and his family resulting from his adultery with Bathsheba, we more fully realize that the wage sin pays is always destruction. Testimonies make wise the simple. The simple are the naïve and gullible regarding how life actually works. But God's testimonies causes them to see life as it really is, from God’s point of view.

C. The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. Precepts are rules—the specific application of biblical principles. I believe God has revealed a specific order for teaching God’s Word here. 1) It should start with the Law of the Lord—the general, big-picture principle behind a rule. 2) Then, it is best to illustrate that truth with the testimony of the Lord, a true story from Scripture. If we do that first, we will find that 3) sharing the precept of the Lord brings rejoicing. But if we skip directly to the precept, presenting it without steps 1 and 2, the naked rule often causes rebellion. For example, we can just say to teens, “Sex before marriage is wrong,” which goes straight to the rule. That won’t cause rejoicing but rejecting. After all, today no one waits until marriage to have sex. To their minds, Victorian prudishness, like old technology, has been replaced by the enlightened realization that sex is wonderful. To overcome such thinking requires a fuller picture to accompany the prohibition.

  • In God’s design, He intends for the union of bodies to be the ecstatic celebration of the permanent uniting of lives and hearts in marriage.
  • Everyone knows that rape is so destructive that a woman may never heal internally from this trauma, which demonstrates the Bible’s view of sex. It is more than recreation; it is sharing extremely vulnerable parts of ourselves.
  • We also sense this vulnerability in our own uneasiness about being naked in front of another, which is God’s gracious way of sending us the message, “Even in romance nakedness is not safe until each partner has vowed to unconditionally love the other in front of family, church, state, and friends.”
  • Sex is designed to glue husband and wife together throughout the tough process of merging lives. But after casual sex, since your partner moves on, it is like ripping apart pieces of paper that were glued together; it tears the soul.
  • Statistics universally show that cohabiting before marriage increases the likelihood of both divorce and dissatisfaction with sex later in the marriage.
  • Premarital sex, called fornication, is so destructive for society that in Israel, God made it a capital offense. He wouldn’t do that were it not very harmful.
  • Christ-followers offer their bodies to God as a living sacrifice. No matter what others do with their bodies, saving sex for marriage is about honoring Jesus with our bodies. (BTW the battle still honors Jesus even if there are a few failures.)

D. The commandments of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. Commandments are direct commands from the mouth of God. They are not gray, fuzzy or cloudy; they are pure moral perfection. Their black and whiteness enables us to have moral clarity. They enlighten our eyes. The Ten Commandments are pillars on which all the moral law stands. The first four commandments explain the first great commandment—love God. Loving God is accomplished by 1) remembering to keep God first in our affections, 2) celebrating who he really is and not a figment of our imagination, 3) treating his name with respect, 4) setting apart the first part of our week to delight in him. The second great commandment, loving our neighbor is accomplished by 5) respecting those in positions of authority, 6) not harming others, 7) channeling sexual desire only toward one’s spouse, 8) not stealing, 9) telling the truth, 10) replacing envy with gladness that others prosper.

E. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever. The fear of the Lord is knowing that you never get away with sin. It is realizing we don’t so much break God’s law as God’s law breaks us when we violate it. It leads to a clean life because it recognizes that even little things matter eternally. Every single choice we make to please Jesus will endure forever, i.e. cause additional joy for us in eternity. God is not mocked, writes Paul, whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up (Gal 6:7-9).

F. The judgments of the Lord are true; they are righteous altogether. This Hebrew word means just decrees. God’s Word reveals justice that is true; it is unbiased and based upon facts. It is always fully righteous. God is never unjust. In fact, the very sense of justice we have originated with God himself because we bear his image. If he seems unjust in allowing some to be born into poverty and others into wealth, or places some into free countries and others under tyranny or assigns men the role of leading in marriage and women the role of submitting to their leadership, the problem is not an unjust God but our fallen misunderstanding of justice.

G. They are more desirable than gold, yes, than much pure gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb. Moreover, your servant is warned by them; in keeping them there is great reward. There is nothing more valuable that we can give our children than God’s Word. We need to lavish it upon them, help them see it as the great treasure that it is, and fall in love with it.

EQUIPPING OUR CHILDREN WITH THE WORD IS THE RESPONSIBILITY OF FATHERS

A. God established this principle with Abraham, the father of the Covenant. I have chosen him, (Abraham) that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice, so that the Lord may bring to Abraham what he has promised him (Genesis 18:18). Later, it appears that Joshua did fulfill this responsibility. He had been challenged by God, This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success (Joshua 1:8). We have no direct examples of Joshua teaching his children and grandchildren the way they should go—but the indirect evidence seems overpowering that he did just that. Joshua lived to be 110 years old, which meant he would have had great, great, great grandchildren. In Judges 2:7-8, we read, And the people served the Lord all the days of Joshua, and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua, who had seen all the great work that the Lord had done for Israel.

B. But this pattern of “commanding his children and household after him to keep the way of the Lord,” did not continue. Judges 2 continues, And there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel. And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals. The failure of the covenant fathers of Israel to turn their hearts towards their children and grandchildren in order to turn the next generation’s heart towards keeping God’s law was nearly universal—especially being highlighted in the book of Judges. Although King David and his son Solomon were notable exceptions, this massive failure of the OT fathers to pass on their spiritual heritage is exhibited all through its history. In fact, the OT ends by observing this fact in the final two verses. But the Messiah will come, overthrow Satan, sin, and death, and empower fathers with the Holy Spirit poured out in greater measure. Hebrews 8 tells us that Jeremiah’s prophecy is fulfilled in the coming of Christ. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

C.The dawning of this new age will be marked by the coming of a second Elijah (whom Jesus said was John the Baptist). The OT ends with this hope, Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers (Mal 4:5-6). Under the New Covenant, with the power of the risen Christ poured out upon us through the indwelling Holy Spirit—men will be helped to win the hearts of their children and turn their hearts to love the Law of the Lord. So, in the NT era we now have the help of the Holy Spirit. Praise God!

FOUR PRINCIPLES FROM DEUTERONOMY 6 FOR TEACHING GOD’S WORD

A.You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might (vs 5). Teaching Scripture to our kids begins in OUR hearts with wanting to obey his Word because we love him and want to please the one who redeemed us, NOT because we think God is a rules-obsessed tyrant or that we need to earn his love. The Ten Commandments were given to Israel after it had been freed from slavery to Egypt to show us how to respond to his redemptive love already poured out upon us. Out of delight and confidence in his goodness proved at the cross, we trust that his law is for our benefit. Counselors, Cloud and Townsend point out, “When we finally understand that God isn’t mad at us anymore, we become free to concentrate on love and growth instead of trying to appease him” (How People Grow).

B. Deuteronomy 6 continues: And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart (vs 6). There is a natural flow from loving God with all our being to having his Word on our hearts, so that we can obey it. In this text, God is saying what Jesus would later repeat, In John 14:6, If you love me, you will keep my commandments. Psalm 119:11 says, I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you. Devotion to obeying Scripture is not legalism; it is the proper expression of love for the God who first loved us. Jesus taught that the mark of kingdom people is hungering and thirsting for righteousness (Matt 5:6).

C. Deuteronomy 6 continues: You shall teach these words diligently to your children (vs 7) The Hebrew word for teach is used for imprinting the official seal upon a letter. It pictures rote memorization. Especially from ages 4-12, we have an unprecedented opportunity to anchor our child or grandchild to God’s truth through memorizing Scripture verses and catechism questions. Helping our child memorize biblical truths is indisputably one of the best investments in our child’s soul that we could ever make.

D. Deuteronomy 6 continues: And shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. The reason for having the Law on our hearts is so that we can meditate on it during the day applying it to everyday life. As leaders we just include our kids in the process. Arguably the most successful believer of the OT era was counseled by God, This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success. Joshua defeated the most enemies in Israel’s history and his family leadership influence caused four generations to walk with God.

DEVELPING A GAME PLAN FOR IMPARTING THE WORD

1.Seek God’s wisdom for developing a life-long lifestyle of radical commitment to time in God’s Word, yourself.

2.Pray specifically for each child to:

  • See Scripture as the great treasure it is—more precious than gold
  • Fall in love with it as David did—Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day (Ps 119:97).
  • Become devoted to building his or her life upon it—as Jesus taught, like a wise man who built his house on the rock

3. Break Scripture into subsets to be mastered.

In closing, I return to the issue of my child’s future. Of all the things I want my child to learn to prepare for life, what is most important? Here again is God’s answer:

Blessed is the one who finds wisdom, and the one who gets understanding, for the gain from her is better than gain from silver and her profit better than gold. She is more precious than jewels, and nothing you desire can compare with her. Long life is in her right hand; in her leftt hand are riches and honor. Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her; those who hold her fast are called blessed (Prov 3:13-18).

For Further Prayerful Thought

  1. In the study of the six facets of the jewel of God’s Word—his law, testimony, precepts, commandments, fear, and judgements, which ones stood out most to you?
  2. Since God’s plan to bless the nations was to call Abraham and his family to faith and then the fathers command their children and households to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice, why have Christian men been slow to focus on this responsibility?
  3. Why is it important, in teaching our kids, for us to follow the Deuteronomy 6 pattern to starting with our motive for loving the Law of God being to please him because he first loved us.
  4. Why do you think God tells parents in Deuteronomy 6 to talk about applying the Word of God throughout the day?
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Winning the Hearts of Our Kids

Winning the Hearts of Our Kids

On 26 January, 2025 By Gary Yagel

As we’ve seen in this series, Successful Spiritual Leadership at Home, our assignment from God to lead our homes is much less about a position, than it is about action, movement, and direction. Spiritual leadership begins with us, ourselves, answering Christ’s call 1) to himself to enjoy a love relationship with him, 2) to be like him in our heart attitudes, 3) to implement his agenda of righteousness in every sphere of our lives with wholehearted allegiance to him. But leadership goes beyond our own commitment to becoming mature disciples. It is all about bringing our followers with us in this whole-hearted commitment to the Master. Leadership is influence, so this episode answers the question, “How do we win the hearts of our followers?” How do we maximize our influence?  

History provides a striking contrast of the influence of two different men revealed through their descendants. In 1874 a prison official named Richard Dugdale was doing research for the New York Prison Commission when he was surprised to find criminals in six different prisons that were all descended from the same family. This led Dugdale to conduct an exhaustive study of 1200 people whose lineages all traced back to one man, who lived in the 1750s, to whom Dugdale assigned the fictitious name, “Max Jukes.” His research revealed these facts about Juke’s descendants:  

  • 310 of the 1,200 were professional paupers—more than one in four.
  • 300 of the 1,200—one in four—died in infancy from lack of good care.
  • 50 of the women were publicly known for lives of debauchery.
  • 7 were murderers.
  • 60 were habitual thieves who spent, on average, twelve years in prison.
  • 130 were criminals who were convicted of crimes.

A generation later a researcher named A. W. Winship compiled records of the descendants of another man who lived during the same time period (1750s) as Max Jukes, but whose influence was the opposite. In his line of descent were:

  • 1 U.S. Vice-President
  • 3 U.S. Senators
  • 3 governors
  • 3 mayors
  • 13 college presidents
  • 30 judges
  • 65 professors
  • 100 lawyers
  • 100 missionaries, pastors and theologians.

This second man’s name was Jonathan Edwards. Despite his extremely busy life as an author, pastor, theologian, and president of Princeton Seminary, Edwards stands as a striking example of one committed to being the spiritual leader of his home—the fruit of which we can see looking back at his descendants. Edwards daily lived out the three functions of leadership we have described in the leadership triangle.

1) He stayed focused on his mission to pursue Christ whole-heartedly--orange arrow across X axis. 2) He invested his time and energy in equipping his eleven kids--brown arrow across hypotenuse. Every evening before dinner, he gave them his full attention for one hour. 3) He invested in his personal relationship with each of his eleven kids--green vertical arrow up y axis. This investment in building his relationship with each child was exemplified by his practice of taking a different child with him when he traveled. The rest of this episode examines how fathers can build their relationship with their children and thus increase their influence. But before that we must see how fathers can also tear down their relationship with their child, marring their positive influence.

FOUR RELATIONSHIP BUSTERS

A. Reluctance to admit that we are wrong. Intuitively men realize they need respect from their followers in order to succeed in leading them. But we default to the wrong understanding of how to gain respect, hiding our failures, being defensive about our mistakes, and being slow to admit that we are wrong. But Scripture tells us that covering our failures is the exact wrong way to win respect from followers. Proverbs 29:23 says A person’s pride will bring him low, but a humble spirit will obtain honor. God repeatedly tells us that honor always comes after humility. Consider Prov 15:33: The fear of the Lord is the instruction for wisdom, And before HONOR comes HUMILITY or Prov 18:12: Before destruction a man's heart is haughty, but HUMILITY comes before HONOR. Our successes can sometimes build walls with our children who think to themselves, “I could never do that.” But sharing failures builds bridges into another’s life. The example they need isn’t as much to see Jesus in us as it is to see one who needs Jesus in us.

B. A critical spirit. Paul commands, Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment, so that it will give grace to those who hear. We men easily explode in anger and send verbal shrapnel tearing into the tender flesh of our wife, or child’s self-esteem. And when we do wound those under our care, we too often ignore what Jesus said to do about it—which leads to the next relationship buster

C. Refusal to seek forgiveness when we wrong another. In Jesus’ portrait of kingdom living he explains what to do when we wound another through words that are angry, cause another to feel stupid, or attack his character (by saying things like “You always” or “You never”). Matthew 5:22-24: I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire. So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.

I am grateful that someone taught me that when I screw up I need to man-up and take responsibility for the harm it caused and seek to restore the relationship through asking for forgiveness. On one occasion, while traveling to my oldest daughter’s graduation from Covenant College, my wife got a call from Kim. She said, “I was just in a car accident and smashed the car into a mailbox.” It had been a tough year for us financially with four of our kids in college. Not realizing that my wife’s phone was NOT muted, I unthinkingly muttered to myself, “What do I have to do to get my kids to slow down in the rain?” Her younger brother had rear-ended someone in the rain a few months earlier. Kim heard my words and hung up.

We stopped at a motel part way to Covenant College and I knew what I had to do. Stepping onto the porch, I called Kim. To her credit she answered. I said, “Kim I don’t know if you can do this yet because I have really hurt you, but I am calling to ask you to forgive me. First of all, who cares about the car. What matters is that you are safe! Second, it is not fair to get mad at you when one of the other kids was driving too fast to stop in the rain. You have a great driving record and that is just not fair. So again, I’m not sure if you are ready to do this yet, because I hurt you so badly, but I’m calling to ask, “Will you forgive me?” She answered, “Of course dad.”

Three weeks later, on Memorial Day weekend, I found myself sitting on the dock of our summer cottage beside Kim, both of us kicking and splashing our feet in the water. For over thirty minutes, we had the greatest heart-to heart father daughter conversation ever—all about her dreams for getting a job in the field of teaching and how excited she was to implement so many things she had learned. I do not believe that conversation would have happened if someone had not taught me, “Gary, when you screw up and wound someone you need to man up, take responsibility for it and fix it.”

D. Selfishness. The fastest way for a leader to cause rebellion among his followers is to use his authority selfishly. Satan knows this characteristic of humans, which is why his strategy in tempting Eve was to deceive her into believing God is selfish. Listen again to Satan’s Words. “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of ANY tree in the garden’?”  Do you hear the insinuation? I know God is just the kind of selfish god who would create all this lovely, delicious fruit and then tell you that you can’t eat any of it—but did he actually do that? Later, Satan directly accuses God of selfishness.  The serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” God lied to you Eve; you won’t die if you eat that fruit. God just wants to selfishly keep “the knowledge of good and evil” to himself. So, Eve rebelled. When it dawned on me that selfishness drives followers away, I became convicted—why did I play sports with my kids that I like, throwing the football and playing ping pong, when they like throwing the frisbee and playing video games. How often did I choose restaurants with food I like, always watch football games when the kids liked soccer matches, and keep the TV remote in my hand? It is worth taking an inventory of our default choices. It might reveal surprising selfishness.  

FIVE WAYS TO BUILD OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH OUR FOLLOWERS

A. Through UNDERSTANDING. Here are two practical ways to build understanding:

  1. Go into our kids’ world just as Jesus came into our world. Jesus won our hearts by coming into our world. He is our Great High Priest who has won the right to be heard by suffering everything we have suffered. This incarnational principle of ministry is precious to me because it changed my life. When I was 16, I was a Christian, but not really following Christ. My world was my high school. I noticed a guy hanging out at our high school games with a bunch of my high school student government friends. I later found out that he was John Hartsock, a Young Life leader. Because he was so interested in MY WORLD he won my heart. I wanted to go to Young Life meetings, HIS WORLD. Trying to follow this example as a dad, I always tried to get into my kid’s world, on one occasion arranging a tour of an industrial lawn mower manufacturing company plant because my son was working there on the floor.
  2. Build the habit of listening well. Lyndon Johnson, had a sign on his office wall that read, “You ain’t learnin nothin when you’re doin all the talkin.” Here are five reasons why dads need to be good listeners
  • Listening shows respect
  • Listening builds relationships
  • Listening increases knowledge
  • Listening builds loyalty
  • Listening helps you know how to help others and yourself (John Maxwell, Becoming a Person of Influence).

B. Through AFFIRMATION. During the launch of his ministry, God the Son heard the audible voice of God the Father who said the two things that every son and daughter most want to hear from their dads, I love you and I am proud of you. Matthew 3:17 a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” This father/child paradigm from heaven itself, exhibiting the words children desperately need to hear from their fathers, was a truth that the apostle Paul knew well. He wrote to the church at Thessalonica, For you know how, like a father with his children, we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory (1 Thes 2:10-11). Few things help a person the way verbal affirmation does. It is oxygen for the soul. When a person feels encouraged, he can face the impossible and overcome incredible adversity. Secular research reveals the power of encouragement. An experiment was conducted years ago to measure people’s capacity to endure pain. Psychologists measured how long a barefooted person could stand in a bucket of ice water. They found when another person was present, giving support and encouragement, the sufferers were able to endure the pain twice as long as their unencouraged counterparts (Maxwell, Becoming a Person of Influence).

C. Through COMPANIONSHIP. Jesus built his relationship with his followers through COMPANIONSHIP. In Mark 3:14, Jesus reveals to us another vital key to leadership influence. We read, He appointed twelve (whom he also named apostles) so that they might be with him and he might send them out to preach. When we realize that leadership is not an authority position but influence, it becomes obvious that there is no substitute for the time required to build a relationship of love and trust with our followers. There are two requirements for providing the companionship with our kids that they require to flourish.

1. Realize our kids spell love T-I-M-E. Here is, A Perspective On Time for Fathers

  • A child cherishes a father’s presence above all else.
  • You have a very short time in which to be the major influence in your children’s lives.
  • Little time = little influence.
  • You can’t buy back lost time.
  • The world, deadlines, contracts and so forth will always be there—your children won’t. Typically they will be with you 2/7ths of your life. 
  • You can almost never spend too much time with your family.
  • The thief in American homes today is too much screen time.
  • Whatever intimacy parents and teens enjoy is almost always cultivated before the age of twelve—rarely after it.
  • Out of quantity time come the quality moments.  
  • If you make time with children when they are young, there will be opportunities and even requests from them for time with you, when they are older.

2. Be intentional: schedule time together on your calendar. Nothing has more power to build our relationship with our kids than “dad dates.” Until my tribe reached high school, I met with a different one of my kids every Monday morning. Often it was for breakfast. Other times, it was to do something together like roller skate, learn tennis, or go to the ice-skating rink. “Grandpa dates” may be even more powerful. A friend of mine takes each of his grandchildren out for some kind of fun activity, usually on Saturdays. One of his most recent grandpa dates was hiking the trails at Carderock, overlooking the Potomac River at Great Falls.

D. Through COMPASSION. The hearts of Jesus’ followers were drawn to the compassion Jesus had for the broken and hurting. As Mark recounts the following story, the wording reveals that the source of this eyewitness account, almost certainly Peter, was not just struck by Jesus’ healing but by the depth of Jesus’ compassion. And a leper came to Jesus, beseeching Him and falling on his knees before Him, and saying, “If You are willing, You can make me clean.” Moved with compassion, Jesus stretched out His hand and touched him, and said to him, “I am willing; be cleansed.” Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cleansed (Mark 1: 40-42). All believers are called to tenderhearted compassion, but it is essential if you want to influence others. Paul writes to the Colossians, Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts (Col 3:12).

Simply stated, all followers want to know that their leader cares about them. Such care is revealed by noticing their pain, being inwardly moved by it, and doing something to remove it if they can. Compassionate adults enter into another’s pain, but that does not mean helping them languish in it. When our child falls off the swing, it is equally important to say, “that hurts” and help them brush it off and get back up on the swing.

E. Through ATTENTIVENESS TO THEIR PRACTICAL NEEDS. There is a strong connection in Scripture between serving by meeting practical needs and love. Paul commanded the Galatians, “Be servants to one another in love.” But it is perhaps the Apostle John who saw this connection most clearly. He wrote: Having loved his own who were in the world, Jesus loved them to the end…. so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him. One of the best ways to win another’s heart is to notice one’s practical needs and assist with meeting them. It is sacrificing for the sake of another. Jesus said, the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Wise Dads look for ways to assist their wives and kids with their tasks. Proactive dads say, “I love you” when they stuff a twenty in their college kid’s hands, wash her car before she heads back to college, stay up past midnight to help with a school project he didn’t budget his time well to accomplish. Paying attention to another’s practical needs and giving assistance to meet them is the universal language of love.  

Our influence upon our children is very largely the result of the quality of our love relationship with them. That is the testimony of Dan Huff who looked back upon his parents’ influence. He recalls:

When I got to the point one time of saying, ‘I’m going to rebel, I’m out of here, I can’t deal with my folks! They don’t know what they’re talking about!’ I remember thinking very specifically, ‘I can’t rebel against them—they love me too much!” And I hated them for that! Now this may sound odd, but at that point I couldn’t rebel. I wasn’t an angel, but I couldn’t turn my back on that kind of love. I wanted to, and that’s what made me angry. If there had been any flaws in the ways they loved me or any hypocrisy on their part, any dishonesty or patronizing from them, then I think I would have found my hole and escaped through it. But I couldn’t find that hole…Let me close with one statement that says it all. My dad was the best man in his three sons’ weddings.

For Further Prayerful Thought

  1. In what ways did Jonathan Edwards demonstrate what it takes to be a successful spiritual leader at home?
  2. What relationship busters are you most concerned about committing?
  3. Which of the following relationship builders do you think is most important for you to focus upon in your spiritual leadership at home: understanding, affirmation, companionship, compassion, attentiveness to practical needs?
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What Our Wives Need to Flourish

What Our Wives Need to Flourish

On 18 January, 2025 By Gary Yagel

No man who walks down his wedding aisle intends to fail in his marriage; but many do, including Christians. This episode looks at one of the most critical investments the spiritual leader of his home makes—into the heart of his wife, because their bond is the very foundation of their home.

A wise mentor taught me that in God’s design of the dance of male and female, the man initiates, the woman responds. A man looks for a woman to love, the woman looks for a man who loves her. Jesus set his unconditional love upon his bride and drew her to himself with the cords of love. Husbands provide what their wives need to flourish. That is what the word “husband” means. It has agricultural roots and means “to cultivate,” as a farmer tenderly cares for his cattle from the time they are calves and his crops from the time they are seedlings. When a wife receives from her husband the various ingredients of love she requires to thrive, she flourishes as the woman she was created to be, richly nourishing others around her.

7 REASONS FOR INVESTING IN WHAT HER HEART NEEDS

  1. It is Scripture’s fundamental call to husbands. “Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.” The word used for love is AGAPE, which means to sacrifice whatever is necessary to provide what another needs. All Christian men would take a bullet for their wives; men are great at the heroic. But it is the mundane, little, everyday decisions to die to ourselves to meet her needs, that is the challenge—especially since we don’t know what her heart needs to thrive. Let’s just admit it! The female heart is a mystery to us! But figuring out what she needs and providing it is our assignment to love her.
  2. Her partnership is our greatest asset. It is simple logic that our top priority as leader must be our leadership team. Her physical, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing is our highest priority because her assistance is our greatest asset.
  3. Building a strong marriage is the best investment we can make in our children. Statistics show that children who grow up in homes with both moms and dads do better physically, economically, emotionally, spiritually and socially.
  4. The calling of manhood is to PROVIDE. Adam was put in the Garden of Eden to cultivate it (AVAD), which means providing whatever is required for garden residents to reach their full potential. Pouring heart nutrients like confidence, encouragement and affirmation into our wife’s heart enables her to flourish.
  5. The calling of manhood is to PROTECT. Adam was placed in the Garden of Eden to keep it (SHAMAR), which means to protect it from physical, emotional, and spiritual harm. We need to watch over our wives’ hearts so that destructive emotions like fear, worry, despondency, and depression don’t harm them.
  6. She is hardwired to respond when you pour love into her. John says, “We love because He first loved us.” The origin of a husband’s love is not his wife’s lovability but his commitment to love her, just as Jesus’ love for us is rooted not in our behavior but in his decision to love us. But when a woman’s heart is fully nourished, she instinctively loves those around her, especially her family.
  7. The most distinctive part of married love—sexual union—is designed to work best when wives thrive emotionally. A wife needs to feel romantically connected to her husband to want to make love to him. Knowing how to romance her so their sexual relationship thrives is not selfish but biblical (Prov 5:19) and in fact strategic, according to Paul, for avoiding sexual immorality.

7 INGREDIENTS OF LOVE TO CAUSE OUR WIVES TO FLOURISH

A. The need to feel understood. In college, I read a statement by Christian Counselor Paul Tournier, which profoundly changed my understanding of relationships: “No one can develop freely in this world and find a full life without feeling understood by at least one person. Misunderstood, he loses his self-confidence, he loses his faith in life or even in God. He is blocked and he regresses” (To Understand One Another). The nakedness of marriage makes it the primary place where God intends for your wife (and you) to feel understood. So, not surprisingly, in 1 Peter 3:7, Peter commands, Husbands, live with your wives in an UNDERSTANDING way. “Your wife’s first need” says Peter, “is for you to understand her, which means discovering what is going on in her heart. Literally this text says, dwell-together according to knowledge. The Greek word used here for knowledge, GINOSKO, indicates a relationship between the knower and what is known, which progresses into deeper understanding. Peter says, “Husbands, as you dwell together with your woman, she needs you to UNDERSTAND her, which means finding out what is going on inside her.” There is only one way to meet this profound need of every wife’s heart: Listen well to help her reveal her soul.

5 Skills for Effective Listening

1. Pay attention. Our wives can sense whether we are listening to them or not. Starting to open up but then observing that you don’t care enough about what she’s sharing to listen sends the message, “You aren’t important to me.”

2. Practice “shutupping.” Good husbanding does start with asking questions about her day. But once she starts to answer, we shouldn’t divert the conversation away from what she is saying by interjecting more questions. Rather we must shut up.

3. Use body language that shows you are engaged with what she is sharing. If she starts to well-up always move physically towards her and perhaps show the kind of touch, hand on shoulder, or hug that fits the moment. Lock your eyes to hers.

4. Listen for the deeper meaning behind the words, especially her FEELINGS. Tournier continues. “Through speech men tend to express ideas and communicate information. Women speak to express feelings, emotions.” I discovered this truth as a pastor, when I called a mom in our congregation who had four kids. I casually asked, “Kathy, how are you doing?” She answered, “Well I’ve got four nooses up on our porch. I’m about to hang all four of my kids.” After I got off the phone, I asked my wife, “Do I need to worry about what Kathy said?” Sandy laughed and said, “Honey, Kathy was just telling you how she FEELS. That’s what women do!”

5. Occasionally, mirror back to her what you think she just said. The goal is to cause your bride to feel like you are trying to understand what she is feeling because you cherish her. Here are a few phrases you can use: “so, from your point of view…,” “it sounds like your feeling…,” “it seems like….” In my opinion a wife’s greatest need is to feel understood. That happens through her husband’s skillful listening, which helps her reveal what is going on in her heart.

B. The need to feel honored in her role as wife and mom. After calling husbands to provide understanding for their wives, Peter continues, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel…so that your prayers may not be hindered. (1 Pet. 3:7). Modern readers are offended by Peter calling the woman a weaker vessel. But NT scholars point out that Peter is drawing a contrast to the pagan culture, which demeaned women for several reasons. Rome valued brute strength by which Roman legions had conquered the world. And it valued cold logic above feelings; reason was to rule their passions. By these false measures, women were devalued and abused in Roman culture.

In direct opposition to the culture, instead of denigrating his wife because she is a woman, a Christ-following man is to bestow honor on his wife because she is a woman. This so-called “weaker” vessel just happens to have the exact abilities and strengths that the male gender desperately needs. Instead of demeaning wives for being like fine crystal instead of clay mugs, or being intuitive, when we are logical, or being shaped by feelings instead of linear reasoning, godly men cry out “Viva La Difference.” At the very point at which abusive men call her weak, godly men protect and cherish her.

“Furthermore,” warns Peter, “if you don’t honor your wife despite her weaknesses God won’t answer your prayers.” The clue to this cause/effect connection comes later where Peter says that God won’t answer the prayers of the proud. “God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble” (5:5). Peter explains “If YOU don’t treat HER ‘weaknesses’ with grace, GOD will not treat YOUR weaknesses with grace—he will not answer your prayers for help.” “Husband, your need for grace is so massive that you cannot criticize anyone else’s need for it. If you don’t get that, you’re in such proud denial that I will resist any request for my help.”

C. The need to feel like she and her husband are full partners at home. Peter continues his admonition to husbands, reminding them that their wives are joint heirs with them of the grace of life. The emphasis is on equally working out God’s grace in our everyday family life. Husbands can fail to be full partners by being too independent, not recognizing how much we need our wives’ perspective on decisions or being too passive, letting the weight of decisions about the family fall on her. After all, she is more spiritual and intuitive about the kids than we are!

Because of the way she is designed, a wife naturally defaults to concern for her home, even if she spends much of her time away in the work world. Because of her hard wiring she can’t let go of her concerns. If her husband doesn’t step in and help shoulder the responsibility, leading in the physical, emotional, and spiritual care of the kids, she will do it alone and exhaust herself. She needs to feel that she and her husband are both carrying the responsibilities for their marriage, and home. After all, marriage to her means having a companion beside her as she travels through life meeting their responsibilities, together.

D. The need to feel valuable. Dr. James Dobson once wrote, “If I could write a prescription for the women of the world, I would provide each of them with a healthy dose of self-esteem and personal worth (taken three times a day until the symptoms disappear). I have no doubt this is their greatest need” (What Wives Wish Their Husbands Knew About Women.) God knew about this need way before Dobson figured it out! Did you know that the final command in the entire book of Proverbs is to give a godly woman the praise she deserves! (Prv 32:28-31).

Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her: ‘Many women have done excellently, but you surpass them all.’ Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. Give her of the fruit of her hands, and let her works praise her in the gates.

Notice the imperative God gives: SHE IS TO BE PRAISED! Husbands and children are to GIVE HER verbal affirmation. Period. Full stop. In Dr. Dobson’s study of depression among women mentioned earlier, more than fifty percent listed low self-esteem as the top cause of depression in their lives, leading him to write, “This finding is perfectly consistent with my own observations and expectations…. revealed within the first five minutes of a counseling session are: feelings of inadequacy, lack of confidence, certainty of worthlessness” (Ibid).  Of course, wives need to find their worth and identity in Christ. But God’s design for wives is for them to constantly be reassured of that truth through words of verbal praise, especially from her husband. You are called to meet her human need to feel valuable in a way that no other person can. You are the one who knows her best—body, soul, and spirit; so, your praise carries enormous weight. Since you are a part of her everyday life, you see the blows to her self-image that come and are in a position to continually counter those negative hits with affirmation. Not only that but she was created to complete YOU, as Eve was created to complete Adam. So, her God-designed identity is being YOUR suitable helper. Because she was created to complete YOU, she needs to know that YOU value her many feminine virtues. If her role is to help you, your assurance that she is the perfect mate for you meets a profound need in her heart. It is the regular PAYCHECK she needs. Are you paying her what she is worth in words of praise?

E. The need to feel in harmony with you. Colossians 3:14: And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. Our wives do not function well when there is tension in our relationship. Neither do we. But I think most men compartmentalize better than their wives. Someone has said, “Men are like waffles, wives like spaghetti.” Their everyday functioning in life is intertangled with us and their sense that all is well in our relationship. Obviously, couples go through spats, hurts, anger, and misunderstandings for at least two reasons. We’re fallen, and we’re different. (If two always agree on everything one of them is not necessary.) Every couple goes through periods of tension when life just hasn’t allowed them to work things out. Nevertheless, as the spiritual leader in your marriage, you need to know that unresolved conflict may be a lot harder on your wife than you realize. One tool to help with harmony may be an anger contract, which Dave and Claudia Arp propose in their book, Ten Dates for Mates containing the following elements:

  • We agree to tell each other when we are getting angry.
  • We agree NOT to vent our anger at each other.
  • We will ask for the others’ help in solving whatever is causing pain behind the anger.

F. The need to feel romantic attraction to her husband. In the Song of Solomon, God enters the bridal chamber, where the newlyweds lay entwined in each other’s arms. He raises his hand over them and blesses them. He urges them to feast on the joy of their sexual union. “Eat friends: drink and imbibe deeply, O lovers” (SOS 5:1) God commands husbands and wives to drink deeply and frequently of the refreshing waters of their partner’s sexuality. The same command to be sexually drunk with our mate occurs in Proverbs 5:19. Husbands must realize that a flourishing love-life with our wives is not selfish; it is a requirement for the spiritual, emotional, and physical health of husband and wife. Shannon Ethridge points out to wives the soul-nurturing component of sex in Every Woman’s Battle:  

“We women look for satisfaction through emotional connection, but this will not fulfill us unless it is celebrated through physical intimacy with our spouse. Even the deepest emotional connection is no substitute for genuine intimacy. Genuine sexual intimacy involves all components of our sexuality—the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. When these four are combined, the result is an elixir that stirs the soul, heals the heart, boggles the mind, and genuinely satisfies”

The gateway to wanting sex with their husbands for women is romance. What is being romanced, according to women? Here are their answers.

  • Romancing her means treating her like a princess. Pamper her. Treat her like royalty! One female said, “As long as he shows me that I'm special--no matter where we are or what we're doing—that’s romance.” (Sana and Miller, How to Romance the Woman You Love).
  • Romancing her means cherishing her. Once, while speaking to a Mothers of Preschoolers group, I asked the wives, “What makes you feel most loved by your husband?” They answered, “feeling cherished.” That means causing her to feel treasured, highly prized, deeply appreciated, precious.
  • Romancing her means making her feel beautiful with words. “I love your smile.” “I love the way you laugh.” “You look beautiful tonight.” “I love the smell of your hair.” “I love the touch of your smooth skin,” “You have the most beautiful eyes,” “You still have what it takes to light my fire.”
  • Romancing her means lifting the weight of her responsibilities from her shoulders. Only when she stops feeling that weight will she be able to feel her sexual desire for you. That is why romantic weekends are so needful. That is why on date night YOU take care of the details. YOU feed the kids. YOU line up the baby-sitter and if sex is planned for the night you say, “Honey, I’ll put the kids down. Why don’t you relax in a warm bubble bath?”
  • Romancing her means making her feel cared for. Linda Dillow and Lorraine Pintus put it bluntly, “When she offers to help you organize your tool bench, it counts as an interruption. When you offer to vacuum the house, it counts as foreplay” (Simply Romantic Nights).

G. The need to feel unconditionally loved. Dr. Barbara Rosberg writes:

“Every wife shares this same need for unconditional love and acceptance. That became clear to us when a majority of our female survey respondents said that the need for unconditional love and acceptance was their number one love need. That’s not surprising when you think about it. We all need love, but we need it most when we deserve it least—when we have sinned against someone, when we have made poor choices, when we have failed. In these situations, ordinary love must become extraordinary love” (The Five Love Needs of Men & Women).

The truth is that every one of us is married to a wife who will, at times, continue to hurt us, be inattentive to our needs, and selfishly pursue her own way until the day we die. And her wounds, at times, reach deep inside to our very self-esteem itself. How do we overcome our inclination to shut down, withdraw, and wallow in self- pity, when her flaws repeatedly hurt us?  The only source of such self-emptying love is Jesus. He must produce it in us, or we won’t have it to give to our wives!

If this review of the needs of your wife’s heart is so daunting that you don’t know where to start, join the club. It’s called “Christian husbands.” But it is Christian husbands who daily depend upon Christ to produce AGAPE love in us and who quote God’s promise back to him: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Let’s believe that promise, ask for God’s power, and get to work!

For Further Prayerful Thought.

  1. What are the strongest arguments for a Christ-following husband to continually invest the nutrients into his wife’s hear that she needs to flourish?
  2. Take a moment to review the first three needs mentioned in the podcast/blog. Which of these needs do you feel best about meeting in your wife? Which do you most want to remember to focus upon in the coming days?
  3. Take a moment to review the last four heart needs mentioned. Which of these needs seems most important to you? Which one do you most want to remember to try to better meet in the coming days?
  4. How can you do a better job of being intentional about meeting these needs in your wife’s heart?
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The Key to CONSISTENCY in Leadership

The Key to CONSISTENCY in Leadership

On 11 January, 2025 By Gary Yagel

On one occasion, the prolific inventor, Thomas Edison, was asked by a reporter how he became so successful. Edison answered, “The ability to apply my physical and mental energies to one problem incessantly, without growing weary is my secret to success.” When a reporter suggested that Edison imposed a rather severe schedule on himself and was very smart, the inventor laughed, looked at the reporter, and said, “You do something all day long don’t you? Everyone does. If you get up at 7 AM and go to bed at 11, you have 16 good hours, and it is certain that most people have been doing something all that time. The only difference is—they do it about a great many things. I do it about one.” Edison overcame distractions to consistently stay focused.

We all know intuitively that success at most everything, be it discovering a filament for a light bulb, hitting a baseball, or leading our homes well requires us to keep our eye on the ball, staying focused on our mission. But in the real world it is so easy to lose focus, take our eye off the ball and lead inconsistently. We’re not real good at following through on our good intentions. Did you know that this past Friday, January 10th, the second Friday of January, has been dubbed “Quitters Day,” signifying that by then many who have made new year’s resolutions have already thrown in the towel? Staying focused is tough. This episode examines step # 1 in staying focused on our mission as spiritual leaders at home—formulating a clear picture of where we are going—what that mission is and then step # 2, shaping our lives to stay focused on that mission.

Last week, we saw that successful leadership at home requires 3 questions to be answered. Where am I going? How can I inspire my followers to come with me? How are we going to get there? The answers to these questions define the three functions of leadership. These we visualized in the graphic below.

Let's review the three functions of leadership:

Function # 1: (Orange arrow across X axis from Leader to Goal: Spiritual Maturity).  The leader has a clear understanding of and stays focused on the goal: The leader is called the leader because he is out in front of his followers going hard after the goal. Paul said, One thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus… Brothers, join in imitating me. (Phil 3:13ff). So, we must be striving hard after Christ, getting back up quickly when sin knocks us down.

Function # 2: (Green vertical arrow up Y axis from Leader to Followers). The leader motivates his followers to come with him by building his relationship with them. There are two vital components of leadership influence.

  1. Structural or positional influence. Bosses motivate their employees by paying them, giving them raises, or threatening to fire them. Fathers exercise structural influence by firmly disciplining their children. Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him (Prov 13:24). Structure with consequences for behavior teach a child self-mastery.
  2. The second component of leadership influence is relational. As children get older and parents transfer to teens responsibility for their lives, the strength and quality of our relationship with our kids dramatically impacts our influence. Researcher Virginia Hearn interviewed 37 Christian adults raised by Christian parents, asking the adults, “What did your parents do right to steer them towards Christ?” Here are a few responses: “My father was my counselor, pastor, teacher, and friend…My parent’s authority was not something that was beaten into me; they won my respect and loyalty with their actions…My father’s devotion to Christ was transparent. I think I grew to love the Lord because I loved my father, and you just couldn’t separate the two” (What They Did Right).

The next two episodes will focus on the green vertical leadership function of BUILDING A RELATIONSHIP with followers with the questions, How do I make sure I am strengthening my bond with my wife by meeting the needs of her heart, What does it mean to lead with a limp, i.e. win influence with my kids?

Function # 3: (Brown arrow across hypotenuse from Leaders to Goal Spiritual Maturity). The leader equips his followers to reach the goal. This may be the most neglected part of spiritual leadership at home. The leader EQUIPS and ASSISTS his followers to keep taking steps towards spiritual maturity, being shaped by the Word of God. Weeks 5-6 of will focus on the brown hypotenuse leadership function TO EQUIP/ASSIST followers with the questions, What basic truths of Scripture need to be built into my child’s heart, What are the worldview issues in our culture that I must equip them to overcome?

The rest of this episode zooms in on the first function of leadership—clearly defining and then staying focused upon our goal, spiritual maturity.

OUR GOAL: WHAT DOES A MATURE DISCIPLE LOOK LIKE?

When it comes to being effective spiritual leaders of our homes, we must begin by asking, “what is our destination?” Leaders take their followers somewhere. There is a goal to achieve, a destination to reach. Many men fail to lead well because their destination is fuzzy and ill-defined so they can’t formulate steps towards it. As the Cheshire Cat said to Alice, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.” The goal of our spiritual leadership at home is mature disciples. This target is like a diamond with many facets; so, it is described slightly differently in many biblical texts. But it is the same diamond. Paul calls the goal, “growing up into Christ the Head” (Eph 4:16), “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Col 1:27), “being conformed to the image of his Son” (Rom 8:29). Jesus described the same goal by saying “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness” (Matt 6:33) and in his command to “make disciples” (Matt 28:19). Let’s examine what the word “disciple” meant to Jesus’ hearers.

Jesus' Command: “Make Disciples”

When Jesus gave us this Great Commission, “Go and make disciples,” those hearing it had a clear understanding of the word, disciple. Bands of disciples with their masters were common in Jesus’ day. The noun “disciple” (MATHETES) means “learner.” It is the word from which we get mathematics. But it described a particular kind of learner—one who followed a master. Jesus’ hearers knew three things about disciples:

1) The disciple had the deepest kind of PERSONAL FRIENDSHIP with the master because they did life together. So, a disciple is called TO Christ—to enjoy a love relationship with him. Christ’s primary role as HIGH PRIEST is to enable us to achieve this foundational part of our mission, experiencing a personal relationship with God through Christ. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need (Heb 4:16-17).

2) The disciple PATTERNED HIS WHOLE LIFE on the teaching and example of his master. The disciple’s greatest goal was to be like his master. So, as Christ-followers, WE are called to BE LIKE Christ—to holy, Christ-like attitudes. Christ’s primary role as PROPHET helps us achieve this part of our mission. The Word proclaimed calls us to repentance and we are sanctified, i.e. made holy, through the truth (see John 17: 17).

3) The disciple, as a “follower” joined in HIS MASTER’S CAUSE. Jesus came into the world to overthrow the kingdom of darkness and establish his kingdom of righteousness over earth. Joining in that mission means we are called to EXERCISE DOMINION FOR Christ—to implement Christ’s righteous agenda in our role as husband, father, employee/employer, neighbor, church member, steward, and ambassador of the kingdom.) Christ’s primary role as KING is to overthrow evil and establish his kingdom of righteousness over the earth. He sends us out to further his mission.

Years ago, as I started my family and wanted to stay focused on Christ’s mission for me, I did a personal study of the Biblical statements describing our mission. I soon saw three themes constantly recurring. We are called TO Christ to enjoy a love relationship with Christ, called to BECOME LIKE CHRIST to Christ-like character, called to EXERCISE DOMINION FOR CHRIST, to implement Christ’s agenda in every sphere of life including, most importantly, our homes. In 45 years, I have never been able to improve upon this summary’s accuracy. The call to maturity as Christ’s disciple is living out of this three-fold calling.

HOW JESUS STAYED FOCUSED ON HIS MISSION  

On the night before he died, Jesus made an astonishing claim. He said to his Father, "I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do.” We wonder how Jesus could have talked about a completed work. His three-year ministry seemed all too short. For every prostitute whose heart he touched, hundreds remained untouched. For every blind man enabled to see, hundreds were still blind. Yet on that last night, with many urgent human needs unmet and tasks undone, the Lord said he had completed the work God had given him. How did he do that? How did he stay focused on his mission?  Let’s look. Mark 1:32-39.

That evening at sundown they brought to him all who were sick or oppressed by demons. And the whole city was gathered together at the door. And he healed many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons. And he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.

As busy as life is in the 21st century with ten-thousand opportunities available to us screaming for our time, I’m not sure any of our lives were as hectic as Jesus’ life was. Talk about opportunities, Jesus had the power to heal everyone everywhere and remove so much pain, not to mention the power to change hearts by the preaching of His Word. So, what does Jesus do?  He takes time to get alone with his Commander-In-Chief, the Father, to talk about his mission.

And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed. And Simon and those who were with him searched for him, and they found him and said to him, “Everyone is looking for you.” And he said to them, “Let us go on to the next towns, that I may PREACH there also, for that is why I came out.” And he went throughout all Galilee, PREACHING in their synagogues and casting out demons.

We are not told what Jesus talked to the Father about, but it had to be about his mission. The whole town wanted healing. Overnight the word about Jesus’ miraculous healing power would have gotten out to the surrounding countryside. No doubt many precious human beings with broken bodies had traveled in the wee morning hours to Capernaum to be healed. Yet, Jesus’ decision about his mission is to leave Capernaum and the opportunities to HEAL and go to other towns primarily to PREACH. I believe Jesus was meditating on his mission statement: The mission of the Messiah is revealed in Isaiah 61, which Jesus had quoted in the synagogue at Nazareth at the beginning of his ministry.

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor (vs1-2a).

This passage foresees the ministry of the Messiah. It pictures his DEED ministry, binding up the broken hearted by healing horrible diseases and bringing liberty to the captives—setting free those overpowered by disease and Satanic influence. It also pictures his ministry of the WORD, “proclaiming good news, proclaiming liberty to those held captive by sin, proclaiming the year of the Lord’s favor.” I believe Jesus was talking with his CO, The Father, about how to balance his WORD and DEED ministries. Late into the evening before, Jesus had devoted himself to his DEED ministry of healing and casting out demons. But he tweaked his direction to leave Capernoum and focus on his WORD ministry—preaching. Jesus stayed focused on his mission by carving out time to talk over his mission with his CO.

This story from Mark 1 was not an isolated incident. Other texts of Scripture show this as Jesus’ way of life. For example, when Jesus had to decide which followers to call as apostles he withdrew and prayed all night (Lk 6:12). The classic withdrawal of Jesus to wrestle with his CO about his mission was in the Garden of Gethsemane. Luke saw a pattern, Great crowds gathered to hear him and to be healed of their infirmities. But he would withdraw to desolate places and pray (5:15-16). The result of constant connection with his CO about his mission was a clear sense of direction. A few months before his death we read that Jesus set his face towards Jerusalem (Lk 9:53). When messengers told Jesus that his friend Lazarus had died, Jesus said, “We must remain here two days” (Jn 11:6).

Following Jesus: Consistent Leadership by Staying Focused on Our Mission

There are just two requirements to stay focused, as Jesus did, on our mission.

1. The first is having—a clear picture of what our mission is from which we shape a game plan for how we will accomplish it. That is what Jesus did. In this episode, we’ve summarized our mission which will become the basis of our game plan in coming weeks. Our mission is responding to Jesus' 3-fold call. We are:

  • Called to CHRIST, to enjoy a love relationship with him
  • Called TO BE LIKE Christ, to Christ-like character
  • Called to EXERCISE Dominion for Christ, implementing Christ’s agenda in every sphere of our lives, especially in our homes. The upcoming episodes in this series will help formulate game plans for each part of this mission

Jesus did not spend the minutes of his life carelessly or haphazardly. He was moving in a direction--to fulfill his mission. The familiar warning, “if you fail to plan, plan to fail is as true of completing Christ’s mission for us as it is of any other part of life. Few men I know would try to run a business without a business plan. Even if it is not written down, they still have in mind the steps they will take to succeed. Few of us, however, have a LIFE plan. But, which is more important, our business or our life? When God has ordained a world in which success in every other area of live requires a plan, why would we think accomplishing Christ’s mission for us would be different?

2. The second requirement for staying focused on our mission is a regular time built into our schedule to get away with our Commander-in-chief to talk about our mission. Certainly, this includes the daily habit of being in God’s Word. In Proverbs 8:34-35, God’s wisdom says, Blessed is the one who listens to me watching daily at my gates. For whoever finds me finds life and obtains favor from the Lord. But what Jesus modeled was much closer to sabbath rest. He worked on the Sabbath teaching in the synagogue—but he regularly shut out the world for a chunk of time to spend with his Commander In Chief focusing upon his mission. Can you find 1 hour out of 168 perhaps sometime on Sunday (which I believe is designed for this weekly reflection) to discuss with him your mission?

If we are to be consistent in our leadership, we need to live, not out of drivenness but out of our calling from Jesus which is what empowers our consistency. Os Guinness writes,  Answering the call of our Creator is “the ultimate why” for living, the highest  source of purpose in human existence…Calling is the truth that God calls us to Himself so decisively that everything we are, everything we do, and everything we have is invested with a special devotion, dynamism, and direction lived out as a response to His summons and service”  (The Call).

For Further Prayerful Thought

  1. Why does it make sense that spiritual leadership at home which seeks to lead our families to be fully devoted mature followers of Jesus, requires us to stay focused on this mission ourselves?
  2. What are the differences you can think of between having a clear picture of mature discipleship versus a fuzzy picture of mature discipleship?
  3. What does Jesus’ routine withdrawal into his private world with the Father to discuss his mission imply for his followers? Why don’t more Christians follow this pattern?
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God’s Strong Views About Family Leadership

God’s Strong Views About Family Leadership

On 05 January, 2025 By Gary Yagel

Today we begin a new series, entitled, "Successful Spiritual Leaders at Home” with a quiz for you. True or false?  When Adam sinned by eating from the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, God judged him for failing to be the spiritual leader of his home. We might be tempted to say, “False. He was judged for eating the forbidden fruit.” But listen to God’s exact words to Adam. “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you…”

(Gen 3:17). The first words out of God’s mouth, in judgement for Adam’s sin of eating the fruit, call attention to Adam’s reversal of God’s order of creation. Adam was to lead Eve and they together were to rule over the reptile kingdom. But in the midst of the fall is flagrant rebellion against that order: Adam listens to Eve and Eve listened to the serpent. That reversal of God’s order is so important to him that God starts with that reversal, before mentioning the actual transgression—eating the forbidden fruit. In a culture that is steeped in egalitarianism, we might say, “What’s the big deal? They both disobeyed God by eating the fruit.” But God wants to let us know that he is offended by this rebellion against his gender-role design, as well as the transgression of eating the fruit. This episode explores the significance of Adam’s gender-designed role to be the spiritual leader and seeks to provide a clear portrait of what that leadership looks like.

Most Bible-believing scholars point out that the role-reversal in the fall is also indicated by Adam’s passive failure to protect Eve from the serpent’s lies. In the prior chapter, God assigned to Adam the responsibility to protect (SHAMAR) the garden sanctuary and those in it from harm or evil. Adam should have manned up and stepped between Eve and the serpent, especially since he was the one to whom God had given the command not to eat the fruit. But, he remained passive instead of manning up. Here is what he might have said:

“Now, wait just one minute here! Honey, this snake is up to no good. I can see right through his devilish cunning. He’s deceiving you into thinking you have more to gain from disobeying God than by remaining faithful to him. That’s a lie! Let me tell you exactly what God said to me before he made you. And look around us. This is Paradise. God made it and gave it all to us. We have no reason to doubt his goodness.” And then, turning away from Eve: “Snake this conversation is over. TAKE OFF. (Larry Crabb, The Silence of Adam).

So, we begin our biblical study of spiritual leadership at home by noting two sobering truths: 1) God takes a man’s failure to lead his home very, very seriously and 2) the sinful nature we inherit from Adam inclines us to neglect this vital responsibility assigned to us by God. On top of that, we swim upstream in a culture which loathes no one more than a male who sounds like he is promoting oppressive patriarchy. Social media has a label for the worldview of anyone who resists its demand to eliminate gender roles: toxic masculinity. The result, I fear, is that many Christian men are so afraid of authoritarianism—the abuse of others using their authority—that they passively fail to take hold of the authority assigned them to lead their families. Nevertheless, what the Bible actually teaches about leadership at home has tremendous power to motivate us as we see its glory! So, let’s examine the biblical view of men’s responsibility to lead their homes.

GOD SAYS MALE AND FEMALE ARE EQUAL BUT HAVE DIFFERENT ROLES

Our view of family leadership must begin with Genesis 1 where we are told unequivocally that femininity is required to fully image God, that both genders share equally in the dignity of bearing that image, and that women are equally called to exercise dominion in the development of culture through their vocation. When God begins teaching us about man and woman in Genesis 1, the first thing he stresses is the full equality and dignity of woman. The Puritan writer, Matthew Henry gives us the proper view of the equality and value of woman. “The woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam; not made out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected by him, and near his heart to be loved by him” (Commentary on Genesis).

But God then writes Genesis 2 to show us how different male and female are by design—so that they can complete what is lacking in the other, designing the marriage union to image the unity of the Trinity. Christians must resist the feminist threads in our culture that undermine the significant differences in the sexes. The Genesis description of Adam and Eve’s creation reveals a 5-fold parallel structure that intentionally highlights their differences.

  • Adam was needed to work the ground (2:5); Eve was needed because of the aloneness of the man.
  • Adam was created from the ground; Eve was created from the man.
  • Adam’s name means the ground; Eve’s name is Ishah meaning she was taken out of Ish—the man.
  • God brings Adam to the ground (garden) to work it and keep it: God brings Eve to the man to be his necessary ally, i.e. a helper suitable for the man.
  • God curses Adams’s relationship to the ground when he sins; God curses Eve’s relationship to the man when she sins.

This parallel structure of the creation of Adam and Eve reveals the importance that God places on our different roles. Although many discipleship responsibilities given in the NT are generic, Paul reinforces God’s gender design by assigning different discipleship responsibilities to women than to men.   

THE WORD LEADERSHIP: WHAT IT IS AND IS NOT

1.To lead means you are not static or passive; you are moving. Being the spiritual leader of your home is not merely a position description on an organizational chart. It is an active process of moving your followers towards Jesus

2. To lead means you are moving towards a goal. Leading is not merely to aimlessly move around but to move together towards a goal. Leaders provide goals to enable growth for the team members individually and as a team

3. To lead means more than to exercise authority i.e. being the one with the final say. It is intentionally moving your family members. Authority is a God-ordained structure that we must teach children to respect. But effective leadership (especially with adults and teens) must go beyond authority. Harry Selfridge, the owner of a London department store chain, shows his managers the difference between seeing themselves as bosses or leaders.

  • The boss drives people, the leader coaches them.
  • The boss depends upon authority, the leader depends upon good will.
  • The boss says, “I”; the leader says, “We.”
  • The boss fixes the blame for the breakdown; the leader fixes the breakdown.
  • The boss knows how it is done; the leader shows how it is done.
  • The boss says, “Go!”; the leader says, “Let’s go!”

4. To lead means you are bringing others with you. He who thinks he is leading when no one is following is only taking a walk. Leadership is getting your team to choose to come along with you to achieve shared goals. Leadership is influence, not coercion. Spiritual leadership in the home is the ability to get your wife and children to follow you in your love for Jesus. Successful spiritual leadership at home is creating a desire in your wife and in your children to WANT to follow you as you follow Christ.

VISUALIZING LEADERSHIP

Three COMPONENTS of Leadership

1.The Leader. This is us, not because we deserve it but because it is assigned to us by God. A wife who has better leadership gifts or greater spiritual maturity than we have is awesome to assist us; but she doesn’t replace us. Being a leader is also not synonymous with being an upfront person. Any church dynamics expert will tell you the real leader in the church may not hold office, but is the key influencer.

2.The Followers. These are our wives, kids, grandkids, or anyone we’re influencing towards Christ.

3. The Target: Our objective for our wife and children is for each to reach his or her full potential—fully developing their gifts and fully reaching spiritual maturity.

Three FUNCTIONS of Leadership

1.The orange arrow across the bottom axis connecting the leader to the target of spiritual maturity portrays the first function of leadership: FOCUS upon and MODEL your own growth to spiritual maturity. Leaders must lead from their lives (MODEL). However, here is a key point for men:  What you model is direction not perfection. The gospel is that we all get knocked down by our own sin. Our kids know we fail. It does NOT help them to see us try to hide our failure; what they need is to see us fail and then get up, get back into the race, and follow after Christ even harder.

2. The green arrow up the Y axis connecting the Leader to Followers portrays the second function of leadership: BUILD your RELATIONSHIP with your followers. A leader’s influence is completely dependent upon the quality of his relationship with his followers. Jesus, affirmed, served, motivated, rebuked, challenged, felt compassion for, and loved his followers, winning their hearts.

3. The hypotenuse brown arrow from Followers to the Target Spiritual Maturity portrays the leader’s task: EQUIP and ASSIST your followers to keep taking steps towards the goal, spiritual maturity. The best leader is not a hero; he is a hero-maker (Hero Maker by Dave Ferguson.) Good leaders 1) help their followers see their own potential, 2) encourage them to discover their own, God-given gifts and passions, 3) equip them with training needed to succeed, 4) give them honest feedback, praising their successes, and pointing out their blind-spots. Many dads understand this part of fathering in the sports arena. We do everything we can to help our kids discover their athletic gifts, develop their skills at throwing, catching, kicking the soccer ball, take them to countless practices, try to get them the best coaching we can, and root obnoxiously for them during the games. Bob Hamrin of Great Dads asks Dad, Do you put as much energy into helping prepare your child to succeed spiritually as you do athletically?

This diagram might be considered the skeleton for effective spiritual leadership at home. Now, we look to some specific texts of Scripturte to fill out the picture.

SPIRITUAL LEADERSHIP AT HOME JOB DESCRIPTION

A. Cause your family members to flourish. In Genesis 2:15 we are told that Adam is placed in the garden to work it (ESV). The Hebrew word for “work it” is AVAD, which is also translated cultivate (NASB). It means to make fruitful, to cause to flourish, to produce, to build, and to shape. Adam is to make the garden (which includes its inhabitants) fruitful—to provide what the garden needs to thrive, to help it and its inhabitants reach their fullest potential. This core concept of masculinity is that we spend our lives (energy and time) devoted to helping those under our care develop to their fullest potential. We sacrifice our greatest assets, time and energy, so that the garden (or civilization) as well as our wives and children (also in the garden) prosper, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

B. Protect your family members from harm. Genesis 2:15 continues, The LORD God put him in the garden of Eden to….keep it. The Hebrew word that is translated “keep it” is SHAMAR, which also means to guard, watch-over, and protect. The word is used of soldiers, shepherds, priests, custodians, and government officials. Rick Phillips writes, “This calling to keep rounds out the Masculine Mandate of the Bible. A man is not only to wield the plow but also to bear the sword. Being God’s deputy lord in the garden, Adam was not only to make it fruitful but to keep it safe. (The Masculine Mandate). The call to be the head of our homes requires us to protect those under our care, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

C. Take the initiative to figure out and meet the needs of your wife, and kids. Moses, the author of Genesis, reveals the universal principle that when it comes to the dance of man with woman, the man is the initiator. He is the one who leaves his father and mother to find and pursue her to give her his love. He asks her to dance. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. CS Lewis said, “God is so masculine that all of creation is feminine in comparison.” What he meant was that when God speaks (initiates action), creation responds. We also know that masculinity initiates by the pattern of Jesus our bridegroom who leaves his place in heaven and comes into the world, taking on the form of a servant who sacrifices himself for his bride at the cross, and then draws her to himself with the cords of love. Because Jesus initiated, we responded. We are his because he pursued us. When husband and wife are in an emotional stalemate or fight, he is the one called to initiate a path out of conflict and move towards her with open arms and unconditional love.   

D. Build a foundation of obedience to God’s Word into your followers’ lives. In Genesis 18:19 God reveals with striking clarity what the responsibilities are of the head of the covenant family, beginning with Abraham the father of the Christian faith.  God says, “For I have chosen Abraham that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice, so that the Lord may bring to Abraham what he has promised him.” God did not assign this task to Sara, nor did Paul assign the spiritual nurture of the children primarily to moms. His words in Ephesians 6:4: Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Certainly, our wives partner with us in every way but God places the primary responsibility for training children in the way they should go upon dads.

E. Recover God’s unfallen design of masculinity in Adam. When we remember that the Apostle Paul rooted nearly all his teaching in the OT, his command to Ephesian husbands makes great sense. Adam is placed in the garden to spend his energy doing all he can to cause the garden and those in the garden—Eve and the children—to thrive. That is the purest definition of masculinity that I know of. Men die to themselves so that those under their leadership reach their full potential and flourish. So, Paul commands Ephesian husbands: Love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. Spiritual leadership at home means we pay whatever price is required to cause our wives to become radiant in godly character, i.e. reach their fullest potential. We are assigned authority to serve. Jesus said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” He who was rich became poor so that through his poverty, we might become rich (2 Cor 8:9) That is Jesus; but it is also redeemed masculinity.

Christ-following men die to themselves, paying whatever price is required for our wives and children to flourish, not because we are heroes but because we understand the definition of spiritual leadership at home: being hero makers.

When it comes to understanding the call to spiritual leadership at home, Christian men have something far better to offer our children and culture than misguided accusations of oppressive patriarchy, egalitarianism, feminism or transgenderism. We view our calling to lead not as a power play or a chance to take advantage of others, but as an opportunity to serve. We see the complementary roles we have the privilege of filling not as a sentence to misery but a summons to the joy of seeing our loved ones flourish.  

For Further Prayerful Thought

  1. Why do you think God told Adam he was being punished for his role reversal as well as eating the forbidden fruit?
  2. What stood out to you in this episode about what leadership is not?
  3. How would you explain the three functions of leadership? (arrows in the diagram)
  4. What stood out to you about the job description of men being the spiritual leaders at home?
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Pride in Your Son But a Sword for Your Soul

Pride in Your Son But a Sword for Your Soul

On 29 December, 2024 By Gary Yagel

This is Gary Yagel interrupting the normal beginning of this week’s blog tell you how excited I am about our new podcast series that begins next week, "Successful Spiritual Leaders at Home." I’m convinced that no Christian man wants to fail an assignment given to him by Jesus, much less fail to provide what our wives and kids need through our leadership at home. But what does that look like? This new series goes to Scripture to answer that question. Specifically, we will examine biblical answers to these questions:  

  • What is the biblical understanding of my job as spiritual leader of my home?
  • How can this understanding be transformed into a workable plan to focus upon?
  • How do I make sure I am strengthening my bond with my wife by meeting the needs of her heart?
  • What basic truths of Scripture need to be built into my child's heart as his or her spiritual foundation?
  • What does it look like to lead with a limp, i.e. to win influence with my kids because I am vulnerable about my own struggles to obey Jesus?
  • What are the worldview issues in our culture that I must prepare them to overcome with a Biblical worldview? 
  • How do I tap into the motivation to do what I know I need to, as the spiritual leader of my home?

As your brother in Christ, may I make this request of you? Would you please take action to let the other Christian men in your church and sphere of influence know about this upcoming blog/podcast series, “Successful Spiritual Leaders at Home.”  Please let the men of your church know about this new series. You can print a PDF to give to others, download the PDF onto your computer and email it as an attachment, or just send an email with this link to the PDF, which explains what the series will cover. Here is the link. 

Today we examine a little-known part of the Christmas story that not too many Christmas carols sing about. When Mary and Joseph brought Jesus to the temple to be circumcised the eighth day, they bumped into on old man named Simeon who had been promised by the Holy Spirit that he would see the Messiah before he died. Luke recounts the story of Simeon’s words (Luke 2:28-36): He took him up in his arms and blessed God and said, “Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel.” And his father and his mother marveled at what was said about him. And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, “Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is opposed and a sword will pierce through your own soul also, so that thoughts from many hearts may be revealed. 

Mary, one of the godliest women who ever lived, agreed to bear God’s child and what does she receive? A sword to her soul. Few song writers I know have put Simeon’s promise that a sword would pierce Mary’s soul to music. It isn’t sung about by children’s choirs in Christmas pageants. But Luke’s account of the true Christmas story ends on the ominous note of suffering caused by the opposition of the kingdom of darkness to Jesus’ kingship claim, just as Matthew’s Christmas story ends with the weeping of Bethlehem for the children slain by Herod’s fear of Jesus’ rule—reflecting this same opposition of the kingdom of darkness to Jesus’ kingship. This episode reminds us of the kingdom of darkness’s fierce opposition to the rule of the Prince of Peace and what to do about it.

Although it is certainly a fact that Jesus is the Prince of Peace, his ascension to the Father does not mean harmony on earth. “Peace,” when used in the NT, usually refers back to the Hebrew concept of shalom, which means flourishing the way things were designed to flourish before sin’s corruption. Shalom is therefore on a warpath with evil, because sin fractures the wellbeing and harmony of planet earth. The Second Adam overthrew sin’s rule and has ascended earth’s throne, where he is now fixing everything broken by sin. However, the retaking of Adam’s throne does not at all mean that peace reigns in this fallen world. Jesus made this fact quite clear in Matthew 10:34, Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. Simeon spoke of this conflict.

JESUS CAUSES CONFLICTS AMONG PEOPLE

Simeon says Jesus will be a light for revelation to the Gentiles and cause the fall and rising of many in Israel… a sign that is opposed. In other words, people will be polarized. Jesus explained this polarization to Nicodemus:

This is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God” (John 3:19-21).

Jesus came into the world to overthrow the kingdom of darkness and replace broken human thinking “corrupted by evil desires” (Eph 4:22) with the truth of God’s kingdom of light. Christians have joined this cause, which Jesus explained in the words “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house.  In the same way, let your light shine before others.”  Though defeated, the kingdom of darkness still fights to take captive every human mind to cause it to believe Satan’s lies. As we enter 2025, here is a sample of the lies being promoted by the kingdom of darkness in our current culture:

A. Lie: Fulfillment comes from being your own master and doing whatever you want to do. Truth: Fulfillment comes in fulfilling your creator’s design for you. Ephesians 2:10 tells us that we were designed before the creation of the world for specific good works. Whenever this goal of personal autonomy is falsely presented as the path to happiness, it is an opportunity to say, “I don’t actually believe that total autonomy is the path to happiness. As a Christian, I believe fulfillment comes in discovering and following the Creator’s design and purpose for me, which includes caring for others and contributing to community, not just my personal, selfish freedom.” Who knows where that conversation may go?

B. Lie: You build a child’s self-esteem by NEVER criticizing him, lest you harm his self-image. Truth: Welcoming correction is the path to maturity. Whoever ignores instruction despises himself, but he who listens to reproof gains intelligence (Prov 15:32), The truth is that the job of parents is not to protect children from negative feelings, but to teach them how the world works. Failure to use consequences to reinforce wrong choices is called hatred by God. Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him (Prov 13:24).

C. Lie: Our job as parents is to protect kids from negative emotions because they harm him. Truth: Experiencing negative emotions is vital for growing to maturity. Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child; the rod of discipline will remove it far from him. (Prov 22:15). Pity the child whose feelings have always been pandered to. He does not know the joy of overcoming obstacles. He is denied the deepest kind of self-esteem, which comes from having the self-mastery to overcome our feelings and do what needs to be done. Whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city (Prov 16:32). The child who is not taught to say “no” to his feelings becomes a slave to whatever breaches the walls of his heart, A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls (Prov 25:28).

D. Lie. Homosexual relationships are normal; they result from different sexual orientations. Truth: Every culture has recognized that some sexual compulsions are morally wrong and cannot be excused by arguing, “that’s just the way I am.” Like all the major religions of the world, the Bible teaches that sexual desire for my neighbor’s wife, my sister-in-law, a child, or one of the same sex is wrong. Even for the irreligious, there is strong evidence that homosexuality is not “normal.”

  • Nature tells everyone that homosexual sex is a perversion. The female vagina was made to receive the male penis. Heterosexual lovemaking causes the home where children are conceived to be a place where both mom and dad are present and in love. Homosexual sex places the penis other places.
  • Monogamy is almost non-existent in gay relationships with 4.5 % of men being faithful compared to 75% of men in heterosexual relationships. 75- 90 % of lesbians report sexual activity with men as well as with women.

E. Lie: Stating your belief that homosexual practice is wrong is hate speech. Truth: Love does not rejoice at wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth (I Cor 13:6). The truth is that homosexual practice is very destructive physically and emotionally, not to mention spiritually. Pointing someone away from such destruction is love!

  • Gay and bisexual men make up 2% of the population but 55% of HIV infections. Monkeypox, like AIDS, is spread by gay men having multiple partners.
  • The emotional consequences of such sexual brokenness are enormous. One CDC study found that, whereas 14.8% of heterosexual students contemplated suicide, that number skyrocketed to 42.8% of LGBTQ+ students. Regarding actual suicide attempts, the heterosexual student rate was 6.4% compared to a staggering 29.4% of LGBTQ+ students. This lifestyle is emotionally destructive.

F. Lie: Legislative actions against minors receiving cross gender hormones and surgery violate transgender rights. Truth: In America no minor has the right to pursue potentially self-destructive behavior, e.g. to get a driver’s license, drink alcohol, or get a permit to carry a firearm. States passing laws against cross gender hormones and surgery are protecting children from radical ideologues victimizing children who are struggling with their experience of going through puberty.

G. Lie: The goal of government and education policy should be EQUITY—not equal opportunity for all but equal outcomes for all. Truth: Justice means equal opportunity. Scripture forbids partiality even towards the poor. You might have heard, “In America, the richest 1% have 40% of all the wealth.” The implication is that wealth gap is fundamentally unjust, which makes God unjust because he placed one child in the home of a single mom crack addict, and another in the home of a Saudi Prince. The biblical call to justice for the poor does not mean unjustly confiscating the wealth of a father who worked his butt off to leave behind an inheritance to his children. That is Marxism. Justice for the poor means being sure the wealthy do not oppress them; it does NOT mean using politics to steal the money of the wealthy and redistributing it to the poor.

H. Lie: Women’s equality means denying the distinctions between the genders. 

Truth: Believing men and women are created differently is not sexist but wise. To be sure, we must avoid overemphasizing gender differences or unfairly limit full opportunities for women. But the folly of attempts to erase gender differences by allowing males to claim transgender identity is so obvious that The American College of Sports Medicine released this statement, “Adult males are stronger, more powerful, and faster than females of similar age and training status. The difference in athletic performance where endurance or muscular power is required is roughly 10-30% depending on the event.” Christians need to stop being people pleasers and stop being apologetic about God’s intentional design of male and female differently to complete one another.

JESUS CAUSES CONFLICTS WITHIN PEOPLE

Simeon does not simply prophecy conflict among humans but within humans, when he said to Mary, “Your own soul will be pierced too.” One writer observes, “Mary stands before us as a representative of everybody who loves Jesus. If you love Jesus and have him in your life, a sword will pass through your heart as well. There will be inner conflict, confusion, sometimes great pain. You may fight with him. And you may fight with yourself” (Tim Keller, Hidden Christmas). The same spiritual conflict between the kingdom of darkness and the kingdom of light takes place in our own soul as it does out in the world. There we must fight a three-front battle: with Satan who knows the tactics of spiritual warfare, a sinful nature that wants its own way, and a world that wants to entice our hearts away from our first love. As 2024 ends and a fresh spiritual battle in 2025 is about to begin I think of Paul’s words urging Christ-followers to use their armor and weapons. Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil (Eph 6:10-20). Let’s examine our equipment.  

A. The belt of truth. This piece of armor is needed to fix our wrong thought patterns. Putting on the belt of truth means immersing ourselves in Scripture. We must re-program our minds because they have been corrupted by the lies of the evil one and of the fallen culture. Tony Evans in his book, Victory in Spiritual Warfare, writes, When you align your mind, will, and emotions underneath God’s view on a matter—his truth—He will then empower you to fight your spiritual battles…. By knowing and functioning according to the truth of God, you will be on your way to experiencing victory over anything or anyone seeking to over-come or defeat you. We must take control of our schedules in 2025 to make sure we immerse ourselves in Scripture so that we see life from God’s point of view.

B. The breastplate of righteousness. The word righteousness, DIKAIOSUNE, contains no hint of self-righteousness. Think of righteousness as “rightness”—the way things were originally designed to be before the fall. It is that which conforms to the moral will of God. Here are three ways that putting on the breastplate of righteousness protects us:

  • The imputed righteousness of Christ protects us from Satan, the Accuser, who wants to bury us with shame over our sin and drive us into isolation.
  • Righteous character protects us from harm. Righteousness guards the one whose way is blameless, but wickedness subverts the sinner. (Prov 13:6).
  • Putting on the breastplate of righteousness protects us from distractions. Most humans get up in the morning and dress for work. For Christians that work is seeking to spread rightness over earth. Isaiah says the Messiah’s mission is to form a people that may be called OAKS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS (Is 61:3). We put on the breastplate of righteousness because working for righteousness in the world around us is our mission, and that mission begins with ourselves.

C. As shoes for your feet the readiness given by the gospel of peace. The emphasis here is on readiness. This is the same Greek word that Peter uses when he commands, Be ready to give a reason for the hope that is within you. Clearly, both biblical authors want us to be ready to seize the opportunity to share our faith when it arises. Here are two ways to do that:

  • Think through and be ready to share the benefits to being a Christian in your own life. One man illustrates. “I talk about my experience of being a Christian—of how I now sense a purpose and meaning to life, of how I never feel alone, and how—because I feel accepted by God—I more willingly accept other people. I told how being a Christian makes my marriage better, gives me a clear conscience, and fills me with a sense of optimism and hope” (Randy Newman, Questioning Evangelism).    
  • Pray intentionally for opportunities to share your faith. When we have been asking God for opportunities to share Jesus, our mind is much more alert to the opportunities that cross our path. One of my favorite accountability questions is, Who are the non-believers you are building relationships with and how can I pray for your strategy to share Christ with them?  

D. The shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one. Raising the shield of faith means to hide beneath promises about God and his nature. Here are a few:

  • He who trusts the Lord will not be in want of any good thing (Ps 34:8)
  • My God shall supply all of your needs according to his riches (Phil 4:19)
  • He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things (Rom 8:32)?
  • Though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich (2 Cor 8:9).
  • He disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. (Heb 12:10-11).

E. The helmet of salvation. The purpose of a helmet is to protect the brain. The helmet of salvation is the protective truth surrounding our thinking about salvation, namely that salvation is FROM CHRIST and not FROM US. Remembering that salvation comes from Christ alone: 1) overcomes moralism—the pressure to perform so that God likes me, 2) causes us to constantly stop and ask for Christ’s help to be obedient, 3) eliminates self-righteousness and judgementalism, since we ourselves are desperate for grace, 4) enables us to get back up quickly when sin has humbled us claiming God’s promise, “God gives grace to the humble.”

F. The sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. The Greek word Paul uses here for sword, MACHAIRA does not describe the swash buckling sword used by Zoro, but a short blade, more like a dagger, used by the Romans in close hand-to-hand combat. This weapon is for personal attacks. That specific attacks are in view is evidenced by the Greek word Paul chooses for “word” in his phrase word of God.  It is not LOGOS but RHEMA. Vine writes, “Here the reference is not to the whole Bible as such, but to the individual Scripture passages, which the Spirit brings to our remembrance for use in time of need, a prerequisite being the regular storing of the mind with Scripture.” In the past few months, I have had to rememorize specific verses (RHEMA) of James 1 because I have had such a lousy attitude towards trials and difficulties that come my way. Why not steal one hour from your remaining Christmas holidays to think through your spiritual battles, memorize a verse or two, and follow Jesus’ pattern for defeating Satan?

G. Prayer. God, Himself, identifies PRAYER as the way Christ’s kingdom advances. Just as a military invasion begins with cruise missiles and bombing runs, our efforts to advance the kingdom on earth must begin with prayer, the only weapon capable of dislodging the enemy from its strongholds. Prayer is such a potent offensive weapon for advancing the kingdom of Christ over earth, that in Psalm 2 we hear God the Father identify prayer as the way Christ’s kingdom spreads. He promises Christ, “ASK of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession.” As Christ-followers join Christ in ASKING that his kingdom advance, the Father promises to act. As 2025 begins, perhaps we all need to rethink our stewardship of the 168 hours/week God gives us.

Ironically, as Simeon’s prophecy to Mary made clear, the arrival of the Prince of Shalom does not mean ease and passivity but joining his fight against evil. May we put on all the armor and use all the weapons he has given us for this battle.  

For Further Prayerful Thought

  1. What are the implications of these two facts: men love darkness because their deeds are evil, and we are called to be light to the world?
  2. Which two cultural lies do you hear most often? How best could you raise a question about whether that assumption is really true?
  3. How can you do a better job of defeating sin in your own life by using the spiritual armor and weapons Jesus has given us?
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Has the Manger’s Familiarity Deadened Its Wonder?

Has the Manger’s Familiarity Deadened Its Wonder?

On 21 December, 2024 By Gary Yagel

Author Max Lucado describes the power of what he calls “the agent of familiarity” (God Came Near) to deaden our hearts even to experiences that are astonishing. This agent’s commission from the black throne room is clear, and fatal, “You don’t need to steal the rich blessings poured out upon Christians—you just need to cause them to forget how precious and spectacular they are.” Lucado ID’s this agent:

“He’s an expert at robbing the sparkle and replacing it with the drab. He invented the yawn and put the hum in humdrum. And his strategy is deceptive. He won’t steal your home from you, he’ll do something far worse. He’ll paint it with a familiar coat of drabness. He’ll replace romance with routine and scatter the dust of yesterday over the wedding pictures in the hallway until they become pictures of another couple in another time. He won’t take your children from you he’ll just make you too busy to notice them. Before you know it that little face that brought tears in the delivery room has become—perish the thought—common.”

The agent of familiarity can cause you to pass a garden every day and never look at the splendor of a flower or witness a hundred sunsets without being moved by the grandeur of one. This agent of familiarity is hard at work this Christmas season, spreading layers of the poisonous dust of the ordinary over the manger in Bethlehem to deaden our senses to the staggering reality of what actually took place there. This episode seeks to blow off that dust to reveal with fresh clarity five ways the incarnation can evoke radical devotion to Jesus. May a fresh look at the incarnation fill us with fresh energy and passion to follow our Master well.

THE INCARNATION HELPS ME SEE HOW COSTLY EVIL REALLY IS

Because God is the holy judge of all the earth who will uphold justice on earth, no sin can go unpunished. God’s moral decree is clear, without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins (Heb 9:22). Remarkably, God, out of love for us is able to be both just and merciful to us because of the principle of substitution. In the OT, he portrayed a combination of mercy and justice in the slaying of a perfect lamb whose death substituted for sinful Israelites. But that animal blood only pointed to the true lamb of God who would take away the sin of the world; the death of a lamb could never justly satisfy the demands of God’s holy justice. The wage of sin is and must always be death to human sinners in a universe created by a holy God. Sin is way too evil to be atoned for by a slaughtered lamb.  Justice demands that every human die for his treason. But in mercy, God the just judge, has allowed for one human’s death to substitute as payment for another human’s sin—a substitutionary atonement.

The Messiah who would have to come to deliver God’s covenant people from the penalty for their sin could not be one who had sinned, himself. No sinful human could atone for another’s sin because his death would just be atoning for his own sin. But the history of the OT reveals no such holy saint—not Moses, nor Abraham, nor Joseph, nor David. So, the Messiah would have to be God himself. Only God, himself, was holy enough to live as a human being perfectly so that his death could atone for others’ sin. The judge himself, the divine judge of the universe, has declared his verdict upon all men—they must die for their high treason. But then the judge stepped down from his celestial bench, took off his judicial robes, put on his prison garb, and was executed on our behalf.

At its core, the incarnation proves the severity, the hideousness, the atrocity, the evil, that sin is. It is so opposite to the God whom we are to love with all our hearts that no sinful man can see the face of God and live. God’s holiness would destroy him. Going into 2025, Christians must hate evil and courageously speak out against it. Jesus devoted 2 of the eight beatitudes to challenging his followers about this component of kingdom living, the 4th—blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, and the 8th—blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake. This commitment to stand for righteousness is relevant every day. Yet its importance has recently been underscored after United Health Care CEO Brian Thompson was gunned down on a New York City Street by left-wing elitist Luigi Mangion. Emerson College conducted a poll about Mangione’s premeditated murder of Thompson. 41% of those aged 18-29 said that this cold-blooded murder was either partly or completely acceptable.

This poll reveals the wide-spread worldview corruption in this age group, by critical theory, aka cultural Marxism. One of the central tenets of this view is that the oppressed have the right to violent actions against their oppressors. This horrific ideology tried to justify the burning down of American cities by Black Lives Matter and excuse the actions of Hamas in their horrific rape, beheading of children and eventual murder of 1300 Jews on October 7th, attempting to label Israel the oppressors. Christan’s must confront the false, evil cultural Marxism that has spread by social media, college campuses, and left-wing politicians.  The burning down of property is wrong. The attack of Hamas was wrong. Luigi Mangione’s murder of Brian Thompson was wrong. Full stop. Period. Any other comment is an attempt to justify evil. Christians must stand for what is right. On another relevant topic, sex before marriage is wrong. Full stop. Period. If either the teen girls or teen guys in our cities were raised to believe that truth, the number one cause of inner-city problems—teen pregnancies resulting in the raising of children without dads—would go away. The incarnation reminds us that evil cannot be rationalized, denied, or excused. The wage of sin is always death.

THE INCARNATION GUARANTEES THAT JESUS UNDERSTANDS ME

It helps to grasp Jesus’ humanity by remembering that he grew up with a real mom and dad. Max Lucado transports us back to the days of Mary by imagining some of the questions we might have wanted to ask her:

  • Did you ever feel awkward teaching him how he made the world?
  • Did you ever see him with a distant look on his face as if he were listening to someone you couldn’t hear?
  • Did the thought ever occur to you that the God to whom you were praying was asleep under your own roof?
  • Did you ever try to count the stars with him…and succeed?
  • Did he have any friends by the name of Judas?
  • When he saw a lamb being led to the slaughter, did he act differently?
  • Did you ever accidently call him Father?
  • Did you ever think, That’s God eating my soup (Ibid)?

The most astounding words ever written were from John’s gospel The Word became flesh and he dwelt among us. The Greek word John uses for dwelt meant literally to pitch your tent—a clear allusion to the tabernacle, Israel’s portable tent where God’s throne, the Ark of the Covenant, was kept. God’s presence was understood to dwell most fully in the tabernacle. In the years prior to the construction of the temple in Jerusalem, the tabernacle was a portable tent to communicate the idea that God was present among his people, no matter where they went. John picks up on the OT imagery and says, “God again has come to dwell among his people.” But this time he doesn’t inhabit an animal skin tent—but a human skin tent. Human flesh is Christ’s tabernacle. God came among his people in the most total manner possible—by getting inside their own skin.

  • The tongue that called forth the dead was a human one
  • The hand that touched the leper had dirt under its nails
  • The feet on which the woman wept were calloused and dirty
  • And his tears came from a heart as broken as yours or mine has ever been

Even if others don’t understand what you are going through, Jesus does. The author to the Hebrews writes: For we do NOT have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, (which being translated means JESUS LIVED IN OUR SKIN) yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Jesus, our Great High Priest, is a great listener. He wants us to pour our hearts out to him. And he is better able to understand EVERYTHING than any other person surrounding our lives. I’m reminded of a cartoon I saw in New Yorker magazine. It shows a forklift operator moving boxes with a quizzical look on his face. Instead of the writing on the box saying “FRAGILE: HANDLE WITH CARE,” it says, “CONTENTS UNKNOWN: HANDLE WITH NONCHALANCE.” The contents of human beings are not unknown to Jesus. He therefore does NOT handle us with nonchalance. He handles us with CARE greater than the care we have ever known from our loved ones. We never wear out his desire to hear us pour out our struggles, frustrations, and need for grace. 

THE INCARNATION INSPIRES LOYALTY TO JESUS MY CO

There is something about Christ’s decision to humble himself that stokes the fire of my desire to follow him as my leader and I think the same is true for you. Humility is always inspiring but especially humility in someone great. It wasn’t just that Jesus understands me that attracts me; it’s the way he chose to enter his world.

The omnipotent made himself breakable. He who had been spirit became pierceable. He who was larger than the universe became an embryo…the creator of life being created. God was given eyebrows, elbows, two kidneys and a spleen. He stretched against the walls and floated in the amniotic fluids of his mother. God had come near. He came not as a flash of light or as an unapproachable conqueror, but as one whose first cries were heard by a peasant girl and a sleepy carpenter. The hands that first held him were unmanicured, calloused, and dirty. No silk. No ivory…For thirty-three years he would feel everything you and I have ever felt. He felt weak. He grew weary. He feared failure. He was susceptible to wooing women. He got colds, burped, and had body odor. His feelings got hurt. His feet got tired. And his head ached. To think of Jesus in such light is—well, it seems almost irreverent, doesn’t it (Ibid)?

Christ did not shelter himself from any of the harsh realities of human life. He could have. He could have been born into a family of aristocrats. Wouldn’t that have been more fitting for the King of Kings and Lord of Lords? Yet he did not choose ease and luxury—and that captures my respect and admiration.

  • His first breath of air would have in it the odor of animal urine.
  • The first noises would be grunts of animals.
  • His first bed would not be on royal satin sheets as his royalty demanded, but a feeding trough in a stable because his parents were poor.
  • He knew what it was like to be a refugee in Egypt.
  • He endured the verbal abuse in a shame-based culture of being a bastard—i.e. a child born out of wedlock.
  • As the oldest child he knew what it was like to bear the financial burdens of a single mom with seven children after Joseph had died.
  • As a tradesman, he got real splinters in his fingers and real bruises from dropping stones on his feet.
  • As one convicted of a crime he didn’t commit, his wrists and ankles were crushed by Roman spikes and the thrust of a spear poured out his real blood.

Proverbs 18:12 says humility goes before honor and my heart senses that reality. The way Christ came to earth captures my respect and allegiance.

THE INCARNATION IS LOVE—HE BECAME POOR SO WE COULD BECOME RICH

Paul wrote to the Christians at Corinth. For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich. (2 Corinth 8:9). Is there a simpler, truer definition of genuine love? That is the epitome of unselfishness—I will become poor so that you can become rich. The eternal God imprisoned himself forever in a 6-foot body. He who was larger than the universe became a human embryo. God abandoned the splendor of the universe’s throne, surrounded by myriads of angels worshipping him every second, for a smelly sheep pen. The supreme emperor of the universe arrived in his world wearing diapers. For God the Son, the eternal cost of becoming forever a human being is unfathomable. The more we understand what it cost him to empty himself for OUR SAKE, the more our heart is awakened to his love for us. Dorothy Sayers writes:

The incarnation means that for whatever reason God chose to let us fall…to suffer, to be subject to sorrows and death—he none the less had the honesty and the courage to take his own medicine….He can exact nothing from man that he has not exacted from himself. He himself has gone through the whole of human experience—from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair, and death….He was born in poverty and …suffered infinite pain—all for us—and thought it well worth his while (The Greatest Drama Ever Staged).

And yet Satan and my sinful nature have the audacity to plant doubts in my mind about God’s love. But the eternal truth stands: HE WHO WAS RICH BECAME POOR SO THAT I MIGHT BECOME RICH. That forever settles the issue of his love for me.

THE INCARNATION IS OUR PATTERN TO FOLLOW—DESCEND INTO GREATNESS

Paul commands the Philippian followers of Jesus, Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (2:5-8).

The Christ-like attitude we are to emulate is described carefully by Paul as not hanging on to his rights and glory as God but emptying himself of those rights and privileges. JB Phillips translates this attitude as laying aside his prerogatives as God’s equal. The NIV translates emptied himself as made himself nothing. How mind boggling are those words!  The one who is everything, made himself nothing. The source of life—the one in whom we live and move and have our being—the one of infinite worth and supreme dignity—how could he make himself nothing? How can this be? So great was the humiliation of our savior when he laid aside his glory to become a human being that the only way the language can accommodate it is to say that he made himself nothing.

This Christ-like attitude is the total opposite of human nature. At the very core of our sinful human heart is the desire to be the center of attention, to have everyone else accommodate our wishes and lifestyle, to do better than everyone else and so be exalted above them, to be preoccupied with making sure others think highly of us. Every person born into the human race is born with a congenital vision problem: OUR EYES ARE FOCUSED ON OURSELVES. This defect comes out as pride, self-centeredness, rivalry, insecurity, selfishness, jealousy, anger, and self-pity. God’s lifelong goal for you and me is to make us like Christ—to take our eyes off ourselves—to make ourselves NOTHING—and then fix them on others’ needs. And by the way, such a mission is as masculine as it gets. God put Adam in the garden to cultivate it—to cause it to achieve its potential. We die to our love of ease, sweating every day to cause others to prosper at work and our families to flourish at home. We are called to descend into constant servanthood.

The great irony is that as we follow Jesus’ example of descending from our instinctive self-preoccupation, making ourselves nothing to serve others, we actually ascend into greatness. Jesus never criticized his disciples for wanting to be great. That is part of our male DNA—We want to achieve. We want to matter. We want to win. We want to be the best us we can be. Instead of criticizing their desire for greatness, Jesus told them how to achieve it. And you know his words, Whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all (Mk 10:44). When we shake the dust off the manger scene of Christmas, we see magnified the great model of Jesus who laid aside his wealth, and glory, and divine privilege descending as a slave to serve us, making us rich through his poverty. That is our call—made achievable through the power of the Holy Spirit.  

And yet the manger scene of the incarnation does not end with Jesus’ humiliation. There seems to be a law in God’s universe. Peter knew it: Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you (I Pet 5:6). Jesus descended into greatness in a manger--Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.  

For Further Prayerful Thought

  1. How do we balance the truth that sin is so heinous and God so just that only he could pay for our sin—the truth that we must take sin seriously—with the truth of God’s grace towards us and call to treat others with grace?
  2. How can you better apply the truth that Jesus is your Great High Prist and Advocate, who fully understands every form of pain and injustice you experience?
  3. How does Jesus’ choice to be born into a manger instead of a palace impact your heart?
  4. In what way is the decision to become poor so that another becomes rich a definition of agape love? How can we better remember what it cost our Lord to redeem us?
  5. How can we better draw upon the power of the Holy Spirit to change our default, subtle focus from ourselves to others and how I can serve them?
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How Can Christ Be the Redeemer and the World So UNREDEEMED?

How Can Christ Be the Redeemer and the World So UNREDEEMED?

On 14 December, 2024 By Gary Yagel

Pete had been a Christian nearly all his life. But since his teen years he had been losing the battle with pornography. Desperately he fought his lust, but every new solution was temporary. Praying harder didn’t work. Feeling worse afterwards didn’t work. Getting married didn’t work. Feeling alone and ashamed, Pete struggled for ten years; but his bondage only increased. One day, he heard about a seminar on sexual purity and attended with his friend. On the way home Pete was even more overwhelmed with feelings of condemnation, and hypocrisy. He knew he had to bring his sin into the light to get help; but the thought of his wife and kids finding out about his secret life was too humiliating to consider. Pete’s friend listened compassionately. But it was the last conversation he would have with Pete. The next weekend, Pete committed suicide.

Countless committed Christian men wrestling with masturbation have asked a legitimate question. If Christ has redeemed me from slavery to sin, why am I still regularly giving in to lust and masturbation? Didn’t Paul say the Christian’s old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for the one who has died is freed from sin (Rom 6:6-7) and then repeat in verse 18 that Christians have been set free from sin? How can this be true when we default to lust, selfishness, resentment too easily and know that our heart attitudes are miles away from being like those of Jesus? This episode addresses the question, If Christ defeated sin at the cross, setting Adam’s kingdom free from its destructive slavery, why isn’t earth’s culture more sanctified and why am I, myself, not more sanctified?

As Christmas draws near, we hear “Joy to the world! The Lord is come. Let earth receive her King.” But if we are honest, we must admit that most of the earth has not received her king. The words continue, “Joy to the Earth! The Savior reigns.” However, news reports don’t sound much like Jesus is reigning but more like evil, hatred, secularism, and cultural Marxism are reigning. The lyrics continue, “No more let sins and sorrow grow, nor thorns infest the ground. He comes to make His blessings flow far as the curse is found,” rightly grasping that the Messiah has come to overthrow sin’s curse upon the earth. But thorns still grow, and the blessing of God’s design of sexuality, for example, doesn’t seem to be flowing into our culture; instead, the culture is attacking it. The final verse says, "He rules the world with truth and grace and makes the nations prove the glories of His righteousness," but we see no international summit of world leaders to acknowledge Christ’s kingship. In short, is the coming of the Messiah no more relevant to the world right now than a fairytale, giving people a picture of a happy ending to the story when everybody lives happily ever after? If Christ defeated sin at the cross—why does sin have so much power to corrupt culture and overpower our hearts? Does our Redeemer’s work have any impact upon this life?

YES. THE TRUE TYRANTS KICKED OFF ADAMS THRONE WERE SATAN SIN & DEATH

From Genesis to Malachi, the pages of the Old Testament promise that one day the Anointed One (Messiah) would come to liberate God’s oppressed people. The oppressive tyrants to be overthrown always were the triumvirate of evil—Satan, sin, and death, which is made clear in the Genesis 3:15 promise that the seed of the woman would crush the serpent’s head. Since Israel was constantly subjugated by foreign political powers, as it was by Rome in Jesus’ Day, its people almost always thought of the Messiah as one to overthrow their political oppression. But nations like Assyria, Babylon, and Rome were just pawns in God’s hands. The root cause of Israel’s oppression was its disobedience, as texts like this make clear:

But if you will not be careful to do all his commandments and his statutes that I command you today, then all these curses shall come upon you…. The Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You shall go out one way against them and flee seven ways before them…. And you shall be oppressed and robbed continually. You shall betroth a wife, but another man shall ravish her. Your sons and your daughters shall be given to another people, while your eyes look on and fail with longing for them all day long, but you shall be helpless. and you shall be only oppressed and crushed continually…. (Dt 28:15ff).

It could not be clearer that the oppressor, from which Israel needed to be set free, was not Egypt, Assyria, or Rome, but the sin that reigned after Adam aligned his kingdom with Satan’s rebellion, which cased Israel’s failure to keep its covenant obligations. Though many Israelites missed it, the Messianic prophecies were clear that the real oppressor was SIN. Listen to these familiar words of Isaiah 

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore (v

  • Notice that the Second Adam takes back the governing of earth from SATAN, the Prince of the Power of the Air—the government shall be upon his shoulder.
  • Note that SIN and its corruption of relationships will be overthrown. As the Prince of Peace, shalom will be restored; both justice and righteousness reign—to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness.
  • Note, that DEATH, the third ally in this triumvirate, will be vanquished since this kingdom of righteousness will be from this time forth and forevermore.

Not only did Messianic prophecies point to the defeat of this triumvirate of oppressors, not a political foe, but Jesus also deliberately prefigured the overthrow of these three specific tyrants in his ministry. Concerning SIN, consider how thoroughly Jesus proclaimed what the righteousness of the Second Great Commandment required, in his Sermon on the Mount. It went way beyond the outward keeping of the law.

You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect (Mt 5:43-48).

Concerning DEATH, Jesus prefigured overcoming the curse upon the material earth placed there because of Adam’s sin by making the deaf hear, blind see, lame walk, and those afflicted with disease well. Decay and death were further overcome by raising Jairus' daughter and Jesus’ friend Lazarus from the dead. Concerning SATAN, Jesus not only routinely cast out demons but in Matthew 12:26-29 interprets his own messianic mission to be the invasion of Satan’s kingdom. Jesus answers the accusation that the source of his supernatural power is the demonic world with the words, “Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and a divided household falls. And if Satan also is divided against himself, how will his kingdom stand?... But if it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you” (Lk 11:17-20).

UNDERSTANDING OUR CURRENT CHAPTER IN REDEMPTIVE HISTORY

One of the reasons it has been so difficult for Christians to understand and apply what Jesus taught about the kingdom of God is that Jesus was emphatic that his kingdom has already come but also spoke of it as having not yet come fully. The messianic prophecies have been fulfilled. Jesus, the second Adam, has come. He has defeated Satan, sin, and death. The victory is already accomplished. He has proven that victory by rising from the grave. He has taken back Kingdom Earth’s rule by ascending to the right hand of the Father. However, Jesus has not yet removed Satan, sin, and death from Adam’s kingdom. Christians are still tempted by Satan, they still sin, and they still die. How are we to understand this already-not yet aspect of the kingdom? Many scholars have suggested a parallel to the Allied defeat of Germany in WWII. Once they succeeded in the D-Day invasion, their victory was sure; it was only a matter of time until VE Day. The decisive battle in a war may already have occurred in a relatively early stage of the war, and yet the war on the ground rages on. Satan has been defeated, but not destroyed. In Colossians 2:15, Paul says, Christ has disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him. But he does not say the powers of darkness have fled the battlefield. Satan, and sin still wage war, but we can defeat them if we fight with the spiritual weapons explained in Ephesians 6.

THE ADVANCE OF CHRIST’S KINGDOM OF RIGHTEOUSNESS IN 2000 YEARS

  • The value of human life. In the ancient world, child sacrifice was common. Excavating in Samaria during King Ahab’s time, Archaeologist Ashtoreth Halley stated, “Just a few steps from the temple was a cemetery, where many jars were found containing remains of infants who had been sacrificed in the temple” (D. James Kennedy, What if Jesus Hadn’t Been Born). Before Christianity, it was common for infirm babies or unwanted little ones to be taken into the countryside and abandoned to be eaten by wild animals. George Grant sums up, “Before the explosive and penetrating growth of medieval Christian influence, the primordial evils of abortion, infanticide, abandonment, and exposure were a normal part of everyday life in Europe” (Ibid).
  • The value of women. Plato taught that if a man lived a cowardly life, he would be reincarnated as a woman. Little girls have been far more vulnerable to abortion and infanticide than boys. For example, Adam Smith writing in 1776, said: “In all the great towns of China, several female babies are every night exposed in the street or drowned liked puppies in the water.” In India, prior to the influence of Christ’s kingdom of righteousness, widows were voluntarily or involuntarily burned on their husband’s funeral pyres—a grisly practice known as suttee. Africa had a similar practice. The wives and concubines of the chieftain were killed at his death so they could not have sex with anyone else. Such tribal customs were stopped only after Christianity began to penetrate the continent.
  • Help for the Poor and Needy. Before King Jesus ascended Adam’s throne, and Christianity began to impact the Roman world, charity was nearly non-existent. The Greek and Roman cultures exalted self-reliance, despising mercy, helplessness, and weakness. One Roman wrote, “in Rome no one ever gives away anything to anyone if he can help it.” Into this self-centered culture stormed the kingdom of righteousness, stressing the support of Christianity’s widows, orphans, sick, and disabled, and of those who, because of their faith, were thrown out of employment or were imprisoned.” One historian, wrote, “It was the church’s care for its own poor and for outsiders that so impressed the pagan Emperor Julian. Julian wrote: ‘For it is disgraceful that, when no Jew ever has to beg and the impious Galileans (Christians) support both their own poor and ours as well, all men see that our people lack aid from us’” (Ibid).
  • Universal Education. Many of the world’s languages were first set to writing by Christian missionaries so that people could read the Bible for themselves. In the latest Wycliff Bible Translators Report, 1,548 languages have a complete NT, with portions translated into another 1,138 languages. This codification of oral language into writing was often the first step towards educating rural, tribal groups. But Christianity’s commitment to education goes much deeper. For example, William McGuffey, a Presbyterian minister, authored McGuffey’s Reader, which sold 120 million copies, for many years providing the backbone of grammar school education for Colonial America. Every collegiate institution (like Harvard, Princeton, Yale) founded before 1775 in the colonies—except the University of Pennsylvania—was established by some branch of the Christian Church
  • Founding of Hospitals. In the pre-Christian era hospitals existed only for soldiers, gladiators, and slaves whose masters could pay for their care. Manual laborers and other poor individuals had no place of refuge. Because humans feared contracting disease the ill were often driven out of their homes and left to their fate. But In 325, the Christian church’s Council of Nicaea, made a world-changing decree. The bishops of the church were instructed to go into every cathedral city in Christendom and start a hospital. Even today, many hospitals reflect their origin in their name, e.g. Holy Cross, Adventist, St. Joseph’s.
  • The Discovery of Science. It is well known that many of the most famous scientists were devout Christians, e.g. Blaise Paschal, Johannes Kepler, and Sir Isaac Newton. Less well known is that Christians urged the exploration of science through organizations like The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge founded in 1660. Seven of the ten founders were Puritans.
  • Explosion of Conversions to the Christian Faith. Though overall church attendance in America is down, the losses are nominal Christinas from Liberal churches whose Christianity is inherited in contrast to religion that is chosen as it is among Evangelicals. Tim Keller in his book, Making Sense of God points out “Only evangelical protestants, among all religious bodies in the Untied States are converting more people than they are losing. In the non-Western world the growth of Christianity is stunning.” In the last 50 years, the number of Christians in East Asia (China, Korea, Japan) has grown from 11.4 million to 171.1 million. In 1910, only 12 million people in Africa were Christians. Today, there are 630 million Christians, a growth from 10% to almost 50% of the population. Today, there are Christians and organized Christian churches in every inhabited country on earth. Christ is spreading his kingdom of righteousness over the earth!

5 REASONS WHY CHRISTIANS AREN’T MORE SANCTIFIED (HOLY) TODAY

A. Because we lose sight of the greatness of God’s mercy to us. After devoting eleven chapters to putting the glorious gospel of grace on display to the Romans, Paul writes, With eyes wide open to the mercies of God, I beg you, my brothers, as an act of intelligent worship, to give him your bodies, as a living sacrifice, consecrated to him and acceptable by him. There is only one intelligent response to God’s mercy—in gratefulness put myself on the altar. Jesus gave two examples of sinners who had not lost sight of God’s mercy—the tax collector in the corner of the temple who would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!'--and  the prostitute standing behind him, weeping, shamelessly letting down her hair to wipe Jesus’ feet with her tears, of whom He said, “She who is forgiven much loves much.” Until I realize that my sin is worse than hers—because to whom much is given much is required—I won’t find the power to keep putting myself on the altar, grateful for God’s mercy to me.

B. Because spiritual change is more a consequence of what our hearts love than of what our hands do. Ultimately, sanctification is the result of loving Jesus more than I love sin. Godliness is not behavior modification, but heart transformation. I cannot take three steps to overcome lust forever next Thursday at 3 PM and be forever, sexually pure. The problem is my heart desires, which are not easily changed. Channeling and protecting the desires of my heart is the foundation of growing in holiness, which is why God says, Watch over your heart with all diligence for from it flow the springs of life (Prov 4:23). John Piper recognizes that holiness is a consequence of changing our heart loves in saying: “One reason lust reigns in so many is that Christ has so little appeal. You were created to treasure Christ with all your heart—more than you treasure sex or sugar.  If you have little taste for Jesus, competing pleasures will triumph. Plead with God for the satisfaction you don’t have. Quote Psalm 90:14, ‘Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love that we might rejoice and be glad all our days’” (Desiring God).

C. Because abiding in Christ, the only path to spiritual fruitfulness, takes great intentionality. Jesus was clear about how the fruit of the Spirit are produced. He said, Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. One of the most counter-intuitive parts of Jesus’ personality was how he handled his life getting busier and his opportunities exploding. Luke observes, But now even more the report about him went abroad, and great crowds gathered to hear him and to be healed of their infirmities. But he would withdraw to desolate places and pray (Lk 5:15-16). The greatest temptation to men of our cell-phone-world of the 21st century may not be the constant accessibility of porn. It may be the theft of private time to shut out the world of sound and sight and touch to commune with our savior and Lord.

D. Because few of us have mastered fighting sin with the spiritual weapons given to us to use in this battle. Christians are not commanded to be courageous in spiritual battle in our own strength but to be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Paul then equates fighting in the Lord with putting on Christ’s spiritual armor and picking up Christ’s spiritual weapons. We are to put on the belt of truth, breastplate of righteousness, readiness to share the gospel, and helmet of salvation, raise up the shield of faith, and fight with the sword of the spirit and with prayer in Jesus’ name. But very few Christians know what employing each piece of equipment in battle actually looks like. The result is far too many victories for agents of the kingdom of darkness who all seem to know how to fight!

E. Because most Christian men fight their battles in a manner that guarantees failure—ALONE. When it comes to obeying God’s command, “Be holy because I am holy,” men ignore the age-old text of Scripture that says, Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up! Again, if two lie together, they keep warm but how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him—a threefold cord is not quickly broken (Ecc 4:9-12). Furthermore, Jesus sets all Christian men an example. On the night of his most intense spiritual battle, in the Garden of Gethsemane when he wrestled with saying yes or no to the cross—he intentionally invited only his three closest buddies, Peter, James and John to be near him, coming back to them over and over as he fought his battle. Jesus did not fight this battle alone.

For Further Prayerful Thought

  1. What evidence would you point to from Scripture that proves that the oppressors the promised Messiah would overthrow always were Satan, sin, and death and not the political oppressors of Israel?
  2. How does the Already/Not Yet description of this period of redemptive history clarify things and muddy things?
  3. The Second Adam’s overthrow of the triumvirate, Satan, sin, and death and ascension to God’s right hand has positioned Him to spread his kingdom of righteousness and restoration over earth for 2000 years. Of the 6 ways that I mentioned its impact on culture which ones stood out most to you?
  4. Which reason for Christians’ lack of sanctification stood out most to you?   
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God DELEGATED More to Us Than We Realize

God DELEGATED More to Us Than We Realize

On 07 December, 2024 By Gary Yagel

As we pursue a clear mission target, which is the goal of this podcast, Christians today can inadvertently be shaped by a “lifeboat” view of our mission in this fallen world. We can subtly act as if the created world and its culture were the Titanic, and now that we’ve hit the iceberg of sin, there is nothing left for us to do but get ourselves and others into lifeboats. The ship is sinking rapidly, God has given up on it and is concerned only with saving those who will respond to the gospel and get in the lifeboat. Any effort we make to improve life in this world through vocation—building a bridge, producing a movie, designing cell phones, teaching secular kids in public schools—has no real meaning. It is just “rearranging the deck chairs” on the sinking ship of our fallen culture on its way down to ruin.

But such a view of Christianity is very flawed. This world is not sinking down to ultimate destruction like the Titanic; to the contrary, it has been boarded by the builder and designer of the ship who at great personal cost is patching the giant hole caused by sin, restoring everything damaged by the toxic sea water, and sailing that renewed ship right into the golden waters of a perfect, eternal world. The lifeboat understanding of Christianity ignores two fundamental biblical facts.  The first is the goodness of God’s creation, a mirror of God’s glory, upon which God Himself will one day dwell in its renewed form with his people forever. The second is the reality of God’s nature as a delegator. In the first chapter of the Bible, God is revealed not only to be the great creator and ruler over his good earth, but also to be the great delegator—having fashioned Adam and Eve in his own image to continue the creating and ruling process that He began. His delegating words were, “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.” This episode examines how God delegated to humans the process he started, i.e. creating and ruling the material order and why such an understanding gives everyday life great meaning.   

Today we continue our series, Life Is Knowing God, by examining God’s role as delegator. The chief way God chooses to rule his creation is by delegating that rule to humanity, and the chief way Christ brings renewal to his fallen creation is, likewise, by delegating his rule to the new humanity commanding us to seek first the spread of Christ’s kingdom rule into every sphere of our lives and ever corner of the planet. The word, delegate, means “to entrust to another,” “to appoint to act on your behalf." God’s plan to delegate his task of creating and ruling the material world to mankind seems to have shaped how God recounts his creation of the planet, providing a pattern for humans to continue. Two aspects of this process stand out.

A. In the creation narrative, God first makes the stuff of creation. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Then the creation narrative reveals God following a distinct pattern for Adam and Eve to later follow, separate and rearrange:  Vs 4 And God separated the light from the darkness. Vs 7 And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. Vs 9 And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” God, the Master Craftsman, recounts his actions in creating the cosmos not as simply speaking every sparrow, giraffe, and oak tree directly into existence. This would be a pattern no human can follow! Rather, he describes his creative work as separating and rearranging the stuff of creation because that is a pattern that he wants his delegates, human beings to follow, as they continue his creative work of developing the material world he entrusts to them. They are to separate the sound waves into notes and rearrange them into music, separate the light waves into colors and rearrange them into art, separate iron ore from the ground and rearrange it into bridges, separate rubber from trees and rearrange it into balls.

B. The second pattern in God’s creative process that leaps off the page is creating four kingdoms first, the heavens, the air, the water, and dry land (days 1-3.5) and then the rulers of those four kingdoms (days 4-6):  1) The ruler of the heavens: And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night. 2) The ruler of the waters: God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm. 3) The ruler of the air: and every winged bird. 4) The ruler of dry land: And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds—livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth.” The connection of created beings to the kingdoms (realms) they rule sets the stage for the creation of man.

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. Notice how closely being God’s image bearers is linked to exercising dominion. That is what the High King of Heaven does. He rules. That is what he designed his image-bearers to do—rule. God delegates his rule over Kingdom Earth to humankind.

After linking the likeness of humans to himself as the ultimate ruler, God then issues the First Commission to the first man and woman. “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Jordan Raynor, in his book, The Sacredness of Secular Work rightly observes that a correct understanding of our mission as Christ-followers begins by realizing that God’s work of creating was never completed by God. He argues, “God never intended creation to be a product we passively consume. He intended it to be a project we actively participate in.” The sixth day of creation has been mistakenly viewed as the end of creation, when it is actually just the beginning of the next chapter about humans creating:

“You might think that our story is ending, but in fact it is just the beginning. God made you to look like Him—to act and work and create with Him. Because while in six days God created a lot, there are so many things that He simply did not—like bridges and baseballs, sandcastles and s’mores. God asked us to create and fill the planet with more” (The Creator in You).

God delegated to us, his image bearers, the responsibility to continue his work of creating with the stuff of the material world and continue his work of ruling over, i.e. shaping the growing interaction of image bearers with each other and with the material world as they develop its potential. This interaction is called “culture.” Before the Great Commission was given by the Second Adam, God gave the First Commission to the First Adam and Eve. Let’s dig into a deeper understanding of it.

1. Be fruitful and multiply. The creation of human beings is not finished. However, God no longer makes males from the dust of the ground and females from the ribs of males. God delegates to the first husband and wife, the responsibility of creating humans through sperm joining egg. This very delegation of the further creation of humans through the pattern of one man and one woman conceiving a child by making love to one another speaks volumes about God’s creation of the human family as the first human institution. How perfect for a child to be conceived in a home in which his mom and dad are in love with each other and thus provide the stability of both father and mother for the child.

We are raising children and grandchildren who hear many voices that undermine God’s design of the family. Marriage is no longer defined as the joining of one man and one woman. God’s design of children to need the feminine touch of a mom and masculine involvement of a dad is being denied. In fact, the value of children, themselves, has been substantially lost in America, which now has a birth rate that is insufficient to replenish our population. Nevertheless, God’s created institutions will prevail against this assault. In contrast to the message sent through social media that the recipe for personal happiness is making money, living for yourself, and staying single or childless without the constraints of marriage or children, UVA researcher Brad Wilcox has proved that the opposite is actually the case. Here are just four of the facts uncovered by his research for his 2024 book, Get Married:

  • Both men and women who get and stay married accumulate much greater wealth than people who don’t marry.
  • Married men and women with families report more meaningful lives, compared with their single and childless peers.
  • Couples who take a “we-before-me” approach to married life—by for instance sharing joint checking accounts—are happier and less divorce-prone than couples who do not.
  • Couples who form “family-first” marriages—characterized by frequent date nights, family fun time and chores done with the kids—enjoy the happiest marriages.

It should not surprise us that those in marriages between one man and one woman who choose to have children flourish by every measure of evaluation. They are following God’s creation design. Every ounce of energy spent loving our wives, serving our children, and building our homes is fulfilling The First Commission!

2. Fill the earth. Jordan Raynor explains the meaning of the Hebrew word fill: “Scholars agree that this isn’t God reiterating the call for us to fill the maternity ward. While the command to ‘increase in number’ is a call to procreation, the command to ‘fill the earth’ is a call to civilization and cultural creation. It is God’s call to take this largely blank canvas he handed us on the sixth day and fill it with art and architecture, schools and services, tree forts and telescopes.” Nancy Pearcey notes that fulfilling this command given in our God’s First Commission to humans is fundamental to every human’s sense of fulfillment.

“The lesson of the Cultural Mandate is that our sense of fulfillment depends on engaging in creative, constructive work. The ideal human existence is not eternal leisure or an endless vacation—or even a monastic retreat into prayer and meditation—but creative effort expended for the glory of God and the benefit of others. Our calling is not just ‘to go to heaven’ but also to cultivate the earth, not just to ‘save souls’ but also to serve God through our work. For God himself is engaged not only in the work of salvation but also in the work pf preserving and developing his creation. When we obey the cultural mandate, we participate in the work of God himself." (Total Truth). 

3. Subdue the earth. The ESV Study Bible notes:

“The term ‘subdue’ (Heb KABASH) elsewhere means to bring a people or land into subjection so that it will yield service to the one subduing it. Here the idea is that the man and woman are to make the earth’s resources beneficial for themselves, which implies that they would investigate and develop the earth’s resources to make them useful for human beings generally. This command provides a foundation for wise scientific and technological development.”

“Subdue the earth,” means to harness the natural world: plant crops, build bridges, operate businesses, write fiction, design I phones, and compose music. God has delegated to us, his image bearers, the responsibility for building civilization on the planet that is a mirror of his glory. I don’t know whether or not the cofounder of Nike, Phil Knight, is a Christian. But Knight captured the essence of this concept when he wrote:

“When you make something, when you improve something, when you deliver something, when you add some new thing or service to the lives of strangers, making them happier, or healthier, or safer, or better and when you do it all crisply and efficiently, smartly the way everything should be done but seldom is—you’re participating more fully in the whole grand human drama” (Shoe Dog).   

4. Rule over all of creation. The ESV renders rule, exercise dominion over the rest of creation. The High King delegates to us the shaping of life on Kingdom Earth as the population grows and diversifies, developing the earth’s resources. But we are to rule our portion of the kingdom FOR him, in alignment with the moral law of God written on every heart (Rom 2:15). Human life is to be regulated by the righteousness of the High King, summarized in the two Great Commandments, “Love the LORD with all your heart” and “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Righteousness was to prevail on earth, just as righteousness prevails in heaven.

After Adam and Eve rebelled against God’s rule, Satan, sin, and death took over earth’s throne causing life on the planet to descend into such wickedness that God destroyed nearly all of it in the flood. Interestingly, as the flood waters recede and created life begins anew, God repeats The First Commission to Noah in words nearly identical to those said to Adam and Eve, with one huge exception. Be fruitful and multiply, increase greatly on the earth and multiply in it. But notice that the command to rule over creation is missing. This omission seems to reflect the truth that at that time, Satan, sin, and death were ruling Adam’s throne, not Adam. Adam’s race needed a Second Adam to overthrow the kingdom of darkness and win back Adam’s throne. And, as we are now celebrating in Advent, our Redeemer did come to take back Adam’s kingdom, and give it back to us, paying the penalty that our sins justly demand so that as Jesus destroys sin, he doesn’t have to destroy us. The Second Adam now re-delegates to us the responsibility to spread his kingdom of righteousness over all the earth making disciples of every nation.

FIVE TAKE-AWAYS

This entire episode about God the delegator is background for grasping more fully that God has delegated to us the responsibility for ruling earth in The First Commission and then again in the Great Commission, assigning us responsibility for taking his redemptive kingdom of righteousness into every sphere of earthly life where we have influence and into every corner of the globe. We are to exercise dominion, to rule, to implement righteousness there. Here are a few practical take-aways from what we’ve seen:

A. Every ounce of energy you spend to care for your wife, kids, grandkids and extended family is fulfilling our First Commission. The family is God’s primary institution for the benefit of planet earth, beginning even before the church. The importance of this sphere of life is so foundational that we all need a game plan. Here is a quick way to design a simple game plan for loving your wife well this week. Read through these components of love asking, “which need more attention from me?”

Love is slow to lose patience—it looks for a way of being constructive. It is not possessive: it is neither anxious to impress nor does it cherish inflated ideas of its own importance. Love has good manners and does not pursue selfish advantage. It is not touchy. It does not keep account of evil or gloat over the wickedness of other people. On the contrary, it is glad with all good men when truth prevails. Love knows no limit to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope.

B. Since vocation is how God tasked humans to develop Earths’ resources to benefit mankind, every effort to accomplish your work well, matters to God. It fulfills our First Commission. Richard Pratt describes this assignment: “The Great King has summoned each of us into the throne room. ‘Take this portion of my kingdom,’ he says, ‘I am making you my steward over your office, your workbench, your kitchen stove. Put your heart into mastering this part of my world. Get it in order. Unearth its treasures, do all you can with it.’” (Designed for Dignity)

C. Your vocation, the place where you spend most of the day, is your primary sphere for spreading the kingdom of righteousness. You might want to make some time to think and pray through how you can better cause your work sphere to conform to the values of the kingdom of God. Kingdom values include humility, servanthood, justice, integrity, treating all with dignity as God’s image-bearers, forgiveness, grace, mercy, compassion, fruitfulness, generosity, etc.

D. Because God has delegated to humans the development and shaping of every sphere of life on planet earth to exhibit his righteousness, you might make time to think about and write out Christ’s agenda for each major sphere of your life—in your role as husband, father/grandfather, employee/employer, neighbor, church member, citizen, steward of resources, ambassador of the kingdom. The common adage if you fail to plan, plan to fail rings especially true in fulfilling this responsibility assigned to you by God, himself. We need intentionality and a plan.

E. Your fruitfulness in every sphere depends upon your commitment to prayer for that sphere. Cornelius Plantinga, in his book, Engaging God’s World, writes,

“A Christian who goes to work for the kingdom (i.e. every Christian) simultaneously goes to war. What’s needed on God’s side are well-educated warriors (warriors who know what is going on). We are now fallen creatures in a fallen world. The Christian gospel tells us that all hell has broken loose in this sad world and that, in Christ, all heaven has come to do battle. Christ has come to defeat the powers and principalities, to move the world over onto a new foundation, and to equip a people—informed, devout, determined people—to lead the way in righting what is wrong, transforming what is corrupted, in doing things that make for peace.”

For Further Prayerful Thought

  1. How would you explain to someone the Genesis 1 teaching that God has delegated his royal rule over Kingdom Earth to mankind?
  2. In what sense would you say God has finished creation and in what sense would you say he has not finished his work of creating?
  3. When considering the Genesis 1:28 four-fold First Commission God gave to Adam and Eve, what is the significance of God starting out with the love-making process of husband and wife the first part of that commission? How can we uphold the value of the first human institution—the family—without demeaning those who are single, divorced, or childless?
  4. If the goal of both The First Commission and the Great Commission is to spread the righteous rule of Christ over every sphere of human life (beginning with surrender to King Jesus in the human heart) why do we Christians spend so little effort being intentional abut thinking through how to impact those spheres of human life where we have influence?
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The Huge Implications of God’s Goodness

The Huge Implications of God’s Goodness

On 29 November, 2024 By Gary Yagel

In December 2004, a massive tsunami in the Indian Ocean killed more than 250,000 people. Over the following weeks, the news media were filled with articles asking, “Where is God?” One reporter wrote: “If God is God, he’s not good. If God is good, he’s not God. You can’t have it both ways, especially after the Indian Ocean catastrophe” Suffering nearly always creates doubts in the human mind about God’s goodness. And if God is not good, then his moral law is just his selfish restriction upon human pleasure, which was the reasoning Satan used to lure Eve into rebellion. This episode examines the massive implications of God’s perfect goodness, not just in resisting temptation, but in enduring suffering, and in shaping the way we interact with the fallen world.  

A famous attack upon the goodness of God was made by Rabbi Harold Kushner, in his book When Bad Things Happen to Good People, published following the death of his son, Aaron, from the horrible premature aging disease progeria. Kushner argued, “If God is all-powerful, he could prevent evil. If God is all-good, he would prevent evil. Evil exists. Therefore, either God is not all-powerful, or he is not all-good.” Kushner opted for God being good but not all-powerful. Since Kushner’s book exploded on the scene in 1981, careful thinkers have exposed the logical flaws of his argument. Hidden away within Kushner’s argument are two fatal assumptions.

The first is that the evil and suffering that exist can have no good purpose. Kushner views evil as inherently pointless. This reasoning is of course, fallacious. Just because you can’t see or imagine a good reason why God might allow something to happen doesn’t mean there can’t be one. It is a bit arrogant for humans to say that if we can’t plumb the depths of the universe for good answers to suffering, there can’t be any. This argument against God’s existence doesn’t hold up, not only to logic, but to our human experience. Athletes understand a basic truth of life—no pain, no gain. Many people admit that most of what they really needed for success in life came through their prior most difficult and painful experiences. So even at our human level, we get a taste of the possibility that God might allow evil and suffering for a greater good.

The second hidden assumption that fatally undermines Kushner’s logic is that if God were an all-powerful, all-loving God, he would have destroyed evil and suffering ALREADY. Ironically, Kushner’s assumption that a good God would destroy evil is exactly what the gospel of Jesus Christ points to—but not yet! The gospel is that God himself in the Second Person of the Trinity came on a rescue mission for creation. He had to pay for our sins so that someday he could end evil and suffering without ending us!

Besides refuting Kushner’s false logic, the Bible, additionally points to God’s compassion and identification with the human suffering caused by our own evil as proof of God’s goodness and love for those who suffer. As Keller observes:

“Christianity alone among the world religions claims that God became uniquely and fully human in Jesus Christ and therefore knows firsthand, despair, rejection, loneliness, poverty, bereavement, torture, and imprisonment. On the cross he went beyond even the worst human suffering and experienced cosmic rejection and pain that exceeds ours as infinitely as his knowledge and power exceeds ours. In his death, God suffers in love identifying with the abandoned and godforsaken” (Ibid).

When we ask, “Why does God allow suffering and pain to continue?” and we look at the cross of Jesus, we still can’t fully conceive what the answer is. But we now know what the answer is NOT. It can’t be that God doesn’t love us. As Paul wrote, Neither death nor life, neither messenger of Heaven nor monarch of earth, neither what happens today nor what may happen tomorrow, neither a power from on high nor a power from below, nor anything else in God’s whole world has any power to separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord!

BIBLICAL TEACHING THAT GOD IS GOOD

  • Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him (Ps 34:8)!
  • Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise! Give thanks to him; bless his name! For the Lord is good (Ps 100:4-5).
  • Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever!...For he satisfies the longing soul, and the hungry soul he fills with good things (Ps 107:1, 9).
  • The Lord is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made…. You open your hand; you satisfy the desire of every living thing (Ps 145:9, 16).

God’s goodness is his morally pure self-giving character by which he acts to benefit his creation. A. W. Tozer, in his book, The Knowledge of the Holy, describes God’s attribute of goodness. “The goodness of God is that which disposes Him to be kind, cordial, benevolent, and full of good will towards men. He is tenderhearted and of quick sympathy, and his unfailing attitude towards all human beings is open, frank, and friendly. By his nature, he is inclined to bestow blessedness, and he takes holy pleasure in the happiness of his people.” J. I. Packer adds to this explanation that goodness is generosity, which “means a disposition to give to others in a way which has no mercenary motive and is not limited by what recipients deserve, but consistently goes beyond it. Generosity expresses the simple wish that others should have what makes them happy.” (Knowing God).   

GOD’S GOODNESS IS TESTED IN TRIALS

James, the earthly brother of Jesus, seems to have understood that when trials come our way it is easy for us to doubt the goodness of God. Notice three ways that James highlights God’s goodness for us to remember in the midst of our trials.

A. God is a GOOD coach. A good coach focuses on game day. He knows he must get his team running hills and wind sprints to build their endurance so that in the fourth quarter they can overpower their opponent and win. As a superb coach, God’s focus is the Day when Jesus Christ is revealed—a day that will continue into eternity. To be fully ready for that day, we need to build character through endurance. So, James writes, When all kinds of trials and temptations crowd into your lives my brothers, don’t resent them as intruders, but welcome them as friends! Realize that they come to test your faith and to produce in you the quality of endurance. But let the process go on until that endurance is fully developed, and you will find you have become men of mature character with the right sort of independence (1:2-4). We cannot become like Christ in our character without enduring pain. Pain is the fire that refines our inner attitudes. But we hate pain because our focus is right now instead of game day. However, God loves us too much to take his eyes off game day. He does NOT wrap us up in a protective bubble to be “safe.” It is precisely because he loves us that he is not safe, in the sense of protecting us from all pain. I think of Lucy’s question to Mr. Beaver in The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe about whether Aslan was a safe lion. Mr. Beaver answered, “Who said anything about safe. ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he is good.'"  

B. God’s goodness causes him to promise us wisdom to endure hard times. God has not endowed humans with the mental horsepower to always understand suffering. He is weaving our lives into his perfect tapestry, which includes dark hews of suffering, difficulty, and pain. We view the tapestry from underneath, where the dark threads seem like a bunch of ugly knots. But from the perspective of eternity, we will see how the dark threads were necessary to accomplish God's perfect design of our lives. However, though we are limited in our ability to grasp God’s purpose for suffering, God promises enough wisdom to get us through the trial. James continues into verse 5: And if, in the process, any of you does not know how to meet any particular problem he has only to ask God—who gives generously to all men without making them feel foolish or guilty—and he may be quite sure that the necessary wisdom will be given him. In goodness, God is happy to grant to us all the wisdom we need to get through a trial, without shaming us if we ask for it.

C. The goodness of God, which lies behind every good gift, never changes. As James addresses Christians who were suffering, he reminds them that the God who is behind every good gift they have every enjoyed is the same good God who is taking them through this trial. Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change (1:17). James wants to insulate his readers against Satan’s fiery arrows, which make us doubt God’s goodness when he takes us through hard times. The God who could remover this difficulty from your life but has not done so is the same one who sent his beloved Son to the cross proving once and for all that he loves you and desires what is best for you. “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Rom 8:32)

THE DOCTRINE OF COMMON GRACE

James’ teaching that every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights is the foundation for what has been called common grace. John Calvin recognized this capacity for goodness in non-Christians as a gift of God’s grace. He made the distinction between God’s saving grace towards believers, and God’s common grace towards all men. This James text means that no matter who performs it, every act of goodness, wisdom, justice and beauty is empowered by God. God gives out good gifts of artistic talent, intellectual power, athletic ability, musical skill, wisdom, physical strength, etc. graciously, for the development of his beloved creation earth. He casts them across all humanity regardless of race, gender, religious conviction, or moral character. This doctrine of common grace transforms our entire attitude towards the fallen world.   

The Goodness of Creation Reaffirmed

A. We are to VALUE God’s creation. God’s action of pouring out good gifts upon his image bearers to develop his creation points to the goodness of the material world, which is a mirror of God’s glory. It is a great tragedy that the church has often fallen into the dualism of Greek Gnosticism, which viewed the material world as inferior to the spiritual world. In fact, Roman Catholicism located evil in physical matter. Thus, marriage, along with sexual intercourse that went with it, were lawful but not nearly as virtuous as avoiding sex altogether and becoming a celibate priest. In sharp contrast to such heresy, Paul commanded married Christians at Corinth: The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; and likewise the husband also does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Stop depriving one another so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. (1 Cor 7:4-5). In Proverbs 5, God shamelessly explains to married men struggling with lust the same Biblical principle for defeating it that Paul taught: the best defense is a great offense. Drink water from your own cistern. Should your springs be scattered abroad, streams of water in the streets? Rejoice in the wife of your youth. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love. Notice that God does not say to take a cold shower, suck it up, pray and read your Bible more! Scripture teaches men that part of leadership is to be sure he and his wife both understand that pursuing sexual oneness is as important to God as pursuing spiritual oneness.

Any demeaning of the physical realm, whether it is the sexual relationship in marriage, the arts, physical recreation, secular work, feeding the hungry, or clothing the poor is heresy. John’s command, “Love not the world neither the things of the world” was never intended by God to deny the goodness of his material world and its culture. That text goes on to say that it is the values that guide secular culture not governed by the moral law of God that is to be avoided. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. To separate from the world is to deny our fundamental calling in the very first chapter of the very first book of the Bible to shape culture. Furthermore, the author who said, “Love not the world” also told us that God so loved the world that he gave us his only Son to die to redeem it and that the spiritual fruit of love can’t ignore the realm of the physical: But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? (I Jn 3:17).

B. We are to DEVELOP THE POTENTIAL of Creation. The observation in James 1 that every good gift among humankind has been poured out by God upon all his image bearers to enjoy and develop his creation underscores the importance of our calling not just to go to heaven but to cultivate the earth. Chuck Colson says:

God cares not only about redeeming souls but also about restoring his creation. He calls us to be agents not only of his saving grace but also of his common grace. Our job is not only to build up the church but also to build a society to the glory of God. As agents of common grace, we are called to help sustain and renew his creation, to uphold the created institutions of family and society, to pursue science and scholarship, to create works of art and beauty and to heal and help those suffering from the fall (How Now Shall We Live).

Richard Pratt points out, “God ordained humanity to be the primary instrument by which his kingship will be realized on earth” (Designed for Dignity). This original calling of King Adam who was given Kingdom Earth to develop and rule was recovered from Satan, sin, and death by the Second Adam who now extends his rule over earth by reissuing the cultural mandate to his followers to accomplish, now, in his resurrection power to overthrow sin. Richard Pratt explains further:

The Great King has summoned each of us into his throne room. “Take this portion of my kingdom,” he says, “I’m making you my steward over your office, your workbench, your kitchen stove. Put your heart into mastering this part of my world. Get it in order; unearth its treasures; do all you can with it. Then everybody will see what a glorious King I am." That’s why we get up every morning and go to work. We don’t labor only to survive; insects do that. Our work is an honor, a privileged commission from our great God. God has given each of us a portion of his kingdom to explore and to develop to its fullest (Ibid).

The Goodness of Lost Humans Reaffirmed

The Biblical teaching of total depravity does not mean that mankind is as evil as it can be. Rather, it means that evil has reached every aspect of the human heart. In a world full of false God’s like money, power, pleasure, prestige, and comfort, Paul commands the Romans, “Make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires,” which can easily lead to a very mistaken withdrawal from evil fallen culture and evil fallen non-Christians. But such a separation violates what Scripture teaches. The image of God in humans is not destroyed by sin but only marred. The good gifts poured out upon all means that all humans experience common grace. Common grace keeps our total depravity from becoming absolute; it keeps the world from falling into anarchy. In my view, the greatest impact of understanding the Bible’s teaching of common grace is changing our attitude towards unbelievers who are part of the fallen culture from a negative to positive one. Keeping in mind that our assigned mission is to shape the culture for good, common grace transforms our attitude towards the lost from the unbiblical, default view of adversary to one of potential ally. Reformed theologian John Murray explains that God not only restrains evil in unredeemed men, but he also endows them with:

“Gifts, talents, and aptitudes; he stimulates them with interest and purpose to the practice of virtues, the pursuance of worthy tasks, and the cultivation of arts and science that occupy the time, activity, and energy of men that make for the benefit of civilization and of the human race. He ordains institutions for the protection and promotion of right, the preservation of liberty, and the improvement of physical and moral conditions” (Writings).

Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper held the same view of common grace, saying, “God is glorified in the total development towards which human life and power over nature gradually march on under the guardianship of “common grace.” It is His created order, His works that unfold here. It was He who seeded the field of humanity with all these powers” (A Centennial Reader). What the truth of common grace means is that the unredeemed around us are often allies in our calling from God to develop the potential of the earth and shape its culture towards good. A generation ago, the great American theologian and philosopher Francis Shaeffer, spoke of the importance of joining forces as co-belligerents. Hugh Whelchel explains the importance of this concept in the twenty-first century:  

We often meet people who are not Christians but who agree with a Christian stance on a certain cultural issue, and therefore they are willing to work together with Christians towards resolution. We should be open to working with them towards a common goal. Francis Shaeffer popularized the use of the term co-belligerence to express that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. He explained, “A co-belligerent is a person with whom I do not agree on all sorts of vital issues, but who for whatever reasons of their own is on the same side in a fight for some specific issue of social justice” (How Then Should We Work).

May God’s goodness empower trust in his good intentions in all his dealings with us and may understanding the common grace that flows from that goodness cause us to always value what every image bearer contributes to God’s good world.

For Further Prayerful Thought

  1. How would you refute the argument: If God is all-powerful, he could end suffering and evil. If he were all-good, he would end evil and suffering. Evil and suffering exist. Therefore, either God is not all-powerful or not all-good. The Christian god does not exist?
  2. Summarize the three “goodness of God” truths that James tells his readers to cling to when facing trials. Which seems most helpful to you?
  3. How does the common grace doctrine that God has given gifts to the unredeemed to enable his world to be developed and enjoyed, impact the way believers should view unbelievers and secular culture?
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Delighting in God’s Holiness and Wrath

Delighting in God’s Holiness and Wrath

On 23 November, 2024 By Gary Yagel

In the second book of C. S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, young Lucy returns to Narnia a year after her first adventure. Narnia has changed so that she feels lost. But then she catches a glimpse of Aslan. We read

Oh joy! For He was there: the huge Lion, shining white in the moonlight, with his huge black shadow underneath him…She rushed to him. She felt her heart would burst if she lost a moment. And the next thing she knew was that she was kissing him and putting her arms as far around his neck as she could and burying her face in the beautiful silkiness of his mane. The great beast rolled over on his side so that Lucy fell, half sitting and half lying between his front paws. He bent forward and just touched her nose with his tongue. His warm breath came all around her. She gazed into the large wise face.

“Welcome, child,” he said.

“Aslan,” said Lucy, “You’re bigger.”

“That is because you are older little one,” he answered.

 “Not because you are?”

 “I am not. But every year you grow you will find me bigger.”

This blog/podcast series, Jesus Said LIFE is KNOWING God, is intended to cause our view of God to get bigger as we grow towards spiritual maturity. My hope is that by the end of today’s episode we will all be able to delight in two of God’s attributes that don’t usually excite us very much—God’s holiness and his wrath.

As we try to stay focused on Christ’s mission for us, we remember that growing in the knowledge of God was often mentioned by Paul as big part of that mission. For example, Colossians 1:9 commands, “walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and INCREASING IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD.” Today we consider the temple vision of Isaiah, who in Isaiah 6 discovered, as Lucy did on her return trip to Narnia, that his earlier vision of God had been way too small.

In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.” And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am! Send me.” (vs 1-8).

ISAIAH’S VISION OF GOD

A. Seeing God’s MAJESTY. Isaiah, the prophet, is in Jerusalem. He goes into the temple probably grieving the loss of King Uzziah, anxiously praying because a stable time of Uzziah’s 52-year reign has just ended, probably wondering what his role will be in the future. And he is shocked to encounter a vision of the Lord Himself. Try to put yourself in his place. You’re in the temple courtyard—not in the Holy place—because you are not a priest. You look up and see the Lord, ADONAI.  Adonai is the title for the king of all kings. He is seated on his royal throne in the sky, high and exalted—as high as your eye can see—in his majesty. You see the magnificent train of his royal robe winding down from the heights. It covers the holy of holies, and the entire holy place. So exalted and supreme is the sovereign one that the train of his royal robe fills the entire courtyard so there is not even a place to sit. Such was Isaiah’s vision of God’s infinite majesty. Isaiah wasn’t even at the level of God’s feet with layers and layers of royal robe between Isaiah and the bottom of the throne. When you see who God really is, you see that God is so awesome, so great, so absent from limitation, that you become very small. You realize you can’t trifle with him, argue with him, complain to him, criticize him, beat him, avoid him or ignore him. The recognition of God’s weightiness is called the fear of the Lord.  The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Prov 9:10).

B. Seeing God’s GLORY. Isaiah notices strange angelic beings called seraphim with three pairs of wings: one pair with which to fly, one pair covering their feet in humble respect as ANE culture would have dictated. But why two wings covering its face? Because the presence of God brings the blinding radiance of his glory. In 1 Timothy 6:15-16, Paul describes God as one who dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see. The brightest, most blinding light possible is what is associated with God’s glory. Mark 9 describes Jesus, Peter, James and John ascending a mountain where Jesus is transfigured, before them. The veil that hid the glory of Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity was temporarily removed. Mark’s words were “his clothes became radiant, intensely white, as no cloth-refiner on earth could bleach them.” The glory of God clothes God in unapproachable light. When considering the glory that accompanies God, it is worth remembering what happened when Moses asked to see God’s glory.

Moses said, “Please show me your glory.” And he said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The Lord.’ And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.” And the Lord said, “Behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock, and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen” (Exodus 33: 19-23)/

After this took place and Moses descended the mountain, the brilliant radiance of God’s glory so remained upon Moses that the people begged Moses to cover his face—and Moses had only seen the BACK of Yahweh! No one can look upon the face of the LORD of Hosts unveiled and live. So, the seraphim covered their faces with their wings.

C. Seeing God’s HOLINESS. Next, Isaiah hears the voices of these Seraphim calling to one another, ““Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” The Hebrew word, “holy” comes from QUADASH, which means to cut, or to separate. God is “set apart” from his creatures. He is utterly distinct from his creatures. He is so exalted above them in infinite majesty, absolute unapproachability, and perfect moral purity that there is a chasm between the most virtuous human and God. Notice that the seraphim ascribe holiness to God not once, not twice, but three times. Grammatically, what occurs here in Hebrew was a totally new phenomenon in the Hebrew language. In Hebrew, repetition was used for emphasis; there were no exclamation points and no ability to “bold” what you were saying. That is why in Aramaic, Jesus would preface some of his teaching with, “Truly, truly, I say to you.” But never, ever was a word said three times, according to the Hebrew laws of grammar—only two. But so totally holy is Yahweh, the Lord of Hosts, our God, that the language Isaiah spoke and heard could not accommodate the concept—the magnitude and depth of his holiness. They had to defy the laws of grammar, crying out, “holy, holy, holy is the Lord.”  

Take Away #1:  God’s holiness means that his moral attributes are infinitely superior to human virtues.

  • Though parents do their best to discipline and train their children properly, God always disciplines and trains us perfectly.
  • Though human dependability is frail—people back out of commitments and forget their promises—God never fails to keep his word.
  • Though human kindness can carefully consider another’s feelings, such human care often gives way to selfish treatment of others. But God never ceases to treat our emotions carefully with divine kindness.
  • On the days when we most need love, the humans we count upon may be preoccupied with themselves or don’t understand our needs. But God never fails to love us, delight in us, and provide what our hearts and bodies need.
  • Though humans can sometimes have the patience that all humans desperately need because of our maddening shortcomings, eventually they reach the end of their fuse. But there is no length to God’s fuse. He knows our frame. He knows that we are dust. And he NEVER shames us.
  • Though humans can discover vital wisdom through investigation of God’s world (general revelation), the wisdom of God revealed in Scripture is perfect and eternal. It never needs to be culturally updated or abandoned because new technology or scientific discovery makes it obsolete.
  • Though humans have the capacity to forgive us many times, their ability to endure our wounds has limits. But God’s forgiveness is inexhaustible; he never tires of forgiving us. Jesus’ blood to cover our sins never runs dry.

Take Away #2: Because God is holy, holiness is a requirement for the health of the universe.  A W. Tozer, in his classic, the Knowledge of the Holy writes:

God is holy and has made holiness the moral condition necessary to health in His universe. Sin’s temporary residence in this universe only accents this. Whatever is holy is healthy; evil is moral sickness that must end ultimately in death. The formation of the language itself suggests this, the English word holy deriving from the Anglo-Saxon halig, hal, meaning “well, whole.” Since God’s first concern for his universe is its moral health, that is its holiness, whatever is contrary to this is necessarily under his eternal displeasure. To preserve his creation, he must destroy whatever would destroy it. 

One of the most irrational sins that a Christian can commit is to envy the wicked. My sinful nature says it would be nice to have three hundred concubines (as Solomon had) so I could have sex anytime I wanted to or be nice to have so much money I didn’t know what to do with it because I had made money my God. Such a loss of perspective, however, forgets that sin is a moral cancer that always destroys from the inside out. God is holy—you can’t get away from the destructive consequence of sin in his universe because he made it. When we see someone who seems to be getting away with violating God’s moral law, we should be wise enough to know he or she is not. We ought to weep for those enslaved by sin and hate this evil taskmaster that destroys lives. Imagine for a moment that you are a pediatric oncologist. Every day you help children do battle with cancer; but so many of those days end with the precious child succumbing to cancer’s power to destroy them. Would your heart not develop a hatred for cancer? Would you not abhor everything about this hideous disease?

So it is, with the cancer of sin. God hates it because it destroys his good creation. Yes, he has sovereignly ordained the sin that he hates. Satan and Adam’s rebellion are part of his good plan. Nevertheless, holiness abhors evil. Did you know that God commands us to hate? Romans 12:9, Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. The Greek word APOSTUGEO means to hate something so much that you shudder. Do you hate your own sin that much? One of the current controversies in today’s church is over those who experience same-sex attraction. One such celibate group identify themselves as “gay Christians.” Such identification seems benign. Yet my denomination has argued that anyone who experiences same-sex attraction and is truly repentant will abhor that same-sex attraction, not celebrate it by calling themselves Gay Christians.

ISAIAH’S VISION OF HIMSELF

Back in Isaiah 6, we see something profound about his encounter with the Holy One of Israel. When Isaiah saw who GOD was, he discovered who HE was. Vs 5 And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”

These angelic beings weren’t exactly singing a lullaby. They thundered, “HOLY, HOLY, HOLY IS THE LORD GOD ALMIGHTY. THE WHOLE EARTH IS FULL OF HIS GLORY” so loudly that the doorposts and thresholds shook. Even inanimate objects moved in response to the holiness of God. And Isaiah was terrified.

A. Isaiah declares an Oracle of Woe upon himself. Isaiah stood in the presence of God’s brilliant light totally exposed—every thought, every motive, every word ever spoken. As the author of Hebrews says, “no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account (4:13). Isaiah’s role as prophet is to be the mouthpiece of Yahweh, to announce oracles of benediction upon obedience and oracles of woe as a consequence of evil. In fact, in the fifth chapter of Isaiah, he had pronounced numerous woes upon the workers of evil in Judea. Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and shrewd in their own sight! Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine, and valiant men in mixing strong drink, who acquit the guilty for a bribe, and deprive the innocent of his right (5:21-23). But in the presence of the holiness of God, Isaiah does what no other prophet had ever done, He says, “Woe to ME.” He announces an oracle of doom upon himself. Because of his uncleanness, his response was “I’m finished.” “I am ruined.” The Hebrew word which the ESV lightly translates lost is translated ruined by the NASB and NIV. It is translated undone by the KJV and NKJV. It could be translated, “I am coming apart at the seams.” We need to soberly understand that every person not clothed in the righteousness of Christ will one day go through this terrifying experience.

B. Isaiah’s woe upon himself reflects the wrath of God upon all who sin. The theme of God’s wrath against evil-doers is a subject about which the Biblical writers feel no inhibitions whatever. There are more references to God’s wrath in Scripture than to God’s love. The wrath of God is not a very popular concept outside the church or within. Perhaps it is because we subtly believe that wrath is unworthy of God. Wrath suggests an extreme, out-of-control, angry fist of God hitting back those who have refused to honor him.  Shouldn’t God be above such capricious emotional reactions to those who do things displeasing to him? Yes, he should and is. This human view of God’s wrath is totally wrong. J.I. Packer corrects:

“God’s wrath in the Bible is never the capricious, self-indulgent, irritable, morally ignoble thing that human anger so often is. It is, instead, a right and necessary reaction to objective moral evil. God is only angry when anger is called for. Even among men there is such a thing as righteous indignation, though it is perhaps rarely found. But all God’s indignation is righteous. Would a God who took as much pleasure in evil as He did in good be a good God? Would a God who did not react adversely to evil in His world be morally perfect. Surely not” (Knowing God).

God’s wrath is always judicial—that is, it is the wrath of the Judge administering perfect justice. It is God’s just punishment upon the sinner. Isaiah confessed that at the very core of his calling as a prophet, he was unclean. “I am a man of unclean lips.” As God’s prosecuting attorney, he knew that no one could see God and live. He deserved wrath, which is why he pronounced God’s curse (woe) upon himself.

ISAIAH’S VISION OF THE CROSS

Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.” There are no richer words in the English language than these. Your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for. Notice that the coal was taken from the altar in the temple on which the paschal lamb was sacrificed for the sins of the people. On that altar for hundreds of years, God had been teaching his people one basic truth: Without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin. On the heavenly altar in the heavenly temple 800 years later, God’s ultimate sacrifice, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, Jesus Christ, was slain. Notice that it was Isaiah’s lips that he had confessed were unclean and it was his lips that were touched by the coal—his guilt was burned away.

ISAIAH’S ALL-IN RESPONSE TO GOD’S GRACE

And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am! Send me.” What a picture. Isaiah was traumatized by seeing the holiness of God, because it exposed the heinousness of his sin. In those moments of awful exposure, he knew his need for the atoning action of the Seraphim as he had never felt that need before. In those moments, gratefulness for God’s atonement for his sin so flooded his soul that he could not help himself. In love, he had to offer himself back to his savior—Here I am. Send me.

Unless we are wounded by the holiness of God exposing the true us, we can never be healed by the grace of God and our hearts will remain lukewarm. 800 years after Isaiah’s vision, in the presence of holiness, a prostitute quietly wept, wetting Jesus’ feet with her tears. She wiped them with her hair, which she had scandalously let down, and kissed his feet, anointing them with the ointment she’d brought. Throughout all of eternity, she will be remembered as the embodiment of this great truth from Scripture: Whoever is forgiven much loves much. May God give us eyes to see God’s holy hatred of every germ of evil. May God give us eyes to see how great our sin really is. And may our increasing need for a BIG savior generate a BIG LOVE for God—a love which says, “Here I am Lord, send me.”

For Further Prayerful Thought

  1. What stood out most to you about Isaiah’s vision of the LORD in Isaiah 6?
  2. How would you explain God’s holiness to a child?
  3. What is most attractive to you about God’s holiness?
  4. What does it look like to abhor evil?
  5. How does a BIG view of God’s holiness take us through a process that leads to a BIG devotion to put our lives on the altar to Him?
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Counter-Cultural Belief in One True God

Counter-Cultural Belief in One True God

On 16 November, 2024 By Gary Yagel

While sitting in his freshman English class in college, a new Christian named R. C. Sproul was asked by a hostile professor in front of the entire class, “Mr. Sproul, do you believe that Jesus Christ is the only way to God?” Sproul gulped and muttered quietly, “Yes I do.” The teacher responded with unmitigated fury. In front of the class with a voice as loud as a rocket launcher, she yelled at Sproul, “That is the most narrow-minded, bigoted, and arrogant statement I have ever heard in my life! You must be a supreme egotist to believe that your way of religion is the only way” (D. James Kennedy, Sceptics Answered).

In today’s culture, where tolerance is seen as the highest of moral values, the exclusivity of Christianity provokes great hostility. Jesus, however, was crystal clear in his claim, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” He repeated this same truth in his intimate prayer to the Father, And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent (Jn 17:3). This episode examines this exclusivity, how we can teach our loved ones to winsomely respond to this accusation, and what are the implications of Jesus’ description of the Father as the only true God.

The late Tim Keller spent thirty years asking New Yorkers, “What is your biggest problem with Christianity? What troubles you most about its beliefs or the way it is practiced.” One of the most frequent answers he heard was, “its exclusivity.” To insist that one faith has a better grasp of the truth than others is seen as “intolerant.” Keller also heard the frequent refrain, “We will never come to know peace on earth if religious leaders keep making such exclusive truth claims.” Followers of every religion believe their religion right and other religions wrong. So, by its very nature religion causes divisiveness. Keller points out that civic and cultural leaders around the world have taken three approaches to solving this problem: outlawing religion, condemning religion, and privatizing religion.

Outlawing Religion. There have been several massive efforts to do this in the 20th century. Soviet Russia, Communist China, the Khmer Rouge were all determined to tightly control religious practice in an effort to destroy it, lest it divide society and erode the power of the state. The result, however, was not more peace and harmony but more oppression. As Alister McGrath points out. “The 20th century gave rise to one of the greatest and most distressing paradoxes of human history: that the greatest intolerance and violence of that century were practiced by those who believed religion caused intolerance and violence (The Twilight of Atheism).  

Condemn Religion. This approach creates a cultural environment in which it is considered unenlightened and outrageous to make exclusive truth claims. Denigrating religion is accomplished by stating and restating certain axioms that eventually become common-sense assumptions. Here is a sample of those axioms:

  • All major religions are equally valid and teach essentially the same thing.
  • Each religion sees part of the truth, but none can see the whole truth.
  • Religious belief is too culturally and historically conditioned to be truth.
  • It is arrogant to insist your religion is right and to convert others to it. (Tim Keller, The Reason for God.)

Keep Religion Private. Another common approach to overcoming the divisiveness of religion is to allow people to privately believe their faith, and even evangelize for it—but demanding that religious values be kept out of the public sphere. This ideology is called secularism—dividing life into various slices of a pie but keeping religion in its own slice. It is telling you to keep your religion in your closet. The above two approaches to overcoming the potential divisiveness of religion are shaping the worldview of the culture into which we are launching our children.

RESPONDING TO THE ARGUMENT CHRISTIANITY IS TOO NARROW TO BE TRUE

When we address this claim, we find three possibilities. Christianity is not narrow. Christianity is narrow but not true. Christianity is narrow but is true. Let’s evaluate.

A. Christianity is not narrow. There is perhaps no more mistaken view about religion in America than the often-repeated idea that all religions teach the same thing; so, Christianity is just like all religions. From the idea of tolerance has sprung the notion that to be tolerant we must agree that all truth claims are equally valid. So, it is ignorantly assumed that all religions teach fundamentally the same thing. Years after college, a mature R. C. Sproul was in a public forum with a Bahai priest. Bahais believe in just about everyone. Jesus Christ is placed as a peer with all the rest—Budha, Lao-tzu, Confucius, Mohamed, Zoroaster, etc. Sproul asks the priest,

“How can you believe that all religions are essentially the same when so many religions contradict each other? For example, Christianity says that Christ came so people could have life, have it more abundantly, and have it eternally. Buddhism and Hinduism, on the other hand, teach that life is a great evil. What we should seek after is the ending of all personal life in nirvana, where the individual, like an individual drop of water as an individual life, falls back into the ocean and all conscious life ceases…Islam vigorously teaches that there is one god. Hinduism, on the other hand, teaches that there at least 300 million gods. Confucianism recognizes no god.”

The Bahai priest’s response to Sproul was astonishing, “I don’t know anything about Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, or Confucianism. I just believe all religions are the same.” Anyone who says Christianity is like all religions is sadly, ignorant. 

B. Christianity is narrow but can’t be true. The reasons for this rejection can be summarized in three objections.

Objection #1: There are millions of sincere worshippers who are not Christian believers. While Christians must admit that this reality poses significant challenges to understanding why God creates so many who never hear the faith, we cannot solve them by denying Jesus’ claim to being the only way to God. The assumption of this argument is that because these worshippers are sincere, they can’t be wrong. Sincerity or lack of it, however, has nothing to do with the accuracy of what is believed. We can be sincere and right or sincere and wrong. A nurse in a large hospital changed an oxygen tank in an oxygen tent for one of her patients. On the next set of rounds she found her patient dead. The tank she had affixed to the tent was filled with nitrogen, not oxygen. It had been labeled improperly at the warehouse. The nurse sincerely thought she was attaching oxygen to the tent. But her belief was not true, i.e. it did not correspond to reality.

Objection #2: Even though it may be right for us it might not be right for everyone. This assumes that truth is determined by your belief or unbelief, not by external reality. But we all realize that whether something is objectively true or not is a separate issue from whether or not a person believes it. One unfortunate driver sincerely believed that trains don’t run on Sundays and ignored the warning that a train was coming around the curve and crossing the highway. He was killed instantly. Christ’s claims are either objectively true or false.

Objection #3: A religion as narrow as Christianity can’t be true. The assumption behind this objection is not valid. A position can be narrow and wrong or narrow and right. Just being narrow doesn’t mean it is right or wrong. At one time in history, believing that the world was not flat was narrowly held by few. In many areas of life, we have learned to be tolerant. Different strokes for different folks. Tolerance is a biblical virtue in personal relationships. Someone once said, “Tolerance in personal relationships is a virtue, but tolerance in truth is a travesty.” Truth is always intolerant of error. The fact that one plus one equals two is very narrow, but it is also reality.

C. Christianity is narrow but true. Christianity is undeniably narrow. As we know:

  • Jesus claimed to have power to forgive sins
  • Jesus claimed to be sinless
  • Jesus claimed to be the fulfillment of OT prophecies of the coming Messiah
  • Jesus claimed to be Yahweh, the god of Israel
  • Jesus claimed that he would rise from the dead
  • The historic evidence for the fact of resurrection is overpowering

As C. S. Lewis pointed out, Jesus’ claims leave no possibility of calling him just a great religious teacher. Someone making these claims to be God was either self-deceived, in which case he was a deranged lunatic, a deceiver of others, in which case he was a liar, or he was who he claimed to be, Lord. Jesus left no other option open to us for understanding his identity. As Lewis says, “He did not intend to.”

WHY ARE THERE SO MANY OTHER RELIGIONS? A BIBLICAL RESPONSE

A. God created humans in his image to be worshippers. Archeologists, along with sociologists inform us that religion is a universal human phenomenon. Wherever man lives, he is found giving some recognition to a power or powers beyond himself. Joseph Gaer in his book, What the Great Religions Believe, points out,

“As far as we can determine, religion has existed in every society, from the most primitive to the most culturally advanced. The more keys modern science finds with which to open the locked doors of the past, and the more we learn about the early days of man on earth, the more evidence there is that all these societies in the past had one thing in common—some form of religion.

Religion is not only universal among human societies; it is also one of the features separating humans, as God’s image bearers, from the rest of creation. British historian Richard Cavendish observes, “Religion is one of the things that distinguishes man from animals. Apes and dolphins (the two creatures most like humans), as far as we know have no religions. But no group of human beings has ever been discovered which did not have religious beliefs” (The Great Religions).

B. Adam’s rebellion corrupted the human heart, causing all humans to refuse to be submissive and thankful to their creator, the true God. But because we’re created to be worshippers, we must worship someone or something. So, fallen man invents his own false God to worship in place of the true God. Paul explains,

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator (Rom 1:18-25).

C. Because God created humans to be worshipping creatures the first two commandments focus on worshipping the only true God and no one or nothing else. Jesus’ words to the Father, in John 17:3, This is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, were no doubt a reflection of these two commandments, You shall worship ONLY me and You shall worship THE TRUE me. Let’s drill down to review what these commands mean for our everyday lives.

Commandment #1: You shall have no other gods before me (Ex 20:3). This prohibition, of course, refers not only to the traditional idol worship of physical statues but to the idolatry of the heart. The corruption of the human heart at the fall causes the human heart to take good things like a successful career, love, material possessions, being liked, and even family and turns them into ultimate things. Our hearts can deify these things, as the center of our lives because we believe we must have them for fulfillment, significance, security and safety.

Commandment #2: You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me.  Historically, at the time the Ten Commandments were given, the gods of the neighboring peoples were visually represented by huge statues overlaid with gold, decorated lavishly with precious jewels. And they were housed in enormous temples that would hold thousands of people. It certainly could be argued that since we live in a concrete, material world, such physical tangible objects could be aids to worship. Contrast that now with the only true God who commands us not only to worship no one and nothing else but forbids his worshippers from crafting an object that will in any way serve to represent him. The natural question that arises is why not? What is so important that God makes this prohibition the second commandment. The answer is that God takes great pleasure in being loved for who he truly is. Perhaps an illustration may help. When pursuing their wives to make love, more than one husband has heard, “You don’t really want ME; you just want SEX,” which points to the need to persuade our wives that it is who she is—every part of her—that draws us irresistibly towards her. God wants us to be drawn irresistibly in love to him for who he actually is, not to a figment of our imagination. His desire is for us to come to know and love him, the only true God, for the being he is. This desire explains the prohibitions that arise from the 2nd commandment.  

1. God in his wisdom, knew that no image crafted by human hands could ever accurately represent the totality of who he is. No carving or statue could capture even a fraction of who our infinite, transcendent god is. Any man-made image would reduce God’s greatness. Any physical image of God is a grossly inadequate image of who he is. To understand this principle, imagine visiting the Swiss Alps, standing at the foot of them being dwarfed by grandeur that takes your breath away. Imagine returning home, trying to explain this experience and a friend saying, “Help the rest of us out. Here is a stick of gum. Chew it for a while, then make it into a replica of the Swiss Alps.” Your response would be, “a chewing gum replica of the Alps would be worse than no replica at all.”

2. Fashioning a physical statue to represent God starts with the craftsman’s formation of his own mental image. In the Roman world the statue for Artemis, the goddess of love, looked very different from statue of Mars, the god of war. Any idol maker must begin with his own mental picture before he turns his stone into a statue. So, the Second Commandment prohibits replacing the true God with our own mental image of God. The reason there are so many false religions in the world is that man was created to be a worshipping creature and having refused to submit to his creator or be thankful to him, has replaced the true God with one that man has fashioned himself. Our rising children and grandchildren need to know that all false cults and religions are the result of violating this second commandment and shaping our mental image of God ourselves the way WE want him to be. For example, the very idea that undergirds almost all other religions of the world—that we can earn our way to heaven by our good works--deinies the most foundational characteristics of God’s nature. He is holy and just. My hope is that this commandment and this episode will fire a passion within us to get to know, love, and celebrate the being who God actually is. That most honors him.

3. It is the jealous nature of God that is beneath both the first and second commandments. But doesn’t saying God is jealous sound offensive? Jealousy is usually thought of as a vice. Are we to think that God is a selfish, insecure deity, so full of spite that he gets back at those who spurn him for another lover? No, because there is a side to jealousy that is entirely right, and proper and virtuous—and that is the zeal to protect a covenantal love relationship. As J. I. Packer has written, “Married persons who felt no jealousy at the intrusion of a lover or an adulterer into their home would surely be lacking in moral perception; for the exclusiveness of marriage is the essence of marriage” (Knowing God). Scripture consistently views God’s jealousy as this kind of zealous commitment to guard the exclusivity of his covenantal love relationship with his people. God will tolerate no rivals. His people shall have no other gods before him. God will not even tolerate inaccurate images of himself used in worship. Those who center their affections, priorities, experiences, or desires on any thing or one other than God himself are consistently called adulterers in Scripture.

Just as lovers want, enjoy, adore, delight in, and come to intimately know each other, God wants to be the first being we want, enjoy, adore, delight in, and come to intimately know. May God be honored by our passion to come to know him, the only true God.

For Further Prayerful Thought

  1. What is the difference between tolerance in relationships and tolerance regarding what is true? How do you see Scripture requiring us to tolerant of other people but intolerant of false ideas masquerading as truth?
  2. How would you answer a Christian you were discipling who asked, “Why are there so many religions?”
  3. What do you think of the statement, “God has too much dignity to accept adoration from worshippers who are not celebrating his true nature?” How does the second commandment relate to Jesus’ statement to the woman at the well in Samaria, “The Father desires worshippers to worship him in spirit and in truth?”
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A Supernatural God Must Exist

A Supernatural God Must Exist

On 08 November, 2024 By Gary Yagel

Praise God that Americans, by a thin majority in the election, rejected cultural Marxism. But the war of ideas will continue to rage on social media and college campuses. The rising generation will continue to encounter the argument that intelligent people reject the Bible in deconversion stories like that of S. A. Joyce, which he entitled, “One Night I Prayed to Know the Truth. The Next Morning I Discovered that I Was an Atheist.” Here are his words:

In the years after leaving the military, I went back to college… I pieced together, bit by bit, a humanistic set of values which turned out to be far more self-consistent and pertinent to the modern world than a petrified Decalogue of biblical taboo. It was becoming clear to me that the universe behaved pretty much as might be expected if God didn’t exist, or at least didn’t care. It gradually dawned upon me that in the grand scheme of things there was in fact no grand scheme…God performed no observable function and had no valid purpose. The question entered my mind, “What is a God without purpose and for which there is no evidence?” “Non-existent,” came the obvious answer (Keller, Making Sense of God)

This episode equips men to guide their families and friends to see that science and logic do NOT undermine belief in God. To the contrary, the evidence for the existence of God is so compelling that it is unreasonable not to believe in God.

As we continue our series on knowing God, we come to his supernatural attributes, i.e.  characteristics of the infinite God. But before digging into them, it is important to realize how necessary these characteristics are to explain human life, even though fallen man wants to suppress this truth. Today, best-selling books written by Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris promote the idea that science in general, and evolutionary science in particular, have made belief in God obsolete. In The God Delusion, Dawkins argues that you can’t be an intelligent scientific thinker and still hold religious beliefs. It is one or the other. What less enlightened humans couldn’t understand and therefore attributed to some kind of god, we now can explain by science. The Bible’s miracles exhibit the same mythology that all religions have used to explain things they couldn’t understand. But scientists know better.

Though popular, this argument is not based on sound reasoning. Science is, by definition, the study of the material world; it is only equipped to test for causes within the closed system of the physical, natural order. Dawkins assumes but does not prove that all events that take place in the natural order can be explained entirely by other events inside that closed, material system. He is like a mechanic who is trying to fix a car that won’t start. He studies every aspect of the system—the car—for an explanation. But suppose that car was in northern Canada, and it was -40 degrees. The assumption that the internal system of the car explains the car not starting is false. Something outside the system, namely the temperature, explains reality. Science is the investigation of the closed, material universe; it is unable to perceive what is outside the material universe. Dawkin’s hidden premise is that because science can’t see a spiritual cause outside the material world there can’t be one. That is like a Canadian mechanic saying, “there has to be something wrong with the car, itself,” disregarding a cause outside the car’s system. So, science does not at all prove that God doesn’t exist; it just assumes it.

But the biblical response to Dawkins goes much further than pointing out his faulty reasoning in assuming his conclusion. Scientific observation yields weighty evidence that there must be a supernatural being who exists outside of the material order.

THE FAILURE OF SECULAR MATERIALISM TO EXPLAIN LIFE

A.  Intelligent design. Here is an experiment to conduct with your child, or grandchild. While sitting in the living room, point to any object in the room and ask him, “Do you think this was MADE by someone or RANDOMLY CAME INTO EXISTENCE BY CHANCE?” In my living room, it would be, “Do you think this piano just happened because it evolved on its own or that someone designed and built it?” Do you think this lamp just accidentally came together because a lightbulb and brass pole just happened to get blown together in a junk yard with some electrical wire, or that someone designed and created this lamp?” We need to help them see that everything about human experience tells us that if we see order anywhere in the world around us, there was an orderer. If they are walking in the woods and see a treehouse, they know that someone built it. If they pick up your cell phone, they know they are looking at something that was intelligently designed. If they walk into the classroom at school and the warm-up activity for that class is written on the board, they know someone wrote those words on the board. The most logical scientific truth of all is that if we see order in this physical world, it is because there is an orderer. NOTHING in life indicates that order results from disorder or random chance. The order of the universe points to a designer.

B. The Big Bang. There is strong scientific evidence that the universe is expanding, which has led most scientists to reason backwards towards a starting point. One Scientist writes, “We have a very solid conclusion that the universe has an origin, the Big Bang. Fifteen billion years ago, the universe began with an unimaginably bright flash of energy from an infinitesimally small point. That implies that before that, there was nothing” (Francis Collins, The Language of God). The concept of self-creation is a logical impossibility. To create you must exist. Self-creation means you existed before you existed, which is a nonsense statement. So, the very fact that the universe had a beginning implies that someone outside of the universe was able to begin it. Science therefore points to a creator.

C. Cosmic Welcome Mat. Science tells us that for organic life to exist, the constants of physics—the speed of light, the gravitational constant, the strength of the weak and strong nuclear forces—must all have values that together fall into an extremely narrow range. The probability of this perfect calibration happening is mathematically zero. Collins observes,

“When you look from the perspective of a scientist at the universe, it looks as if it knew we were coming. There are 15 constants—the gravitational constant, various constants about the strong and weak nuclear force, etc. that have precise values. If any one of those constants was off by one part in a million million, the universe could not have come to the point where we see it. Matter would not have been able to coalesce, there would have been no galaxy, stars, planets, or people” (Ibid).  

D. The Clue of Love, Beauty, and Meaning. Naturalism says that the physical world of matter and energy is all that exists. But every human who thinks about it realizes that we all sense a spiritual reality behind the material world. There is a reality behind the words, beauty, love, heroism. Those qualities exist beyond mere chemical reactions in our brains. Padgett & Sunshine point out,

Naturalism runs counter to our experience of life. Love, hate, self-consciousness, self-awareness, all of these are just chemical reactions. Good and evil and right and wrong do not exist since they are neither matter nor energy. You can’t even call them cultural preferences since a preference is neither matter not energy….You are nothing more than a robot carrying out the necessary and inevitable results of biology, chemistry, physics, and math. While some people claim they believe this is true, it is extremely doubtful that they really believe it deep down, and it is certain that they do not and cannot live as if it were true (The Image Restored).

E. Moral Obligation. If you were jogging on a path beside a river and someone who was drowning cried for help, what would you do? Almost every human being would immediately try to help. The materialist understanding of life can’t explain why. In fact, Darwin’s survival of the fittest would demand that a human NOT risk drowning to help another. One pastor responding to a couple’s unbelief asked “Is there anything you think is absolutely wrong?" The wife answered, “Male abuse of women.” The pastor responded, “I fully agree because I am a Christian. The Bible says God made all human beings in his image. But why do you see harming women as wrong?” She responded, “Women are human beings and human beings have rights. It’s wrong to trample on someone’s rights.” The pastor asked, "How do you know that?" She smiled realizing she was in a corner. Scientific naturalism has no explanation for why male blobs of protoplasm should not rape female blobs of protoplasm. It can’t account for our moral feelings, let alone the fact that we all believe there are external moral standards by which moral feelings are evaluated.

The above 5 scientific observations about the world we inhabit don’t prove the existence of God. They only prove that it is much more reasonable to believe in a supreme being than not to. Alvin Plantinga illustrates that absolute proof isn’t necessary for humans to act. He imagines a man dealing himself 20 straight hands of 4 aces in poker. As his companions reach for their six-shooters the poker player says, “I know if looks suspicious! But what if there is an infinite succession of universes with an infinite possible distribution of poker hands and there is one universe in which the dealer deals himself 20 straight aces without cheating.” This argument will have no effect on the other players. They couldn’t technically prove he had cheated, but it would be unreasonable to conclude that he hadn’t.   

ALL HUMANS SUPPRESS THE TRUTH ABOUT GOD

As we lead someone to faith in Christ or launch our child into the world, it is imperative that he understand that logic supports belief in God but that human nature suppresses that belief. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, WHO BY THEIR UNRIGHTEOUSNESS SUPPRESS THE TRUTH. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. The picture behind the word, suppress is that of holding down a spring. Nature unremittingly leaps out to all humans with arrows pointing to its creator, one who is eternal, i.e. outside the created order, and one who is divine, i.e. one who is God. All are given this knowledge of God. But because our autonomous sinful nature refuses to honor God by surrendering to him as the one to whom we owe obedience, and because we refuse to give thanks to God as the one on whom we depend to sustain life every second—our foolish hearts suppress the truth that he is our creator.

We see this human tendency in the research of Charles Darwin. In 1831, on a voyage to the Galapagos Islands, Darwin observed that the beak shapes of finches varied. His research substantiated that the beaks of an ancestral species had adapted over time to equip the finches to acquire different food sources. He found no scientific evidence to support the idea that finches became crabs—that species morphed into other species, admitting that there was no fossil evidence to support one species evolving into another. Nevertheless, with zero evidence, Darwin extrapolated from his legitimate research on adaptation within a species to the worldview of evolution that denies the creature’s accountability to God. Millions still cling to this theory even though it has been debunked by science.

GOD’S EXISTENCE OUTSIDE OF CREATION—INCOMMUNICABLE ATTRIBUTES

A. Self-existence. When a child asks, “Who made God?” the answer may not be as hard as we think. It is, “God did not need to be made because he has always existed.” The theological word for this self-existence of God is aseity. This characteristic of God is identified by Paul in Acts 17 when he challenged the Athenian Christians: to seek God, saying that he is actually not far from each one of us, for ‘In him we live and move and have our being’ (vs 27-28). R. C. Sproul in his book, The Character of God, elucidates this attribute:

"To say that God is self-existent simply means that there is no time when God started to exist. He has always been. He is eternal. He has no beginning and no end. Nothing caused God to come into existence. God did not make Himself. He made us. In a word, God is not a creature. He is not dependent. He is not derived. He is not fragile. Rather, God is the Creator. He is independent, self-sufficient, and secure. God, and God alone, has the power of being within Himself. He is who He is. “I  AM WHO I AM.” That God is self-existent means that He is unique. He alone is the source of all being. He alone has the power of being. He alone is eternal. He alone is supreme."

This characteristic that he is outside of creation and self-existent is foundational for our security. He is dependent upon no one and no thing. No force exists that can change him. At the same time, his aseity is the source of our humility. If God died, we would instantly perish. We are utterly dependent upon him every second.

B. Omnipresence. One of the Christian’s boldest assertions is that there is a reality that far exceeds the visibility of the physical world. “God is spirit,” said Jesus, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth (Jn 4:24). Because God is an infinite spirit, he can be omnipresent. In fact, the universe is replete with his presence. This biblical teaching is far from pantheism, which is disallowed in the first verse of the Bible, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” The boundary between God and the material universe is a boundary of being. The being of the created world is a lower order of being than the being of God because God’s power of self-existence is lacking in creaturely beings who must be sustained in their existence by God. Scripture affirms “that there exists a higher plane of reality than the plane upon which we live our everyday lives. This other reality is the spiritual realm” (Ibid). God’s omnipresence reminds us that there is much more to life than what we can see with our eyes. One morning when Elishah’s servant stepped outside, he realized he and Elisha were surrounded by an army intent on killing them. Then Elisha prayed and said, “O Lord, please open his eyes that he may see.” So the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw, and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha (2 Kings 6:15-17). Those of us who are Star Wars fans may miss the truth that spirit is much more than force. God is a creative, personal, loving, moral being. The spiritual world deals not only with spiritual beings but with the hidden world of the heart. The outworking of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, and self-control.

C. Omnipotence. In Genesis 17:1 God refers to himself as God ALMIGHTY. When Abram was ninety-nine years old the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless. Later in this conversation, God tells Abraham that he will bear a son through his ninety-year-old wife, Sarah. As the eternal, infinite God, his power over creation is total. There is no limit to God’s power except himself, when he  choses to limit his use of that power. He could have prevented Satan from rebelling as well as the disobedience of Adam and Eve. We do not live in a dualistic universe, caught between two equal warriors, God and Satan who are battling it out for supremacy. Satan is on God’s leash. Humans don’t have the mental horsepower to understand why God allows evil. We are not only told that God is so good that evil cannot exist in his immediate presence but that he is so good that he turns evil into a tool for good. For those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose (Rom 8:28).

One of the most important principles in understanding God’s omnipotence is that he limits the use of his power because of his decision to involve man, his image bearers, in ordering and shaping earth. He has limited his creative power, not delivering an iPhone 16-Pro to Adam in the garden, nor an adult son named Isaac to Sarah. The process of us exercising dominion is God’s ordained way to exercise his creative power and his recreative power. Paul finds it especially important to remind the Ephesian Christians of that process when they pray. He points to the power of the one to whom we pray: who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us (Eph 3:20).  

D. Omniscience. Proverbs 15:3 warns, The eyes of the Lord are in every place, keeping watch on the evil and the good. The truth that God is all-knowing is a terror to those who do not belong to Jesus. But here are 3 reasons why this attribute is a comfort to those who do.

  • God is the God of all knowledge. There is no conflict between Christianity and science. The old faith vs reason division is false. We never need to fear the academic world or of scientific facts. God invented knowledge. It is the accumulation of facts about his creation!
  • God knows the future. He is outside of time. He views the timeline of history, past, present, and future. There is nothing in the future that can take him by surprise. When I seek his guidance, he gives it in light of the future. Nothing unforeseen can ruin his perfect plan for my life.
  • God knows everything in my closet of shame but still loves me. God has searched and known us, our sitting down, our rising up, and everything in our locked diaries of shame. Yet he is the God of all grace who loves me.

E. Immutability. In Malachi 3:6, God says, I, Yahweh, do not change. There is an inner consistency to God. He undergoes no mutations. He is very different from Allah in Islam who can change his mind upon any whim. But God is internally consistent. Is there anything that God can’t do? Yes. He can’t act against his immutable nature. The same God who has not stepped in to prevent the loss of a loved one, allowing my heart to be crushed, is the one who loved me so much that he gave his only son to die for me. The author of the NT book of James was the half-brother of Jesus. In the first chapter of his letter, James addresses how to handle our everyday trials. I’m sure that he knew exactly how his brother, Jesus, handled trials. James tells us that one of those key principles is to be confident of the immutability of God—his unchanging character. The same God taking his readers through trials was the giver of every good gift they enjoyed. Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.

God is an unchanging, supernatural, fabulous being.

For Further Prayerful Thought

  1. What evidence would you martial to support an argument that it is much more reasonable to believe in the existence of God than not to?
  2. Why do you think it might be important to help our rising young adults understand the biblical teaching that human sinful nature leads man to suppress the truth that creation proves there is a God?
  3. Look back to God’s supernatural attributes. Which ones most stood out to you? How can knowing these attributes help you delight in the Lord?
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Let Him Who Boasts Boast in This

Let Him Who Boasts Boast in This

On 31 October, 2024 By Gary Yagel

In Jeremiah 9, God has some words for his people about boasting, and they re not, “Don’t brag.” Rather he says to his covenant people, Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, THAT HE UNDERSTANDS AND KNOWS ME, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things, I delight (Jer 9:23-25). What is it about knowing God that causes him to tell us that knowing him is of greater worth than wisdom, might, and riches? What does the rest of Scripture say about the benefits to us of knowing God? These are the questions we seek to answer in this episode.

As you know, this podcast/blog focuses on our mission as men. In Genesis 2:15 we see that God placed Adam in the Garden of Eden to work it. Men are designed to have impact, to rearrange the “stuff "of creation, to get the project done. No wonder every third commercial when watching the NFL is for a pickup truck, the perfect tool for getting most jobs done. Because God created men to be doers, we have an intuitive sense that getting a job done requires some assets—three in particular, which happen to be the same three mentioned in Jeremiah 9. The first is expertise. Every team member doesn’t need an MBA or PhD; but getting the job done requires wisdom, good old-fashioned know-how. Second, success requires the strength to overcome the obstacles we encounter to completing our mission. No goal worth pursuing comes easily, so the might to persevere is required. The third asset required is money. Obtaining the material resources and labor we need requires wealth.

In our Home Depot world where doers get more done, successful men understand the value of these three assets, wisdom, might, and riches to accomplish almost any project we undertake in our vocation or at home. So, as men called to be doers, it should get our attention that the primary assets that preoccupy our thinking to accomplish any mission i.e. wisdom, might, and riches are NOT the keys to our success. They are not what we should depend upon nor boast about. “Rather,” says God, “your boast should be that you understand and know me.” But, practically speaking, what is God saying? Let’s dig into the meaning of the word boast for some clues.

A. Boasting, according to Webster, is rooted in “an awareness of one’s excellence.” In one sense, being aware of our own excellence is a good thing. Acknowledging our own strengths is not pride; boasting about them is. However, an awareness of one’s excellence can apply to someone else. Knowing God leads to an awareness of God’s excellence. God is saying through Jeremiah—I want you aware of MY EXCELLENCE and boasting about that.    

B. Boasting means to display proudly. My shirts and jerseys display proudly that I am a Penn State, Baltimore Ravens, and now, repentant Washington Commanders fan. It is amazing how profoundly humans identify with their college or professional sports team, as if we are exalted somehow by their success. It is also surprising how common it is to name drop—i.e. mention some kind of connection we have to a famous player or celebrity as if who we know will enhance our worth in others’ eyes. In Jeremiah 9, God is saying, “If you want to name drop, boast about knowing ME.” God just happens to be the most fantastic being in the universe and knowing him (because he changed my darkened heart) is the greatest privilege in the entire world.

C. “Boasting” in context in Jeremiah 9 probably refers primarily to where one’s confidence lies. This is the meaning in Jeremiah’s other two uses of the word boast. (48:30 and 49:4). Though our masculine call (AVAD) is to be a doer, to transform the world including through our prayer and influence even the hearts of our loved ones, God reminds us that our greatest asset is not our wisdom, our powerful determination, or our riches. It is understanding and knowing God.

D. Boasting in this text is linked not only to understanding and knowing God but specifically to knowing what God delights in. God goes on to tell us what that is, i.e. the practices of steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. The strong implication of God is that the more we know him, the more we will pursue the things in which he delights. There seems to be a link between the moral energy that comes from knowing God and pursing what pleases him. That gets my attention because we are all looking for more motivation. Last week I was talking with a believer who is doing an exceptional job of raising his son and daughter. But he lamented, “Gary, the problem is not that I don’t know what I should be doing as a spiritual leader—it’s that I just don’t do it.” We all need more motivation.

E. Boasting about knowing God will be easier, says Jeremiah, under the New Covenant. One of the major themes of Jeremiah is the failure of God’s people under the Old Covenant to live up to their covenant obligations while giving hope to Israel about a New Covenant to come. The following words from Jeremiah 31 are directly quoted in Hebrews 8:8-12 as being fulfilled in Christ through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost.  Notice the emphasis on better knowing God.

Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will PUT MY LAW WITHIN THEM, and I WILL WRITE IT ON THEIR HEARTS. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ FOR THEY SHALL ALL KNOW ME, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.

Under the New Covenant, the Holy Spirit is poured out 1) to indwell us, giving us the reality of Christ’s presence with us every moment and 2) to apply the Word of God to our hearts (See John 14:25-26). At the core of the New Covenant is boasting that we can now know the Lord personally through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and through the Word of God personally applied to our hearts.

Seven Further Benefits of Growing in The Knowledge of God

A. Those who know God have great energy for God. In one of the prophetic chapters of Daniel, we read, the people who know their God will be strong and take action (11:32). J. I. Packer writes, "In this context, the statement is introduced by ‘but’ and set in contrast to the vile person who corrupts by flattering talk those whose loyalty to God’s covenant has failed. This shows us that the action taken by those who know God is their reaction to the anti-God trends which they see operating around them. While their God is being defiled or disregarded; they cannot rest; they feel they must do something; the dishonor done to God’s name goads them into action" (Knowing God p 23).

B. Those who know God understand how life works. We find this theme all through the book of Proverbs, for example, The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, And the KNOWLEDGE of the Holy One is understanding. For by me your days will be multiplied and years of life will be added to you (9:10-11). Again, J. I. Packer says it well:

"Knowing God is crucially important for the living of our lives. As it would be cruel to an Amazonian tribesman to fly him to London, put him down without explanation in Trafalgar Square, as one who knew nothing of English or England to fend for himself, so we are cruel to ourselves if we try to live in this world without knowing about the God whose world it is and who runs it. The world becomes a strange, mad, painful place, and life in it a disappointing and unpleasant business, for those who do not know about God. Disregard the study of God, and you sentence yourself to stumble and blunder through life blindfold, as it were, with no sense of direction and no understanding of what surrounds you" (Ibid p 14).

C. Those who know God have confidence in his character. Life is full of trials; in a fallen world there is no escape from pain. Scripture does not cover up that pain. Rather, it says, My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives (Heb 12:5-6). Yet, the prophet Hosea points to a growing knowledge of God as the salve for heart-wrenching pain. Come, let us return to the Lord; for he has torn us, that he may heal us; he has struck us down, and he will bind us up. After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him. Let us know; let us press on to know the Lord; his going out is sure as the dawn; he will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth (Hos 6:1-3). Hosea urges his countrymen going through tough times NOT to let those trials hinder their growth in the knowledge of God. Such knowledge is their hope—in the consistency of the God they have come to know: his going out is as sure as the dawn; he will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth.

D. Those who know God’s perfections can better delight in him, which satisfies our hearts. Desiring heart satisfaction is a good, not an evil thing. As C. S. Lewis preached many years ago:

"If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics, and is no part of Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased" (Sermon, “The Weight of Glory”).

We were made for God, and he is the answer to our deepest longings. Delighting in him and basking in his delight in us is the core foundation to a Christian’s very life. Abide in my love, even as I abide in the Father’s love, said Jesus. Just as in marriage knowing my wife more deeply enables me to love her more fully, our delight in the Lord is a direct result of seeing his perfections. David wrote, One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple (Ps 27:4). Moses recognized the same truth—that our deepest heart hunger needs to be satisfied through intimacy with God when he wrote, Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days (Ps 90:14).

E. Those who know God are better able to fulfill God’s purpose for our lives. In Ephesians 1, Paul summarizes that purpose, Be imitators of God (Eph 5:1). There is a category of God’s perfections called “incommunicable attributes,” his omnipotence, omniscience, eternality, etc. the characteristics of which finite humans do not share. But, as we saw last week, Adam and Eve were created to exhibit God’s moral attributes, and believers are recreated in Christ to recover that calling and are empowered through the work of the Holy Spirit “to be conformed into Christ’s image” (Rom 8:29) which God tells us is the purpose for our trials (Rom 8:28). The more clearly that we perceive God’s moral perfections, the more powerfully they can move us to reverent adoration of them, and impel us with the spiritual energy through the Spirit to imitate them.

F. Those who are growing in the knowledge of God exhibit the fruit of being true disciples. Paul summarizes the life of a true Christ follower in Colossians 1:9-10 when he says, I pray that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of god.  Notice how growing to know God is implicit in three parts of this text.

  1. First, note the phrase worthy of God. Worthy describes an equation. It is balancing the degree to which my life is surrendered to God against his worthiness of that surrender. The more I grow to know God, the more I will see that he deserves the best I can offer him, fullest surrender. It all begins with knowing God’s worthiness—seeing who he really is.
  2. Next, note the expression fully pleasing him. When you love someone, that love compels you to find out what pleases your loved one. So it is with the greatest commandment. If I am to love God supremely, I must get to know him well enough to find out what pleases him.
  3. Finally, Paul says explicitly that a disciple is one who is increasing in the knowledge of God. A true love relationship deepens over time as the lovers intentionally seek to know and delight in one another.

G. Knowing God IS life. Jesus prayed to the Father, This is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent (Jn 17:3). As my Young Life leader used to say, “eternal life doesn’t wait until you die to begin! It’s about the quality of life right now—living life to its fullest—and that quality continuing into eternity.” Notice that the path to such life is knowing God. There are two Greek words for knowing. OIDA, which comes from the word seeing, suggests objective perception of the facts. But the other word, GINOSKO, which signifies a process of taking in knowledge is the one used in John 17. W. E. Vine tells us “In the NT, GINOSKO frequently indicates a relation between the person knowing and the object known; in this respect, what is known is of value or importance to the one who knows, and hence the establishment of a relationship.”

The blessing of knowing God is so enormous that the only way the biblical writers can describe it is to call it life. What is your picture of vitality? Maybe it is the rippled muscles of a man or woman completing a triathlon. Maybe it is a 100% healthy newborn baby. Maybe economic vitality is seeing South Korea lit up from outer space while North Korea is completely dark. Maybe vitality to you is a lush green garden full of vibrant flowers and luscious fruit. Maybe it is the sound of a rushing waterfall or bubbling brook. Whatever that picture is for you—the path to it is knowing God. The benefits of knowing God seem boundless!  

The Greatness of God

In the coming weeks we will be studying the specific perfections of God and what difference they make in our lives. But perhaps the best way to wrap up this introductory episode is to remember the greatness of this being who has invited us, indeed urged us, to know him. May we bow in humble adoration, as we consider the wht is probably the most complete descriptive paragraph ever written about our God outside of Scripture. From the WCF:  

There is but one only, living, and true God, who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions; immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, most wise, most holy, most free, most absolute; working all things according to the counsel of his own immutable and most righteous will for his own glory; most loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin; the rewarder of them that diligently seek him; and withal, most just, and terrible in his judgments, hating all sin, and who will by no means clear the guilty.

What a privilege to be invited into the presence of this being—to know him. As we head into the week of the 2024 election, what comfort to know that this is the God who sits on the throne of the universe. As Steve Green sang a decade ago, he is the only being fit to sit on that throne:

God, and God alone created all these things we call our own. From the mighty to the small, the glory in them all, is God’s and God’s alone.

God and God alone reveals the truth of all we call unknown. And all the best and worst of man won’t change the master’s plan—it’s God’s and God’s alone.

God and God alone is fit to take the universes’ throne. Let everything that lives, reserve its truest praise, for God and God alone.

God, and God alone, will be the joy of our eternal home. He will be our one desire; our hearts will never tire, of God and God alone.

God and God alone is fit to take the universes’ throne. Let everything that lives, reserve its truest praise, for God and God alone.

For Further Prayerful Thought

  1. What is your take-away from God’s command to the wise man not to boast in his wisdom, the mighty man not to boast in his might, the rich man not to boast in his riches but instead to boast of understanding and knowing him? What are your ideas about what this looks like?
  2. Which benefits of growing in the knowledge of God most stood out to you?
  3. How would you defend the idea that God and God alone is fit to take the universe’s throne? Which components of God’s character give you the most peace and confidence as you head into the future?
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What If I Don’t Like Either Candidate?

What If I Don’t Like Either Candidate?

On 26 October, 2024 By Gary Yagel

In a new study conducted by George Barna, in which he interviewed 2000 church-going self-identified Christians, his results were shocking. 49% said they were unlikely to vote. Here are their reasons:

  • 68% said they are not interested in politics
  • 57% said they disliked the major candidates
  • 55% said they felt like none of the candidates reflect their most important views
  • 52% believed their vote will not have an impact
  • 50% said the election has become too controversial

This episode addresses these reasons for NOT voting.

Thinking biblically about our participation in an election, in which we 1) dislike both candidates, 2) are sickened by the politicization of everything, 3) are disgusted by the harsh rhetoric of both sides, and 4) are questioning whether our single vote really matters takes us back over 4000 years to God’s words to the first two humans he created, explaining his reason for creating them. God said he created us to be images of himself. God’s inherent royalty, i.e. his kingship, his creativity, his love within the three persons of the Godhead, his holiness, and many other of his attributes would be revealed in this creature called man whose purpose would be putting God, himself, on display before all the angels by bearing God’s image. So, God created man—the union of male and female--to exhibit: 1) God’s kingship by giving them the kingdom earth to rule, 2) his creativity by calling them to explore and maximize the potential of that kingdom, 3) God's love by creating other humans to be loved, 4) his holiness by writing his moral law upon their hearts. God’s familiar words were:

“Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And LET THEM HAVE DOMINION over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So, God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and SUBDUE IT (Gen 1:26-28).

As the first humans were fruitful and productive, the resources and population grew, requiring Adam and Eve to exercise dominion over the CULTURE that emerged as they fulfilled their calling to CULTIVATE their kingdom. Worshipful love for their creator and love for his image bearers—other humans—was to shape the culture that evolved as the population grew, labor diversified, and ownership of the resources in the garden became more complex. Exercising dominion over this emerging, complex set of relationships—a person’s relationship to God, to the earth’s resources and to one another—was the calling of King Adam and Queen Eve. They were to exercise dominion FOR God, in obedience to his moral law, which, as the Apostle Paul told us, is written on every image bearer’s heart.

But instead, Adam and Eve joined the rebellion against God, aligning their kingdom with Satan, sin, and because of sin, death. These three ruled, until God himself came as the Second Adam. Jesus overthrew these three usurpers of Adam’s kingdom, triumphing over them at the cross, proving in his resurrection that sin and death’s hold on Adam’s race and kingdom were broken. Then, Jesus ascended as the Second Adam to do what the first Adam was originally called to do—exercise righteous rule over Adam’s kingdom, earth. In Christ, Christians recover Adam’s calling to shape the culture over the earth. Jesus commanded, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations. Notice that Jesus did NOT say make disciples in every nation or from every nation but OF every nation, meaning that not just individuals but entire nations are to be discipled, i.e. we are to shape the culture of all nations. All Christians are now restored to Adam’s original calling, the NT expression of which is stated, “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.”   

Returning to the topic of this election, having the opportunity to choose government leaders through the process of voting for representative government, as we experience in this nation, is a privilege and responsibility that most Christians in the world never dreamed of having. It is a direct way to fulfill Jesus’ great commission, of using our God-given political influence to “disciple” our nation, i.e. align its values with Christ’s kingdom of righteousness. With this fundamental calling to use our influence to shape the culture of our nation in mind, let’s respond to some arguments Christians make NOT to vote.

A REVULSION TO POLITICS

It could simply be that a Christian has never been that interested in politics or that the hostility of the two sides to each other is repulsive to him or her. Besides, the church should focus on seeking first the kingdom of God, not the kingdom of man gained by a political party or candidate, especially since almost every politician claims God is on his side. Furthermore, it is argued, as the spiritual wasteland of Europe proves, the fastest way to kill Christianity is aligning it with politics and creating a state church. Separation of church and state, though misstated by the political left to marginalize Christians and keep religious values out of the public square, is nevertheless a legitimate Biblical principle of keeping the power of the sword to coerce given to the state distinct from the power of the Word to persuade given to the church.

I understand this distinction, but I see no way that the refusal to take advantage of an opportunity to shape the culture by using my vote to support the policies that most align with Christ’s kingdom righteousness is NOT disobedience to God’s cultural mandate. Using our political rights may be unpleasant but since when is unpleasantness an excuse for disobedience. We were CREATED in God’s image to shape culture (Genesis 1). We were RECREATED in Christ’s image to shape culture (Matt 6:33). Failure to vote because politics is unpleasant is disobedience.

WITH OVER 100 MILLION VOTES CAST—MINE DOESN’T MATTER

160 million people voted in the 2020 election. One vote, out of 160 million, doesn’t seem likely to make a difference. So, why should I bother voting? Here are three reasons:

A. One vote matters a lot in local elections. When most people think about elections, they tend to focus on the presidential race. But state and local elections, which are decided by far fewer votes, can have a significant impact on our lives. In most elections, there are ballot measures that will determine local and state laws... everything from rules about utilities or transportation to restrictions on abortion and law enforcement.

  • In 2017, a Virginia House of Delegates race ended in a tie after more than 23,000 ballots were cast. According to the rules, the winner was decided by pulling a name out of a bowl.
  • In 2016, a New Mexico State House seat was decided by just two votes out of 14,000 that were cast.
  • School board elections, which happen in every town in America, determine what students will be taught at school. Many of these races are decided by just hundreds of total votes.  

B. If lots of people decide their vote doesn’t matter, it makes a big difference. In 2020, approximately 240 million Americans were eligible to vote. However, only 168 million were registered to vote, and only 158 million actually voted for president. That means 82 million people who could have voted for a presidential candidate chose not to. In the end, Joe Biden, who was elected president, received 81 million votes, which was only 34% of eligible voters.

C. Voting is an act of stewardship. Romans 13 tells us that government was created by God to punish evil and reward good. If any of us had been born into a royal family and were destined to be king or queen, we would be responsible to use the power God gave us to punish evil and reward good. In America, all citizens have been granted authority to determine who should be in government offices. The church has a vital role—defining what good and evil are for the state. Part of the way that voice is heard in a democracy is through our vote. Though the ultimate outcome may be beyond our control, our stewardship of the authority God has given us is part of our responsibility. (see What Would You Say, Colson Center). 

I DON’T LIKE EITHER CANDIDATE

Many of us had hoped for a different candidate to represent the Republican Party. But we must put a biblical lens over the attitude, “I don’t like either candidate and I’m not sure that in good conscience I can vote for either.” Here is a response:

A. The vote for president isn’t about liking a candidate; it is not a vote for “Mr. or Ms. Congeniality.” Choosing the Commander-in-Chief of America is a responsibility that is very different than voting for high school class superlatives like, most popular, best personality, or most friendly. Most of the best leaders of the world would fail to win “most likeable” contests.

B. The vote for president is a hiring decision. It is filling the top job vacancy in the US government with the candidate who is most likely to do a good job. The benefit of a CEO to his shareholders and employees is the effectiveness of his leadership and policies he will implement—not whether he is a nice guy who would be your first choice with whom to have a beer.

C. It is a choice between candidates both of whose characters are flawed. There is no candidate without character flaws. Here are some thoughts to consider in evaluating character flaws in this election.

  1. We live in an age when both sides use the ad hominem argument, which attacks the character of your opponent. Trump childishly belittles his opponents relentlessly, which all Christians should find extremely repulsive. Jesus was severe in his words about character assassination, Anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca, is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell. The Democrats employ ad hominem arguments incessantly, labeling anyone who disagrees with their cultural Marxist ideology racist, homophobic, or transphobic and demonizing Donald Trump as Hitler incarnate. Here are the words from a news conference called earlier this week by Kamala Harris to attack Trump’s character: "Donald Trump is someone who certainly falls into the general definition of fascists, who in fact vowed to be a dictator on day one  and vowed to use the military as his personal militia to carry out his political vendettas. Donald Trump is increasingly unhinged and unstable." Perhaps such demonization should not surprise us since Democrats called George Bush, Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon “Hitler” also.
  2. As the Colson Center for Christian Worldview points out, “A vote doesn’t always mean, ‘I think they’re great.’ It may just mean I think they’re better.’ On social media we ‘like’ posts as a way of affirming someone. In some ways, a ‘vote’ feels the same, so we hesitate to vote because it feels like we’re affirming the person or showing our complete approval of everything they say and do. But voting to fill government offices is not the same as ‘liking’ an Instagram post. It’s more like interviewing someone for a job. You may not be excited about any of the job applicants, but you still must hire someone to fill the position” (Ibid).
  3. A grace perspective that recognizes that character flaws are the flip side of character strengths can make living with flawed candidates more tolerable.

For example, Kamala Harris’ dishonesty is striking. She consistently lied that she saw nothing about Joe Biden’s cognitive decline and even after the debate, she denied this reality saying, “it was just a bad debate.” She is advertising in front of a border wall, which Donald Trump built saying she will fix the border problem, when her administration caused the problem. Harris criticized the border wall over fifty times, calling it stupid, useless and Trump’s medieval vanity project. She called for defunding ICE and shutting down of the ICE detention centers. Every time she had a chance in the Senate to vote for funding the border wall she voted against it. As a senator, she tried to take $220 million out of ICE’s Enforcement Division. 

But I believe that Kamala Harris, though lying about her border view, sincerely believes open borders help to right the wrong of financial inequity around the world. Kamala Harris believes cultural Marxism if not economic Marxism. Her father was a Marxist economics professor. This ideology sincerely believes that poverty is the fault of the rich business and landowners. When asked about her economic approach to high grocery prices, Harris revealed her Marxist, blame-the-rich mindset referring to price gouging, indicating that she would use price controls. Then she pointed to her actions in California, also revealing her Marxist, blame-the-rich mindset when she took action against the "evil" banks that foreclosed on those who defaulted on their home loans. Marxism believes the state should force economic equity, taking wealth from the evil rich and distributing it to the victimized poor. Such ideologues sincerely believe that Americans unfairly have too much wealth and that every poor immigrant looking for a better life has a right to come to America and enjoy our prosperity, whether coming illegally or not. From a character perspective she is a liar concerning closing the border and Joe Biden's memtal health. But I believe she is rationalizing such dishonesty because the elites know best how to help the poor. There is good evidence that she cares about the poor, the disenfranchised, and destitute. So, I don’t think open borders just mean more votes in the future to her. From her youth she appears to have been raised to believe that Marxist policies help the poor.  

Donald Trump’s self-confident arrogance is an off-putting character flaw. This flaw can’t be covered up. But. I have asked myself, “Could anyone without a very strong ego actually succeed at taking on cultural Marxism's vice grip on this culture?" Think of what Trump has endured: 1) three years of media lies and Department of Justice corruption accusing him of Russian collusion from a story proven to be from Hilary Clinton’s campaign, 2) the unprecedented dishonesty of the corrupt social media which suppressed facts about his successes and US enemies' bribes to Hunter Biden, 3) relentless frivolous lawsuits and criminal charges brough by corrupt Democrat attorneys and prosecutors, 4) the invasion of his and his family’s privacy in a legally baseless FBI raid of his and Milania'a bedroom and the rest of Mar-a-Lago, 5) hatred from the media that is so vicious and inexplicable that conservatives have labeled it Trump Derangement Syndrome, 6) two assassination attempts, 7) a Democrat Party that does not care whether calling Trump a dangerous fascist incites a mentally unstable gunman to make another assassination attempt. What Trump has endured is no justification for arrogance. I’m just saying that character flaws are often the flip side of strengths. Trump is arrogant. But the strength he brings to the table as a fighter for what he believes in is an asset that can’t be ignored, especially in facing down America’s enemies.

D. If you don’t like either candidate, remember that you cast your vote for the leaders WHOSE POLICIES most correspond to the righteousness of Christ’s kingdom. Character always matters, but if the options don’t include a person we can enthusiastically support, maybe they represent policies that we can enthusiastically support. Is one candidate working on behalf of the abortion industry, while the other works to defend life? Does one candidate defend conscience rights while the other supports suing nuns and churches that live out their faith? Does one candidate want parents involved in their child’s education and health care decisions while the other wants the state to interfere with parental rights? Every voter must work out which issues matter most, but in a situation where all the candidates are flawed, we can gain clarity about who to vote for based on the policies they endorse” (Ibid).

E. If you don’t like either individual candidate, vote for the best team. No politician works alone. Most candidates are part of a political party, and all candidates have donors and supporters. Executive offices, like mayors, governors, and presidents also appoint cabinet members, judges, ambassadors, and thousands of other positions that affect how government operates. In choosing one candidate over another, it’s important to think about the team that each brings along with them. If neither coach is ideal, which direction is the team going? Voting isn’t always easy. As in all of life, we’re often presented with imperfect choices, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t vote (Ibid).

When this final episode of this series, Election 2024 and Biblical Worldview is published, the election will be just 9 days away. May each of us do what God told us he created us to do over four thousand years ago: Use our influence with other voters and our own vote to, as best we can, elect leaders whose policies most align with Jesus’ kingdom of righteousness.

Just one final thought as we close. No matter who wins the Nov 5th election Christians will have to continue to battle the same anti-biblical views identified in this podcast series over the past seven weeks, especially cultural Marxism. These culture-shaping views aren’t going away, anytime soon, unless the Lord returns.

For Further Prayerful Thought

  1. How would you explain the connection between God’s reason for creating human beings (to bear his image) and the Christian responsibility as redeemed human beings to vote?
  2. What are the logical flaws in a Christian’s argument that with over 100 million votes cast his doesn’t matter?
  3. How would you respond to someone who said, “I don’t like either candidate and I’m not sure that, in good conscience, I can vote for either”?
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Policies That Harm Girls and Women

Policies That Harm Girls and Women

On 19 October, 2024 By Gary Yagel

God assigned men the responsibility of protecting women. Not only is that clear in God’s special revelation; Genesis 2:15 tells us that Adam was placed in the garden to protect the garden and its inhabitants. It is equally clear in God’s general revelation (i.e. from observing creation); men have stood between their women and harm in every known culture of the world. This episode is about protecting women—our wives, our daughters, and our sisters.

History reveals that Christians have been known throughout the world for protecting women. Following the example of their master, who protected a woman caught in adultery who was set up by male Pharisees, from being stoned by them, and who even protected Mary who was sitting at Jesus’ feet as a full disciple from her sister Martha’s female stereotypes, first century Christians lived out the truth that every female is as precious as any male by rescuing the predominantly females babies left by chauvinistic Roman fathers in the wilderness to die. So effective was the Christians' protection of female babies that when male Roman children grew to adulthood finding a shortage of Roman women for marriage, they turned to the Christian adopted daughters who became their wives and led many to faith in Christ! At the cost of being labeled partisan, this episode reveals the truth about how harm to our girls and women is resulting from Biden/Harris policies of 1) an open border, 2) promoting gender affirming medical care, and 3) rewriting Title IX to allow biological males to compete against females and share their locker room.

OPEN BORDERS CAUSE SEXUAL ASSAULT OF IMMIGRANT WOMEN & CHILDREN

The refusal of the Biden/Harris administration to enforce immigration law, which would allow women and children to be protected as they migrate to the USA, has led to countless parents sending their daughters on a journey to the southern American border. But most of the young women are captured by Mexican drug cartels and turned into sex slaves. According to one congressional report, immigrants, especially immigrant women, make up the largest portion of trafficking victims. Let’s stop and consider what this little word trafficked means? It means raping girls, boys, and women repeatedly and selling them into a life of being raped endlessly. Have you ever talked to someone who has been raped? Women say it rips apart their soul. It is a trauma so severe that it takes a lifetime of therapy to overcome it. And that is if it happens ONCE.

This refusal to enforce immigration law, however, harms more than the millions of precious girls and women setting out for a new life in America. 15,811 convicted sex offenders and another 4,250 charged with sexual assault have been apprehended at our borders by ICE but released into our country to victimize Americans instead of being sent home as immigration law requires. 22-year-old Georgia nursing student, Laken Riley, 37-year-old Baltimore mother of five, Rachel Martin, and 12-year-old Texas child, Jocelyn Nungary, are just some of many raped and murdered by illegal immigrant convicts caught and then released.

Further proof of what is happening through Democrat open border policy are the facts about the Mexican drug cartel’s income. In 2018, during the Trump administration, the cartels were earning roughly $500 million per year. Under the Biden/Harris open border policy the cartels' revenues have skyrocketed, 2000%. Last year, they made approximately $13 billion--26 times their income in 2018. Christians need to stop closing their eyes to the suffering of women who are being raped because of Democrat refusal to implement US Immigration law.

“GENDER AFFIRMING CARE” PREYS ON PUBESCIENT GIRLS

On Joe Biden’s inauguration day, the very first day in office, the Biden/Harris administration made clear its radical gender ideology by executing the “Executive Order on Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation” mandating the implementation of the transgender agenda throughout the US government. The words: “Children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to the restroom, the locker room, or school sports….People should be able to access health care and secure a roof over their heads without being subjected to sex discrimination.” Here’s what it means: Boys who identify as girls must be allowed to compete in the girls’ athletic competitions, men who identify as women must be allowed in women-only spaces, healthcare plans must pay for gender-transition procedures, and doctors and hospitals must perform them. The Biden/Harris Justice Department then sent a letter to all state attorneys general warning that they could be violating civil rights laws if they keep minors from receiving “gender-affirming care.” Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Population Affairs explains that gender affirming care requires:

  • Supporting social affirmation: Adopting gender-affirming hairstyles, clothing, name, gender pronouns restrooms and other facilities.
  • Supporting puberty blockers: Pause pubertal development using hormones.
  • Supporting hormone therapy: Testosterone hormones for those assigned female at birth; Estrogen hormones for those who were assigned male at birth.
  • Supporting gender-affirming Surgeries: “Top” surgery—to create male-typical chest shape or enhance breasts. “Bottom” surgery—surgery on genitals or reproductive organs. Facial feminization or other procedures.

Seven states and the American College of Pediatricians are suing the Biden administration for requiring physicians and healthcare personnel to provide affirming care to patients, including minors. In their brief they argue, “Doctors should not be compelled to harm children. But a new final rule from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services requires physicians to perform, refer for, or affirm harmful gender-transition procedures and forces States to pay for these dangerous procedures in state health plans.”

Gender-affirming health care denies 4000 years of history and all of science, specifically anatomy (which shows obvious differences in reproductive systems), embryology (which shows that testosterone in male babies shapes brain development), endocrinology (which shows enormous male and female differences based on the presence of testosterone and estrogen), and genetics (which shows that every one of the thirty trillion cells in the normal female body is marked XX and in the male body XY).  Gender affirming care is based upon the enormous power of the LGBTQ+ lobby, which intimidates politicians, educators, and government bureaucrats into support for it. Its victims are primarily pubescent girls, whose anxieties and emotional turmoil over their bodies growing into womanhood are exploited by radical gender ideologues to cause the girls to believe a delusion—that THEY, not their biology, determines their gender. Here are some characteristics of the girls who are most vulnerable to believing the destructive delusion that they are actually boys in the wrong (female) body. They: 1) already have high comorbidities (emotional/social disorders like autism), 2) don’t “fit in,” 3) are often fleeing womanhood more than pursuing maleness, 4) may fear their body becoming sexualized, 5) may be confused about their identity because of stumbling onto lesbian porn and being aroused by it, 6) don’t fit their or their parent’s stereotype of femininity, 7) are starving for affirmation, since being cis is uncool but being trans brings immediate notoriety, 8) are lonely but feel understood by a transgender media coach. This socially outcast subgroup would be one that Jesus would fiercely protect. So must we!

The Harm to Children Done by Gender Affirming Care

  • Although there has been an explosion of gender dysphoria among teen girls in the last 15 years, research shows that if left alone 82% will outgrow it. But the LGBTQ+ lobby wants government to mandate a shove of such troubled girls down the path of gender transition, sterilization, and body mutation.
  • The most frequently used puberty blocker, Lupron, which is used to chemically castrate sex offenders has never been approved by the FDA for halting puberty. We don’t even know what it is doing to kids.
  • Statistically, 100% of those who begin puberty blockers go on to cross-gender hormones, which always cause permanent sterility.
  • The gender affirming care claim that we must put gender dysphoric children on puberty blockers and support their desire to change genders or they will commit suicide is utterly false. The illegitimacy of the main organization making this fraudulent claim, World Professional Association for Transgender Health, was exposed via internal WPATH documents released March 4, 2024, by whistle blowers. Long term studies of transgender adults in fact show a very troubling increase in the suicide rate of trans adults after ten years.
  • Increasingly, de-transitioners, i.e. those shoved down the path of gender affirming care who now regret it, are making their voices heard. Such victims are proving what science is increasingly showing about the adolescent brain; it does not finish developing until age 25. Until then the young adult’s ability to understand the long-term consequences of immediate decisions is impaired, which partially explains suicide, risky drug experimentation, fast driving, and decisions to mutilate their bodies and become sterile because of a teen fad.

BIDEN/HARRIS ADMINISTRATION CHANGES TITLE IX OF CIVIL RIGHTS LAW

August 1, 2024. WASHINGTON—The Biden/Harris administration’s radical rewrite of Title IX, the longstanding federal law created to protect girls and women from sex discrimination in education, takes effect today in public and many private schools in 24 states across the country. Title IX of the Civil Rights Act says that schools cannot discriminate against individuals based on sex, which gave women better access to higher education and athletics through women’s scholarships and requirements to fund women’s athletics. It led to a revolution in the sports world enabling women athletes to compete in their own sports leagues. But the current administration has swapped “sex” for “gender,” which allows biological males access to females’ bathrooms, locker rooms, sports competitions, etc. This change treats women unjustly, puts them at risk of physical injury, and sexually abuses them.

The Biden/Harris Title IX Change is UNJUST for Girls & Women

On September 29, 2023, The American College of Sports Medicine, in an article entitled ACSM Releases Expert Consensus Statement: The Biological Basis of Sex Differences in Athletic Performance, says, “Biological sex is a determinant of athletic performance: adult males are faster, stronger, more powerful than females because of fundamental sex differences in anatomy and physiology dictated by sex chromosomes. 

  • Significant differences emerge at puberty due to anabolic effects of testosterone in males. Testosterone levels rise 20-30-fold in males during puberty and are 15 times higher in males than females by age 18. 
  • Direct and indirect effects of testosterone during male puberty include increase skeletal muscle mass; lower percentage body fat; higher hemoglobin concentration and mass; larger ventricular mass (heart) and cardiac volumes; larger airways and lungs; greater body height; and longer limbs.
  • Adult males are stronger, more powerful, and faster than females of similar age and training status. The difference in athletic performance where endurance or muscular power is required is roughly 10-30% depending on the event. 

Rilley Gaines is a 12-time All American University of Kentucky swimmer who, during her senior year, had to compete against a biological man claiming to be transgender, Leah Thomas, a member of Penn’s women’s swim team in the NCAA Women’s Swimming championships. She tells her story:

Beginning when I was six, I trained six hours every single day. By college, you swim fifteen thousand yards, which is about ten miles every single day. Three of those hours are before eight am. It's brutal. At the highest levels, you train all year just to knock off tenths of a second from your time. My senior year, I had a goal of winning a national title, which meant becoming the fastest woman in the country. I’m right on pace to achieve that when the NCAA allows a man, Leah Thomas, a mediocre swimmer at that, to compete in women’s athletics. He and I raced in the two hundred freestyle. We tied, which is really rare.

After we tied, we go behind the awards podium where the NCAA official looked at Thomas and me and said, “Great job but you tied, and we only have one trophy, and we're going to give that trophy to Leah because we've been advised as an organization that when photos are being taken it's crucial that the trophy is in Leah's hands.” There was no conversation with my coach or my AD or anyone that was representing me. The national championship trophy and my record setting time for women collegiate swimming were taken from me.

Later, my school warned me not to make trouble saying that if I objected to this unfair treatment, I would never get a job. No employer would ever hire me because they would look me up and see that I'm a transphobe. Their threatening warning continued,

“You know, Riley, you want to go to dental school. No dental school will ever accept you or even look at your application if you speak up about this. And remember when you signed that scholarship, you gave away your rights to speak in your own personal capacity. Remember whose name is across your chest, because it's not yours, it's ours. Understand, we have already taken your stance for you. If you speak out and any harm were to go Thomas's way, whether in the form of physical harm, emotional harm, self-inflicted for that matter—understand that could result in a potential death, and that would make you a murderer” (Interview with Riley Gaines on Verdict with Ted Cruz Podcast, October 4, 2024, The Assault by Men Playing In Women’s Sports.)

The Biden/Harris Title IX Change is PHYSICALLY HARMFUL to Girls & Women

  • Peyton McNabb, a high school senior, was in North Carolina competing in women’s volleyball. A man claiming to be trans on the opposing team spiked the ball, hit her in the face, knocking her unconscious. That was September 2022. Still to this day, she's partially paralyzed on her right side. Her vision is impaired, her memory is impaired. She was supposed to play softball in college, but because of this brain injury, she will never play college sports.
  • At a Massachusetts high school, a male claiming trans identity was allowed to play field hockey in women’s athletics. He slapped a shot that hit a woman in her face, knocking out all her teeth and requiring facial reconstruction surgery. This male is till harming women playing women's field hockey at the collegiate level.
  • At the summer Olympics we saw the IOC allow two men claiming trans identity, to compete in women's boxing. Naturally, both men won gold medals in their respective weight divisions. One of the female boxers who fought against one of the male boxers, said she had never been punched that forcefully in her entire life, and that “this was nothing like a punch a woman could throw.”

The Biden/Harris Title IX Change SEXUALLY ABUSES Girls & Women

Sexually abusing a woman is forcing non-consensual nakedness or sexual acts upon her. Listen again to Riley Gaine’s description of what happened in the women’s locker room at the NCAA finals where male swimmer Leah Thomas appeared.

“The NCAA gave no warning to the women competing in the NCAA finals that a man was going to be standing naked right next to us in our locker room. When I discovered this, I said to an official, ‘I understand the guidelines that allowed a man into the pool with us. But what guidelines allowed a man into our locker room?’ This official responded, ‘We actually got around this by making the locker rooms unisex.’ I remember, thinking, ‘Okay, you realize by admitting you had to change the rules, you're admitting that Thomas isn't a woman.’ But secondly, unisex, means any man, any coach, any official, any parent, any pervert who wanted to, could come down there and share this changing space with us.”

“A swimming locker room is a giant, completely open square with no stalls or even aisles. And the suits that you're putting on—it takes twenty minutes to poke and prod yourself into them and that's twenty minutes in which you're fully exposed. When I had my back turned and I heard a man's voice in our intimate changing space, I really cannot put into words the feelings. Of course it's awkward. It's embarrassing, it's uncomfortable, it's humiliating. It's feelings of utter violation and feelings of betrayal. It’s traumatizing, really, and not even necessarily traumatizing because of what we were forced to see or how we were forcibly and non-consensually exploited, which used to correctly be called sexual abuse or sexual harassment. It was traumatizing for me to know just how easy it was for them to throw our rights to privacy as women entirely out of the window” (Ibid).

As this blog comes out, San Jose State is allowing a man claiming to be trans to play on its women’s volleyball team. Not only did he take a scholarship away from a woman, he has taken a roster and starting spot away from a woman, and is endangering the safety and privacy rights of his team’s women, especially when they travel. But finally, someone is having the guts to stand up to the LGBTQ+ movement. The presidents of four other Mountain West Conference schools, Southern Utah, Boise State, University of Wyoming, and Utah State have chosen to protect their women by refusing to compete against men claiming to be women. Instead, they forfeited their match, thereby taking a loss on their record.

In the past, God has sometimes used secular forces to shame Christians into doing what they should be doing. Maybe Gof is doing that here—giving a picture of what men should be doing—protecting women. May we oppose every ideology that harms these precious feminine creatures!

For Further Prayerful Thought

  1. Why do you think many Christians and Christian leaders turn a blind eye to the hundreds of thousands of girls and women being raped and turned into sex slaves by Mexican Drug cartels because of America’s open border?
  2. What facts about gender affirming care do you most want to remember so you can point out its harm to parents of gender-confused kids?
  3. What aspects of Riley Gaine’s story are most infuriating to you? Why do you think so many people cave to LGBTQ pressure when radical gender ideology totally contradicts science and common sense?
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Pursuing Truth in This Election

Pursuing Truth in This Election

On 13 October, 2024 By Gary Yagel

Here is a Question for you. In the last two weeks, have you heard anything about the following news story from your news source?

  • The head of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) reported that there are now over 13,000 known convicted murderers who were caught by ICE at the southern border but instead of being sent home as immigration law dictates were released into America because of the Democrat party’s catch and release policy? And those are just the convicted felons. The ICE director reported there are also another 1900 illegal immigrants who’ve been charged with homicide in another country, caught by ICE, but released into America.
  • In the past two weeks did you hear any horrified female newscaster mention the 15,811 illegal immigrants who are convicted sex offenders who were caught by ICE at the border but released into the US by the Democrat Party’s refusal to enforce immigration law. Has any newscaster you know called attention to the additional 4,250 illegal immigrants charged with sexual assault now on the streets of America because of catch and release?

These shocking revelations came on September 30 in a letter from ICE Director Patrick Lechleitner to Congressman Tony Gonzales. Lechleitner revealed that under the Biden/Harris catch and release violation of immigration law, over 600,000 illegal immigrants with criminal records or pending criminal charges against them have been released onto our streets instead of returned home as US immigration law requires. Think of it. Over 13,000 convicted murderers and over 15,000 convicted rapists released into our land by the Biden/Harris administration and the corrupt mainstream media makes virtually no mention of it!

This episode examines the responsibility of Christians to be light to our culture—to expose what sin wants to cover up and, in particular, to expose the unprecedented suppression of the truth by the corporate media and Democrat Party of what is actually happening at our southern borders. Jesus said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (Jn 8:12). What does this claim mean for our mission? A disciple, by definition, pursues both BEING LIKE his master, and the master’s CAUSE. So, not surprisingly, Jesus said to his followers, You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others (Mt 5:14-16). Let's fill out the biblical picture of this mission.

OUR MISSION TO BE LIGHT TO THE WORLD

  • We are called out of darkness: But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you OUT OF DARKNESS INTO HIS MARVELOUS LIGHT (I Pet 2:9).
  • Sin causes humans to suppress the truth and hide from the light. And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed (Jn 3:19-20).
  • Deceit is at the heart of evil. The devil was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies (Jn 8:44).
  • God is unalterably opposed to dishonesty. A lying tongue is an abomination to the LORD (Prov 16:17).
  • Jesus exposed hidden evil. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness” (Mt 23:25-27).
  • We follow a master who IS truth. I am the way the truth and the life (Jn 14:6).
  • A commitment to truth belongs at our core in the battle for the kingdom of light to prevail.  Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth (Eph 6:14).
  • Notice that in Psalm forty-five’s description of Jesus’ messianic rule, he spreads truth. Gird your sword on your thigh, O mighty one, in your splendor and majesty! In your majesty ride out victoriously for the cause of truth and meekness and righteousness (Ps 45:3-4).
  • Helping another see truth is an act of love. Love does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth (1 Cor 13:6).
  • Our calling in the culture is to expose lies. You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house.

EVIDENCE OF THE CORPORATE MEDIA’S SUPPRESSION OF TRUTH

A. Trump Russian Collusion Hoax. Although I’ve known that over 90% of those in the media industry are Democrats, I did not see the extent of the mainstream media corruption until 2019 when Special Counsel Robert Mueller exonerated President Trump’s campaign from the mythical allegation of Russian collusion to influence the 2016 election. The world saw that this allegation was actually fabricated by Hillary Clinton’s campaign. For three years, the mainstream media had repeated the lie of Russian collusion. During that time, I repeatedly heard Greg Jarrett of Fox news give updates on these allegations. Mueller’s report confirmed that every single thing Greg Jarrett said true, while the wool was pulled over the eyes of everyday Americans for three years by a dishonest media seeking to undermine everything Trump tried to do. This experience opened my eyes to the sad truth. CNN, MSNBC, CBS, NBC, ABC, Sixty Minutes are no longer interested in real journalism. They are led by progressive ideologues, the same ideology that has overtaken what was for some a beloved Democrat Party. I have had many conversations with distraught friends who have spiritually mature Christian adult kids who seem to be blind to the takeover of the Democrat Party by Cultural Marxism. I think I understand why. If they get their news from the above sources, they don’t have a clue what is happening in America. Instead, they hear progressive spin at every turn. Sadly, some very intelligent Christians would be called naïve using biblical categories. Scripture says, The naïve believe everything but the prudent man considers his steps (Prov 14:15). Perhaps some of us need to say to friends and relatives, “The Bible says, The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him. If your main news source is the mainstream media, what conservative news source are you listening to so that you get both sides?” (Conservative sources would be Fox News Channel, Newsmax, The Heritage Foundation, some talk radio broadcasts, and podcasts like the World and Everything in It, Breakpoint, Verdict with Ted Cruz.) So, it would be folly to ignore what the 3-year promotion of a hoax invented by the Clinton campaign tells us about the corporate media. They can’t be trusted. Period.

B. Cover Up of Hunter Biden’s Crimes Before the 2020 Election. Black Conservative thinker Kay Coles James asks, “While there’s little doubt that left-leaning bias is rampant throughout much of the political media, is that bias powerful enough to swing a presidential election? According to a survey of those who voted for Joe Biden in November of 2020, it made a big enough difference to hand six swing states to the former vice president.

Brent Bozell, president of the watchdog Media Research Center, surveyed swing-state Biden voters and found that the media’s refusal to cover certain stories may have cost President Donald Trump the election. The Media Research Center asked voters about eight news stories, including the unfolding scandal involving Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings that may have included Joe Biden himself, a former staffer’s sexual assault allegation against Joe Biden, and positive stories about Trump’s successes, including 33% economic growth during the pandemic, an upcoming coronavirus vaccine rollout, and Middle East peace deals. The Media Research Center found that 17% of Biden voters wouldn’t have voted for him had they known about one or more of the stories. Bozell’s calculations show that was enough to move six swing states into Trump’s column, giving him 311 Electoral College votes—enough to retain the presidency. For example, 39% of Biden voters said they didn’t know about the record 11 million jobs created from June to October in the snapback from the pandemic. If they had, 5.4% would have changed their vote. (Heritage.org “How Conservatives Must Counter the Media’s Left-Wing Election Advocacy”).

C. In April of 2023 Elon Musk bought Twitter for 44 billion dollars. In a TED interview, Musk said he aimed to make Twitter a "platform for free speech around the globe", hailing free speech as a "societal imperative for a functioning democracy" and insisting that he had not made the offer to increase his wealth. Musk himself had been the victim of twitter’s incredibly biased shutdown of voices with whom its leaders disagreed.

On July 13th Elon Musk endorsed Donald Trump. Musk is no political conservative, but he saw the way progressive ideology suppresses the truth. All forms of Marxism, including Cultural Marxism, which reigns in the Democrat Party, are totalitarian in nature. The elite must control and manipulate what the masses think. Six days ago, Musk repeated his reasons for supporting Trump in these words: “I think this election is the most important election of our lifetime. This is not an ordinary election. The other side wants to take away your freedom of speech.… Free speech is the bedrock of democracy. If people don’t know what’s going on—if people don’t know the truth, how can you make an informed vote.”

D. Facebook admits suppressing the truth. This past summer, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerburg made a stunning revelation about Facebook being pressured at times by the Biden/Harris administration and that it had deliberately buried stories about the Biden family receiving bribes by “demoting it.” Demoting a story means making it and references to it all but impossible to find anywhere on Facebook. Zuckerburg’s words: “In 2021, senior officials from the Biden Administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain Covid-19 content. In a separate situation in the lead up to the 2020 election, when we saw a New York Post story reporting on corruption allegations involving then-Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden’s Family, we… demoted it…In retrospect we shouldn’t have demoted the story.”

E. The Son of Robert F Kennedy leaves the Democrat Party and endorses Trump. On August 24th in one of the most stunning political reversals in US history, the reigning patriarch of the bluest of all Democrat blueblood families, RFK Jr. endorsed Donald Trump. His words are a stunning confirmation that cultural Marxism has taken over the Democrat Party and will do anything to force its ideology on voters, in utter disregard of the principles of democracy. His words:

"Sixteen months ago, I launched my campaign to be president of the United States. I began this journey as a Democrat, the party of my father and uncles, the party which I pledged my allegiance to long before I was old enough to vote. Back then the Democrats were the champions of the Constitution, of civil rights. The Democrats stood against authoritarianism, against censorship and were the party of government transparency. Our party was the bulwark against big money interests and corporate power. As you know, I left that party in October because it had departed so dramatically from the core values that I grew up with. It had become the party of censorship, corruption, big tech, big pharma, and big money."

"I’m sorry to say that while democracy still survives at the grass roots, it has become little more than a slogan for the media, and the Democratic Party. In the name of saving democracy, the Democrat Party set itself to dismantling it. Lacking confidence that its candidate could win in a fair election at the voting booth, the Democrat National Committee waged continual legal warfare against both President Trump and myself. Each time our volunteers turned in those towering boxes of signatures needed to get on the ballot, the DNC dragged us into court, state after state, attempting to erase their work and subvert the will of the voters who had signed those petitions. It deployed DNC-aligned judges to throw me and other candidates off the ballot and to throw President Trump in jail."

"In a campaign of over a year, when at times my poll numbers were in the high twenties, the DNC-aligned mainstream media networks maintained a near perfect embargo on interviews with me. By comparison, during his 10-month presidential campaign in 1992, independent candidate Ross Perrot gave 34 interviews on mainstream networks. In contrast, in the 16 months since I declared, ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC CNN combined had 2 live interviews with me. In my heart I no longer believe that I have a realistic path to victory in the face of this relentless censorship and media control. The causes for throwing my support to President Trump are free speech, the war in Ukraine, and the war against children."

F. Sixty Minutes was caught red-handed “fixing” Kamala’s answers. In an interview with Bill Whitacker broadcast last week, Kamala Harris answered Whitaker’s question about Hamas in a very unpresidential, windy, uncertain manner. Her words were:   “Well, Bill, the work that we have done has resulted in a number of movements in that region by Israel that were very much prompted by, or a result of, many things, including our advocacy for what needs to happen in the region,” But in the broadcast that aired, Harris’ response was crisp and confident, having been edited to this. “The work that we do diplomatically with the leadership of Israel is an ongoing pursuit around making clear our principles,” This is just one more example of the dishonest mainstream media in action.

MEDIA & DEMOCRAT SUPPRESSION OF BORDER FACTS

In 2020, the Trump Administration achieved the lowest rate of illegal immigration in 45 years. But all Democrats want open borders. The first week in office the Biden/Harris administration made three intentional decisions to open the border to illegal immigrants. 1). They halted construction of the border wall. 2) They reinstated the disastrous policy of catch and release. 3) They pulled out of the incredibly successful Remain in Mexico policy. The truth is that the Democrats have deliberately caused the border crisis. The executive branch refuses to enforce immigration law. Here are some examples of the deceptions.

  • In recent interviews Kamal Harris lied in blaming the border crisis on Congress for not passing a necessary law. Tim Walz also lied in saying more funding is needed. There is no new law or funding needed. The only issue is the refusal of the Biden/Harris administration to enforce current immigration law. Why is it that members of the mainstream media did not challenge Harris or Walz with the dishonesty of their answers, since the 11 million illegal immigrant explosion is caused by catch and release, which defies immigration law.
  • The Republican majority of the House of Representatives voted to impeach Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for dereliction of duty in not enforcing immigration law. When the case went to the Democrat-controlled Senate to be tried, every Democrat voted in favor of a bogus procedural motion to dismiss the charges. They would not allow the Democrat non-enforcement of immigration law to even be discussed on the floor of the Senate lest voters know what is happening at the border.
  • Here is a story from this week that has been all but ignored by mainstream media as are hundreds of vicious attacks committed by convicted felons released into the US by the Biden/Harris administration. A woman in her fifties returned to her Briarwood neighborhood of Dallas and had just pulled into her garage when four men approached her, forced her inside at gunpoint, tied her up, pistol-whipped her, threatened to cut off her fingers, ransacked her home, stole money and jewelry. Police matched a fingerprint to one of the suspects, Manuel Hernandez who named the others involved. All four are from Venezuela. Ice would only give the immigration history of Manuel Hernandez, who in March illegally entered the US from El Paso and has been arrested at least twice before and released. Just months after illegally coming into the US, he pled guilty to a DWI. Despite the conviction, he was released right back into the US. By the way, this Dallas woman was fortunate she wasn’t raped or murdered like 22-year-old Gorgia nursing student Laken Riley and so many others by convicted felons released into our country through the Democrat catch and release.
  • The Biden/Harris administration has admitted that it illegally flew 320,000 illegal immigrants secretly into the US. This would be a major news headline if the mainstream media were not committed to suppressing what the Biden/Harris is doing to bring illegal immigrants into America. The Biden administration was forced to admit these facts because it was sued under the Freedom of Information Act by the Center for Immigration Studies. I response to that lawsuit, they released documents that showed that the Biden/Harris administration paid for paid for secret flights of 320,000 illegal immigrants and unloaded them at 43 different American airports. They refused to admit which ones because that would be “a security risk."

In closing, I want to say that like most Christian leaders, I hate the very idea of bringing partisan politics into a discussion about Christian discipleship. Trump and the rest of the Republican Party are nowhere close to perfect. And EVERY politician spins the truth. But I cannot flee from my responsibility to shed light on the evil being covered up by the corporate media and Democrat party, especially with regard to our southern border.

For Further Prayerful Thought:

  1. What do you think is the biblical case for Christians to advance the kingdom of light by exposing destructive actions that those in the culture are attempting to hide?
  2. What two or three facts seem like the strongest evidence of the corporate media’s suppression of the truth? Why do you think Christians allow the mainstream media to blind them so much to what is really happening in our culture?
  3. What facts about illegal immigration and the open southern border stood out most to you?  In view of these facts, what wise question might you ask a believer who naively thinks Christians should support the Democrat’s open border catch and release defiance of immigration law?
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Putting a Lens Over the Israel vs Hamas/Hezbollah War

Putting a Lens Over the Israel vs Hamas/Hezbollah War

On 05 October, 2024 By Gary Yagel

In the Genesis 12 account of Abram’s calling, God says, Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and… I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse (vs 1-2). That nation, Israel is now at war with Hamas and Hezbollah. Does God’s promise of blessings and curses mean that Christians should blindly support candidates from the Republican party who are staunchly pro-Israel? What about Palestinian Christians who were killed while taking refuge in a church, which was bombed by Israeli jets in what many Christians consider reckless overkill? This episode seeks to set forth some facts about Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Christian theory of just war, giving you a lens to evaluate the stands of the two parties, yourself.

Tomorrow marks the one-year anniversary of the October 7 massacre by the terrorist group Hamas of some 1200 Israeli babies, children, women and men, many after torturing them. It was the worst day of slaughter of Jews since the holocaust. Hamas didn’t just commit atrocities: they filmed, celebrated, and broadcast them. As we try to get our minds around how to think biblically about Israel’s response to this attack. we need quite a few facts. Let’s begin with some history.

HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE EAST CONFLICT UP TO 2005

  • Jews were dispersed across the world after 70 AD when Jerusalem was pillaged.
  • In 1917, Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire with less than 10% of the population Jewish.
  • During WWI, Britain passed the Balfour Declaration, in 1917, to establish a "national home for the Jewish people in Palestine.”
  • The declaration called for “safeguarding the civil and religious rights for the Palestinian Arabs” who composed the vast majority of the population.
  • After Britain’s army drove the Ottoman Turks out of the Middle East (WW1) the Britts set up a political entity called Mandatory Palestine under its rule.
  • Meanwhile, in Europe the Jewish Zionist movement called for Jews to migrate to Palestine to repatriate Israel.
  • Arab nationalists naturally opposed this effort, asserting Arab rights over the former Ottoman territories and seeking to prevent Jewish migration.
  •  After World War II, in 1945, the United States took up the Zionist cause.
  • Britain, unable to find a practical solution for the rule of Palestine referred the problem to the United Nations, which in 1947 approved a plan for 1) an independent Arab State, 2) an independent Jewish State, and 3) the city of Jerusalem to be under an international trusteeship system.
  • The UN’s vote caused joy among Jews and anger in the Arab community. The next day Arab League members, Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq marched their forces into what had, until the previous day, been the British Mandate for Palestine, to attack the Jewish state.
  • After an initial loss of territory by the Jewish state, the tide turned in the Israelis' favor and they pushed the Arab armies back beyond the borders of the proposed Arab state.
  • The departure of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs from Israel during the war left the country with a substantial Jewish majority.
  • Hostility towards Israel among the Arabs smoldered for twenty years leading the Arab league in 1967 to plan another attack. Israeli intelligence learned of it and the Israeli air force launched pre-emptive strikes destroying the Egyptian, Jordanian, and Syrian air forces on the same day.
  • It then defeated Egypt, Jordan and Syria in this Six-Day War. Israel captured the Old City of Jerusalem, the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and the Golan Heights. 
  • In 1979 Israel signed a peace treaty with Egypt based on the Camp David Accords.
  • In 1993, Israel signed the Oslo I Accord I with the Palestine Liberation Organization, followed by the signing of the Israel–Jordan peace treaty.
  • In 2005, Israel gave up its occupation of the Gaza Strip. All Jewish settlers were evacuated from Gaza and it set up free elections there.

The Rise of Hamas

  • Hamas won the free 2006 Palestinian election with 75% of the vote.
  • Hamas then staged a bloody coup against the Palestinian Authority which had won the other 25%, seized control of Gaza, and turned it into a base for attacking Israel with rockets, tunnel infiltrations, and incendiary balloons.
  • After Hamas's takeover of the Gaza Strip from other elected Palestinians, Israel significantly intensified existing movement restrictions and imposed a complete blockade of the Gaza Strip.
  • Hamas’ organizing documents state its intent to annihilate Israel and impose Islam on Palestine. Consider the actual words of this document.

The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement 18 August 1988

In The Name of The Most Merciful Allah

  • There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad (holy war). Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time.
  • Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.
  • The Jihad for the Liberation of Palestine is an individual duty. The day that enemies usurp part of Muslim land, Jihad becomes the individual duty of every Muslim. In face of the Jews' usurpation of Palestine, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised.
  • The slogan of Hamas: The Prophet is its model, the Koran its constitution: Jihad is its path and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes.
  • Under the wing of Islam, it is possible for the followers of the three religions--Islam, Christianity and Judaism--to coexist in peace with each other. Peace and quiet would not be possible except under the wing of Islam. It is the duty of the followers of other religions to stop disputing the sovereignty of Islam.

Identity of Hezbollah

Hezbollah is a Lebanese Shia Islamist militant group founded by Lebanese clerics primarily to fight Israel in 1982. It was created with the support of 1,500 Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps instructors from Iran. The group's stated goals: the expulsion of Western influences, the establishment of allegiance to Iran's supreme leader, and the establishment of an Iran-influenced Islamist government.

Hamas and Hezbollah Will Always Reject Peace with Israel

  • The founding documents of Hamas, Hezbollah (Iran’s proxy) and Iran, itself, demonstrate that their clear purpose is to annihilate Israel.
  • Since the 2005, Hamas terrorists have fired more than 18,000 rockets and mortars at Israel’s civilian population.
  • To date, Hezbollah, from Lebanon, has launched over 5,000 attacks against civilian and military targets in Israel.
  • Ali Laijani, head of the Iranian Parliament stated, "We [Iran] explicitly support Hamas and Hezbollah and the oppressed and Muslim people of Palestine, and we do not hide this support … Israel is a cancerous tumor in the region, and we are helping the people of Palestine, and we even send them weapons.”
  • As recently as 2020, Hamas rejected the Trump middle east peace plan that was embraced by the Arab states, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, and Morocco. The plan provided for Israeli security needs, and cleared the way for U.S. recognition of Israeli sovereignty over many settlements and Jewish holy sites in the territory of the West Bank. It also included important benefits for Palestinians, who were offered the opportunity to build a state of their own, supported by a $50 billion regional development plan for the Palestinian territories and nearby Arab states.
  • Despite the economic benefits and the diplomatic pathway to a Palestinian state the Islamic extremists, Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran rejected the plan.

ATTEMPTING TO LOOK THROUGH A BIBLICAL LENS

A. Muslim dissatisfaction over Britain’s division of Palestine into an Arab State and Jewish State does NOT justify seeking the annihilation of Israel.  Civilized people work out disputes over land, which have happened all through history. An important parallel to the British and UN’s decision to partition Palestine is India.  After WW II, Britain sought to return the rule of British India to its inhabitants. In 1947, the UK Parliament passed The Indian Independence Act that partitioned British India into the two new independent countries of India and Pakistan. Since most of the Muslim population was in the northwest portion of British India, these majority Muslim districts were awarded to Pakistan and the majority non-Muslim districts to India.

The plan to partition British-owned India, was a two-state solution as was the plan to divide British-owned Palestine. Although, there is certainly hostility between India and Pakistan today, the Pakistani military is not firing thousands of rockets at Indian civilians, demanding that India has no right to exist. Only evil, radical, hate-filled ideologues (like Radical Islamists and Nazis) insist on settling land disputes by the extermination of their opponents. When I visited Israel I saw how normal Palestinians, be they Christian, Arab or secular, don’t want Israeli eradication. They favor a kind of two-state solution not unlike that proposed by the Trump administration. However, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and other adherents to radical Islam WILL NEVER COMPROMISE. Israel must be annihilated, “from the river to the sea” so that radical Islam can impose the Caliphate, forcing Islam on all Palestinians. Muhamad was a warrior who spread Islam through the might of his sword. Islam’s method of spreading its faith is jihad, holy war. Once an enemy was militarily defeated, Islam was forced on the population through Sharia law, from the top down. The spread of Islam is done by slaughtering its opponents, especially Jews and Christians. That is why, when it comes to the persecution of Christians across the world you see statistics like these:

  • In Pakistan the number of Christians persecuted by Islamic oppression is 4,194,000 (The Gospel Coalition).
  • In Nigeria, the estimated number of Christians persecuted by Islamic oppression is 1,420,000 (Ibid)
  • Since the year 2000, 70,000 black Christians have been murdered in Africa by Muslim extremists. (Dennis Prager).

Contrast this to Christianity whose founder gave his life for others, prayed from his cross for the forgiveness of his enemies, and is building a kingdom whose core value is loving and serving others. The conflict in the middle east is not caused by a land dispute; it is caused by Islam.

B. There is NO moral equivalency between the actions of Hamas and the actions of the Israeli Defense Forces. None. In the 13th century, theologian Thomas Aquinas synthesized biblical teachings on peace and war, proposing what was called Just War Theory. His thinking had a lasting impact on later generations and became the basis for the humane treatment of civilians and prisoners required by the Geneva Conventions. Here is a summary of Hamas’ violations of the Geneva Conventions.

  • Specifically, those captured must be “treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, color, religion or faith, sex.”
  • The killing of all civilians is prohibited.
  • Beating, rape, cruel treatment of any soldier or civilian is prohibited.
  • Mutilation, torture, outrages upon dignity…humiliating and degrading treatment are forbidden.
  • Taking civilian hostages of any kind is forbidden.

Hamas gets an A+ for committing viscious war crimes. It could not be waging a more immoral war. It breaks all international laws by hiding among civilians and firing its weapons next to hospitals, schools and mosques. While Israel tries to avoid civilian casualties, Hamas fires thousands of indiscriminate missiles in order to maximize Israeli civilian casualties. Hamas has made it clear that its goal is the destruction of Israel and the extermination of its seven million Jewish inhabitants.

This contrasts in the greatest possible way with the Israeli Defense Force actions. The IDF has hamstrung themselves because of Israel’s adherence to the Geneva Conventions. In response to Hamas atrocities against its children, Israel did what every country in the world would justly do; it took military action to secure its territory and entered Gaza to rescue its hostages and eliminate the threat on its border. Israel’s attempt to destroy Hamas can be compared to the Allied invasion to end WW II. The Allies drove all the way to Berlin to destroy the Nazi party. As Israel seeks to destroy Hamas, it, like America is morally committed to keeping the Geneva Conventions. The former Supreme Commander of British forces in Afghanistan, Richard Kemp, has testified that, in Israel's battle against Hamas in Gaza, “The Israel Defense Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.”

This is not to say that abuse of Muslims is not taking place by the IDF forces. It certainly is. In fact, some IDF whistle blowers called attention to prisoners held at an Israeli detention camp in the Negev desert that were being subjected to widespread physical and mental abuses. This parallels the whistle blowers of the American military who called attention to American abuse of Muslim detainees in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq during the Iraq war. But contrast Israeli whistle blowers with Hamas who videotaped and celebrated its horrific war crimes on October 7. There is zero moral equivalency here.

C. Hatred of the Jews is a worldwide phenomenon that is best understood as Satan’s hatred of God’s chosen people. Romans 9-11 make clear that God’s covenant made with Abraham continues through Abraham’s line of descent, but that line of descent was the faithful remnant of Israel who trusted God’s provision for their sin, foreseen in the temple sacrifices, but ultimately accomplished by Christ. “For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world,” writes Paul, “did not come through the law but through the righteousness of faith (Rom 4:13). God’s covenant, by which He promised to save Abraham, always belonged to the descendants of Abraham who had faith, the faithful remnant within ethnic Israel. That remnant and covenant promises come into the NT era as the church. Abraham is the father of the Christian faith.

But what about God’s commitment to ethnic Israel? The re-formation of Israel in 1948, after Jews were dispersed over all the earth for 2000 years is without precedent in history. So is the antisemitism that accompanied them everywhere, which I can’t help but see as Satan’s hatred of the ethnic group God chose. Admittedly the rebirth of Israel has led to wild eschatological views with which I strongly disagree Nevertheless, I believe that this historic fact—the reconstitution of Israel in Palestine with its capital in Jerusalem—is consistent with what Paul teaches. In Romans 11, Paul uses the analogy of the olive tree to say that God has grafted the Gentiles into God’s covenant community. Then he writes, “a partial hardening has come upon Israel, UNTIL the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And in this way ALL ISRAEL WILL BE SAVED, as it is written, ‘The Deliverer will come from Zion, he will banish ungodliness from Jacob; and this will be my covenant with them when I take away their sins (vs25-27). I agree with the ESV Study Bible footnotes that argue that the best interpretation of Paul’s phrase “all of Israel will be saved” in context is that after the ingrafting of the Gentiles, before Christ returns there will be a great outpouring of the Spirit in the nation of Israel, leading to millions of Jews coming to faith in Christ. God's covenant people were clearly the remnant; but God's call to Abram and Romans 9-11 seem to suggest a commitment God has also made to ethnic Israel. That is not the only reason, but a good reason to elect those who are pro-Israel.

DEMOCRATE AND REPUBLICAN SUPPORT FOR ISRAEL

Is there a difference between Republican and Democrat support for the nation of Israel? Trump's support while in office was notorious. On December 6, 2017, he officially recognized Jerusalem as the capital city of Israel and announced his plan to move the American embassy to this city. It is unfair and untrue to say that all Democrats are anti-Israel. But the facts are that pro-Hamas politicians in the Democrat Party have caused a historic weakening in its support for Israel. Here are some of those facts.

  • One month after taken office, the Biden-Harris Administration rescinded Trump’s restoration of U.N. sanctions on Iran concerning its sale of oil. The enforcement of these sanctions led to a reduction in Iran's oil procuction from 1 million barrels/day to 300,000. The refusal of the Harris/Biden administration to enforce these sanctions has caused Iranian oil production to skyrocket to 2 million barrels/day flooding over one hundred billion dollars into Iran’s coffers since Boden and Harris took office. That money funds HAMAS and HEZBOLLAH rockets.
  • On March 14, 2024, Senate Democrat Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu should be replaced because of Netanyahu’s determination to root out and destroy Hamas. Such public criticism of an ally’s leader during wartime is an unprecedented violation of diplomatic protocol.
  • In May 2024, the Biden-Harris Administration decided to hold up certain arms sales to Israel without consulting Congress. The administration threatened Israel on network television suggesting that it is more concerned with satisfying the anti-Israel left-wing part of their party than supporting our close ally who neded the weapons immediately.
  • Vice President Kamala Harris has recklessly called for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza, when contrary to all international law Hamas is still holding hostages.
  • May 7th 2024 U.S. Senator Tim Scott submitted to the US Senate a resolution to condemn the explosion of antisemitism on U.S. college campuses. In an effort to call out university presidents who have enabled and refused to take action against this antisemitism, Senator Scott filed a motion to pass the resolution via Unanimous Consent, which was blocked by Democrat Senator Bernie Sanders.

Christians must continue to call Israel to follow the Geneva Conventions. But it is also necessary in 2024 to explore which candidates actually are pro-Israel, because God has said, I will bless those who bless Abraham’s descendants and curse those who curse his descendants.  

For Further Prayerful Thought:

  1. What are some thoughts that might come to your mind now if you heard someone say, “The middle east conflict is because Jews took Arab land.”
  2. How would you respond to someone attempting to equate the IDF’s military response as just as morally reprehensible as Hamas’ October 7th attack?
  3. How would you respond to one who said, “the Democrats say that Israel has a right to defend itself. They are just as supportive of Israel as Republicans."
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Does Loving Immigrants Mean Supporting Open Borders?

Does Loving Immigrants Mean Supporting Open Borders?

On 28 September, 2024 By Gary Yagel

When faced with the sight of millions of men, women, and children from war-torn lands seeking to escape tyranny to have better life, most Christians will voice their approval for open door policies of inclusion, hospitality, diversity and welcome. Some Christians have even argued that failure to have such open-hearted attitudes towards these immigrants is sinfully, selfishly, letting “the gods of fear and security dictate how we respond” (Mark Galli, Christianity Today). Does the Biblical call to care for the sojourner and resident alien, imply that those with true Christ-like love for non-Americans requires us to throw open our boarders to all who want to enter? Jesus, did teach that true believers will hear from Jesus, “I was a STRANGER and you WELCOMED me.” Doesn’t this settle the issue—All Christians must be welcoming to immigrants who want to come into our country? Your children and grandchildren are hearing that argument. This episode seeks to help us all think biblically about the hot topic today of illegal, undocumented, immigrants coming across our southern border.

Scripture describes a subset of King David’s “Mighty Men” from the tribe of Issachar as men who had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do (1 Chron 12:32). That is a description of the band of brothers this podcast is seeking to build—men who understand their times because they view culture through a biblical lens—and who therefore know what their families, churches, and nation should do. As we continue our series, "Election 2024 and Biblical Worldview," we dig into what the Bible says about the Christians’ responsibility to care well for immigrants, who are called sojourners or resident aliens in Scripture.

GOD’S PEOPLE ARE TO GIVE SPECIAL CARE TO SOJOURNERS

In recent years among Bible-believing Christians there has come a welcome challenge to shun Western materialism, become much more committed to the poor and marginalized, and return to the simple vision of godliness given in Micah 6:8: What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?  At the core of Christian ethics is the recognition that every human being has dignity as God’s image-bearer, which requires us to care for every human, no matter what his or her social status. Scripture particularly identifies those holding the lowest status for intentional care—widows, orphans, the poor, and immigrants.

The OT is filled with laws and narratives about immigrants. Israelites were commanded to provide for them through an agrarian welfare system, in which foreigners could glean from an Israelite’s field (Dt 24:19-22) and were required to be pay immigrants in a timely manner for their work (Dt 24:15). The Israelites were repeatedly warned not to oppress the widow, the orphan, or sojourner, in words like these in Deuteronomy 24: You shall not pervert the justice due to the sojourner or to the fatherless, or take a widow's garment in pledge, but you shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt and the Lord your God redeemed you from there; therefore I command you to do this (Vs 17-18). The prophets frequently called down fire on anyone who claimed to be a follower of Yahweh and mistreated a foreigner. Do justice and righteousness, and deliver from the hand of the oppressor him who has been robbed. And do no wrong or violence to the resident alien, the fatherless, and the widow, nor shed innocent blood in this place. (Jer 22:3). Indeed, Malachi puts mistreatment of immigrants on a level with sorcery and adultery: Then I will draw near to you for judgment. I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers…against those who oppress widow and the fatherless, against those who thrust aside the sojourner (Mal 3:5).

The NT concern for immigrants is perhaps even more clear. Jesus was a refugee, fleeing with his family from Herod. He confronted his hometown elders over their racist attitudes towards gentile outsiders. He attacked the bigoted Jewish hatred for the Samaritans. Peter tells Christians that we, ourselves are sojourners in a foreign land. Such status as foreigners should give us a new heart for others who find themselves in similar situations. Moreover, Jesus taught that on judgement day, he will look at true Christians and say, “I was a stranger and you WELCOMED me” and look at those damned to hell and say, “I was a stranger and you did NOT WELCOME me” (Matt 25:35-43).

Taken at face value, there is an undeniable case that Christians must open their hearts to the plight of poor immigrants seeking a better life in America. But this non-negotiable heart attitude does NOT for one second support the policy of open, uncontrolled borders any more than opening our hearts to the poor in our neighborhood means leaving the doors of our homes wide open when we go to bed at night! Godly compassion for the poor immigrant wanting to come into our land cannot mean supporting open borders for these reasons:

FOUR REASONS OPENING OUR HEARTS TO IMMIGRANTS DOES NOT MEAN SUPPORTING OPEN BORDERS

A. American borders are NOT immoral, selfish attempts to keep others out and hoard our wealth any more than the doors to our homes are selfish. This accusation comes from cultural Marxism’s radical attempt to force “equality” on all and demonize wealthy nations. Scripture says it is God who has established national boundaries. When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples (Dt 32:8). In Acts 17:26, we see the same truth: God himself established boundaries, making distinctions between different groups of people. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place.

Although authors, like Dan Carroll, in his book, Christians at the Boarder, and Preston Sprinkle in his blog, “A Christian Response to Undocumented Immigrants” attempt to justify the un-enforcement of immigration laws protecting our boarder as civil disobedience, they have no Biblical case for doing so, since there is zero biblical teaching that makes open boarders a moral imperative. Scripture permits civil disobedience only when a believer is compelled by the government to violate the clear command of Scripture. There is no verse of Scripture that gives a person the moral right to live in whatever land he or she chooses. It is an unbiblical stretch to turn the calling of all Christians to love their immigrant neighbors into a moral principle that gives every human a right to live in any country he wants to. That idea comes from cultural Marxism not Christianity. 

B. Welcoming sojourners Is already happening through LEGAL immigration. Here are some facts taken from the State Department website. To move to the United States, a foreigner must obtain an immigrant visa and then get a Green Card (residence permit). U. S. immigration law is based on these principles: 1) the reunification of families, 2) admitting immigrants with skills that are valuable to the U.S. economy, 3) humanitarian protections, and 4) promoting diversity.

The law governing U.S. immigration policy is called the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). The INA allows the United States to grant up to 675,000 permanent immigrant visas each year across various visa categories granting them the right to be lprs—lawful permanent residents. On top of those 675,000 visas, the INA sets no limit on the annual admission of U.S. citizens’ spouses, parents, and children under the age of 21. In addition, each year the president is required to consult with Congress and set an annual number of refugees to be admitted to the United States through the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program. Finally, humanitarian protections such as asylum, Temporary Protected Status, and other programs, which may permit someone to reside in the United States legally do not have numerical caps but do have other restrictions.

Once a person is granted an immigrant visa or receives certain other eligible protections, such as asylum or refugee status, they can apply to become a lawful permanent resident. Individuals arriving on immigrant visas become LPRs when they arrive in the United States.

Compare and contrast the following:

  • Legal immigration of children protects them by requiring the legal parent (US citizen or lpr) to sponsor them. Illegal immigration incentivizes parents to send their kids to the border, but on the way, most are captured my Mexican drug cartels, raped, and turned into drug mules or sex slaves.
  • Legal immigration requires a background check enabling hardened criminals to be denied admission. Illegal immigration allows nations like Venezuela to empty its prisons and mental institutions sending these folks into US society. Progressives try to downplay the crime caused by illegal immigrants, saying that non-immigrants commit crimes too. But this misses the point. Legal immigration strains out hardened criminals. Illegal immigration DOES NOT.
  • Legal immigration requires an immediate US citizen, legal permanent resident, or employer to sponsor the immigrant and thus care for his or her material and health care needs. Illegal immigration results in numerous immigrants arriving at America’s doorstep with no one to care for them, which causes an enormous, unjust burden on those who live near borders.
  • Legal immigration requires a background check so that very few terrorists come into the nation. Illegal immigration welcomes terrorists.

The argument that many deserving people can’t get into our country legally because they don’t have the money to bribe officials has no merit. Bribery is common throughout the world. This problem of human sin is not solved by an irresponsible U.S. border policy that has no control over who enters our country. The argument that it is unfair to prevent anyone from coming to América, who wants to, is rooted in cultural Marxism. It’s not fair for Americans to be so rich—so we must force equality on Americans by making them share their wealth.

C. The Bible requires governments to enforce a secure border. As we’ve seen the past two weeks, in Paul’s command to submit to government authorities he gives us great insight about God’s purpose that lies behind giving the power of the sword to the state. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. Notice the principle behind the civil magistrate, for he is God's servant FOR YOUR GOOD. The purpose of civil government is your good. God has instituted government to protect citizens from harm. The word good is closely linked to the word beneficial in biblical thought just as Paul’s negative words, wrong and bad are linked to causing harm. Government is instituted by God to prevent harm to citizens. Classically, the right to self-defense and to defend your nation against a military invasion is rooted in Paul’s teaching here. So, God’s ordained purpose for government is to protect from harm. For this reason, border security is indisputably required by God because it is a necessary part of protecting citizens.

D. Unenforced borders cause enormous harm. A biblical worldview begins by discovering the facts. Proverbs 13:6 says, Every prudent man acts with knowledge. Proverbs 14:15 gives good advice to those whose only news source is social media. The simple believes everything, but the prudent gives thought to his steps. If you do not know about the present human suffering caused by the refusal of the Biden administration and Democrat-controlled Senate to enforce immigration law at the borders, you need to find a news source that will tell you the truth. Less than a week after taking office, the Biden administration reversed 94 executive policies that the previous administration had implemented to enforce immigration law. For nearly four years Democrats have refused to enforce immigration law, which has led to immeasurable suffering. Let’s take statistics from just one day. March 21, 2024, from just one location, El Passo—its migrant dashboard showed, 743 immigrants who had tried to cross the border illegally were released from custody INTO THE UNITED STATES, instead of returned to their home country as immigration law stipulates. Let’s consider this policy’s cost.

  • Unenforced immigration law PROMOTES human trafficking. “In the U.S., immigrants, especially immigrant women, make up the largest portion of trafficking victims. The Department of State estimates than in 2016, 57,700 victims had been trafficked into the U.S. annually. Studies done by the Latin American branch of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women estimates that 60% of Latin American children who set out to cross the border alone or with smugglers have been caught by the cartels and are being abused in child pornography or drug trafficking.” (Congress.Gov, “How Porous Borders Fuel Human Trafficking in the United States”). This horrific depravity alone is cause enough for all Americans, especially Christians, to recognize the evil of refusing to enforce immigration laws at the southern border, a refusal endorsed by 100% of Democrats.
  • Unenforced immigration laws EMPOWER drug cartels to kill Americans. The 2000-mile southern side of the American/Mexico border is now 100% controlled by Mexican drug cartels, who own 25,000 drones used to spot border patrols and drop illegal drugs over the border. Not only has unenforced immigration law caused inconceivable quantities of illegal drugs to spread all through American cities, now we are seeing prescription drugs laced with fentanyl, killing our college students. This is not a political statemen, but a personal one. Last year I wept with a father whose heart was crushed by the death of his 21-year-old son, a student at MIT because he took a prescription drug laced with fentanyl. According to the DEA, for Americans ages 18-45, the leading cause of death is an overdose of fentanyl, nearly all of which the refusal to enforce immigration laws allows into our country.
  • Unenforced immigration laws ENABLE known terrorists to cross the border. On October 31, 2023, a member of the Senate Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, reported that 169 individuals had been apprehended at the southern border in 2023 who were on the U.S. terror watch list. And those were the ones caught; she did not speculate on the “got aways.” She said the number of individuals on the U.S. terror watchlist who tried to cross the border so far in 2023 constituted a “tenfold increase” from the fiscal year 2021 numbers. (capito.senate.gov). Six months ago, a member of the terrorist group, Hezbollah, Basel Bassel Ebbadi, 22, was caught by the US Border Patrol near El Paso, Texas. While in custody, he was asked what he was doing in the US, to which he replied, “I’m going to try to make a bomb.” Ebbadi told Border Patrol he had seven years of training with Hezbollah. Again, a reminder. God assigns civil government the responsibility of protecting its citizens from harm.
  • Unenforced immigration laws WELCOME hardened murderers and rapists. On February 22, 2024, Laken Riley, a 22-year-old American nursing student at Augusta University, was abducted and killed while she was jogging at the  University of Georgia (UGA) in Athens, Georgia by José Antonio Ibarra, a 26-year-old Venezuelan who had entered the United States illegally. ICE confirmed that the suspect was caught crossing the border but was released into the United States because of the Democrat catch and release policy. ICE also confirmed that the New York City Police Department arrested Ibarra back in September and charged him with acting in a manner to injure a child under 17. But since NYC is a Democrat-governed sanctuary city, he was released. Open border advocates argue that many people are murdered; Laken’s death is just being used politically. But it remains a stubborn fact that will not go away. Laken Riley lost her life because the Biden administration and the NY City Democrat-controlled government did NOT do what God says governments are ordained by him to do: protect its citizens from harm.

I don’t doubt that the vast majority of displaced persons are simply looking for peace and a new chance at life. If you want to help more such immigrants then tell your Congressman and work politically to increase legal immigration. But there is zero biblical case for open US borders. Zero.

HOW SHOULD WE TREAT ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS ALREADY HERE?

A. Expel known terrorists and hardened criminals. Those caught by law enforcement who are known to be on the terror watch list or are convicted felons from other countries would never have been allowed to enter the US under legal immigration. Sending them back is part of the government’s biblical responsibility to protect its own citizens.

B. Provide care for immigrant whose only crime was crossing the border illegally.

  1. As many churches do, Christians must reach out to poor immigrant communities in Jesus’ name with love, compassion, and material assistance.
  2. In my opinion, mercy for the sojourner means supporting an earned legalization process. Many undocumented immigrants have chosen to come to the U.S. illegally under very difficult circumstances, fleeing serious economic hardship or persecution. But amnesty for them communicates that the law doesn’t matter. An earned legalization process would include the payment of a monetary fine as restitution for adults who willfully violated U.S. immigration laws. One prominent group of Evangelicals points out:

“Most of the undocumented immigrants in U.S. churches are actually very eager to make things right, and they would be happy to pay a fine and meet other qualifications to eventually have the chance to be lawful permanent residents of the United States, a country most have come to love and see as their home. For many who have lived under both the fear and shame associated with their unlawful status for many years, the opportunity to earn legal status would feel akin to the biblical Year of Jubilee, when debts were canceled" (see Lev 25:8-17). (Taken from World Relief website.)

A welcoming heart towards poor immigrants who want to come to America for a better life is non-negotiable for all who would be Christ-like.

  • That might mean seeking larger legal immigration quotas.
  • It does mean caring well for our immigrant neighbors.
  • It does NOT mean subverting the government's God-given responsibility to protect its citizens through enforcing border, immigration laws.

For Further Prayerful Thought:

  1. Why do you think so many Americans are unaware of what is happening at the southern boarder? Of the categories of harm that un-enforcement of immigration policies brings—human trafficking, spread of drugs including fentanyl, terrorism, and attacks from hardened criminals, which concern you the most?
  2. How would you respond, biblically to the fallacy that for Christians to properly care for immigrants we must we welcoming to all who want to come to our nation, including those crossing the border illegally?
  3. What biblical principles do you think apply to our treatment of illegal immigrants who are already in our country?   
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Ideas Have Consequences—Cultural Marxism Has Victims

Ideas Have Consequences—Cultural Marxism Has Victims

On 18 September, 2024 By Gary Yagel

The spiritual battle in which Christian men are called to engage is largely a battle of ideas. After Paul devotes eleven chapters of Romans to the glory of the gospel, and challenges Christians that the only proper response is to offer ourselves back to God as a living sacrifice, the very next command is a reference to this battle over ideas: Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind. In Ephesians 6 the list of equipment for warfare begins with the belt of truth and ends with the sword of the Spirit, the word of God, indispensable tools for this battle of ideas.

This reality presents Christian men with an enormous challenge. We are created to be warriors (Gen 2:15). But few of us are philosophy majors. The world of ideas that we know best matches our vocation and avocation. Yet, as warriors in the spiritual battle of ideas and as protectors of our families, WE are the ones God expects to lead the way to destroy arguments, and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ (2 Cor 10:5). How can we possibly do this? The missing ingredient is EQUIPPING. The church must find ways to equip the saints (Eph 4:12). This podcast series, “Election 2024 and Biblical Worldview” is intended to equip men to understand the worldview issues that lie beneath the upcoming election.

As an economics major at Penn State, I got to take an economics class from an expert on Mao Zedong’s take over of China by his Red Guard in 1949, just twenty years earlier. I discovered with horror the Red Guard’s slaughter of millions of Chinese landowners to collectivize farming, and how this experiment led to the economic ruin of China and the starvation of twenty million people. I studied how Mao implemented his unique brand of Marxism and how he deceived the naïve into ceding more and more power to his regime. In his Little Red Book, I read his argument that class and class struggle justify violent revolution making it necessary for peasants and the Chinese people to murder business owners and seize their assets . I saw how Mao played on class envy, enflaming violent hatred in Chinese peasants towards the wealthy, justifying the brutal annihilation of factory owners. I saw how he brainwashed the young and naïve to accomplish his slaughter of farmers through the slogan, “From each according to his ability. To each according to his need.” History reveals that eventually 65 million Chinese lost their lives through Mao’s evil Marxist policies. 65 million! So, perhaps, I am more alarmed than most at the spread of a very similar ideology throughout the institutions of America over the last twenty years. It is called cultural Marxism and is also known as critical theory, a subset of which is critical race theory.  

Origin and Growth of Critical Theory

Critical theory is a comprehensive way of viewing society that is rooted in Karl Marx’s dichotomy of society into the oppressed proletariat laboring class and the oppressor bourgeoisie land and business owner class. Italian Marxist Antonia Gramsci extended this oppressor/oppressed lens into every aspect of culture. Thus, not only are laborers oppressed by business owners, but the poor are oppressed by the rich, blacks are oppressed by whites, women are oppressed by men, homosexuals and transgendered oppressed by cisgendered people. Poor nations are oppressed by wealthy nations, immigrants wanting to cross our borders are oppressed by Americans citizens who want closed borders. Palestinian Muslims are oppressed by Israel. Gramsci called the force that enables these oppressors to oppress “unjust, cultural hegemony.” You may remember this term from history class, which usually refers to the influence of stronger nations over weaker ones. Hegemony means the social, cultural, ideological, or economic influence exerted by a dominant group.

After the Marxist revolution failed to topple capitalism in the early twentieth century, Marxists, who had gone back to the drawing board, picked up Gramsci’s hegemony concept. One such group, the Frankfurt School, following Gramsci’s lead, expanded Marx’s oppressor/oppressed economic lens to every sphere of social injustice. All inequities are caused by the cultural power of the OPPRESSORS, which these OPPRESSORS cling to through their religious, political, social, and cultural structures. These structures, such as Christianity, the US Constitution, the free market, accurate history, and the structure of the family must be torn down to accomplish social justice. One’s membership in oppressed groups is called his intersectionality rating and determines the legitimacy of one’s truth claim. Thus, a black, female, gay immigrant has more credibility than just a black man. During the last 25 years among Christians in the West there has come a welcome return to a concern for social justice and especially opposition to racism. But tragically, many Christians who lack an awareness of the tenets of cultural Marxism are being seduced into its anti-biblical thinking, including their thinking about politics.

FOUR CHARACTERISTICS OF CULTURAL MARXISM

1. Cultural Marxism is based on a corrupt, anti-Biblical view of justice.

Amplification: This view argues, “all inequalities are unjust.” Privilege is evil and the cause of oppression. Equal opportunity is replaced by the call for equity. Whereas equality means that each individual or group is given the same opportunity or resources, equity recognizes that each person has different circumstances and, therefore allocates the exact resources needed to reach an equal outcome among all. This is pure Marxism—the redistribution of wealth, i.e. the state stealing from the rich and giving those funds to the poor. After all, why should some have so much and others so little? It is not fair! Mao fomented revolution through his slogan “from each according to his ability and to each according to his need.” This utopian ideal to force “equality” upon others led ultimately to the slaughter of 65 million Chinese by Mao, and 20 million in the USSR by Lenin and Stalin (cited from Money Greed and God, by Jay Richardson). That this Marxist view of justice is seen in critical theory is obvious. For example, Ibram Kendi, the author of How to Be an Antiracist, and leading spokesman for CRT writes, “As an anti-racist, when I see racial DISPARITIES, I see racism” (Cited by Ted Cruz, Unwoke). Think of it, ANY inequity PROVES racism.

Thinking biblically:

  • Inequality is not unjust. It is God who has ordained the exact circumstances of every creature. In Romans 9 Paul gives God’s response to the accusation of being unjust in treating humans differently, Is there injustice on God's part? By no means! For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion” (vs 14).
  • There is zero biblical case for the state redistributing wealth. The eighth commandment, which prohibits theft, underscores the ownership of private property while the tenth commandment warns against the covetousness that is at the core of critical theory’s oppressor/oppressed social binary.
  • The chief obstacle to defining justice as equal outcomes is the Bible. It overwhelmingly teaches that outcomes are a result of numerous factors, including the blessing of God upon righteousness as well as potentially being unjustly oppressed.
  • The Biblical law requiring landowners to harvest only once leaving the leftovers for the poor needs to be recognized; but to act justly is not just defending the marginalized. It is being impartial, i.e. not favoring the rich or POOR. “You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the POOR or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor” (Lev 19:15).

Cultural Marxism and Government Policy. Progressive ideology, which I’m using synonymously with cultural Marxism has very largely taken over the Democrat party in the past 20 years. The cultural Marxist view of equity is behind many of the Biden Administration Executive Orders (e.g.13985) behind his nominations for positions in the executive branch and courts, behind his administrations’ promotion of radical gender ideology and his administrations promotion of Diversity Equity and Inclusion policies. While these three terms seem benign, “diversity” is interpreted diversity of opinion, which takes precedence over whether such ideas are true, while “inclusion” ideology targets Christians for hate speech if they do not go along with one’s chosen gender identity. The most extreme form of this Progressive equal-outcome-ideology is the idea that rich America must open its border to all poor people who want to come to America. New York city taxpayers are paying to house illegal immigrants in the hotels of New York City. After all, it is not fair that America has so much wealth compared to everyone else. Next week, we’ll look further at the border issue.    

2. Cultural Marxism’s oppressor/oppressed social binary is false and evil.

Amplification: Of course, those with power oppress those with less. That is an obvious conclusion from biblical teaching about how the fall corrupted human nature. But the radical fall of Adam’s race transmitted his sinful nature to all humans, not just the rich. Using the oppressor/oppressed lens of Marx to interpret all of history and explain the most basic human motivations is nowhere close to accurate. For example, according to critical race theory’s intersectionality teaching one of the greatest racists who every lived was Abraham Lincoln. After all he was a white, male, cisgender, protestant, able-bodied, non-immigrant according to intersectionality. Never mind that he gave his life to end slavery. So, critical theory, written by academics disconnected from reality, does not conform to reality at all. Nor can it be reconciled with Scripture.

Thinking biblically. The reason this oppressor/oppressed binary narrative is so evil is that it is substituted for Biblical one. Notice God’s true biblical binary of Psalm 1.  

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.  He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither.
In all that he does, he prospers. The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away. Therefore, the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous; for the Lord knows the way of the RIGHTEOUS, but the way of the WICKED will perish.

All through Scripture God challenges his creatures to choose the path of his wisdom and righteousness. And in common grace, he appoints the state to reinforce that choice. Peter argues the same way we saw Paul argue last week in Romans 13. Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to PUNISH THOSE WHO DO EVIL and to praise THOSE WHO DO GOOD (I Pet 2:13-14).

Cultural Marxism and Government Policy. During the riots in American cities in 2020, I remember being shocked that so many Democrat Party leaders, the party that regularly gets over 90% of the black vote, were coming out in favor of defunding the police. Not one of my black pastor friends did so. They saw clearly that the anti-police rhetoric hurts no one more than Black folks who live in our major cities. What caused the “defund the police” movement? The influence of the cultural Marxist oppressor/oppressed narrative. Police officers in our cities, (ironically many of whom are black) are deemed the oppressors, while black teen males are the oppressed. But common sense and Scripture teach that punishment for lawbreaking is required to motivate humans towards righteousness. Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him (Prv 22:15). Outside the home, government must administer punishment for evil or evil will triumph. But Cultural Marxism’s oppressor/oppressed lens sees lawbreakers as victims, while District Attorneys and the police are oppressors. Cities like San Francisco, and Chicago have been overrun by crime and the homeless because city officials refuse to enforce laws. This victim mentality towards those who refuse to obey the law could not be more anti-biblical or more unloving. Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him (Prov 13:24).

3. Cultural Marxism builds on class envy, enflames class hatred, and justifies evil.

Amplification: Cultural Marxism violates the most basic of moral principles learned by most of us before kindergarten: two wrongs don’t make a right. Doing wrong is never justified by a so-called “righteous” cause! Just as economic Marxism rationalized the slaughter of 85 million people in the name of “justice,” cultural Marxism foments evil on the part of the oppressed but excuses it because it is against oppressors.

Thinking biblically. Satan tempted Eve to do evil, eat the forbidden fruit, so that good might come—she might be wise, knowing good and evil. Satan, no doubt tempted Jesus to do evil so that good might come when he showed Jesus all the kingdoms of the world, and said he would give them all to Jesus (to rule benevolently) if Jesus just hit the knee once in worship to Satan. We are never commanded to do evil so that good may come.   

Cultural Marxism and Government Policy. Some classic examples of progressive policies embraced today that foment evil and injustice.

  • The refusal of Democrat city mayors to enforce laws against destroying property during the summer riots of 2020.
  • The constant refrain of Democrat politicians blaming the rich, for example, Kamala Harris blaming gas station owners for high gas prices.
  • The catch and release approach to those crossing the southern border illegally, which is supported by 100% of the Democrat party.
  • Enabling the rape of women, subjugation of children as sex slaves, the death of over 100,000 American children per year by drug overdoses, especially fentanyl which crosses the border through refusing to enforce border laws.
  • Excusing the brutal war crimes of Hamas because Palestinians are deemed the oppressed and Israel is the oppressors. Never mind Hamas’ horrific war crimes and long-term abuse of the Palestinian civilians by hiding their weapons beneath hospitals and day care centers.
  • Supporting transgender policies that unjustly allow males to compete in women’s sports leagues and take away the rights of women to privacy and safety in their own locker rooms.

4. Cultural Marxism destroys flourishing by minimizing human responsibility.

Amplification: The cultural Marxist oppressor/oppressed worldview lens teaches victimhood instead of personal responsibility. Arguably the most important principle you can teach a child is that the child is responsible for himself. Cloud and Townsend point out, “Truly responsible people take responsibility for their feelings, attitudes, behaviors, choices, limits, talents, thoughts, desires, values, and loves. To take ownership of these is to be a truly responsible person—the kind of person with whom everyone wants to have a relationship” (Boundaries for Kids). The most unhappy human in the world is the one who is always blaming someone else for his problems. One of the greatest spiritual poisons that exists is bitterness towards those who have wronged you. Blaming others promotes victimhood.  

Thinking biblically. The first thing that Adam did when confronted with his sin in eating the fruit was blame Eve. The first thing Eve did was blame the serpent. Human flourishing comes from assuming our responsibility to exercise dominion over our lives, shaping them and the world around us according to righteousness. This moral law is summed up, “love God with all your heart and your neighbor as yourself.” It is taking responsibility for my actions. Psalm 119:1-3 is one of hundreds of biblical texts that point to the path of human flourishing: Blessed are those whose way is blameless, who walk in the law of the Lord! Blessed are those who keep his testimonies, who seek him with their whole heart, who also do no wrong, but walk in his ways!   

Cultural Marxism and Government Policy. Voddie Baucham, a black pastor who was raised in the inner city of LA by a single mom, argues that Critical Race Theory blames the pathologies in the black communities of our cities on systemic racism instead of correctly putting the focus on the destructive behavior choices of black teens. He looks back to the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown, in Ferguson, MO, as an example, lamenting the way CRT advocates, including white Evangelical pastors leapt onto the bandwagon of accusations against Police Officer Darren Wilson. He was accused of shooting a black teenager who held his hands up and said, “don’t shoot.” His death caused widespread looting and destruction in American cities as the oppressor/oppressed narrative was promoted relentlessly….except that the FBI Report eventually said Michael Brown never raised his hands and never said, “Don’t shoot.” To Voddie, the oppressor/oppressed narrative prevented young black men from hearing, “We can’t live like this, stealing things we want from stores and roughing up store clerks, walking down the middle of the street, refusing to listen to police officers, and provoking a confrontation with them.”

But perhaps the most tragic result of CRT imposing its false narrative over the Michael Brown shooting is what has been called “the Ferguson effect.” This is an increase in violent crime rates in a community caused by reduced proactive policing due to the community's distrust and hostility towards police. Fueled by the defund the police movement led by Progressive Democrats, The Ferguson effect was an increased murder rate in U.S. cities following the Ferguson unrest.

“Cultural Marxism” isn’t just a nasty name conservative made up to describe the beliefs of their leftwing opponents. It is a real, evil ideology that brings destruction wherever it travels, just as economic Marxism has. Christians must oppose it.

For Further Prayerful Thought

  1. What did you learn about Marxism that you did not know before?
  2. How does the concept of hegemony (the cultural power to which oppressors cling to protect their dominance) explain why the political left wants to destroy the social institutions of Christianity, the US Constitution, a market economy, traditional male/female roles, traditional moral values, and the family?
  3. How would you explain to a friend why cultural Marxism’s oppressor/oppressed is either substantiated by reality not Scripture?
  4. Which illustrations of cultural Marxism shaping progressive policies most stood out to you?

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Christian Men’s Mission in the 2024 Election

Christian Men’s Mission in the 2024 Election

On 15 September, 2024 By Gary Yagel

The purpose of this podcast has always been to help Christian men define and stay focused upon their mission as followers of Christ. So, what is our mission over the next 50 days in view of the upcoming American election? Some Bible-believing Christians answer, “Your mission is to save America as a Christian nation by voting for Donald Trump and getting others to.” Other Bible—believing Christians are appalled by such Christian nationalism and would say, “The kingdom of God is not America. The mission of the church is to preach the gospel and stay out of political discussions.” Which is it? This episode analyzes the strengths and flaws of these two arguments, then suggests an alternative that avoids the potholes of both.

The term “Christian Nationalism” has rather suddenly intruded into American political conversation. For some, the term recognizes the historical reality of Christian influence that shaped this nation and made it great. The term calls Christians not to be passive while evil ideologies are being promoted by progressive Democrats that replace the Christian worldview that shaped America with destructive, godless ideologies. For others, the term Christian nationalism suggests January 6th violent, white supremacy. It is a dangerous term that denies the critical importance of separating church and state while seducing the church from its call to preach the pure unadulterated gospel into partisan politics. Between warring camps are Christian parents and grandparents who want to avoid the error of both sides, and just understand Jesus’ mission for them in this election. Is that possible? I think so.

THE CASE FOR CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM: Christians should be politically involved supporting the Republican Party to save America as a Christian nation

Two years ago, Eric Metaxas, a specialist in the study of Deitrich Bonhoeffer and the German culture surrounding Hitler’s rise to power, challenged American Christian leaders to avoid the mistakes of the German church, which remained silent while Hitler incrementally rose to power in the 1930’s. Here are some excerpts from the first chapter of his book, Letter to the American Church:

Critical Race Theory—which is atheistic and Marxist—and radical transgender and pro-abortion ideologies are all inescapably anti-God and anti-human. So, they are dedicatedly at war with the ideas of family and marriage, and with the idea of America as a force for good—as a force for spreading the Gospel and Gospel values throughout the world.

One of the principal ways that they (CRT, transgenderism, pro-abortion ideology) have gained strength is in persuading so many in the American Church that to fight them is to abandon the “Gospel” for culture warring or for politics. This is not just nonsense, but it is a supremely deceptive and satanic lie, designed only to silence those who would genuinely speak for truth...Those who call the church to be “apolitical” are like (the 1930s German church leaders) singing more and more loudly to drown out the cries of Jews in boxcars heading to their gruesome deaths.  

Just as the German Church had a painfully important task and did not rise to that occasion to perform it, so we have a painfully important task…If anyone would feel that believing God has chosen the American Church for such a vital role somehow smacks of an egotistical nationalism, they have already bought into the Marxist and globalist lie that America is nothing special.

Let’s consider the arguments made in support of this view:

A. Scripture does distinguish between the power of the church, exercised via church discipline, and the power of the state, exercised through the use of the sword. But notice that the secular state is required to punish moral evil and reward moral good. From Romans 13: For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer (vs 3-4). The secular state is incapable of doing its job by itself; it needs the church to define the good, which it is to reward and the evil it is to punish.

History records that just nine weeks after taking office, Adolf Hitler signed the “Restoration Act” to “restore the purity of the Arian race,” which made it illegal for anyone with Jewish blood to hold government positions. Dietrich Bonhoeffer immediately responded writing his essay, “The Church and the Jewish Question” that same month. Bonhoeffer argued three central points:

  • The church was the conscience of the state and must call it to account. It must loudly object if the state was doing wrong. It must not remain silent when injustices and wrongs are being promoted and enacted.
  • The church was obligated to help the victims of the state’s evil policies.
  • If the state refused to change course, Christians were obligated to act against it.

Bonhoeffer rightly understood the Romans 13 responsibility of the church to be the conscience in its political sphere.

B. Present-day progressive ideology and in particular, critical theory, (aka cultural Marxism) are as evil as were Hitler’s racism, America’s chattel slavery, and India’s practice of widow immolation. If William Wilberforce and Harriet Beecher Stowe believed Christians were to be “apolitical,” slavery might still exist in America and Great Britain. If Martin Luther King, Jr. believed Christians should be “apolitical” Blacks might still be forced to sit in the back of the bus. If Christian missionaries to India had been “apolitical,” some widows might still be burned on their husband’s funeral pyre. In today’s world, children are being raped because of open border policy, mutilated by gender ideologues shoving them down the path of irreversible hormone treatments and surgery that permanently disfigures their bodies, and slaughtered by policies that advocate the murder of unborn children not only up to the moment of birth but in some cases, after birth if the child survives a botched abortion. Ideas have consequences. Evil ideas have VICTIMS. If Christians don’t speak against the evils of progressivism,

C. Historically, America has been seen by many as a “Christian nation” from its inception. Here are two classic examples from the thousands that could be cited.

  • The French sociologist, Alexis de Tocqueville in 1835 when he reported on his visit to America to understand the roots

I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers—and it was not there…in her fertile fields and boundless forests—and it was not there…in her rich mines and her vast world commerce—and it was not there…in her democratic Congress and matchless constitution—and it was not there. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great. (Democracy in America).

  • As recently as 1954, Earl Warren, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, said to attendees of a prayer breakfast at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C.

“I believe no one can read the history of our country without realizing that the Good Book and the spirit of the Savior have from the beginning been our guiding geniuses. Whether we look to the first Charter of Virginia, or to the Charter of New England, or to the Charter of Massachusetts Bay, or to the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, the same objective is present: a Christian land governed by Christian principles. I believe the entire Bill of Rights came into being because of the knowledge our forefathers had of the Bible and their belief in it: freedom of belief, of expression, of assembly, of petition, the dignity of the individual, the sanctity of the home, equal justice under law, and the reservation of powers to the people. I like to believe we are living today in the spirit of the Christian religion. I like also to believe that as long as we do so, no great harm can come to our country.”

D. Some intellectuals like Rusty Reno, editor at First Things, use the term Christian nationalism juxtaposed to globalism. There is a strong case for resisting the open society globalism that is being promoted by globalist progressives, which would require the US to give up the tremendous influence that Christianity has had and is having on American society. As Rusty says, “I’d rather live in a society whose main influence is Christianity than in a society mainly influenced by secularism.” 

E. Christian nationalists argue that Christians who attempt to deny that America is a Christian nation are playing right into the hands of godless progressivism, especially since the January 6th riots. Progressives have successfully used the dishonest tactic of guilt by association to brand Donald Trump a right-wing, white, racist, supremacist, extremist. No Christian leader wants to be associated with this label. So instead of speaking out against the evil policies of the Democrat party’s progressive ideology—they seek to justify being “apolitical.”   

THE CASE AGAINST CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM

A. The fusion of Christain identity and national identity is both wrong and racist. 

Although it could be argued that God has blessed us as no other nation and that no other nation has been used for good the way God has used America, we are no more special to God than North Korea, Venezuela, or South Africa. Blessed—yes. Special—no. The only time God’s church took on a political identity was in the OT, when the nation of Israel was a theocracy. The suffix ism, by definition, describes what is most valued. Human ism most values humans. Nationalism elevates loyalty to one’s nation to the highest value. It makes your country an idol. History is littered with the debris of human suffering that has accompanied nationalism of any kind. Christian nationalism is NOT the same as patriotism. CS Lewis in his book, the Four Loves defines the Greek word, STORGE as affection for an object like one’s pet or his homeland. There is no evil in love of country, but Christians are bound by a higher allegiance to brothers and sisters in Christ and to King Jesus!

B. Conflating Christian identity and the church’s identity is dangerous. One of the most horrible sights I have ever seen took place on January 6, 2021--a wooden cross propped up outside the US Capitol, surrounded by a mob of people hoisting up American flags, not far from a faux hangman’s platform and noose apparently intended for the vice president.  I agree with the lat Tim Keller's assessment: “It will be many years before the sights and sounds of evangelical religious symbols and language in the Capitol riot will fade from national consciousness. We have all been stained with it (Gospel Coalition). Christians are naïve if they fail to realize that just about every politician who has ever lived has sought to persuade the populace that God was on his side. Let’s consider the other argument:

ARGUMENT: Christians should be “apolitical” and stay focused on just preaching the Gospel.

SUPPORT FOR THIS VIEW

A. Keeping the church and state separate is profoundly important. Arguably the location where the church of Jesus Christ is weakest is Europe, because of its historical union of state and church. It is ironic that Eric Metaxas, (with whom I mostly agree) has pointed to the moral weakness of the German church during the rise of Naziism, challenging us to NOT be like them. But why was the church of Luther’s Germany so weak? One cannot read Detrick Bonhoeffer’s biography without realizing that the moral weakness of the Lutheran church was caused by its centuries-long history of being a state church. During the Reformation, Lutheranism became the state religion of numerous states of northern Europe, especially in northern Germany, and Scandinavia. Lutheran clergy became civil servants, and the Lutheran churches became part of the state. No wonder most Lutheran pastors automatically went along with Nazi government declarations.  

B. Part of the reason Isreal did not recognize the Messiah was that its people didn’t separate church and state. They expected a political ruler to overthrow Rome. But God sent Jesus to overthrow a far more sinister triumvirate—Satan, sin, and death. Progressive Democrats are not the enemy, they are being held captive by the enemy. The political entity we want to prevail is not the Republican party; it is the kingdom of righteousness spreading over all the earth.

C. Politics in a democratic system is extremely complicated. Political leaders must build coalitions to accomplish anything. Such messy compromises are difficult to evaluate. Should Christians rebel against the Republican party and refuse to vote for their candidates because they are no longer prolife? Hardly, since the alternate candidate belongs to a party that supports the death of the unborn child until the moment of birth, if not longer. The complexity of the democratic process makes it arrogant for a Christian leader to identify one party, or sometimes even one party’s position on a given issue as “the Christian one.” Furthermore, the complexity of many issues means that telling a congregant how to vote risks “binding their conscience.” The Protestant, Reformed tradition strongly upholds the freedom of conscience in political matters.

THE CASE AGAINST BEING “APOCITICAL” AND JUST PREACHING THE GOSPEL

A. There is NO gospel in the New Testament but the GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM. The gospel Jesus proclaimed was never just the gospel of personal, private salvation. The gospel has always been the gospel of the kingdom. That is the only way the Gospel writers understood it. Matthew records, “And he went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people” (4:23). Luke recounts “Soon afterward he went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God” (8:1). Jesus’ own words show that his gospel was the Gospel of the Kingdom, “I must preach the good news OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD to the other towns as well; for I was sent for this purpose” (Lk 4:43). Until Jesus returns his followers are to proclaim the good news OF THE KINGDOM: “And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations” (Mt 24:14).

The true gospel, the Gospel of the Kingdom does not merely consist of two chapters, i.e. 1) man’s fall, 2) salvation through Christ, which gives us a ticket to heaven to escape this fallen world. Such a gospel teaches separation from the world, including the world of politics. But the gospel of the kingdom—the one Jesus taught—begins with kingdom and ends with kingdom. 1) Adam is created and given a kingdom to rule—earth. He is placed in the garden paradise to develop and shape it FOR God (God’s moral law written on his heart.) 2) Adam and Eve chose rebellion, causing their kingdom, earth, to be given to the power of Satan, sin, and death. 3) A Second Adam comes to defeat those powers at the cross, redeeming Adam and his kingdom from slavery to Satan, sin, and death and he is now seated on Adam’s once-lost throne. 4) Adam’s original call to bring glory to God by ruling Kingdom Earth in a way that pleases him is now being accomplished by the Second Adam. In his authority and power, we are to seek the spread of Christ’s kingdom of righteousness over every square inch of planet earth. Biblically, the true gospel IS the spread of Christ’s agenda of righteousness into every sphere of life on earth, beginning with the human heart. And the mark of every true Christ-follower is spreading that agenda as best he can EVERYWHERE. Politics and government policy are NOT excluded!  

B. Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, which defines kingdom life as disciples, begins with the the development of heart attitudes which must take root in the heart of every true believer. Notice how directly three of these eight call Christians to oppose evil and promote righteousness over earth.

  • Blessed are those who mourn—we are to grieve, to weep over the way sin is destroying ourselves and those around us (Matt 5:4).
  • Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness—we are to hunger for righteousness to be restored everywhere. (Matt 5:6)
  • Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake—we are expected to stand against evil and for what is right (Matt 5:10-11). It is doing that which Paul implies in Romans 13, Christians must do because the naked secular state can’t, call out what is evil and what is right.

The mark of Christ at work in our heart attitudes is an increasing hatred of evil and deepening refusal to be silent in the face of it.

C. God’s plan in this age is not for Church isolation from culture—but for Christ’s kingdom of light and righteousness to exist side by side with Kingdom Earth, Christians influencing our culture like yeast spreading throughout the loaf. Salt and light INFLUENCE their surroundings: “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people's feet. You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven (Matt 5:13-14).

There is zero case for the faithful church to be “apolitical.” The gospel transforms culture and uses thoughtful Christ-followers to do that. But we can get the HOW of political influence very, very, wrong. The rest of this series on Election 2024 and Biblical Worldview will attempt to help us not through calling for blind allegiance to a particular party but by understanding the worldview ideas at stake during this election.

For Further Prayerful Thought

  1. How can understanding the strengths of both sides of the Christian nationalism movement help Christians be less judgmental towards those holding the other view.
  2. How would you challenge a friend who claims that America is more special to God than other countries like China and Iran?
  3. How would you challenge a friend who said, “The kingdom of God is not America and Christians should just focus on the gospel and not discuss anything political?”
  4. How would you summarize the argument that Christ’s highest calling, “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness won’t” requires Christians to be engaged in working for righteousness through utilizing their political rights?
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Prayer Releases Spiritual Power

Prayer Releases Spiritual Power

On 07 September, 2024 By Gary Yagel

Author Dave Murrow observes what anthropology has confirmed: "Warfare is still imprinted on the male psyche. Men love to watch war movies and read war novels. They play war games on computers. Polls show men always support military action more than women" (Why Men Hate Going to Church). Science just confirms the truth we are given in Genesis 2:15—that Adam is designed to shape and protect the garden. Since Adam and Eve’s sin brought Satan, sin, and destruction into the garden, all our efforts to shape our lives and culture in righteousness are opposed by this triumvirate. We must fight, in the power of Christ, for every inch of ground. Today we examine a powerful WEAPON for this fight: prayer. But viewing prayer as a weapon for fighting is probably NOT what most men think of prayer as being for. They see prayer as praise to God, confession to God, thankfulness to God, requesting God’s help for those grieving or having surgery. But rarely do we see prayer used the way Paul tells us in Eph 6”18 it is to be used: as an act of war. And when men understand this dimension of prayer, prayer moves from being a guilt-producing obligation to becoming a life-changing thrill! Could that happen in your prayer life? Yes, and that is our goal in this episode.

Behind the world and the flesh is an even deadlier enemy, one we rarely speak of and are much less ready to resist, the kingdom of darkness, which is to blame for most of the casualties around us and assaults against us. Paul said it this way, We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Paul reveals two vital implications of this reality 1) we must put on our spiritual armor—the belt of truth, etc. but secondly 2) we must PRAY. Eph 6 continues, praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints (vs 18). Paul uses one of the words for prayer four times. Why is prayer such a vital part of combatting the spiritual forces of evil?

Our Prayer Power Is Only Grasped by Understanding Redemptive History

A.  Because humans are made to bear God’s image, God created humans to rule over a world using their mental capacity and creativity to develop the potential of the earth and all those living on it—causing everything to flourish. God left things “undeveloped” so man could exhibit God’s image in developing earth’s potential. The law of God was written on Adam and Eve’s hearts, to guide them to shape the world righteously in a way that pleased God. For them that moral law was summed up, “You may not eat of the fruit that is in the midst of the garden.”

B. When Adam and Eve ignored their conscience and rebelled against the High King by eating the fruit, Adam’s race lost the moral ability to shape the earth in a way that was consistent with God’s righteousness. SATAN, and SIN (along with sin’s consequence DEATH) began to rule Adam and Eve’s kingdom.

C. Adam and Eve’s descendants inherited that corrupt nature. Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned (Rom 5:12). There is nothing that any human can do to free the human race from sin’s enslavement of human nature.

D. God himself would have to come, invade human nature, and become a second Adam. So, God The Son, came into the world as Jesus the Messiah to “redeem” the new humanity and new earth from the destruction, power, and presence of sin.

 And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him (Col 2:13-15).

E. At the cross, Jesus, the second Adam overthrew the usurpers of Adam’s kingdom--Satan, sin, and death, restoring the throne of Adam’s kingdom to the new head of Adam’s race, namely King Jesus to spread the kingdom of God over earth from his position at the right hand of the Father. George Ladd explains,

The Kingdom of God is the redemptive reign of God dynamically active to establish his rule among men, and this Kingdom, which will appear as an apocalyptic act at the end of the age, has already come into human history in the person and mission of Jesus to overcome evil, to deliver men from its power, and to bring them into the blessings of God’s reign. The Kingdom of God involves two great moments: fulfillment within history, and consummation at the end of history. (The Presence of the Future).

F.  We live between these two moments in history; Jesus has already ultimately defeated Satan, sin, and death, and yet they have not yet been destroyed. During this present age, Jesus wants us to spread his righteous rule over earth (Matt 6:33) THROUGH HIS POWER. The fact that this can only be done through his power was stressed by Jesus in the words that preceded his great commission: All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me, therefore—go and make disciples of the nations. Only IN CHRIST is there power to overcome the kingdom of darkness. Ladd continues,

The kingdom in this age is not merely the abstract concept of God’s universal rule to which men must submit; it is rather a dynamic power at work among men….  Before the apocalyptic coming of God’s Kingdom and the final manifestation of his rule to bring in the new age, God has manifested his rule, his Kingdom to bring men in advance of the eschatological era the blessings of his redemptive reign.

G. Jesus’ defeat of Satan, sin and death at the cross, his resurrection, and then ascension bring about the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in a fuller way. On the day of Pentecost, Peter tells the crowds they are witnessing the fulfillment of Joel’s prophecy, And in the last days it shall be, God declares that I will pour out my Spirit (Acts 2:17). The primary work of the Holy Spirit reinforces the truth that Christ is establishing his kingdom of righteousness RIGHT NOW. Paul describes the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives:

Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh…. Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, division, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control (Gal 5:16-23).

Linking These Facts of Salvation History to PRAYER

Just as God left the earth undeveloped because he wants Adam to exercise dominion over the earth to develop its potential, much of Christ’s redemptive power for the new creation is waiting for us to access. Because he made us to be his image bearers, he wants US to engage the weapons of spiritual warfare to advance the kingdom of righteousness over earth. Just as God did not create the world with iphones already invented, God’s new creation does NOT begin with Christ-followers and their world already perfected. During our current period of church history, he has given us spiritual resources to spread the rule of Christ over every sphere of life on planet earth. God does NOT need us to do anything for Christ’s kingdom to advance. But he has chosen to grant Christ-followers, a role in advancing the kingdom of righteousness. Prayer is the primary weapon for advancing Christ's kingdom of righteousness in this world during this age. Why?  Here are three reasons:

1.  Because only Jesus has exhibited the power required to defeated Satan, sin, and death. Paul prays fervently that the Christ-followers in Ephesus would grasp the greatness of this spiritual power. Paul asks God to give them the eyes to see:

What is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above  every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all (1:19-23).

The resurrection of Christ brings the future power of God—that will one day heal and renew the entire world—into our lives now, accessed by prayer in his name.

2.) God, Himself, identifies PRAYER as the way Christ kingdom advances. Just as a military invasion begins with cruise missiles and bombing runs, our efforts to advance the kingdom on earth must begin with prayer, the only weapon capable of dislodging the enemy from its strongholds. Prayer is such a potent offensive weapon for advancing the kingdom of Christ over earth, that in Psalm 2 we hear God The Father identify prayer as the way Christ’s kingdom spreads. The Father promises the Anointed One, “ASK of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession.” As Christ-followers join Christ in ASKING that his kingdom would advance, The Father promises to act.

3) The third reason why prayer is the primary weapon for advancing Christ’s kingdom in the world is that Jesus specifically taught that the Father will give the Holy Spirit’s help to those who ASK for it. Luke 9:11, Jesus says, What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him! In context Jesus is not talking about a one-time filling of the Holy Spirit but continuing to ask God to work through the Holy Spirit. Indeed, we may even ask for the Holy Spirit’s help for others, not just ourselves. Paul tells the Ephesians that he prays to the Father “That he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being” (3:16).

All of this background is to say that you and I have a vital role in the defeat of evil in our world. In many cases, God will not act to defeat evil if you and I do not pray. There are many things God can do but doesn’t do if we don’t ask. That is especially true in combating evil. Perhaps the power of Christ to defeat sin could be compared to an antibiotic against the bacteria of moral evil that has spread to every aspect of human life. Prayer in Christ’s name for that person or battle does cause God’s Spirit to inject antibiotics into that bacteria. God promises, “The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.” (Ja 5:16). But we may not see the result of the injection for two reasons: 1) we can’t see inside people and 2) the disease of sin is so strong that multiple injections are needed. We may not see the result of our prayers, but they bring others one step closer to defeating evil.

Lessons from Ephesians 6:18

Praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints,

1. Note that the context of this admonition to pray is battling the spiritual forces of evil. It is prayer for some aspect of the kingdom of righteousness to prevail over the kingdom of evil.

2. The Greek word for “supplication” is DEOMAI which means: “ask fervently for help.” The root comes from the word, “desire.” So, it means asking intensely for something you really want.

3. Every member of the Body of Christ is to be engaged in prayer warfare for other Christians. The expectation of Paul is that the intense spiritual battle he has just described must be won by making supplication for ALL the Saints.

4. Paul stresses perseverance in prayer. He must have known by experience how hard it is to keep going in prayer support for other’s spiritual battles. He would also be familiar with Jesus’ emphasis on persevering in prayer, as in Luke 11.

And he said to them, “Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves, for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him’; and he will answer from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything’? I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his impudence he will rise and give him whatever he needs. And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. (vs 11:5-9). 

I have wrestled with this text and fervent prayers of mine that have gone unanswered for a long time. To get at what I think this parable means, I need to go back to my high school days. Back then, we used the term cheap girl, for a girl who would easily give sex to a guy who wanted it, instead of requiring a life-long commitment to love her in marriage. She was lacking dignity. She was a people pleaser. God is not a cheap God. He does not let us USE him. He does NOT spring into action the moment we make a request, saying to us, “Your wish is my command.” He has way too much dignity to jump into action because one of his kids, once in a while, thinks to make a request that he has forgotten about the next day. Yes, God will respond to this request; that is his promise. But he is not our personal genie. He is the ultimate heavy weight, full of glory. The neighbor within the house is not such a people pleaser that he will wake up his whole household, including his kids, some of whom probably will not get back to sleep, keeping him and his wife awake half the night, just because a friend asks for some bread. God does not answer prayers because he is a people pleaser. “He has too much dignity,” says Jesus, “for you to EVER think he is a puppet on strings.”

But when the man within the house realizes, “my neighbor asking for bread is never going to stop knocking. He is so impudent, that he refuses to take ‘no’ for an answer,” he will give what is requested to his neighbor. The precious treasures we request of God—a son or daughter returning to Christ, a relative coming to salvation, victory over an enslaving sin—don’t happen because on a whim we asked God to work. They only happen for those who in a humble sense, refuse to take “no” for an answer. They keep asking and asking and asking. The ground conquered by Christ’s kingdom of righteousness is not cheap nor easily obtained; it belongs only to those who persevere in prayer.  

What To Pray For

Prayer releases spiritual power when its focus is spiritual battles and the work of the Holy Spirit producing Christ-like attitudes. We see this in Paul’s prayers.

Phil 1:9-11: And it is my prayer that your LOVE may abound more and more, with KNOWLEDGE and all DISCERNMENT, so that you may APPROVE WHAT IS EXCELLENT, and so be PURE and BLAMELESS for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of RIGHTEOUSNESS that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.

Col 1:9-11. We have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the KNOWLEDGE OF HIS WILL in all spiritual WISDOM and UNDERSTANDING, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully PLEASING TO HIM: BEARING FRUIT IN EVERY GOOD WORK and INCREASING IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD; being STRENGTHENED with all power, according to his glorious might.

Gal 5:22. The fruit of the Spirit IS LOVE, JOY, PEACE, PATIENCE, KINDNESS, GOODNESS, FAITHFULNESS, GENTLENESS, SELF-CONTROL.

Eph 3:17-19.  I pray that you, firmly fixed in love yourselves, MAY BE ABLE TO GRASP (with all Christians) HOW WIDE AND DEEP AND LONG AND HIGH IS THE LOVE OF CHRIST—and to KNOW FOR YOURSELVES that love so far beyond our comprehension. May you be FILLED THOUGH ALL YOUR BEING WITH GOD HIMSELF!

You might want to write down the names of your loved ones and others you know God has called you to pray for and choose from the verses above a request that seems most suited to his or her needs.

Men, our mission is to FIGHT THROUGH PRAYER for the kingdom of righteousness to prevail in our own heart attitudes, in the hearts of our wives, children and grandchildren, church, neighborhood and nation. During this stage of church history, prevailing prayer is God’s ordained means of extending his kingdom, for defeating Satan and his empire of darkness, and bringing to earth a taste of the way things will someday be. If we do not fight this battle, the kingdom of darkness will prevail in the hearts and lives of those we love. No one else can take our place in this fight!

For Further Prayerful Thought:

1. Why do think Christians don’t see prayer more as a weapon?

2. What is wrong with saying that after the resurrection, Jesus left this world to go back to heaven and be with God?

3. What does Jesus want Christians to during this stage of salvation history, between his ascension to God’s right hand and his final return?

4. Why is it important, that Jesus prefaced his command to make disciples of all nations with, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me, Therefore…”?

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Using the Sword of the Spirit in the Power of Christ

Using the Sword of the Spirit in the Power of Christ

On 30 August, 2024 By Gary Yagel

Author, David Jeremiah abserves,

The biblical context for viewing all of life’s events is called spiritual warfare—the age-old conflict between the kingdom of darkness and the kingdom of light…. Biblically and practically speaking, we are in a spiritual war. The Christian’s spiritual enemy is not in uniform, and he doesn’t meet us on an identifiable battlefield. He uses ruthless and unconventional tactics such as deceit, deflection, and disguise…. The church of Jesus Christ needs to know its enemies and his strategies. Above all, Christians need to know how to gain victory over this enemy. (The Spiritual Warfare Answer Book).

In this episode, we take a practical look at HOW YO USE the sword of the Spirit to resist thoughts and temptations that seek to entice us off of the path of life and onto the road of destruction. As we continue the series, Winning Spiritual Battles Because We Use Our Spiritual Weapons, we come today to Paul’s admonition to take up… the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God (Eph 6:17). One of the best things about this weapon is that unlike the others, we actually get to see Jesus using it in Scripture. We’ll dig into a study of Jesus’ combat with Satan, in a moment but lets first get to know a bit about this weapon.

This weapon is the Word of God, which is so powerful for transforming human minds and hearts that it is called “living.” For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.  (Heb 4:12-13). As we will see, even Jesus did not battle Satan with his own thoughts but only by quoting Scripture.

The Greek word for sword, MACHAIRA does not describe the swash buckling kind of sword used by Zoro. Rather, it was quite short, more like a dagger. It was used by the Romans in close hand-to-hand combat. This weapon is for personal attacks. This truth is underscored by the Greek word Paul chooses for Word (of God). It is not LOGOS, which connotes broad, general principles. Rather, Paul chooses RHEMA, which refers to specific “utterings.” NT scholar W. E. Vine writes,

The significance of RHEMA as distinct from LOGOS is exemplified in the injunction to “take the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” Here the reference is not to the whole Bible as such, but to the individual Scripture passages, which the Spirit brings to our remembrance for use in time of need, a prerequisite being the regular storing of the mind with Scripture (An Expository dictionary of NT Words).

Identifying the word of God as the sword of the Spirit is consistent with what we know about the work of the Holy Spirit. Not only does He indwell Christ-followers so they have the presence of Christ with them at all times (abiding in Christ), the Holy Spirit’s work is to help us overcome our sinful nature and transform our hearts into Christ-like attitudes—love, Joy, peace, patience…etc. So, the Holy Spirit is right inside us to help us when thoughts come into our minds, designed by Satan to lead us away from Christ and his righteous path. He is there to help us recall the right truth in Scripture to combat Satan’s lies. But of course, we can’t recall, what we have never read or committed to memory. Let’s zoom in to the wilderness of Judea and watch Jesus wield the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

First Temptation: Use your power to command these stones to be bread

Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. And the tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” But he answered, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ (Matt 4:1-4).

Satan begins the temptation by appealing to Jesus’ power, If you are the son of God use that power to turn stones into bread. What many don’t realize is that Jesus’ hunger after a long fast meant that he was close to death. Those who have practiced long fasts point out that after 6 or 7 days, hunger pains go away. If they have water, a human can fast about 40 days, but when his hunger pangs return, he must eat soon, or he will die. Jesus was being tempted not to have to depend upon his heavenly father, but to use his spiritual power to take care of his own needs. The passage he cites is Deut 8:3. The verse before it provides important context.

And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord (Deut 8:2-3).

Dependency upon God for your daily bread reflects the humility that is vital for depending upon God’s moral law every day. Jesus refused the temptation to stop depending in humility upon his heavenly father. The first Adam refused to depend upon God to satisfy his hunger for food, failing to trust God’s instruction not to eat of the tree in the middle of the garden. Instead, he allowed the delicious fruit to entice him into rebellion against God. He violated God’s restriction and ate. The first Adam put his physical appetite ahead of obedience to God. The Second Adam, though at the point of dying because of his need for food—refused to take matters into his own hands. He humbled himself depending on God. In quoting Deut 8:3, man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord, Jesus is saying real life comes not just through physical sustenance but also by obedience to God. That is the lesson God wanted to teach the Israelites in the wilderness.

Second Temptation: Putting God to the Test

Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up lest you strike your foot against a stone.’”  Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test’” (Matt 4:5-7).

In the second temptation Satan again appeals to Jesus’ power, If you are the Son of God…..The temptation is to throw himself off the pinnacle of the temple in Jerusalem proving that he was the messiah, and thus winning a following. In response, Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 6:16, You shall not put the Lord your God to the test, as you tested him at Massah. Here is what Israel did at Massah:

(Israel) camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. Therefore the people quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink.” And Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord? But the people thirsted there for water, and the people grumbled against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?” So Moses cried to the Lord, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me” (Exodus 17:1b-4).

God provides water from a rock that Moses strikes. Then Moses sums up what happened in the words, they tested the Lord by saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?” The sin of the Israelites was demanding that God prove himself IN THE WAY THEY DECIDE HE MUST DO SO. Had Jesus thrown himself off the pinnacle of the temple in Jerusalem, it is likely that the Jewish people, recognizing by this supernatural feat that Jesus was the Messiah, would have immediately risen up in rebellion against the Roman occupation. A bloodbath would have ensued, and the people would have coronated him the king of a political Israel. Instead, Jesus must defeat the more deadly triumvirate, Satan, sin, and death by going to the cross, inaugurating the spiritual kingdom of Israel—Christ’s Kingdom of Righteousness.

What is the difference between having faith that God will work supernaturally to answer our prayer (thus pleasing God), and sinful presumption, which puts God to the test? Genuine faith always includes humility. Consider the faith of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in Daniel. When told by Nebuchadnezzar that they must fall down and worship his statue or be cast into the fiery furnace, they answered,

“O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.” (3:14-18).

In contrast, the arrogant Israelites in the wilderness, demanded that God give them water when and where they wanted it. Their arrogance is revealed in demanding that God prove himself to them THEIR WAY instead of God’s way. Jumping off the temple pinnacle would have demanded that God prove Jesus was the Messiah and win a following JESUS’ way rather than God’s way.

Third Temptation: Achieving a great goal but making one small compromise

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” Then Jesus said to him, “Be gone, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.’” Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and were ministering to him (Ma

In this temptation, Satan offers to give Jesus rulership over every kingdom of the world if he would just hit his knees and worship Satan once. At this point in Jesus’ sinless life, his heart was full of perfect love for humans. Jesus must have thought back over all the centuries of human suffering caused by Satan’s rule of the earth, since Adam’s rebellion. Imagine all the suffering Jesus could relieve, all the healing he could perform, all the good he could do, if he were in charge of Adam’s kingdom, instead of Satan. It would just take one small compromise. Just genuflect once—and he could avoid the horrible agony of the cross and rule Adam’s kingdom for good. But thanks be to God, Jesus resisted Satan’s enticing offer. Satan tempted the first Adam and Eve to become LIKE GOD, knowing good and evil. They chose rebellion rather than submission. Satan tempts the Second Adam to be LIKE THE GOD of this world—ruling all the kingdoms of earth—and Jesus fought off the temptation with God’s word, Deut 6:13, “Be gone, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only

Jesus parries every blow Satan attempts, by citing a relevant specific passage of Scripture. Jesus grew up in an oral culture where practicing Jew’s like Joseph and Mary had their children memorize much of the Torah. Certainly, this is strong motivation to stay devoted to reading and study Scripture ourselves—a vital weapon in our arsenal. Is there some way in our culture to train ourselves to wield the sword of the Spirit, when temptation strikes? David Jeremiah, founder of Turning Point, answers that question from his own life. He writes,

Years ago, my friend Swen Nater and I got together at a restaurant. We talked about the areas where we thought the enemy would come after us, and we took a concordance and researched the Scriptures. We came up with about forty “swords” (i.e. specific verses for specific temptations) for each of us, which we stored in the armories of our minds. I suggest you do the same. Think of the areas in which you know Satan will tempt you, find some Bible verses relating to those areas, write them out on little cards, and put them where you will see them often. Memorize them. Internalize them. Learn them by heart--and be ready to use them when the enemy attacks.

Even Jesus, did not try to fight Satan’s temptations without quoting Scripture!

A List of Temptations and Correlating Combat Truths from Scripture

1.  When I doubt that following Christ is worthwhile:

Ps 34:10 Even) the young lions suffer want and hunger; but Those who seek the Lord shall not be in want of any good thing.

2. When inwardly bored, the temptation to indulge in lustful pleasure strikes:

Matt 5:6: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for THEY shall be SATISFIED.

3. When God wants me to give more generously than I want to:

Luke 6:38: Give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.”

4. When I am angry because of my wife’s critical words:

Prov 12:1 Whoever hates correction is stupid.

5. When I am repelled by my wife’s selfishness feeling like I work at meeting her needs way more than she works at meeting mine.

Eph 5:25: Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.

6. When anger seeks to control my decisions.

James 1:20: The anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.

7. When I have more month left than money, and am tempted to worry.

Phil 4:19: My God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

8.  The temptation to get a better deal by bending the truth a little.

Prov 10:2 Ill-gotten gains do not profit, but righteousness rescues from death.

9. When I am envious of a friend’s new house, car, or other possession.

Matt 6:19-21: Don’t pile up treasures on earth, where moth and rust can spoil them and thieves can break in and steal. But keep your treasure in Heaven where there is neither moth nor rust to spoil it and nobody can break in and steal. For wherever your treasure is, you may be certain that your heart will be there too!”

10. When everything is going wrong, and I want to murmur against the Lord.

Romans 8:28: For those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.

11. When my pain and suffering send the message that God doesn’t love me.

Heb 12:6: For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.

12. When I want more sugar and don’t feel like working out.

1 Cor 6:19-21: Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, …. Therefore, honor God with your bodies.

13. The temptation to spin the truth so I am in seen a more favorable light.

Prov 12:19: Truthful lips will endure forever, but a lying tongue is only for a moment.

The result of yielding to Satan’s temptation is always destruction. But wielding the Sword of the Spirit fends off the thoughts and impulses that The Enemy plants in our minds to lead us into death. The Word of God brings LIFE. This truth led King David to write Psalm 19 and sing:

The Law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul; The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. THEY ARE MORE DESIRABLE THAN GOLD, YES, THAN MUCH PURE GOLD; SWEETER ALSO THAN HONEY AND DRIPPINGS OF THE HONEYCOMB. (Ps 19:7-8,10).

For Further Prayerful Thought:

  1. Do you think this is a fair statement? If a man is not winning his own spiritual battles, he won’t be very effective helping his wife and children win theirs.
  2. Describe in your own words the power of the Word of God.
  3. What did you learn from our examination of the way Jesus wielded the sword of the Spirit?
  4. Of the 13 temptations, listed, which 2 or 3 do you most need to be able to parry, by quoting Scripture?
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How Can the Helmet of Salvation Protect Us?

How Can the Helmet of Salvation Protect Us?

On 24 August, 2024 By Gary Yagel

Today, we continue our series Winning Spiritual Battles Because We Use Our Spiritual Weapons. As we seek to run well the race marked out for us, this calling means advancing the righteous reign of King Jesus in our own hearts, attitudes, and behavior, not to mention shaping each sphere of life with Christ’s agenda. But it is very easy to think, “Who am I to spread righteousness anywhere? Whoever thinks that’s my job in life, doesn’t understand the corruption of MY heart and weakness of MY flesh.”  But it is Christ who told his followers to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. Jesus calls us to this primary life focus, knowing the weakness of our sinful nature because his plan has never been for us to seek righteousness in our own strength but in his. He tell us.

Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God (Eph 6:10-13).

This episode tries to define in practical terms how to put on the helmet of salvation and how that protects us in the fight to do the right thing.

A few years ago, I was sitting in the stands watching some of the finest moments in my son’s collegiate football career. Playing the Rover position (sort of combination safety/linebacker, he had stopped the opposing ball carrier for no gain. On the next play he chased down the tailback on a sweep for a loss. A few plays later, he met the fullback right in the hole at the line of scrimmage for no gain. But my son didn’t get up. The running back had ducked his head just as Josh hit him in a helmet-to-helmet collision. Josh had a concussion that kept him in a dark, quiet dorm room for three days and out of football for weeks.

The main purpose of helmets, whether in sports, in battle, or in work situations like construction sites, is to protect the brain from injury. The brain must be fiercely protected, because once the brain is damaged, body functions also get damaged. That is why the NFL is investing millions in helmet design, most recently studying God’s design of woodpeckers. This medical reality is also the reason behind the helmets worn by the Roman legions. They did not want their soldiers concussed and therefore controlled by fuzzy vision and confused thinking. Paul tells Christians that our salvation is like a helmet protecting us from fuzzy, confused thinking. But how does the helmet of salvation do that? And what does it mean to take up the helmet of salvation over and over—we don’t have keep asking Christ to come into our lives over and over again!

Some commentators envision the helmet’s protection of the brain to be protecting our thinking—the process by which God’s Word renews our minds. Indeed, spiritual warfare is very much about the thoughts that capture our mind. In 2 Corinthians 10 we are told that we have divine power to destroy…. arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ (vs 5). But in the text we’re studying, the next piece of armor Paul will mention is the Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, by which Jesus took every thought captive when he fought Satan. When Paul says, “Take the helmet of salvation” he is NOT talking about the need to renew our mind in this verse; he is talking about how understanding SALVATION in particular protects our minds.

An important clue in understanding Paul’s teaching on the armor of God is realizing that Paul is as influenced by Isaiah’s writing about the armor of God as by the Roman soldiers guarding him, if not more. Here are the verses that impacted Paul concerning the helmet of salvation (describing God’s decision to HIMSELF bring salvation):

Man’s Evil: Truth is lacking, and he who departs from evil makes himself a prey. The Lord saw it, and it displeased him that there was no justice. 

Man Can’t Save Himself: He saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no one to intercede;

The Solution: then his own arm brought him salvation, and his righteousness upheld him. He put on righteousness as a breastplate, and a HELMET OF SALVATION on his head. (59:15-17b).

This text uses the same expression Paul used, helmet of salvation. The whole point to the Isaiah 59 text is that salvation for Adam’s race can not come from another human; God, himself must provide salvation from sin and its consequences. God himself will be the Messiah who wears the helmet of salvation and breastplate of righteousness. So, taking up the helmet of salvation is a reference to the reality that salvation from sin comes by grace alone, through Christ alone. Think of what Paul has already said in this same letter about salvation. By grace you have been SAVED through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast (2:8-9).

Remember, the purpose of a helmet is to protect the brain. So what Paul is saying is that in some way the reality that salvation from sin comes by grace alone through Christ alone PROTECTS our thinking as Christians. I believe this is the truest understanding of taking the helmet of salvation. Let me try to say this another way. The one to whom he helmet of salvation belongs in Scripture is only Christ (Is 59:17) But we get to wear that helmet because of grace, that we are “IN Christ,” dependent upon him for every aspect of salvation. So, the helmet of salvation to which Paul refers is the protective truth surrounding our thinking that SALVATION IS FROM CHRIST AND NOT FROM US. To see how this truth can protect our thinking, let’s consider three component parts to our salvation.

Salvation Means We Are Saved from The PENALTY Of Sin

The Greek word for salvation, SOTERIA includes deliverance from God’s just wrath upon all lawbreakers separating them from his holy presence and consigning them justly to destruction in hell. Jesus said, Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into  judgment, but has passed from death to life (John 5:24). The salvation story is the reality that we ourselves are destitute sinners whose only hope is God’s mercy. God, himself must save us. How does surrounding our daily thinking with the helmet of salvation protect us?

1.  It protects us from thinking WE ARE TOO DIRTY FOR GOD TO WANT A RELATIONSHIP WITH.  In Luke 5, after spending a whole night finding no fish, Peter sees Jesus miraculously fill his nets. Luke reports, But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.”  I have found that many men struggling with lust, feel the same way. “Lord I know you love me, and forgive me because Christ died for my sins. But you are holy. My lust is so repulsive it makes me disgusting to you. Depart from me. I’ll be back to see you after I’ve proved that I really am sorry for my sin by getting a few wins under my belt.”

But putting the helmet of salvation on means, knowing that only Christ can make us holy. We are declared righteous. Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us. And Christ’s righteousness is not so incomplete that we have to add a little of our own! The truth about our salvation is that we are far more flawed than our lust proves while at the same time we are far more loved and accepted than we imagined. Henry Cloud and John Townsend, write, When we finally understand that God isn’t mad at us any more, we become free to concentrate on love and growth instead of trying to appease him (How People Grow).

A mother named Maria understood the principle that feeling dirty might drive someone away from those who love her. Her 15-year-old daughter, Christiana, had run away from home to the big city. Maria knew Christiana would turn to prostitution to support herself. She also knew that when Christiana did so, she would feel too dirty and disgusting to think her mom and family would ever want a relationship with her, again. So, Maria threw some clothes in a bag, gathered all her money, and bought a bus ticket for Rio de Janeiro. She stopped by the drugstore to take as many pictures of herself as she could afford. Maria visited every hotel, nightclub, or bar where prostitutes hung out. At each place she left her picture—taped on a bathroom mirror or tacked to a hotel bulletin board. On the back of each photo, she wrote a note. But before long, Maria was out of photos and money. So, broken-hearted, she returned home.

A few weeks later, young Christiana descended the hotel stairs. Her young face was tired. Her big brown eyes no longer danced with the laughter of youth but spoke of pain and fear. She longed to trade these countless beds for the secure pallet of her bedroom at home. As she reached the bottom of the stairs, her eyes noticed a familiar face. There on the lobby mirror was a small picture of her mother. Christiana’s eyes blurred with tears as she crossed the room and removed the small photo. Written on the back was this compelling invitation: “Whatever you have done, whatever you have become, it doesn’t matter. Please come home.” Christiana did.  (No Wonder They Call Him Savior, by Max Lucado). 

Putting on the helmet of salvation means remembering that God’s arms are always open to us like the arms of the father who runs to throw his arms around the prodigal son.

2. The helmet of salvation protects us from JUDGING OTHERS. Jesus taught,

Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye (Matt 7:3-5).

Taking up the helmet of salvation means remembering the rock from under which I was dug--that my salvation is all about God’s incredible mercy for me. I have a whole forest of timber in my eyes, compared to another’s speck. When the flaws and sinfulness of others wound me or make my life more difficult, my own desperate need for God’s mercy surrounds and protects my mind from impatience, anger, retaliation, and bitterness.

3. The helmet of salvation protects me from APATHY TOWARDS THE POOR, THE OUTCASTS, THE HURTING. Let’s think for a moment of the Good Samaritan.

A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, ‘Take care of him, and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back (Lk 10:30-35).

How does this relate to putting on the helmet of salvation? WE are the wounded man. We lay helpless and bankrupt, dying in the road. Christ who is our natural enemy because he is God who hates evil, who owes us nothing, nevertheless shows great mercy for us. He stops and gives us of his riches and saves us. When we realize we are the one in need of mercy, we better understand the gospel of grace. Christians who RECEIVE mercy must be drawn to those who NEED mercy.

There are two powerful effects that the gospel of grace has on a person who has been touched by it writes Tim Keller.  First, the person who knows that he has received mercy while an undeserving enemy of God will have a heart of love for even (and especially) the most difficult and ungrateful persons. When a Christian sees prostitutes, alcoholics, prisoners, drug addicts, unwed mothers, the homeless, the refugee, he knows that he is looking in a mirror….The second major effect that the gospel of grace has on a person is that it creates spontaneous generosity (Ministries of Mercy)

My salvation story is that he who was rich emptied himself so that I who am poor might be rich. This truth that is foundational to the salvation story is a helmet that protects me from apathy for those broken by sin. Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required, said our master (Lk 12:48).

Salvation Means We Are Saved from the POWER of Sin

4. Putting on the helmet of salvation protects us from PASSIVITY AND LAZINESS. The salvation story was never just that those who put their faith in Christ are saved from the penalty of their sin and go to heaven when they die. Such a mistaken understanding leads to a neglect of Christ’s call to discipleship—the call to enjoy a personal relationship with him right now, the call to become like him in this life, the call to spread the kingdom of righteousness over our sphere of earth.

The word salvation refers to the truth that believers are being saved from the power of sin in this life. Justification is a one-time act that saves us from sin’s punishment. Sanctification is the ongoing process of saving us from sin’s power. Paul writes: For this is the will of God, your sanctification (1 Thes 4:3). I am called to pursue God’s goal for my life: holiness of character. Salvation is not spiritual retirement. It is pressing on towards our upward call in Christ Jesus.

5. Putting on the helmet of salvation protects us from NEGLECTING OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD. The helmet of salvation is the reality that Jesus is the only one with the power to save me from sin’s destructive power. WE MUST DEPEND UPON HIM EVERYDAY. Jesus precedes his marching orders to the church to make disciples with a very important historic fact about our power for discipleship. All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples (Matt 28:18). It is only in the power of Christ that I can surrender to Christ’s kingly rule over my heart loyalties, heart attitudes, and the other spheres of my life. After Christ ascended, he poured out the Holy Spirit who empowers us to be holy. But the only way the spiritual fruit of godliness is produced is by abiding in Christ, because he is the vine, and we are the branches.

Salvation Means We Are Saved from the PRESENCE of sin

6. Putting on the helmet of salvation protects us from DESPAIR, when evil wins.

The third aspect of the word, salvation, refers to our future hope. The biblical word for hope does not imply uncertainty as the English word does. Our hope is certain, but it is future.  Before penning the verses we are studying in Ephesians, Paul had written to the Thessalonians, Let us be sober, having put on...for a helmet the hope of salvation. Here, Paul had referred to this third part of salvation—the final return of Christ when all of creation will be set free from its bondage to sin and restored. (Rom 8:18-21). We are given a glimpse in Rev 21.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first 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 I 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. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away…. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment” (Rev 21:1-5).

John’s vision of the new heaven and the new earth is breathtaking. God’s people are adorned as a bride for his son, clothed in righteousness. God, whose presence dwelt in the tabernacle and temple of old, will be present with them to satisfy their hearts with the ecstasy of his immediate presence; they will see him face-to-face. Sorrows will be turned to joy, mourning and pain wiped from memory. Thirst will be quenched without cost.

During this church age evil will triumph at times, then be driven back, and then triumph, back and forth. But taking up the helmet of salvation is remembering that sin’s utter defeat will take place one day. The proof of that, argued Paul, was Christ’s resurrection. That is why he closed his chapter on the resurrection (I Corinthians 15) with the words, Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain (vs 58).

For Further Prayerful Thought:

1. Why does taking up the helmet of salvation mean something different from just thinking biblically about stuff.

2. How does putting on the helmet of salvation protect us from thinking we are too dirty for God to love?

3. Why does being saved by grace alone cause a true Christian to be drawn to those who need mercy?

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How to Protect Ourselves from Satan’s Fiery Darts

How to Protect Ourselves from Satan’s Fiery Darts

On 17 August, 2024 By Gary Yagel

Men don’t always admit it, but deep inside, we all want to be heroes. We want to come through when it matters for our loved ones. In our own way we would love to be like Joshua or David or William Wallace leading the charge with a sword in our hand in the spiritual battle. Yet, instead of identifying with such great warriors on the front line, most of us feel like we are just the factory worker back home in the war effort, putting in our 8 plus hours a day, sharing home responsibilities with our wives, checking our social media, maybe grabbing an hour on Disney+ and starting the whole routine over again the next day. But thinking that your role in spiritual battle is insignificant is a lie from the Enemy. Christ has called you and me to follow him in his cause of defeating evil and establishing his righteous kingdom over every square inch of human hearts and lives. There is no other man who can replace you in your life, in the arenas you have been called to. If you leave your place in line, it will remain empty. You must be the hero in your own story. There is no extra or stunt man to fill in for you. Winning your spiritual battles matters. You will celebrate for eternity the ones you win tomorrow and the next day and the day after that because each victory has honored Christ. This episode examines how we protect ourselves from Satan’s fiery arrows by lifting up our shield of faith.

One thoughtful author writes, Behind the world and the flesh is an even more powerful enemy, one we rarely speak of and are even more less ready to resist. Yet, this is where we live now—on the front lines of a fierce spiritual war that is to blame for most of the casualties you see around you and most of the assault against you. It is time we prepared ourselves for it (John Eldredge, Wild at Heart).

There IS a dragon to be slain. Our loved ones do need us to be heroic and to fight for them, for ourselves, and for the honor of our King, Jesus Christ who has defeated Satan’s kingdom and claims this world as his own. Let’s learn from Ephesians 6:16 another truth about how to fight this battle:  In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one. The Roman battle shield looked more like a door than a trash can lid. It was four feet tall and two and a half feet wide allowing the soldier to crouch completely behind it. It was covered with thick leather and metal, that could deflect incoming arrows.

Paul likens this protective shield to the Christian’s faith. Biblical faith is relentless confidence in the goodness of God’s character—that all of his dealings with us and those we love spring from the character of goodness and love—wanting what is best for us. This unwavering confidence in the goodness and love of God is what Satan relentlessly seeks to destroy. We see that in his attack on Eve and on Job.

A. Consider Eve. When we read God’s history of mankind—the Bible, we’ve barely gotten through creation in the first two chapters when we encounter Satan planting the one idea into Eve’s heart that is responsible for more human destruction than any other idea—the lie that God’s goodness can’t be trusted. When this wrong idea captured Eve’s heart, she rebelled, Adam rebelled with her, and humans have been rebelling against God and his law ever since. Satan’s chief strategy to inspire rebellion in Eve’s heart was to make her doubt God’s goodness. Let’s take a moment to study again this tactic of Satan used on Eve.

The Serpent said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Gen 3:2-5).

1. Notice that Satan actually begins the temptation by planting a complete fabrication into Eve’s mind, i.e. the possibility that this unfair God might have put all the delicious fruit trees in the garden just to make them miserable by not permitting them to eat ANY of them. His words, again, Did God really say you can’t eat from any tree. Even though God never said that, as Eve pointed out, Satan still planted the idea that God was the kind of being who could have done something so completely unfair.

2. Satan further undermined Eve’s confidence in God’s goodness by taking her focus off all the wonderful fruit God had given them to enjoy throughout the entire garden and directing her focus on one apparently unfair restriction. EVERY SINGLE other tree in the garden, with its lush fruit for Adam and Eve to enjoy proved God’s GOODNESS—his desire to bless them with GOOD gifts. Later, Jesus would remind us of this wonderful benevolent nature of God: Which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent?  If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him (Matt 7:9-11).

3. Satan’s attack on God’s goodness continues, For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” Satan insinuates that: 1) God’s motive is selfishness—he is keeping something good from her and Adam, all to himself, i.e. the knowledge of good and evil, and 2) God’s moral law is fundamentally a restriction on our happiness. Both undermine her confidence in the goodness of God. The truth of course is that his law is given to us out of his goodness—to guide us into blessing. King David said, I will never forget your precepts, for by them you have given me life (Ps 119:93).

B. Satan’s tactics to destroy the faith of Job are different—he has the power to inflict enormous physical, emotional, and spiritual pain on Job. But his strategy is the same—to try to get him to curse God instead of trusting him. Job learns some humility, but Satan fails. In the midst of unfathomable pain, Job, says, Though he slay me, yet will I trust him (13:15). And God’s goodness, hidden for a season of affliction, bursts forth, again in the closing chapter of Job with the words, And the LORD restored the fortunes of Job….And the LORD gave Job twice as much as he had before (42:10) Inscribed on the shield of faith we need to raise against Satan’s attack on God’s goodness are the words, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust him.”

It is noteworthy that Paul begins this admonition to raise our shield of faith with “In all circumstances” (ESV). Because Satan’s desire is to create doubt in our hearts about God’s love for us, the fiery darts of doubt Satan sends our way often result from painful experiences and situations. Tony Evens, in his book, Victory in Spiritual Warfare, notes that Paul tells us to take up our armor in the evil day:

The evil day is the day that all hell breaks loose in your life—when you are under attack. It’s when the finances are so low that you don’t know how you are going to make it through the end of the week. It’s when you’ve lost your job. And there is no new job in sights. It’s when you are breaking down emotionally and have lost your passion for life. It’s when your marriage seems hopeless, your kids have turned away, your health deteriorates, your future looks bleak. It’s wen your friend has betrayed you, you’re overcome by an addiction or impulse, or life seems to deliver any other piercing stab.

In view of such trials, it is imperative to realize that FAITH is not an EMOTION; it is an act of the will. Any normal person encountering the difficult, sometimes heart-wrenching circumstances mentioned above will feel an array of emotions including doubts about God—perhaps discouragement, anger, frustration, disappointment, worry, fear, distrust, sorrow, insecurity, resentment, self-doubt, or grief. The feelings are not unbelief, itself, but put our faith to the test. Faith is a decision. It is choosing to trust God despite all the feelings and circumstances that severely undermine confidence in God’s love for you. I heard my son-in-law say through tears and the agony of a heart split open in grief, at the funeral of his 21-year old son, “Though God slay me, yet will I trust him.”

In my own life, in a crisis nowhere near as severe, but nevertheless real, I remember learning that faith is a decision to trust God. Our church was pursuing the crazy agenda of planting a daughter church while going through a building program at the same time. I was a circuit rider, traveling to the daughter church to preach at the 9:15 service, then driving to the mother church to preach at the 10:45 service. In the midst of this process, my lone associate pastor and his wife, both of whom my wife and I leaned upon heavily, felt called away to another ministry. It normally takes 12-18 months to replace a staff person in the church. I remember where I was standing right after I heard that news that Bill and Jeannette were leaving. Wrestling with the fear that I would fall apart emotionally under this stress, I realized I had to make a choice; either trust God or not. I said, “I choose to trust you, God.” Little did I know that within our own congregation was the man God would call to fill that staff position. Two weeks after the first associate and wife left, his replacement started (who, btw stayed at the church longer than I did.) God is worthy of our trust! Faith is not a feeling but a decision to trust God. Hebrews 11:1 tells us faith is the assurance of things hope for—confidence that God has a good purpose WHICH WILL BE REVEALED IN THE END, and the conviction of what is unseen—confidence THAT THOUGH UNSEEN, RIGHT NOW God is working everything together for my good.

There is one aspect of the Roman shield that is especially significant in our culture where men are often isolated. The shields were designed to lock together as mutual defense against the rain of enemy arrows. Stu Weber, in his book, Locking Arms, asks men, “Do you see the critical point here? This is the shield of faith, which by design is interlocked with the soldier next to you. This is the shield of faith utilized in community.” A few years ago, a friend discovered that his infant daughter had a very serious, life-threatening disease. I asked him what he learned about raising your shieled of faith through that experience. Here is what he wrote:

Our faith helped my wife and me deflect the attacks of fear, doubt and despair that we faced. While our faith stood secure in the midst of our trials, we learned how important it was to have the community of faith stand beside us to strengthen our resolve. Have you ever watched a movie showing warriors locking their shields together to block an arrow barrage? Sustaining faith through a major health crisis works this way. Mine was buttressed through these multiple health crises through the faith and prayers of brothers.  Of course, the main linking of shields was with my wife, but the many texts, calls, and questions from brothers keeps me going. One brother would not accept "fine" or "okay".  He insisted on being real and shared his struggles as well. That helps build faith. It strengthens your shield knowing your brothers are locking arms. I know they are with me and they know I am with them.

Six Reasons for Trusting God

(Components of a Shield of Faith Laminated Together)

1. Trust God because those who trust him will not be in want of any good thing. We will not come to God, if we believe his motive is to deprive us, wound us, or restrict our pleasure. Have you ever known someone who lost a parent through death or divorce and is bitter with God? We must be convinced that God wants what is best for us, or we won’t pursue him whole-heartedly. But God says, Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him! Oh, fear the Lord, you his saints, for those who fear him have no lack! The young lions suffer want and hunger; but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing (Ps 34:8-10).

2. Trust God because he is the God of all comfort (2 Cor 1:3). Allowing you to suffer does not mean he has closed his heart to you. God became flesh to be our Great High Priest, so that he understands the depths of our pain because he felt that pain himself. Jesus’ compassionate heart was proved for all time, when seeing the tears of Martha and Mary over the loss of their brother, his tears gushed forth even knowing he was about to bring Lazarus back from the dead. Jesus taught  that grieving, whenever we encounter the pain brought about by the way sin has broken life in this world, is true godliness. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. So, we cannot weep without Jesus entering into our pain and feeling it himself. And having such compassion, he assures us that he will never test us beyond our ability to endure (1 Cor 10:13).

3. Trust God because every single frustration and trial in your life has a good purpose. We all can identify with Alexander and his terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. His day started badly and grew worse. By evening he says, There were lima beans for dinner, and I hate limas. There was kissing on TV and I hate kissing. My bath was too hot, I got soap in my eyes, my marble went down the drain and I had to wear my railroad train pajamas. I hate my railroad train pajamas (by Judith Vorst). Every one of us has day’s like Alexander’s. As Christians, we realize God is sovereign. We know the promise of God in Romans 8:28, All things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. But we often forget the next verse, which explains HOW all this pain and frustration can be good. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son. God’s purpose is to use trials and frustrations to build Christ-like character. We cannot become like Christ in our character without enduring pain. Pain is the fire that refines our inner attitudes. Like working out, present pain NOW leads to RICH SATISFACTION later (even in this life). Jesus taught that the deepest form of happiness (MAKARIOS), translated blessed in the beatitudes, results not from circumstances but from godly heart attitudes. There is truth to the phrase tough times don’t last; tough people do (and the satisfaction of enduring tough times outweighs the pain.)

4. Trust God because his love for us causes him to be commited to our eternal joy. We hate present pain, whether it’s the frustration of careful plans dashed, having our self-esteem trashed, unjust treatment, pouring ourselves into an effort that fails, or our body or our heart blaring, “I hurt.” But, from an eternal perspective, God sees that enduring pain now will lead to eternal joy. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison (2 Cor 4:17). He loves us too much to sacrifice eternal joy for present relief from pain.

5. Trust God because doing so is especially pleasing to him. In gratefulness for God’ grace, all that he does to forgive my sin, love me unconditionally and turn my evil heart to him, I want to please him. Hebrews 11 teaches HOW. Our FAITH is singled out as especially pleasing to God. Without faith it is impossible to please (God), for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him (vs 6). Trusting him is personal to God. He declares that our trust in him is more precious than gold. Both Peter and James tell us God, therefore, tests our faith. Peter writes, You have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ (1 Pet 1:6-7). James writes, Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness (James 1:2-3). The muscles of faith atrophy if they are not exercised. When it comes to your faith muscles, God plans on taking eternal delight in you being ripped. And so will you!

6. Trust God because he has already proved he is FOR US. In pop culture, taking something by faith is contrasted with having proof. Faith is believing in something even when there is no evidence for it. That is not the Biblical meaning of FAITH. In the famous verse, Romans 8:28, it is true that Christians are to believe that all things work together for good for them. But he goes on to give us the evidence upon which this faith rests: because God is FOR us. If God is for us, who can be against us/ (vs 31).  In fact, in this eighth chapter Paul specifically tells us all three persons of the Trinity are FOR us.  In verse 26, the Spirit himself intercedes FOR us with groanings too deep for words. In verse 32, he tells us that God the Father is FOR us, He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up FOR us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? In verse 34, Paul tells us God the Son is FOR us.  Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding FOR us. The reason our shield of faith protects us from Satan’s flaming arrows of doubt is that we are trusting a truth about God’s character, PROVEN by the facts:  GOD IS FOR US

For Further Prayerful Thought:

1. For you, what is the hardest part of remembering that winning your spiritual battles matters?

2. What circumstances tend to be the occasion for you to doubt God’s goodness and whether following Christ is worth it?

3. Of the six aspect of our Faith Shield mentioned, which “Trust God because…” statement do you most want to remember?

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Being Contagious Christians

Being Contagious Christians

On 09 August, 2024 By Gary Yagel

Today we continue our study of the armor of God and finish looking at Eph 6:15, where we’re told to put on, as our shoes, the readiness of the gospel of peace. I think most Christian men want to be contagious Christians. We know that sharing our faith is something our Lord wants us to do and when we do seize opportunities to talk with others about Christ the experience pumps joy and energy into our walk with Him. We also realize that if we are to lead our homes well, our wives and kids need to see us modeling Jesus’ love for the lost and a commitment to seeking ways to share him with others. So, we want to be ready, when the opportunity presents itself, to steer a conversation towards the good news that our listener can have a personal relationship with Christ. This episode looks at three ways TO BE READY when that opportunity arises.

It gets my attention when the two primary NT texts that call Christians to share their faith use the same word. In the text we’re studying, Eph 6:15, Paul writes and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the READINESS given by the gospel of peace. Peter tells his readers that Christians should always be READY to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you (1 Pet 3:15). The same Greek word, HETOIMOS translated ready or prepared is used. It means able and inclined to respond without hesitation. Every day, no matter where our feet take us, whatever the situation we walk in to, we are to be READY to share our faith, i.e. to give a reason for the hope that is in us. And we are to do that wisely. Scripture says, The wise of heart is called discerning, and sweetness of speech increases persuasiveness (Prov 16: 21), and The heart of the wise makes his speech judicious and adds persuasiveness to his lips (Prov 16:23). There are probably many ways to be ready. In this episode I pass along three that have helped to me.

A. The first way to be BE READY to move a conversation towards discussing Christ comes from understanding the OT background behind Paul’s command in Ephesians to shod our feet with the readiness of the gospel. As Paul writes he is influenced both by the armor of the Roman soldiers guarding him, and the words of Isaiah concerning the coming of the Messiah. Paul knew Isaiah 52:7, How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.”  The good news is that the promised Messiah, God, himself, would rescue Adam’s kingdom from the devastation of its slavery to sin and establish his righteous rule over earth. The good news is the gospel of the kingdom.

Notice how the three descriptions of this kingdom in Isaiah match what Jesus said about the kingdom of God, which he inaugurated. 1) The good news is not just, “We now have a ticket to heaven.” It is peace—shalom has come. The messiah has come to reweave shalom by restoring human relationships broken by sin—our relationship with God, self, others, and creation. Shalom describes the flourishing of all four relationships. 2) The Isaiah text goes on to tell us this good news is of happiness. It is hard to miss the connection between this word and the happiness (MAKARIOS) of kingdom life portrayed by Jesus in the beatitudes, blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, blessed are the pure in heart. The good news of the kingdom is that God gives the Holy Spirit to kingdom members to deliver us from destructive heart attitudes and produce godly, Christ-like character. 3) The third cause for proclaiming good news is salvation. As we saw last week salvation is not just escaping judgement. It is Jesus’ the second Adam’s work to fix the mess the first Adam made—restoring wholeness to everything broken by sin.

The first way to prepare for conversations with the lost is to understand the full-orbed gospel of the kingdom. Things are not the way they are supposed to be. There is pain, frustration, and struggle for humans because the fall has fractured the shalom of harmonious relationship with God, ourselves, others, and creation. A lost person’s openness to Christ is often tied to wanting relief from that brokenness. Last week we used Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to see that Jesus is the answer to this extensive brokenness. Let’s review what we saw and go deeper.

1. Maslow says mankind’s most foundational need is PHYSIOLOGICAL--for oxygen, water, food, clothing, shelter, and health. But the curse of Adam’s sin upon the ground has caused humans to lack what they need physiologically to flourish. The coming of Christ’s kingdom means that creation itself will be set free from this bondage to decay. Since Jesus’ kingdom brings the renewal of the physical earth, Jesus taught his followers to prefigure the coming physical wholeness of the world by feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, housing strangers. We are to care for those harmed by the physical brokenness of earth. The agape love shown by believers in meeting these physical needs is the best way to turn their hearts to Christ.

In John 9, Jesus bumps into a man who experiences the brokenness of Adam’s kingdom by being born blind. Jesus meets that physiological need; he restores his sight. Thirty verses later Jesus led the healed man to saving faith (vs 35-38). In my role as a pastor, I have found that when humans are face to face with their physical frailty, they are open to discussing spiritual things. On one occasion, I was visiting the elderly father of a congregational member in the hospital. He had some church background, but I asked, him, “Has anyone ever explained to you what the Bible says about heaven and hell and the afterlife?” He answered, “No” I said, I’d be happy to come by and visit you after you get out of the hospital a few times and we can look into that together, if you would like to” He said, “Great. I’d like that.” We went through an evangelistic Bible study together and he prayed to receive Christ. We started our joint study with God’s holiness. I remember that because later when this man joined our church, he began his testimony, “Holy, holy, holy is God….” When brokenness of our physical body becomes a reality, that brokenness can be an avenue to lead others to Christ.

2. The next level need that humans seek to satisfy when their physiological needs are met is SAFETY, both physical and emotional. That is why Christians have protected widows from immolation in India and founded orphanages around the world. The brokenness of Adam’s kingdom is also apparent in addictions to porn, alcohol, drugs, gambling and in a host of emotional battles that threaten our internal health like, grief, anxiety, or depression. Many have found Christ, because a friend sent them a booklet on grief or depression that steered them to biblical health for this affliction and ultimately to Christ. It was a neighbor’s battle with anger that opened the opportunity for me to lead him to Christ. One Saturday afternoon when I returned from an all-day meeting, my wife told me that the neighbor we had been reaching out to and praying for wanted me to go see him. I later found out that he had gotten angry in the midst of an argument with his wife and pushed his wife away. That afternoon she had left him. When I walked in his front door, he said, “Gary, I need Christ in my life.”  He knew that his anger was a threat to his marriage and came to faith in Christ because he needed Christ’s help to overcome that brokenness.

3. As we continue to think of the gospel—the good news that Christ has come to fix everything broken by sin, we move on to Maslow’s third tier of need—FOR LOVE and BELONGING. As we saw last week both Zacchaeus and the woman at the well in Sychar were experiencing the brokenness of human relationships—both being outcasts of their society. Jesus reached the hearts of both by affirming their value and inviting them into a personal relationship with him. One of the groups suffering from the brokenness of horizontal relationships is those going through divorce. Our church wanted to care for those in our community going through this pain and lead them to the Caregiver, Jesus. So, we began a group called, Second Beginnings, advertised a divorce recovery seminar we held in our community, and launched a follow up support group. We saw the experience of divorce open hearts to Christ in two ways. Many just needed the unconditional love of Jesus to heal their broken heart and demolished self-esteem. Others wanted to walk closely with Christ, because they knew they needed him to make their marriage work, if they every married again. The human need for belonging and love, if it goes unmet is often a pathway that can connect others to Jesus. 

4. Maslow calls his next level SELF-ESTEEM. I want to call it the desire to be SUCCESSFUL—to fulfill my responsibilities effectively—to make life work. Some years ago, I was building a relationship with my neighbor, I’ll call Sean, who lived along a path I often walked for exercise. He was very successful at his work, but his wife had recently divorced him. Shortly after that, he lost his job. He started his own business, but then it went bankrupt. When we would visit, Sean would often have his dog sitting on his lap, so I bought some treats for the dog, just to build the relationship. A few weeks later, I stopped by again, and Sean’s dog had just died. As I was walking home, I thought about a pair of diagrams I had seen with circles representing our lives. In the middle of one circle was a throne with ME sitting on it. Inside the circle were all sorts of smaller circles in disarray-representing the various areas of life. The other circle had Christ sitting on the throne and all the other areas of life being ordered and in balance in the circle. I visited Sean again and asked, “Sean would you be interested in looking at what the Bible teaches about making life work?”  He said, “Yes.” Those two diagrams became the core of how I shared the gospel with Sean, and he gave his life to Christ.   

5. Maslow’s highest level of human need, he calls SELF-ACTUALIZATION. It is the desire for significance--to know that your life matters. Jesus’ approach to Peter was to enlist him in a great cause. “Follow me and I will make you a fisher of men.”  It is the desire for a fulfilling life that captured my 16-year-old heart on a Young Life weekend. The message I kept hearing was that Jesus said, “I have come that they might have life and have it abundantly.” I had more fun and enjoyment at Young Life meetings, weekends, and camps than I had anywhere else. So, this message rang true in my heart. I told Jesus at Hill Top Ranch “I am all in.”

I am blessed to have been an Evangelism Explosion Trainer, and I have my own set of Christianity Explored videos, which I have used. These are great tools. But those in today’s world who are under seventy don’t find the EE question, “Have you come to the place in your life, where you know for certain that if you were to doe tonight you would go to heaven?” relevant. Christianity Explored is excellent—but most of the lost folks God has surrounded us with aren’t interested in exploring Christianity. But they are experiencing the brokenness of life on planet earth. Jesus pattern in reaching the lost is to identify that brokenness and tailor the good news to how they can be whole. The gospel is about Christ’s ability to start to fix brokenness RIGHT NOW. Most of the time, sweetness and persuasiveness of speech is showing others how Christ is relevant to them NOW. Think about Maslow’s categories of need or your own categories and ask—how can the good news that Jesus came to fix everything broken by sin be good news to the one I am thinking about?

Randy Newman, in his book, Questioning Evangelism summarizes this approach to linking our faith to others’ felt needs. Calling this his “so what” story, Newman stopped starting with “You’re a sinner in need of forgiveness.” Instead, he says, I talked about my experience of being a Christian—of how I now sense a purpose and meaning to life, of how I never feel alone, and how—because I feel accepted by God—I more willingly accept other people. I told how being a Christian makes my marriage better, gives me a clear conscience, and fills me with a sense of optimism and hope.

I have found that one of the best forms of preparation of readiness to steer a conversation towards Christ is to have spent some time thinking through the various ways that Jesus helps begin to fix our brokenness RIGHT NOW.

B. The second way to BE READY when we have a chance to talk about spiritual things is intentional prayer. Part of the sinfulness of Gary Yagel’s heart is that I just don’t care about the lost, the way Jesus did. If I did, I would be relentlessly dedicated to praying for my lost relatives, lost neighbors, and lost friends. But I like being the keeper of the aquarium a lot more than being a fisher of men. This week, in exasperation over my own uncaring heart, I opened my Evernote APP to my prayer list and put, “Pray for the heart of Jesus for the lost” at the top. I will tell you, in a few months if it worked. Maybe you need to do the same.

I do know, however, that there is another component of intentional prayer that DOES work. Our ministry helps men get connected over a series of what we call Check 6 questions. The fifth question is: Who are the non-believers you are building relationships with and how can I pray for your strategy to share Christ with them? I believe that the best way for all believers to share Christ is in the context of the relationships God has intentionally surrounded us with. But it is so hard to stay focused on building those opportunities. My brothers and I don’t ask that question of each other enough. But when we have, I’ve discovered that God loves to answer this prayer:

  • After renewing our prayer for each other’s outreach efforts, after the very next match in my racquetball league, my opponent sat down with me for thirty minutes to discuss philosophy and Christianity.
  • On another occasion, after renewing this prayer commitment, the next week my double-oven went out. I didn’t want to pay an installation fee. So, I asked my next-door neighbor to help me move it in and, afterwards we relaxed for a half-hour and he opened up about his life and spiritual pilgrimage.
  • Another friend and I renewed our commitment to such prayer and he soon had a discussion about spiritual things with the restaurant owner where he often ate lunch at work.
  • One year as I set goals for the new year, I felt convicted about not sharing Christ enough and my accountability partner and started praying again for outreach opportunities. A few years earlier, I had led a Bible-study in at a pregnancy center for the fathers of the unborn babies. He had married the mother of his baby, but he was now asking me for help in his marriage. My wife and I met with them. His wife had made of profession of faith, but I explained how Christ can help with spiritual strength to love well. I gave him a copy of Mere Christianity, which he read and surrendered his life to Christ.

The command, BE READY, almost implies to me, that we have been asking God in prayer for opportunities. It is a response of being willingly inclined to share Christ wisely. One of the best ways to be so inclined is to have been asking, repeatedly for God to work in that lost person’s life and for opportunities to discuss spiritual things. And if there is any area, I need to be accountable in, it is Check 6 Question # 5: Who are the non-believers you are building relationships with and how can I pray for your strategy to share Christ with them?

C. The third way to be READY to move the discussion towards spiritual things is to be seeking the right opportunities. This opportunity is NOT the chance to slip the gospel into the discussion but the chance to listen and ask questions. The third way to BE READY to move towards discussing the gospel is to BE AN INTERESTED LISTENER. We often think that effective evangelism requires looking for someone to share the gospel with. But a wiser approach, especially in the 21st century, is NOT looking for people to talk to but looking for people to listen to. Listening to them well will open a window to their soul. John Leonard, author of Get Real: Sharing Your Everyday Faith Everyday writes:

You will not believe how many people will want to talk to you—if you’ll only take off the sign that reads, “Not interested. Leave me alone.” You will not have to go looking for people. They will find you. There will be many people who will “just happen” to be in front of you or behind you in a line. They may be strangers standing beside you at the bus stop or in front of you at the deli counter. They may ask you, “How’s the pastrami?” but what they are really asking is “Do you care enough about me to listen?” They are desperate to talk to someone. They may believe that no one cares, that no one wants to hear their story. They can’t think of any reason to live or wonder if anyone would care if they chose to end their life. When they look at us, what will they see—the sign that says, “I’m not interested; leave me alone,” or the one that reads, “I care; I’ll listen?”

In many ways, the starting point for being able to talk about Christ and his ability to change our lives begins with asking another how his day has been going in a way that communicates that we have the time and are willing to listen to an answer that is longer than “fine.” We must begin by listening not only to communicate genuine care and concern, but because listening will help us know what the Lord wants us to say to the person that he has brought across our path.  

For Further Prayerful Thought:

1. Does realizing that Jesus tailored the good news to others based on the way they were experiencing the brokenness of life in this fallen world discourage you because it makes sharing Christ harder, since there is no “one size fits all” or encourage you because it helps you realize how wise we are to be about relationships and the uniqueness of every human?

2. Which 2 or 3 of those in your circle of lost associates and friends has God put on your hearts. What might be missing in their lives compared to what you have in Christ?

3. Is God prompting you to be more intentional about praying for and reaching the lost? What might additional intentionality look like for you.

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How Misunderstanding Evangelism Makes Us Fear It

How Misunderstanding Evangelism Makes Us Fear It

On 01 August, 2024 By Gary Yagel

Today we continue our study of the armor of God and come to Eph 6:15, where we’re told to put on, as our shoes, the readiness of the gospel of peace. I think most Christian men want to see God use us in others’ lives to bring the gospel to them. Yet, nearly all would say we fail more in this part of our mission than in any other part. Could it be that it is harder to share our faith than it should be because we have some mistaken ideas of what Scripture says sharing the gospel looks like? That is the question we investigate in this episode.

For many Christians, this is what sharing the gospel looks like: It is having the courage to overcome every piece of emotional intelligence we’ve learned about relationships, and intruding into the life of a co-worker, neighbor, or stranger to tell someone, who doesn’t want to hear it, the gospel message that they are a sinner in need of a savior, and then being willing to suffer rejection if we are accused of being preachy. This “traditional"view has major flaws. It misunderstands the word, evangelism, it misunderstands the gospel, and it misunderstands peace.

The Word Evangelism (EUANGELIZO)

Why have Christians come to this flawed view of personal evangelism that I just read? It may be because the place we look for evangelism models is the book of Acts, which exhibits primarily proclamational evangelism. Joe Aldrich observes, 

The early church was planted because of the strong proclamational ministries of the apostles. They preached in synagogues, on street corners, and in marketplaces. …In a new, unreached mission field, evangelism usually begins with proclamation, moves to persuasion, and then as decisions are solidified and converts grow, the gospel becomes a visible presence….Once a thriving church is established, the starting point for evangelism, increasingly shifts from proclamational (confrontational) to presence (relational) (Life-Style Evangelism).

Most of the examples of gospel sharing in Acts were public, not personal evangelism. However, to translate EUANGELIZO “preach” gives a wrong impression of what evangelism is. There is another Greek word, KERUSO, for preach. Translating EUANGELIZO as preach the gospel is especially troubling in Acts 8:4: Now those who were scattered (Laymen and women--not apostles) went about PREACHING (EUANGELIZO) the word. But preaching is not what they did and not a part of the meaning of EUANGELIZO. This Greek word is composed of EU, which means good and ANGEL, which means messenger. It means being a messenger of good news, not a preacher. Later in the same chapter, in Acts 8:26-40, the same word, EUANGELIZO is used not to refer to preaching but to describe Philip’s interactive conversation with the Ethiopian Eunuch, which began with Philip asking the Ethiopian Eunuch a question. Author, John Leonard observes that the traditional view of evangelism has unfortunately been shaped by the word, preach, which focuses on delivering content. He writes,

Traditional evangelism only takes place when we drive home our point over and over again—when we do all the talking. We have gotten the impression that on every page of the New Testament we are commanded to preach the gospel. We know what preaching looks like because we see it in church. The model for traditional evangelism looks a lot like what preachers do on Sunday mornings….

Leonard then speculates that if we think evangelism is essentially preaching, i.e. one way communication to tell people they are sinners who need a savior, it is no wonder we don’t share our faith! He continues, We don’t share our faith because preaching is seen negatively in the culture. We have all said, “Don’t preach at me!” or “Preach to yourself!” The one-way communication style of preaching doesn’t communicate that you care much about the person you are speaking to. Instead, this style is associated with a holier-than-thou-attitude.

Faithfulness to our call to share our faith is not primarily seeking an opening to push the content of the gospel into another’s life! Nor does faithfulness to the call to share your faith require you to violate everything you’ve learned about relationships. Jesus wrote the book on emotional intelligence. It is true that at times Jesus spoke harshly to the scribes and Pharisees! But that is because Christ, the Anointed One, filled the office of Prophet—God’s prosecuting attorney to convict his people of their sin. That is not the way Jesus interacted with others in his every day, private relationships. Instead, he modeled the pattern for communication given in verses like Prov 16: 21, The wise of heart is called discerning, and sweetness of speech increases persuasiveness, and Prov 16:23, The heart of the wise makes his speech judicious and adds persuasiveness to his lips. Jesus wants us to wisely impact our non-Christians friends for him. Evangelism, EUANGELIZO, is winsomely sharing good news.

The GOSPEL We Share

In the traditional view of sharing the gospel that I started with, the hearer must admit he is a sinner who can’t save himself and trust the work of Jesus on the cross as the atoning sacrifice for his sin. Such faith is his admission ticket to heaven. While this is true, it is only two chapters of a four-chapter story—1) the fall, 2) redemption. Failure to see the whole gospel story will cause our gospel message to focus just on another’s sin and Jesus’ death on the cross so he can avoid eternal separation from God in hell. While these two chapters are essential to anyone’s salvation, that is NOT what Jesus referred to as the good news. A thoughtful examination of the word, gospel, in Scripture shows that the gospel Jesus spoke of was the gospel of the kingdom. Jesus had begun his ministry by calling attention to the cataclysmic intrusion of the kingdom of God into time. “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand” (Mk 1:15). The good news that Jesus preached was not just a message of personal private salvation, but the gospel of the kingdom. “And he went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people” (Mt 4:23). The good news of the kingdom was that the second Adam, Christ, had come to overthrow Satan, sin, and death, the usurpers of Adam’s kingdom and begun to establish his righteousness kingdom over earth, restoring everything broken by sin. The truncated, two-chapter gospel, man has sinned and needs to trust Jesus as his savior completely misses what Jesus said about his “kingdom.” It is only in recovering the entire, four-chapter Gospel, 1) creation, 2) fall, 3) redemption, 4) restoration that Christ’s vital role as the anointed king, (besides being anointed priest, and prophet) makes sense. When we start the gospel story with creation, we quickly learn that the kingdom is Adam’s kingdom, earth. And the fourth chapter (restoration) reminds us that believers aren’t chosen to escape from this world, but to renew this world. Tim Keller writes,

Some conservative Christians think of the story of salvation as the fall, redemption, heaven. In this narrative, the purpose of redemption is escape from this world…If however the story of salvation is creation, fall, redemption, restoration, then things look different...The purpose of redemption is not to escape from this word but to renew it….(The gospel) is about the coming of God’s kingdom to renew all things. (“Our New Global Culture Ministry in Urban Centers” address).

The true gospel is the four-chapter gospel of the kingdom not just the two chapters of fall and redemption-- that we have a plane ticket to heaven, paid for by Christ’s blood on the cross. If that were the true gospel our job right now would be to wait around at the airport. The true gospel is about God’s glorious creation, earth, a mirror of God’s glory, being set free from its slavery to sin and Jesus fixing everything in Adam’s kingdom broken by sin.

The Gospel of PEACE

The Greek word for peace, EIRENE, does not just mean the cessation of hostilities in relationships, but harmonious flourishing in relationships. The corresponding Hebrew word is shalom, which refers to wholeness and health. Going back to creation, God designed humans to have four types of harmonious relationships:

  • Harmonious relationship with God, depending upon his love as our lifeline.
  • Harmonious relationship with self, finding our dignity and worth as God’s image bearers.
  • Harmonious relationship with others, made to connect to others by loving them as we do ourselves.
  • Harmonious relationship with the creation, assigned the job of discovering and developing earth’s potential.

When these relationships are functioning properly, we experience the fulness of life God intended—shalom. But Adam and Eve’s mutiny against God plunged all four of these relationships into disharmony, chaos and decay.

Their relationship with God with God was damaged, as their intimacy with him was replaced with fear; their relationship with self was marred as Adam and Eve developed a sense of shame; their relationship with others was broken, as Adam quickly blamed Eve for their sin; and their relationship with the rest of creation became distorted, as God cursed the ground and the child-bearing process…. Because the four relationships are the building blocks for all human activity, the affects of the fall are manifested in the economic, social, religious, and political systems that humans have created throughout history (When Helping Hurts, Corbett & Fikkert).

Things are not the way they are supposed to be. But the good news of the kingdom is that Christ has come to fix WHATEVER is broken by sin in Adam’s kingdom—to restore harmony in all four spheres of relationship—with God, self, others, and creation. To effectively share the gospel, we must think carefully about all the aspects of human life that have been broken by sin because we are going to see that Jesus tailored the good news of the kingdom to the point of brokenness being felt by his listeners. Joe Aldrich, in his book, Life-Style Evangelism, calls this inductive evangelism, in contrast to deductive evangelism. He writes: Traditionally, evangelism courses teach people one basic approach to witnessing. They are trained to announce a blanket gospel message suitable for all. Lest we be too critical of such training programs, those who have been trained by them are much more “ready” to share their faith than those who have not been so trained. Nevertheless, we must acknowledge that in personal evangelism, Jesus always seemed to follow an inductive model. Aldrich explains:

The inductive model presupposes knowledge of the individual being addressed. The gospel is then tailor-made to his individual needs. The goal is to discover that point in the individual’s life at which the gospel will become good news, and then share it as such. Jesus’ method of dealing with people followed this adaptive, inductive model. To Nicodemus the ruler, he said, “You must be born again.”—he never used “born again,” a highly conceptual metaphor in any other recorded instance in the NT. He talked to the woman by the well about “living water.” But when the rich young man came up and asked what he had to do to have eternal life, Jesus did not talk to him about living water. Knowing that money was this man’s god, he said, “Sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come and follow me. He was basically calling him to a total switch of Gods. On the other hand, he didn’t tell Zacchaeus, the tax collector who went up in a tree, to give away everything he had. He simply said, Zacchaeus….I must stay at your household today.” By the end of the day, Zacchaeus had decided on his own to give half of his possessions to the poor.

The inductive evangelism approach fits hand in glove with understanding that our good news is that King Jesus has come to restore everything broken by sin. It includes broken bodies, broken dignity, broken marriages, broken father/son relationships, broken sexuality, broken values that exalt material prosperity and success over caring for the downtrodden. Jesus tailored the good news of the kingdom to the point of brokenness being felt by his listeners. Let’s do a simple exercise to see how to do this, using a tool, Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to point us to the various categories of human need, because sin has broken everything.

A.  Maslow says mankind’s most foundational need is PHYSIOLOGICAL--for oxygen, water, food, clothing, shelter, and health. But the curse of Adam’s sin upon the ground has caused humans to lack what they need physiologically to flourish. The coming of Christ’s kingdom means that creation itself will be set free from this bondage to sin. Jesus gave a foretaste of this reality by healing the sick, giving sight to the blind, empowering the lame to walk, and himself rising from the dead. Since his kingdom brings the renewal of the physical earth, Jesus taught his true followers to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, house strangers, clothe the naked, and cure the sick if they could (Matt 25:34-36.) The first message of good news for a starving man is bread. That is why the church historically has always cared for the sick, the dying, the poor, widows the homeless—those harmed by the brokenness of the physical world. The genuine, agape love shown by believers in meeting these physical needs is the best way to turn their hearts to Christ.

B.  The next level need that humans seek to satisfy when their physiological needs are met is SAFETY. That is why Christians have founded shelters for battered women, sought to end the sex trade, and founded pregnancy centers to save the lives of unborn children and women from the trauma of abortion. Support groups like Celebrate Recovery are a great way to reach others with the gospel. Addiction to pornography, alcohol, gambling, and drugs have the power to ruin lives. I have spoken to many men who did not come to faith in Christ until they were desperate for his help because an addiction was threatening to destroy their family.

C.  The next level of needs Maslow identifies are for LOVE/BELONGING. Jesus knew that this was the path to the heart of Zacchaeus, the outcast traitor. When Jesus spotted him outside of Jericho in a tree to see above the crowds, all Jesus said to him was, Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for I must stay at your house today (Luke 19:5). A few moments later, Zacchaeus repented of his dishonesty and Jesus remarked, “Today salvation has come to his house” (vs 9). Jesus identified this same need in the heart of the outcast woman at the well of Samaria, there in the heat of the day, instead of at the time the other women went out to get water. He seemed to recognize her thirst for love and pointed to his ability to give her living water. I’ve personally seen those who are lost come to Christ through marriage seminars, so they can better love each other through Christ’s power. In a divorce recovery ministry, I saw many rejected, lonely people realize how much they needed Christ’s love and come to faith. Through meeting with a couple who wanted to be married and showing them that they need Christ’s power to love each other well, I’ve seen folks open their hearts to Jesus. The gospel is the answer to broken human relationships in countless ways.

D. Maslow’s next level is SELF-ESTEEM. Sin crushes the high view we should have of ourselves because we are God’s image bearers. So, feeling clean inside, i.e. being forgiven of our sins is a felt need for some. I would also place a desire to be successful in our responsibilities here. I have seen many non-Christians come into a seminar I was leading called, Great Dads. About 80% of the way through the material, we show overwhelming statistical data that proves that children do better in every area of life—their friendships, their grades, resisting peer pressure, etc. if they have a strong spiritual/moral foundation. Then we point out that the best way for them to build that foundation is through their example, as dads. I can almost see it on men’s faces. They realize they can’t take their kids where they need to be without getting right with God themselves. I also watched men and boys commit their lives to Christ at a breakfast with Joe Gibbs—just saying he needed Christ in his life to make it whole, to make it work.

E. Maslow’s highest level of human need, he calls SELF-ACTUALIZATION. It is the desire to know that your life matters, that it is more than a shooting star that streaks through the sky for a moment in time and then is gone forever. When Jesus called Peter to follow him, he did not say, “You must be born again,” or “I will give you living water.” He miraculously filled Peter’s fishing nets with fish and then said, “Follow me and I will make you a fisher of men.” Jesus’ approach to Peter was to enlist him in a great cause. Rick Warren’s book, The Purpose Driven Life is the most popular book in the world, outside of the Bible. He appeals to most people’s desire to know, “What is the purpose of life? What am I here for?” His book has brought millions to faith in Christ through appealing to the human desire for significance.

Let me close with a final quote from Aldrich. Effective evangelism begins where people are, not where you would like them to be. As the King’s messengers, our challenge is to help others discover how their needs can be satisfied through a relationship with Jesus Christ (Ibid).

For Further Prayerful Thought:

1. Why is it misleading to understand the Greek word for evangelism (EUANGELIZO) to mean preaching the gospel to others?

2. How does understanding the four-chapter gospel help us realize that Christ’s kingdom power is for more than just an eternal life insurance policy?

3. Can you think of biblical examples not mentioned in this episode of Jesus tailoring the good news of the kingdom to the point of brokenness being felt by his listener?

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Put On the Breastplate of Righteousness

Put On the Breastplate of Righteousness

On 23 July, 2024 By Gary Yagel

Do you ever feel like our side is losing in the spiritual battle—that the powers of darkness and evil are winning? Perhaps more specific to our own lives, do you ever wonder why the Christian life is so hard, why sin so easily ensnares us, why our whole-hearted resolve on Sunday to love Jesus better by obeying him more has given way to blatant sin by Sunday night? Today we continue our series, Winning Spiritual Battles Because We Use Our Spiritual Weapons. Paul tells us that to fight evil we must put on the breastplate of righteousness. But most of us don’t even know what the breastplate of righteousness is, much less how to put it on. At the end of this episode, we want everyone to have a clear picture of what this piece of armor is and begin winning more spiritual battles because we put it on.

Sir Winston Churchill famously said, "Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it. In the 1181-chapter world history book, the Bible, already by just the third chapter, human beings encounter a spiritual enemy who hates us and constantly seeks to lead us down a path to destruction—i.e. rebellion against God. In the Bible’s meta narrative, Satan and the kingdom of darkness enter in chapter 3 and aren’t destroyed until 1176 chapters later, 3 chapters from the end of the Biblical story in Revelation 20. Since that third chapter of Genesis where Adam and Eve allied their kingdom with the powers of darkness, every page of human history is written against the backdrop of the clash between these alien powers and God’s plan to send Christ to free Adam’s kingdom from sin and its devastation.

Paul gives us his perspective of what is really happening on the stage of world history. He writes, For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Do we really think we can stand up against THOSE POWERS without figuring out how to be strong in the Lord by putting on the spiritual armor he’s provided? Is there any reason why THOSE ENEMIES will not tear us to pieces if we do not resist them with spiritual weapons? Could we ever hope to chieve our mission establishing Christ's agenda over every sphere of life without taking on the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places who claim this world as their own?

So, let’s dig into our study of the breastplate of righteousness. Right out of the gate, we have a problem. “What is your gut response to the word, righteous?  What comes to mind when you hear, Ryan is consumed with being righteous, or Lauren is focused on her own righteousness?”  This word does not appeal to us at all. The reason is that it has many very unfortunate, very mistaken connotations. Let’s try to distinguish, the rich biblical meaning of this word from our sadly mistaken, default ideas.

A.  First, the biblical concept of righteousness does not at all imply self-righteousness. The Greek word, DIKAIOSUNE, means, that which conforms to the moral will of God. This word does not carry with it, in any way the idea that this righteousness is earned, that it reflects an over estimation of one’s own righteousness, or that this righteousness is in any way a basis for self-justification.

B. Second, DIKAIOSUNE, the word for righteousness, is not used in the Bible primarily to describe the imputed righteousness of Christ to us. Rather, it’s more common use is a call to righteousness of character. It is true that we are justified by grace through faith, alone. In response to faith as a one-time act of grace, Christ has declared us legally righteous. The law has no claim against us to condemn us for our sin. But the term, righteousness has a much richer meaning in Scripture, than just justification, a one-time act. Jesus urged, Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.

C. Biblical righteousness is not legalism. Legalism’s focus is on outward rule—keeping. It loads its proponents down with extreme applications of the law, which its advocates make binding. “How could any Christian put his kids in public school,” “Everyone should keep the Sabbath the way we do.” “You watched an R-rated movie?” Jesus said, Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness (Matt 23:23). They paraded their righteousness by making it known that they tithed on the smallest of their crops. Their external, self-righteousness, knit-picking over application was not real righteousness at all. 

D. Righteousness is not moralism. Moralism is obeying the moral law as a bargaining chip with God. Moralists might trust Christ for salvation, but are insecure in their love relationship with God. They aren’t sure God will love them if they don’t behave. Instead of the freedom to bask in God’s unconditional love, a moralist has to be good, so God loves him back and God will give him what he wants. Their obedience to God earns them the right to demand that God bless them in the ways they expect blessing. When God doesn’t do that, their faith is shattered. The moral law oppresses them because they have to keep it for God to love them. The reality is, however, as Steve Brown points out, Only those who know God will love them even if they never get better, will ever get any better. When they understand God’s unconditional love, they will love the moral law not hate it, and pursue true righteousness with all their hearts. It is God’s path to life and to pleasing him!

THE APPROPRIATE GARB THAT FITS OUR WORK OF SEEKING RIGHTEOUSNESS

Everyone knows that how he dresses in the morning depends on what he has planned for the day. We put on the breastplate of righteousness because working for righteousness in the world around us is our mission, and it begins with ourselves. Here are 4 reminders that seeking righteousness is our mission:

1. Jesus taught that righteousness is to be our highest priority: Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Christ’s mission was to invade Adam’s kingdom, overthrow its invaders, Satan, Sin, and death, and begin to fix everything broken by sin. Jesus is making everything RIGHT, i.e. free from sin. If we think that pursuing righteousness means keeping a bunch of legalistic rules, we have missed the concept of righteousness—which comes from rightness. It is joining Jesus as he makes right whatever in Adams kingdom was made wrong by sin. Believers love the moral law of God because it shows them how life was designed to be lived. David sang to How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth! Through your precepts I get understanding; therefore, I hate every false way (Psalm 119:103-104).

2. We should seek righteousness in our own lives because that is God’s purpose in redeeming us. Jesus, as he launched his ministry in his hometown of Nazareth quoted the great Messianic passage of Isaiah 61:1-3 which says that God’s purpose was to turn his people into OAKS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. Here is what the kingdom of heaven looks like as we pray for it to spread over earth.

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor, to comfort all who mourn…to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit; that they may be called OAKS OF RIGHTEOUSNESS, the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified.

3. The fourth beatitude, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they will be satisfied shows us kingdom living and the character of Jesus. John Macarthur writes,

This beatitude speaks of strong desire, of driving pursuit, of a passionate force inside the soul. It has to do with ambition—ambition of the right sort—whose object is to honor, obey, and glorify God by partaking of his righteousness. This holy ambition is in great contrast to the common ambitions of men to gratify their own lusts, accomplish their own goals, and satisfy their own egos (The MacArthur New Testament Commentary).

4.  Seeking righteousness of character is not only NOT LEGALISTIC, it is the proper response to God’s grace. It is the way to love God back. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. In the next verse God tells us HOW he wants us to love him with all our hearts. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart (Deut 6:5-6). Jesus taught us the same thing, If you love me, you will keep my commandments (Jn 14:15).

Christ-followers hunger and thirst for righteousness in their lives and over the world, because they know that is what is best for themselves and all creation. They also know that seeking righteousness (DIKAIOSUNE), i.e. that which conforms to the moral will of God is the best way to please him. Putting on the breastplate of righteousness everyday is to renew your commitment to pursue righteousness that day. It is similar to saying, “lead me not into temptation, but deliver me from evil.” Having said that, we must also say loudly, that righteous character and righteous behavior is impossible to achieve apart from being in Christ, depending upon him for strength.

TAKING UP THE BREASTPLATE OF RIGTEOUSNESS IS ASKING FOR CHRIST’S HELP

When Paul challenged Christ-followers to put on the armor of God he was not only thinking of the Roman guards around him but of Isaiah’s prophecy that only the Lord, himself, could come to establish righteousness over the earth: Isaiah’s prophecy tells us that the messiah would put on righteousness as a breastplate, and a helmet of salvation on his head (59:17). We are to passionately pursue righteousness in our character and rightness for the things broken by the reign of sin; but we are reminded that it is only in Christ, i.e. through our abiding relationship with him and using his supernatural armor, that righteousness can prevail. Putting on the breastplate is asking Christ for help.

THE BREASTPLATE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS IS PROTECTION

The breastplate was the piece of armor that ran from the neck to the middle. It protected the vital internal organs, especially the heart. We have seen what righteousness is:  conformity to the moral will of God, i.e. the moral law. We now examine four practical ways that righteousness protects our heart.

1. Imputed righteousness protects our hearts from the devil’s accusations. Knowing that Christ’s righteousness is credited to us (justification) means there is no legitimate accusation against us. The judge himself has declared us doubly “not guilty” 1) because all our sins were laid on Christ and paid for at the cross and 2) his perfect straight A moral report card has Jesus’ name erased and ours written it. If you put this breastplate on, which says across the chest, There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, Satan, the accuser of believers cannot get through to weaken you with words like, “You hypocrite. Do you really think a Holy God wants to hear you talk again with him about your sin? “If you were really sorry, you wouldn’t commit that same sin again.” “How dare you try to be the spiritual leader of your home. If your family knew what you were looking at online they would never follow you.” Putting on the breastplate of righteousness means reminding ourselves that we are “declared righteous” by the judge, himself.

2. Righteous character protects us from harm.

  • Righteousness guards the one whose way is blameless, but wickedness subverts the sinner. (Prov 13:6).
  • In the path of righteousness is life, and in its pathway there is no death (Prov 12:28).

God is not a pragmatist; the ends do not justify the means. Often, we are tempted to fulfill a legitimate goal the wrong way. Making a commitment to be scrupulously honest in business helps protect us from the temptation to bend corners when we have opportunity. Putting their bodies on the altar and making a commitment to God’s standards for sex helps protect a couple from temptation before marriage. Deciding ahead of the party how many drinks are enough helps avoid too many. Job, who was known for being righteous, made a covenant with his eyes not to look lustfully upon a woman, ahead of the temptation. He trained himself to bounce his eyes away from women who are showing way too much of their bodies. Pursuing righteousness brings enormous protection to our lives, just as the breastplate protected Roman soldiers.

3. Righteous character protects us from misunderstanding the Lord's leading. 

  • The integrity of the upright guides them, but the crookedness of the treacherous destroys them (Prov 11:3).
  • The righteousness of the blameless keeps his way straight, but the wicked falls by his own wickedness (Prov 11:5).

When seeking the Lord’s leading, it is vital to settle the obedience issue first—that you will obey God even if it is the decision you do not want. By intentionally putting this decision on the altar (giving God his RIGHT to rule you) it protects your heart from steering you in the wrong direction. Twice, God warns us, There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death (Prov 14:12, 16:25). A prior commitment to doing the right thing is putting on the armor of righteousness. It helps protect our hearts from being seduced by temptation and leading us the wrong direction. Jesus is, of course, the great example, here. The evening before his trial and crucifixion, ahead of all the mistreatment, pain, and temptation to avoid the unimaginable agony of becoming sin on the cross, Jesus’ settled the issue of his obedience. He pled with the father, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not my will, but your will be done” (Matt 26:39). Jesus committed to God’s will either way.

4.  Righteous character protects us from being trapped or snared by sin. An evil man is ensnared in his transgression, but a righteous man sings and rejoices (Prov 29:6).

Consider the differences in the way Joseph resisted the allurement of Potiphar’s wife and the way David yielded to the alluring sight of Bathsheba. When Potiphar’s wife sought to seduce him, Joseph answered her, Potiphar has put everything that he has in my charge. He is not greater in this house than I am, nor has he kept back anything from me except you, because you are his wife. How then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God? It appears by his reasoned response to her that Joseph was already committed to righteousness, before the temptation struck.

In contrast, David did not have a breastplate of righteousness protecting him.  By the time he saw Bathsheba on the roof top, David had been consistently violating God’s command that Israel’s kings must not multiply wives: You may indeed set a king over you whom the Lord your God will choose….He shall not acquire many wives for himself (Deut 17:17). David had already married six women when he looked down on the bathing Bathsheba and decided he wanted her, too. His breastplate of righteousness had gaping holes, when it came to sexuality. Not only

that, but the Biblical account of this tragedy begins, In the spring of the year, THE TIME WHEN KINGS GO OUT TO BATTLE….David remained at Jerusalem. The implication is that David never should have been home but with his troops in battle. It is possible that Bathsheba was in the position of being exposed to eyes on the palace roof because she expected no men to be there. David’s disloyalty to his troops is amplified in the biblical account by its contrast to the loyalty of Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband. David’s scheme to make others think the baby was Uriah’s failed because when Uriah reported home to David, he refused to have sex with his wife out of loyalty to his troops, who were NOT with their wives but on the battlefield. David’s breastplate of rightness—loyalty to his troops—was down. Temptation penetrated his heart and brought devastating consequences.

We all face the same forces that took David down—a deep rooted sinful nature, and powerful spiritual enemies who know just how to get us to yield to sin. In this world, we are all going to fail, a lot. But affirming our commitment to righteousness—to doing things the way God’s moral law shows us to live—is preemptive protection for our hearts. It is putting on the breastplate of righteousness. It is saying, Lord, I wear your righteousness today against all condemnation and corruption. Fit me with your holiness and purity especially in these areas that I foresee tempting me—defend me against all assaults that come against my heart.

For Further Prayerful Thought:

  1. What is the motivation for hungering and thirsting for righteousness for one who is confident of God’s unconditional love? How does that contrast with the moralist’s view of the moral law?
  2. What is the difference between seeking righteousness and being legalistic?
  3. How would you summarize Paul’s command to put on the breastplate of righteousness? What stood out to you about HOW to do this?
  4. How is the fourth beatitude (Matt 5:6) a prerequisite for putting on the breastplate of righteousness?
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