Join me in Joshua chapter 1 in your Bibles, Joshua chapter number 1. When you find your place, if you would honor God's word as we read verse 1 down to verse 9, we'll stand and read those verses. The Bible tells us here in Joshua 1, this is at the end of Moses' life.
Joshua now takes the reins of leadership and it says in verse 1, Now after the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord, it came to pass that the Lord spake unto Joshua the son of Nun, Moses his minister, saying, Moses my servant is dead. Now therefore arise, go over this Jordan thou and all this people, unto the land which I do give to them, even to the children of Israel. Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you.
As I said unto Moses from the wilderness of this Lebanon, even unto the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and unto the great sea, toward the going down of the sun shall be your coast. There shall not any man be able to stand before thee all the days of thy life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with thee, I will not fail thee nor forsake thee. Be strong and of a good courage, for unto this people shalt thou divide for an inheritance the land which I swear unto their fathers to give them.
Only be thou strong and very courageous. Thou mayest observe to do according to all the law which Moses my servant commanded thee, turn not from it to the right hand or to the left, that thou mayest prosper whithersoever thou goest. And he says, This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein.
For then shalt thou make thy way prosperous, and then shalt thou have good success. Have not I commanded thee be strong and of a good courage? Be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed, for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest."
Father, we are so thankful for the word of God today. We ask that your blessing in such a dynamic way would be upon the text this morning. I pray that our hearts would be drawn to you. I pray that you would move in the lives of the men here today especially. I pray that you would raise up a generation of godly fathers and grandfathers and young men and dads.
Lord, I pray that you would give us a vision for what you would have us to be. Let us set our focus on what really matters and be all that you've called us to be through your scripture and through your Holy Spirit and through the power of the word of God. May you accomplish in our lives all you desire. I pray today that fathers would not abdicate this great responsibility. And thank you for the men here today. May you bless each one.
We ask it in Jesus' name and God's people said, Amen. Man, you may be seated. I've been blessed to be a father of four children and I grew up with three brothers. I didn't have any sisters and so there's four of us boys. And then God gave me four daughters so that was a whole new learning experience. And being a father has been really the greatest, one of the greatest joys of my life. Being married, being a pastor, being a father, these are such joyous things.
But to be a father, the responsibility that you step into the shoes that you now feel is great. This morning I am hitting pause on our study in Matthew to preach for a couple Sundays actually on the importance of the role of men in our homes and societies in church because I truly believe the future of the church and homes rests upon the men to be what God has called them to be. I'm so thankful for the men that God has raised up at Lighthouse, that have come to know Christ and are leading in the way that God's called them to. But I don't know that men always realize the amount of influence and impact they have on their wives, on their children and on those that are around them. There are people in our church that did not grow up with godly men in their home or even perhaps a man in the home. I think about four of the staff at Lighthouse, four of the men in our church, four of the men that were staff members at our church, did not grow up with a Christian dad. So they learned to be a man of God from the men in this church.
And I'm thankful for you and you're making an impact. And I believe that God could produce an incredible revival in your home and in this church and in this country if men would get serious and focused about the things of God. Our cities need godly men to be salt and light in the world and to be different than this sinful culture. I know we live in a culture today that wants to minimize the role of man. They want to emasculate men.
If the previous generation of the feminist movement tried to derail men, this culture wants to turn men into women. But we believe that God has designed men to be real men, to be godly men of courage and strength. And I thank God for the men that are in this church. If you're a father today, would you stand today?
We just want to honor you for a moment and thank God for your role in our homes and our societies. And it's not easy being a man these days. There's a lot of challenges, a lot of bias against men. They try to stand up to be what they are created to be. People think it's wrong sometimes in the secularistic society that we have. But I encourage you men that you're not defined by this culture.
You're to be defined by God. And the influence you have is greater than I think most of us understand. Back in the 1700s, the lives of two men were traced to see the impact they had on the future generations and their families. Over a thousand of each of their ancestors were looked at to see how their lives impacted the lives of the descendants. One man's name was Jonathan Edwards.
The other's man was Max Juke. Jonathan Edwards is one of the greatest theologians in America's history. At the age of 13, he entered Yale College and he graduated with honors just a few years later. He became an incredible pastor. His sermons, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, is the most read, most famous sermon ever preached. It started the Great Awakening that began in the 1730s. A revival involving numerous preachers swept across America united the colonies before the Revolution. He became a preacher that believed in leading by example.
He would routinely spend 13 hours in his study. He oversaw also his household farm, his children, his church. His marriage to his wife Sarah was a wonderful thing.
Then you had a man at the same time named Max Juke. He lived during the same era. He was a free thinker and atheist who believed in free sex and liberation from laws. He had numerous children, many of them illegitimate. One of the great scholars, Benjamin B. Warfield of Princeton, has chartered 1394 known descendants of Jonathan Edwards. What he found was an incredible testimony to Jonathan Edwards. Of the 1394 known descendants of Edwards, one was a vice president, three were U.S. senators, three were governors, three were mayors, 13 college presidents, 30 judges, 86 college professors, 430 preachers, 314 war veterans, 100 missionaries, 100 lawyers, 80 public officials, and 75 authors. That was his descendants. He also chartered Juke's 1,026 known descendants.
What he found was much different. 310 of Juke's descendants, or 25% of them were professional paupers who lived in porthouses. 300 died in infancy from lack of good care and good condition. 190 were prostitutes, 60 were habitual thieves, 300 convicts, 7 murderers, 509 alcoholics or drug addicts.
One researcher was able to estimate that Juke's had cost the state of New York almost 1.4 million dollars to house, institutionalize, and to treat the family of these deviants. What you find among the story of Jonathan Edwards is an example of what sociologists call the five generation rule. How a man lives his life will reach through the next five generations in ways that he doesn't even realize. Men, dad, fathers, you are impacting with your life generations to come.
The decisions you make or the lack of decisions you make will affect greatly and significantly the generations that will proceed after you. Data from the United States Census Bureau shows that nearly 18.5 million children grow up without fathers, which has led to the US owning the title of the world's leader in fatherlessness. You know what the greatest problem in America is? It's not inflation, it's fatherlessness. In 1960 only 8% of homes didn't have a dad present, today it's 25% and the effects are devastating.
It's crippling our nation. One research group showed that fatherlessness is associated with almost every societal ill in our country's children. Those without a father at home are three and a half times more likely for a teenage girl to get pregnant if no dad is present in her life. They're five times more likely to commit suicide, a fatherless child is nine times more likely to drop out of school, 32 times more likely to run away or be homeless, 20 times more likely to end up in prison. They did a study with 835 juvenile male inmates and they found that father's absence stood out as the number one common denominator that resulted in their criminal behavior.
All the statistics show this is the biggest impact on people. It's not mental issues, it's not culture, it's not what part of town you live in, it's not how much education you have, it's what kind of father you have or the absence of that father. Fathers, you need to understand you're creating a generational effect. You're splashing your life into this world and there's ripples that will go down through the centuries. God has put you in the driver seat of your home and family and this is a day which we can't afford for men to fall asleep at the wheel. America is in a steep decline and it takes intentional fathers, husbands, and men to be behind the wheel of their families, leading with courage, with conviction, with resolve, love, truth, and to be a man. Today I want to look at the life of a man named Joshua, a man who in the Bible was a pinnacle of manhood, a powerful example of strong, courageous leader. He led his family, he led the nation, a man who was faithful, committed, devoted, godly, a man who had resolve, he didn't quit, a man who left a powerful legacy.
And this is the kind of man that we need to follow after as men in our culture today. Just to give you a little bit of context, it had been about 400 years since the nation of Israel had been in slavery in Egypt. God had led them supernaturally out after 10 plagues he brought upon Pharaoh. Moses had been the leader of the nation for 40 years. Moses was the man. He was the leader God had called to the task. And for every great leader, they need helpers, and Joshua was that right-hand man of Moses. He was the commander of the armies of Israel. He would take the reins of leadership after Moses died, and he would lead the nation into the promised land.
The book of Joshua highlights the military campaigns, the nation, and the great battles that they had. The book of Joshua concludes in chapter 24, where Joshua brings the nation together, and he talks to the 12 tribes of Israel. And he stands before them, and he says in Joshua 24, 15, a very pinnacle verse. He says, He challenged the 12 tribes of Israel to make your decision. He drew the line in his sand, and he said, Are you going to be a man of God, or are you going to be a man of the world?
Choose you this day, but as for me and my house. Joshua placed responsibility first upon himself, and then his family could follow that. And he stands as this pinnacle of success, a man who, again, not only led his family, but an entire nation. And what were the keys to Joshua's success? What did God call him to do?
First of all, we see that Joshua was called to be courageous, and God calls us as men to be courageous leaders. In the midst of a culture that has sought to feminize men, to soften men, to remove the grit and calluses from men, and a culture that has sought to un-men men, God calls men to be real men, men who are strong and courageous, I think women still like to have calluses on their man's hands. I think men still like a man that looks like a man.
I think that what the culture tries to feminize women are not the kind of women that you should be should not be attracted to that. And I'll say some things that are probably offensive today, but I'm okay with that. Because I'm not desiring to be politically right, I just want to be right with the Word. When Moses addressed the men of Israel at the end of his life, he said in Deuteronomy 31 verse 6 through 8, I just want you to hear what God expects of men. He says to the men of the nation, he says, Be strong and of a good courage, fear not, nor be afraid of them, for the Lord thy God is he that doth go before thee, he will not fail thee nor forsake thee. And then Moses called unto Joshua and said unto him, In the sight of all Israel, be strong and of a good courage. He not only calls the men of the nation who would be leading the battle and the campaigns, be fearless men, be courageous, don't be cowards.
And then he says, Joshua, I'm calling you to be a man of courage. You be a strong man, a leader. For the nation to go in the direction it needed to go, it needed men with courage. You know why America burst into the realm of success that it did? Because there were godly, strong men that were not afraid to lay down their life for what they believed in. America was founded on such men.
I'm not trying to be disparaging to women today. No man can be what they need to be without that godly woman that's beside them, encouraging them and strengthening them, what a blessing that is. But I can tell you that God has called men to be leaders, to lead their people, to lead their families, to lead churches, to lead countries.
After Moses died, Joshua takes the reins of leadership. You notice God wasn't calling his wife to do this. I can tell you this, you may have superheroes that are women that act tough, right? Superwoman? Ain't no woman in the world that if somebody breaks in their home wants to stand in front of their husband and say, honey, stand back. I got this intruder. I'm the woman of the house.
Any takers on that? How many women would be like, my man better step up? See these hands? Raise them high. Raise them high, right? Yeah, that's right. And if he didn't, if he fell back and was crying, you'd be like, what kind of man is this?
You don't want a man like that. Joshua 1, God comes to Joshua. And God calls him in Joshua 1, too. He says, my servant Moses is dead. Therefore, arise and go over Jordan, Dow, and all these people.
And I'm going to give you this land. And he says in verse 5, there's not any man that will be able to stand before you. And what was it going to take for Joshua? What kind of fortitude did he need? Verse 6, be strong and of a good courage.
For unto this people shalt thou divide for an inheritance to the land which I swear unto their fathers to give them. To do what God called Joshua to do took courage. It took strength. Verse 7, God goes on and says, only be thou strong and very courageous. Notice what it took him great courage to be able to do. That thou mayest observe to do according to all the law which Moses my servant commanded thee. For you to be able to obey the word of God takes courage. That's why cowardly men cannot follow the word of God. I will preach today like I'm preaching to men. I will preach probably somewhat offensive to women the way I talk to men, but men need to be talked to as men.
Right? You go into a football room, your coach isn't like, hey guys, let's get out there, you know? I'm going to encourage you. You don't want some weak, soft-spoken, limp-wristed coach.
You want a man to lead you, right? If you're in the military, we've got a lot of military guys, and it kills me to see some of the things they're trying to do to our military in America. You know what I think?
Let me just say this. I think instead of Pride Month, we need Patriot Month that starts on Memorial Day and goes through July 4th. I think we should start a national movement. It's called Patriot Month. What kind of fool each nation calls Pride Month, homosexuality, and LGBTQ?
Not only is pride a sin, but then they're going to celebrate sin. That's called Patriot Month starting next Memorial Day through July 4th. Wouldn't that be great? I'm going to wear an American flag on me somewhere next year all the way through that, right? Maybe preach four weeks or five weeks on the nation and what it takes, and so stir that up on social media. We should get a big flag out there like a 10x20 says Patriot Month, right?
Fly it high, man. Does that sound like a good idea? I just thought about that this morning. Who would be on board with that? We could get Lighthouse Baptist T-shirts and it says Patriot Month, right?
With the big American flag. You all in for that? We're going to work on that, okay? I like that. Might get some blowback, might get some letters.
Been there before. Don't stop us, right? But it takes men. We need to have some men that are not afraid to stand up and say, Hey, I believe in something. Because we have a bunch of politicians that are cowards.
We have a bunch of people that just get swayed by culture, and they don't really have conviction, and they'll change their mind. You see places like Target? They're like, Hey, pride, pride, pride, and then their stock goes down. They're like, Yeah, we ain't going to talk about that anymore.
Right? Well, if you really believe it, stand on it, sir. Oh, you're really just into the money, right? Ah, follow the dollar.
No backbone. Praise God they got away from it. But it takes courage to follow the word of God. And he says in verse 8, he says, This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth.
Thou shalt meditate day and night. And it's only when you do that can you observe to do what's written in it. And he says when you do that, you're going to find great prosperity and good success. And he concludes in verse 9 by saying, Have not I commanded you? Be strong and of a good courage. This is like a general talking to his army. He's telling the commander of the, the physical commander of the army, Joshua, be strong and courageous over and over and over again.
He keeps calling them to this. And why does it take strength and courage? Because the gate is straight and the way is narrow. It's not easy.
It's an uphill climb. Never forget, I was walking with my wife down in the narrows one winter day. Winter. Freezing. Like, it was like 20 degrees out.
But sometimes it's real peaceful to walk in the snow like that. There was, I think, some ice even on the river down there. There were some guys, like, some, like five marines probably. Shirts off. I don't think they had shoes on or nothing. They're just in shorts and I'm like, whoa. I was more impressed with them than my wife was, I think.
These guys run through the snow, swim across the river and run up the hill. I'm like, I'm glad she didn't ask me to do that. Man up, Joshua.
I like being warm and dry right now, right? But it's encouraging when you see military guys behaving in such ways. Like, those are the kind of guys I like fighting for our nation.
That's the kind of men that we need to be able to go on a battlefield, not somebody that dresses up like a woman who's a man. If you need to write a letter, you can send it to Alex Martin. He preached last Sunday. It takes courage, friends, to stand.
And I'm going to tell you what. As the world gets darker, it's going to take more courage. It's going to take more fortitude. God is calling you to be strong and courageous as challenges, fears and hardships come.
You stand as the strength of your home. How much our families need a strong and courageous man who doesn't run from challenges, who doesn't make excuses every time something hard happens, why they can't, who doesn't pile up everything on their wife, but rather is like a shade tree over his family that casts a shadow of goodness and peace upon his home. He takes the brunt of the stress and the pressures and the challenges of life so that his family doesn't have to. He doesn't make excuses. He doesn't play the victim card.
He doesn't act cowardly. He owns his faults. He knows he's not perfect. Everybody knows he's not perfect.
He's willing to admit his excuses and make some real changes. He doesn't lead from the back. He doesn't say, well, my wife didn't want to go to church, so I didn't want to go. He doesn't let the kids be the spiritual leaders of the home.
Perhaps you feel I'm being a little strong on men today. 1 Corinthians 16. Listen to what Paul says to the men he concludes this letter with. 1 Corinthians 16, verse 13. This is what Paul says to the men of the church. He says, watch you. The phrase means be on alert. Stand fast in the faith. And the phrase, quite you like men, literally means act like men. In our vernacular, man up.
Man up. Be strong. There are four imperatives in this short little verse. First, he says, watch you. It's be on guard. Like you're a soldier for God, and you're to watch over your family spiritually. Be on guard. It is the opposite of somebody who's lulled to sleep, who's spiritually indifferent.
It's like, wake up spiritually. Secondly, he says, stand fast in the faith. This is a word that means like, hold your ground, stand firm.
Don't give up any ground. And then he says, quit you like men. It's a Greek word, it's a verb. And it means to be manly or to be brave. It's the opposite of being cowardly. Again, it would be like, man up. Be a man. Paul concludes the letter like that. Like, be a man.
He's talking to the men there. Again, God's word defines a man as one who's courageous and brave. You have spiritual courage. You're not a coward who's afraid to stand for God and his truth. In the midst of a sinful society and among co-workers, but rather you're courageous. You don't bow your knee in fear to the world. You're a man when it comes to prayer, to God's word, to obedience. Today I fear that so many men in our Christian culture have abdicated their responsibility.
And to abdicate your responsibility, the word abdicate means to fall away from your responsibility, to not fulfill your responsibility. And what they've done is they've placed that on the shoulders of their wives. And so now their wives feel the weight of carrying things that God designed for the husband to be the chief one to carry. And so they're... I've got to be careful how I preach today.
I'll offend... It's like sometimes you'll see a man in the passenger seat of a vehicle. It's okay for the wife to drive. But if your husband doesn't have his driver's license, I don't know why that bothers me. It annoys my wife too. I'm like, isn't that weird? But it just like, if maybe she's that much of a better driver, I don't know.
But that's what it looks like spiritually for a lot of homes. He's not even in the passenger seat. He's in the back seat.
That's what it looks like. It not only kind of gets under my skin in the physical realm. And again, I understand, don't get offended if he's that bad of a driver.
I get it, all right? I'm not going to get upset. But if he just is lazy and doesn't get his driver's license and has broken every record on his video game system, and he's still a boy, it's time to man up. Maybe he never had a dad talk to him like I'm talking. And maybe that's what he needs.
And maybe his little conscience is getting offended. Get offended and grow up. Be a man. Put your game system up.
Go get your driver's license. That's a small thing, but just be a man in your house. You know why men have fallen away from the church a lot? There was a study done that showed a lot of men find the church to be so feminine. The church has become such a feminine place. You have pastors today with skinny jeans, shirts that are sucked on them like Velcro, right? And guys walk in, they're like, I don't want to look like that. You all with me? How many men know what I'm talking about?
Just be honest with you. It's like, yeah. And listen, if you have a Velcro shirt on today, get one of ours out front. It's a little looser. You can take it, all right? Lighthouse is not politically correct, all right?
It's just what it is. Men, what I'm trying to say is this. To be a spiritual leader means you get out of the back seat. You're not even in the passenger seat.
You sit in the driver's seat. When your wife looks at you, the closer she gets to you, the closer she's going to get to Christ. And I praise God for the godly women in our church.
We have an amazing force of godly women in this church. And our homes could never be what they could be without you being there. A man may be the head of the home, but the wife can be the neck so often that turns that head. But I'm going to tell you something. Men, you need to be the leader of that home. God has called you to that. And then he closes by saying, be strong.
This means to be firm and steadfast, not moving, but holding your position. In a world where you find stories of men abdicating their responsibilities, things get hard, they just bail out. They get an argument with their wife and they just leave. And then they go to their mom or dad's. Don't go to your mom or dad's. Stop calling your mom when you have a difficulty at home. Go home and you get on your knees before God and you pray and you get that thing reconciled. You don't just bail out when things get hard.
That's what it means to be a man. You don't just quit. My dad never let me quit anything. I remember I wanted to quit this sport activity when I was in junior high. I wanted to quit baseball. I wanted to quit track. Sometimes I wanted to quit basketball and football. I was like, I want to quit. I'm so sick of this, coach.
I'm so sick of this. Dad's like, you ain't quitting. And he told me this. He said, no son of mine is going to be a quitter. He said, you finish out the season.
If you don't want to play next year, you don't have to play. He said, but you're going to finish your commitment. I wanted to quit.
I was so mad. I was like, he wouldn't let me quit. I wanted to get a different teacher at times. I don't want to say that teacher's picking on me.
I was 6'4 when I was in eighth grade. So I was always like, mom, they're picking on me. Actually, I was just, I was a bad kid.
They should have been worse on me, right? And they wouldn't let me quit anything. And you know what that did for the rest of my life? I haven't quit anything in my life.
It's not because I'm good. It's because they just never let me quit. So it set in my mind a pace that says when things get hard, you just stick it out. You just stay with it.
You just man up. You just pull your bootstraps up and you say this is hard, but it wasn't supposed to be easy. And I believe that if I would have quit in junior high in those sports, I would have quit being a pastor many years ago because this is the hardest thing I've ever done. I've worked construction for years. I've done a lot of different jobs in my life. Being in the ministry is the hardest thing because it's spiritual attack.
There's a lot of different challenges you go through, but it's the most joyful, most rewarding, and the most glorious thing I've ever done. And so many times we miss out on what God could have done because we quit some junior high activity. And maybe you've had that pattern in your life today. Be resolved that you won't quit. Just stick to it. And what happens is then when you come to your marriage and if you have challenges, you're like, I'm not going to quit because we just don't do that.
You don't fall down. And if maybe you've gone through divorce, you say, well, if you're in the next marriage, then you're not going to quit that. You're going to stick to it.
You're going to be resolved to be what God's called you to be. Be strong. Don't put pressure all on your wife.
Put the stress and challenges and hardships upon her. Dad, you're placed by God to be the head of your home, be the leader of the home. To lead your family takes courage.
It takes getting out of the comfort zone. I'm going to tell you, it takes courage to be a man who breaks the chain of a godless system that has been passed down to them. Some of you are the first link in the chain. Some of you didn't have godly fathers to follow after. You never had a dad that prayed with you, brought you to church.
Maybe you didn't even have a dad in your life. And it takes courage to do things that you haven't done before maybe. Maybe you're going to be the first person that didn't just quit jobs when things got tough. And then you're going to be the first man that broke alcoholism and drugs, and you're going to be that first link in the chain, and your kids are going to follow that example.
And you're going to be the first man in your home that broke the sexual perversion and the pornographic wickedness that has just permeated our male culture. We need courageous dads who will stand against sin and evil with conviction, who won't get sucked into the perverse conversations with coworkers and make every excuse in the world why they can't live spiritual lives. To be courageous, to be a man of integrity, to be the same at home as you are at church as you are by yourself, to be a man of courage when challenges and crisis hits, who don't bail out on his wife when family and difficulties come. You act like a faithful shepherd when the hardships come. You don't leave the sheep of your home. Rather, you will take and even lay your life down for your wife and those children God's given to you. I mean, it takes courage. It's not easy.
Sometimes you're like, I don't know who I can talk to because I don't want to put the pressure on my wife. Then find some godly men in this church that you can come and sit down and converse with, that can pour into you and you into them. The second thing I want to show you today is it takes, not only God has called us to be men of courage and strength, but also we'll see how courage is exemplified in Joshua's life. If you look at Numbers 13, flip over in your Bible, backwards a little ways, back to Numbers 13.
I want to step back into a time when Joshua's courage was challenged in a dynamic way. In Numbers 13, God instructs Moses to send a leader from each tribe to spy out the Promised Land. In verse 1 and 2 it says, Moses is saying, Send down men that they may search the land of Canaan, which I have given the children of Israel, and every tribe of their fathers shall ye send a man, every one a ruler among them. So what you have basically here is 12 tribes of Israel. This is about a year after they were led out of Egypt.
They spent about 10 to 11 months at Mount Sinai getting the Ten Commandments, learning from God. Now they're coming up to the Promised Land, and he says, I want you to take the leaders of each of the tribes. These are the leaders of the tribes.
These are not weak men. These are leaders, so they go, 12 of these guys go into the land to check it out. They search the land out all the way through verse 25, and notice what it says in verse 25. And they return from searching of the land after 40 days. Now they return and listen to what they say about the land in verse 27. And they told him and said, We came into the land whither thou sentest us, and surely it flows with milk and honey, and this is the fruit of it. And they're like, this is an incredible, incredible land. After they share the potential and the incredible potential of the Promised Land and all the things they saw. Look at verse 28. Nevertheless, the people be strong that dwell in the land.
The cities are walled and very great. Moreover, we saw the children of Enoch. These are the giants. And the Amalekites dwell in the land of the south, the Hittites, the Jebusites, the Amorites dwell in the mountains, and the Canaanites dwell by the sea, by the coast of Jordan. Now what they found when they came to the Promised Land was not only an incredible land, but it also had incredible challenges. There are fortified cities, there's giants, there are hard battles. They thought the Promised Land that God was bringing them to would have been pretty easy to step into.
I want you to just consider this. What God, the exact place God had for them, the place that He promised them, the place that He was bringing them to, would only be attained by men of courage and strength who would take the land, who would lead their families to a place that was involving real challenges. You would not get there unless you were strong and courageous. The only men who brought their families into that land were men who had strength and courage.
If you didn't, there's no way you could make it in. Men, you need to hear this clearly. The promise of God comes with real challenges, real battles, real hardships. The place where God wants to bring your family in life is a place of blessing and prosperity.
The exact place God has called you to bring your family spiritually, to bring your family emotionally, to bring your family physically, all those things in that dynamic is a place that will involve real challenges. You don't get there by playing video games and having soft hands with no spiritual calluses. There are some giants in life, some fortified cities. There's real battles. It's not easy. If the promised land for our lives includes some real big challenges, are we going to be able to achieve that with a casual half-hearted devotion to God? It's no way.
It's impossible. Victory requires total surrender. The only men in this room that can bring their families where God wants you to go involves you men fully surrendered to God. And if you don't fully surrender to God, your family's going to feel the effects for generations to come. You should walk out of here with extreme angst and fear if you don't surrender to God, because you're leading them with fear and not faith. That's why Jesus said, if you come after me, you come after me, right? You think I'm the American Jesus they talk about. You come after me, you better take that cross.
You want to come after me, you better be willing to die. Never forget reading about one of the great missionaries who went to the Fiji Islands. There were cannibals on the island, and when he went to share the gospel with those cannibals, the captain of the ship says, listen, if you go there, you're going to die. You need to turn back.
This is not a good idea. You need to come back with us. And when the missionaries got off the boat, they said, we died before we came. They were all in, and God saved that.
All the people in that island heard the gospel, and God did an incredible revival. Some of the men lost their lives. That's what it takes. It's like the founding fathers, give me liberty or give me death. They fought like lions, and we bleed like sheep for comfort.
It's a different world, isn't it? We need some lions. We need some men.
We need some people who are not afraid to do what God's called them to do. One of the most incredible stories I've ever read was on February 19, 1519. The Spanish explorer Hernan Cortes set sail for Mexico. He had 11 ships, 13 horses, 110 sailors, and 553 soldiers. The indigenous people was about 5 million. Cortes was outnumbered 7,541 to 1.
Not a good odds. Two prior attempts by others had failed to even establish a settlement. Yet Cortes ended up conquering much of the South American continent. And you ask the question, how did he do it? What Cortes did after landing is a true story of epic proportion. After they got to land, he commanded the men to burn the ships. And when the soldiers saw Plan B sinking in the ocean, they set their heels and did what no other men were able to do. And, men, I'm calling you today to man up and to burn the ships and to set your focus on something that God only could do with your life.
This half-hearted stuff must stop. Well, my wife is, or my kids are not. God called you to lead your home.
What level of devotion is your heart at? I want my kids to say, you know what? If I were to die in the next year, which could happen to any of us, I would want them to say, Dad loved Christ. He followed Jesus. I want my kids to say, I want to marry a man like that.
I want my husband to be like that man. Listen to the report that came back from the 10 after they saw how big the challenges were. They said, you know, this is so difficult.
The challenges are so big, all this stuff. I want you to listen to a courageous man's response, 13 verse 30. And Caleb stilled the people before Moses and said, Let us go up at once. This is an 80-year-old lion speaking.
He's 80 years old. Let us go up at once and possess it, for we are well able to overcome it. In the midst of fear, this courageous man stands up and says, What are you guys worried about? We can do this.
We got this. I can tell you, if you were part of Caleb's family, you were like, Man, you didn't live with a lot of fear in life. If Caleb's your dad, you weren't a fearful family. And then listen to the response of those without courage in verse 31. But the men that went up with him said, We be not able to go up against his people. They're stronger than we are. They brought up an evil report of the land which they had searched for the children of Israel, saying, The land through which we have searched it out is a land that eats up the inhabitants.
We saw giants, and they go on and talk about this. And I want you to hear the effect of the tent on the nation. Look at chapter 14, verse 1. Then all the congregation lifted up their voices and cried, and the people wept that night. You know what happens when you have a faithless man in front of a family, when you have faithless leaders in front of nations and peoples? You bring great stress and heartache upon those underneath you. I wonder how much fear, doubt, worry, stress, and anxiety are in our homes because there's not a strong, courageous, spiritual man to lead that home. You stir stress up.
You create it. Instead of being like a protector of your wife and children from all the pressures, you increase it for them. Well, honey, why don't you just deal with that? Man up! That's what God's calling us to do.
Be a man. Sit in the driver's seat. When I was growing up, when my older brothers had their permits, I could not sleep in the back seat. They stressed me out. They'd hit the rumble strips.
I'm like, ah. If Dad was driving, I could sleep like a baby in the back. Now, I don't know if my kids sleep real good sometimes because I may hit the rumble strips. One thing that a strong spiritual leader will produce in a home is peace. You know why? Because peace is a fruit of the Spirit. When you have a Spirit-led man, you have a Spirit-filled home.
Love, joy, peace, all that stuff just gets dumped on the family. John 14, 27, you want to hear what a man sounds like when he's facing death? This is what a man sounds like when he's facing death. John 13 through 18 is Jesus' day before he dies, the day before he dies. It's incredible to me.
I preached for two years through the Gospel of John. I have never gotten over these passages. I have been so utterly shocked by how much of a man Jesus was. Not one time does he complain. You know what strong men don't do? They don't complain. They don't whine. They don't whimper. They're not constantly stressing their family out with conversation, overwhelmed with trials. I'm sure I'm making some people uncomfortable. I don't know of all your situations. Some of you guys are like, why did I even come to church today? It's killing me here.
Move on to the next point. You know what Jesus did for five chapters? Not one time does he complain. And all he cared about was making sure those underneath him were cared for. He's holding the sin of the world.
He's holding all the weight. And you know what he says to them while it's coming down on him in John 14, 27? He's like, peace I leave with you. Peace I give unto you. Not as the world giveth, giveth unto you.
He dumped peace on them so he could take the wrath and the judgment. That's what a man does. That's what Christ the man did.
And that's what he's called us as men to do. You feel the pressures of life coming. You stand in the front and you let it hit you. If somebody came into my home and shot a bullet, I would be the one, the first one to step up and be like, hit me first. Right? I'll never forget I watched one of these I shouldn't be alive stories.
A man's going up on a mountain with his daughter. Why he didn't have a pistol beside me. Comes around the corner, a couple cubs. That mama bear coming around, that mama bear came full attack against his daughter. You know what that man did?
That man went and threw himself right in front of that bear. That's what men do, right? And I know women in this room you would do the same thing. Women are fearless. Believe me, I understand.
I had a mom. She'd whip a man if they tried to beat up one of her boys. But that's what men do.
You take it. And notice the next thing they do, not only do they weep all night, the nation weeps all night, but then they murmur against Moses and Aaron. They murmur against Moses and Aaron. Verse 3, they begin to murmur against God. Verse 4, they said, let us make it, Captain.
Let's go back to Egypt. Fear produced complaining, murmuring, turning away from God, and wanting to go back into Egypt. How incredible the impact of doubt in faithless, cowardly men. No wonder America's Christianity is falling away. Joshua and Caleb make one last appeal in verse 7. And they spake unto all the company of the children of Israel, saying, the land which we pass through to search is an exceeding good land. If the Lord delight in us, then he will bring us into that land and give it to us, a land which flows with milk and honey.
Only rebel not against the Lord. Neither fear the people of land. They're bred for us.
Their defense is departed from them. The Lord is with us. Fear them not. Joshua and Caleb are like, what are you worried about? We're going to eat them like bread.
You know how the nation responds? Verse 10. But all the congregation bade stone them with stones. Kill these faith-filled maniacs.
You know what's incredible to me? They were so afraid of men, they had no fear of God. The fear of men brings the snares, Proverbs 29 says. Their faithlessness discouraged Joshua and Caleb, but Joshua and Caleb's faith incredibly discouraged the rest of the people. That's why sometimes when you preach a faith-filled message, some people are edified by it and some people are so enraged, they're like, kick him off the stage.
And if you preach the word of God and encourage faith, I can tell you, I would ask you this question. Are you part of the ten or the two? Because the ten wants to stone that guy.
And the two says, let's go up at once. Let's do what God's called us to do. Let me ask you, are you part of the ten or the two? You will never be part of the two if you are not surrendered.
And I will say this. The whole cross is easier to carry than half the cross. I mean, you go all in, it's a whole lot easier than being a double-minded man. He's unstable in all his ways. You just say, God, I have committed all my soul to what you want me to be. It's easier to be fully in the passenger seat with Jesus totally in the driver's seat.
He's a lot better driver than we are. You know, as I kind of wrap this up today, what is so discouraging? The faithlessness of the ten caused their entire families to die in the wilderness. Because they had no faith, their families had to live with the effects. You know, out of all those men, the only ones that went in, God says only Joshua and Caleb were going to go in. Joshua and Caleb were 40 years old at the time we're reading this.
Three years younger than me. They had to wait until they were 80. And all those men who had no faith died out and their families died out. And what's incredible, you'll read later in the book of Joshua. Caleb's an 80-year-old man and he says, I want the mountain where the children of Anak are. He says, give me this mountain. I've been looking at that mountain for 40 years. And there's giants.
It's the hardest place to win. And as an 80-year-old man, I'm going to go up and I'm going to kill the giants and it's going to be my mountain. You know what the Bible says?
And that mountain became the inheritance of Caleb and his children. That's the life of a man with a lion type of faith. What kind of faith do you have, men? You're going to be what the world calls you to be? You're going to get sexualized and perversed and run around. You think sleeping around makes you a man? It makes you a coward. Being a man of integrity, being a man of God, being a man who follows Christ, being a man that your little boy looks up and says, I want to be like him.
He doesn't seem to ever be afraid or complain. Doesn't mean you're perfect, men, because all of us fail, all of us fall short. There's been more than one time I've had to go to my kids and say, listen, I'm sorry. I'm sorry for the way I talked, I'm sorry for the way I behaved in that situation. Daddy was wrong and I need you to forgive me. That's what men do. They're not afraid to admit mistakes. Being a man means to love your wife, to be humble, to serve your family.
It's not some dictatorship. It's to be like Christ at your home. That your wife would say, there's no man in this world that loves me as much as my husband. If you ask my wife, who loves you more than anybody in the world, I guarantee you, just ask her. I won't speak for her. I want my wife to know that there's no man on the world that loves me as much as that man.
I want my kids to see my dad loves their mother. He's not some dictator, some strong-armed guy that bosses him around. That's not what leadership is. Leadership is by example. As for me and my house, we serve the Lord. I'm going to tell you this.
What you get passionate about, your family will get passionate about. That's why you see little boys with, I mean it can be even this horrendous. You'll see a little boy with a Pittsburgh Steelers jersey on. Because that dad's wearing it.
We'll get even worse. Sometimes I have a Cleveland Brown fan. I'm like, come on son. Some things you don't follow your dad into, okay? Actually, I kind of like the Pittsburgh Steelers their coach stood out against.
He said, none of our players are going to celebrate this Pride Month. I was like, stand up for that, man. That's cool. I like that, right?
It must have made me start to like Pittsburgh for a moment. Let me wrap this up. The reward of courage. You know what the reward of courage is? Joshua, 24, 31, he gets to the end of his life. He's 110 years old, 30 years of campaigns and wars and battles.
He dies at 110 years old. You know what the Bible says at the end of his life? After he says, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. Verse 31 says this, and Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua. Israel served the Lord all the days of Joshua. And all the days of the elders that overlived Joshua. And had, which had known the works of the Lord that he had done for Israel. You know what Joshua was like?
He was like Jonathan Edwards. His influence just rippled down through the centuries. Not only Joshua's family. I can tell you this. If you're going into battle, you want to go underneath a commander like Joshua, right? I mean, if you're going into a war, you don't want a double-minded man. I'm going to tell you, man, this is a war we're living in now. It is a war against your family. It is a war against your children. It is a war against your future descendants. It is a war against everything that God says. Things in this Bible are becoming outlawed. You stand for the truth and you will be persecuted in many places around the world.
That's a reality. And there has to be a time when you draw your line in the sand and you say, what are we going to do? Are we going to serve the pagan gods of the world and the gods of all the sexual perversion and the evil and the wickedness? Are we going to serve the God of the Bible? I can tell you right now, it's for me and my house, we're going to serve the Lord.
And it starts with me. I'm not looking at my wife to be the leader. I'm not looking at my kids to be the leader. If they got up next Sunday and said, we're not going to church, I'm going to church and I'm going to bring them with me, right? I don't force my kids to go to church, but I lead them there and you say, you force your kids to go to church?
No, they just come with us. I don't force them to go to school, but they're going to school. I don't force them to go to the dentist, but guess what?
They go to the dentist. You all get what I'm saying? That's what leadership is. We need to be men. And thank you men for being here today. I know this is a strong message, but we need a shock to our system. We need a shock to our system sometimes. I believe we're in desperate times in this country.
America is sinking because fatherhood is sinking. And what God could do in this nation, what God could do in this city and in this church if the men here got revived. I'm going to do something starting next Sunday night. It's going to be a little unusual, but next Sunday night, 2-42. We don't have 2-42 tonight, but next Sunday night, I'm going to encourage all the men to come. I'm going to speak to the men over in the youth center and we're going to break up. We're going to do this for three Sunday nights. And the ladies will be in here.
You have the comfortable chairs where the ladies talk to the ladies, men to the men, and then after that we're going to break up. We're going to do that for three weeks. I know we do 2-42 on Sunday nights, but we're going to do this for three weeks. If you're in 2-42, you come.
If you're not in 2-42, you come. And then I'm going to encourage you. I'm going to talk to men about some men things. We're going to talk about what's God's expectation for the man, what's God's expectation for the wife in society, what's God's expectation for the father and the wife or the mother. The mother will be in here, the father I'll be talking to, and then what's God's expectations for dads.
We're going to talk about some of these things. And listen, you need to be here if you can be here. Bring somebody with you. We need men to get serious. Man, but Sunday nights is my only night. Yeah, yeah, get them comfortable. If you can't make it, I understand. You've got other obligations, but I encourage you to start making some real commitments.
