Allen Jackson - Sovereignty of God and Gender - Part 2
But there’s three fundamental roles that I think every man should understand are a part of our assignment in our families. They’re biblically grounded. They’re not complicated. We could make this far more extravagant, but I wanna do it briefly. The first, I believe, is we have an assignment as a priest. Don’t get caught up in the imagery of that. It’s not about fancy clothes or new kinds of hats or shoes. It’s about spiritual leadership. Biblically, priest represents someone to God. That’s the whole idea of the priesthood that God implemented.
We’re in Genesis, but we’re gonna be in the rest of these books in just a short bit, and you’ll see God begin to implement a priesthood, and he’s gonna recruit a group of people to represent the rest of the people to him. They’ll offer sacrifices. They’ll do spiritual interventions. And men, we have an assignment to provide leadership, certainly in our homes and our families but equally in our communities. In our nation, this is our assignment. We’re alive and well, you understand this. We’ve been mobilized for war, whether we’ve been drafted or we volunteered, we live in the volunteer state for Pete’s sake. We understand these concepts on some level. We’ve just chosen conveniently to look away. Adolescence is more fun. We’d rather be involved in athletics. We’d rather look away.
Responsibility is the stuff that goes with adulting and we turn that into a verb now as if it’s optional. We have an assignment to be priests, to be spiritual leaders, to be a man of character, more than you want to be a character. So you can go viral if you can figure out how to be a character. There’s really not much attention paid if you’re just a person of character. I would submit to you it’s much more rewarding, very much so over the long term and particularly into eternity, if you’ll allow the Spirit of God to see to the formation of your character. It may not be celebrated and get you to the front of a parade in the moment. But it will bear tremendous fruit for the people that look to you. Show the people who depend upon you what it looks like to lead a life of faithfulness to God.
Be different. Demonstrate love and respect for your wife so your children can see it, sacrificially. I’m gonna get to the women’s side, I promise, okay? We got Mother’s Day coming, there’s lots of options. I’m not gonna warn you, you’d stay home, but we’re gonna work on it. But there’s some simple things you can do, fellas. I don’t wanna add to your to-do list in some burdensome obtuse way. This really isn’t that complicated. There’s some things you can do. Simple ideas like bring your family to church.
«Now, Pastor, you’re just trying to grow the church». You caught me. I mean, get really weird with it and, like, bring your kids' friends. Let your kids feel not only the sense of responsibility you have, but the enthusiasm you have for it. If you’re driving to Knoxville for a ballgame, the journey’s as much fun as the ballgame. You look forward to it all week. You talk about it, you make plans, you circle it on the calendar, you start talking trash about who the adversary is gonna be. You understand, I’m not saying it’s wrong. I’m just telling you the training invested in the things that we value compared to the training typically invested to our faith is dramatically different. You’re capable of understanding this if we’re willing to invest our heart in it.
Let your kids see you read your Bible, like, when nobody’s watching, not like when you’re in church in the lobby: «Look, I came early. I’m gonna read my Bible». Well that’s okay with me. I bring a Bible to church myself, but it’s more important that you read it when nobody’s watching, that you give time to it, that they understand it’s valuable to you. Because they’re really clever little rascals. They’re gonna learn a whole lot on my board than from what you do, than what you say. Pray. Now I know men especially will say to me, «Pastor, that praying out loud thing, you know, I don’t… I’m…»
So, let me give you a little progression. When you pull in the driveway at the end of the day, before you go in the house, busy day, difficult day, a lot of problems, you’re tired physically and emotionally. You walk into the house, the kids are jacked up. The wife’s been feeding them sugar, knowing you’re coming home, she’s gonna hand them off. She does it on purpose. Just pause for a minute before you walk in the house and say, «God, I thank you for my family. In Jesus’s name, amen». Just do that for a week, every day when you get home. Don’t tell anybody, don’t announce it, don’t post it. Don’t take a selfie in your car: «Just got home, praying for my family».
Stop. If you can make it through a week of praying for your family before you walk in the house, week 2 before you leave in the morning, put your hand on your wife. Put your hand on her shoulder, very calm. «God, I thank you for my wife, amen». Just quit while you’re ahead, all right? Don’t break out your favorite verse of scripture. Don’t swell up, start to act spiritual. She saw you kick the dog last night. She’s not gonna be impressed. You know, when we talk about let’s pray and I talk about that creepy look you give where you want somebody to affirm how spiritual you are, don’t do that to your wife. She knows you’re not spiritual. Just, «God, I thank you for her».
Have a great day, out you go. It’ll be noon before she can get her head right. That messes with her. If you can do that for a week, by week 3 maybe you pray for your kids. Maybe you do it at the dinner table when you’re gonna bless the food. «God, I thank you for my children, they’re a gift in my life, amen». That’s enough. If you’ll just start to develop that muscle a little bit. Just bring a voice for God into your home. You bring a voice for a lot of things into your home. Making money, getting ahead, vacation, planning a spring break or a fall break or a midterm break or a summer break or a Christmas break or an Easter break. Bring a voice for God into your home. You can’t imagine the difference it’ll make. We’ve got an assignment, we’re gonna be held accountable for it. We will give an account for it.
Now here’s the good news. I talk to men a lot who say, «Pastor, my kids are grown, they’re out of my home». And with a brokenness, they say, «I didn’t do that when they were there. I was busy. I was chasing the next opportunity». I can’t tell you how many people I’ve sat with in that condition. And I’ve come to understand something because I’ve watched God honor this. The Bible says that a day with the Lord is like 1000 years and 1000 years like a day, opportunities that you and I failed on for decades, God can redeem in a moment. But it requires of us. It requires of us to change. That’s what repentance means. It’s a change of how we think and a change of how we behave, and we have to be willing to say, «God, I’m sorry». For whatever reason, I’m not saying there weren’t real pressures. I’m not saying that you weren’t having to overcome a great deal.
I’m not saying circumstances were ideal. I’m just simply saying you’re acknowledging the reality of your circumstance, that observable truth again. And saying, «God, I’m sorry if… I wanna be different». Maybe you just write a one-sentence prayer and send them to your adult kids. «I woke up this morning and I wanted you to know how grateful I am for your life. God bless you». Then don’t FaceTime them and ask them if they got the message. The second assignment, and it’s equally important is as a protector. Men, you have an assignment to be guardians. This is sacrificial. As long as we’ve been civilized, as long as people have been around, men have accepted this role. It’s gotten muddied and confused. And the voices are doing it not to make us more vulnerable. They’re doing it to disrupt our families, to break down the strength of our families, and in doing so to weaken our society and our culture. And the quality of our life is deteriorating and we’re cooperating because they’re feeding our selfish carnal tendencies. We’re called to be protectors.
DEI. Institutionalizing racist behavior where we make decisions based upon how people look or sexist behavior based on their biology is evil. It is not a biblical construct. And please don’t imagine because some president signs a few executive orders, that’s been weeded out or rooted out. There are entire departments in our most celebrated universities and our most powerful institutions, in corporate settings and government settings, that are fully intended to bring those principles back out as soon as they have the opportunity. They’re morphing the language now. Rather than talk about equity, they just talk about belonging. We want everyone to belong. But the values behind it are the same, because we haven’t repented. We haven’t said, as the church, we haven’t been willing to say, «Oh, that was really ungodly stuff that we’ve been supporting».
We’re protectors. As Christians, we’re protectors of family and children and it’s not just our own. The fact that you put your kids in a private school or in a Christian school doesn’t mean we won’t be held accountable for the children. God put us here. I don’t believe we should accommodate new definitions of family. It’s confusing. It’s absurd. We were told for so long that they just wanted equal opportunities to insurance and all sorts of things, but it wasn’t very… we moved very quickly from that until same-sex couples wanna be surrogate parents and they wanna rent the body parts of other people. And we watch all of this in silence because we want to be kind. Can you imagine the destructive things that invites into the lives of children and their hearts? Biological sex is not confusing. It’s about the sovereignty of God.
In Luke 19, I did put it in your notes. Jesus coming into Jerusalem weeps over the city. The Son of God, the incarnate Son of God, the water-walking, winemaking, blind-eye-opening, dead-raising, incarnate Son of God weeping over Jerusalem and he says to them, «Your spiritual failure is going to bring physical destruction, and even my presence in this city will not stop it». You see those same leaders he spoke to that said the fatherhood over your lives is the devil himself, and your character is giving expression to demonic behaviors, and now he’s weeping over that city and he said, because of those choices destruction is coming. You see, this notion about men and husbands and fathers is not some superficial theoretical theological subtlety or nuance. It will shape the well-being of our families when we’re gone.
Jesus said destruction is coming and the children are gonna suffer because you didn’t get the fatherhood thing right. And there’s a third assignment we have. We’re providers. We’re priests, we’re protectors, and we’re providers. Not the government. Too much squishy Christianity on this. And again, language is being manipulated, ideas are being manipulated. I’m not gonna finish your outline. If you haven’t figured that out, I’m sorry. I will finish it. We’ll reconnect on Wednesday and I will try again, but as a provider, this is a biblical concept. Look at 1 Timothy 5 and verse 8. It says: «If anyone doesn’t provide for his relatives, and especially for his immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever,» wow. Worse than an unbeliever, worse than a pagan.
Now, we’ve got all sorts of messages that we pull in around that to kind of excuse us and say why we don’t, and we couldn’t find a job we wanted or we couldn’t find meaningful work or it was too hard or something was unfair. We introduce all this language with a enormous body of literature now around work-life balance, and I believe in that. I think we should have some balance in our lives. Moderation is generally a pretty good theme. But I would submit to you that we’re skewed probably quite a bit away from the work side of the balance equation. I mean, just the way we educate our kids with the breaks that are available. Going to school 5 consecutive days is now more the exception than it is the rule. I mean we’re a little out of it. I can pick on my profession because it’s the one that’s I’m closest to.
I know the literature, the professional literature, that comes to professional Christians like myself. And it usually begins with some kind of description about how difficult our jobs are. How much pressure there is. The great burdens that come with ministry. It’s exhausting. In fact, many of the people that write the literature and invite us to the seminars and write the books and provide the commentary, they’re not quite sure how we make it. And I’ve been invited to speak at quite a few pastors' conference lately, and I usually engage with them using the language that comes from our literature and I get all these rousing amens. I say, in fact, I think it’s probably better if we had a 6- or 8-week sabbatical every summer. Usually there’s kind of a core, yeah, I’m gaining momentum.
So you know me better than they do. And I say, «Look, here’s the reality. Most days if I choose to, I could wear a white shirt to work and when I go home it’ll still be white. I’m not a coal miner. I don’t run towards gunfire. The training for my profession does not threaten my physical well-being. A hard day means I thought. And a heavy lift is I talked». Now I agree it can be stressful doing life with people, engaged in solving. I get that. I’m not minimizing that, but the language we use and the reality of our behavior is not the same, so I tell my pastors when we’re gathered together if they’ve bought into that system to grab their verse and exit the podium. It’s a short list for my second invitation, but it’s okay. But I would suggest that the voices that speak to us have done that in many of our professions, whether we’re teachers. You choose the occupation.
We’re told we’re put upon, we’re mistreated, we deserve some different idea and in doing that what they’re separating us further and further away from is our assignment, the notion that we have an assignment to be providers. That it doesn’t have much to do with how I feel and then we’ve added to that misaligned mislabeling of our work unrealistic expectations of work and there’s a whole body of literature around this, that your job should fulfill you, that when the alarm goes off in the morning and your eyes open, the first thought that should hit your brain is, «I can’t wait to get to work today».
That you want a job that completes you, that gives you full expression of all the creative abilities with which God has entrusted you. Find something you love to do and you’ll never work another day in your life. All kinds of seminars, motivational stuff, and I’m not a… I hope you enjoy what you get to do. I enjoy some of what I do. I know how you enjoy. I watch you come into church. And then I watch you leave. Body language is completely different. I got it. Look, work is difficult. Office, at times, it isn’t fun. Many times in the moment it doesn’t feel rewarding. Occasionally I like to go do just manual. I like to mow grass because when I get done mowing the grass, I can see it. I cut that grass, that grass is shorter, that grass is taller, and I’m coming for that tall grass in a minute. Because the job I have, you can’t always see that you did something. I read this little thing about three generations of my family were funeral directors and I met a minister.
He stopped the ministry and he became a funeral director. You see, now I have a job when I straighten people out they stay straight. It’s a bad joke. Don’t send me a note. But the truth is work is difficult. And oftentimes it’s unpleasant, but it’s necessary. And we have to be taught to work. We have to teach our children the value of work. We have to be willing for them to suffer the difficulties that come with work. It’s not always fair. It isn’t always just in the moment. That’s the awkward reality. You don’t get a participation trophy. All of that is what’s necessary in helping us develop a generation of men, godly men, prepared to be godly husbands, who can then be godly fathers. It doesn’t happen by accident. It’s not the government’s responsibility or the university’s responsibility. It’s not even the Sunday school’s responsibility. It starts in our homes.
I wanna go back to the 1 Timothy 5. I’m gonna quit here. I know my time’s up. «If anyone doesn’t provide for his relatives, and especially for his immediate family, he’s denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever». That’s the part some of us know. Look at the next phrase. «No widow may be put on the list of widows unless she’s over sixty, and has been faithful to her husband, and is well known for good deeds such as bringing up children, and showing hospitality». Skip to the next verse. James 1:27: «Religion that our God accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after widows and orphans in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world».
Most of you have heard the words from James quoted when somebody was trying to ask you to help with widows and orphans. And I believe we have a biblical assignment to help widows and orphans. I do. Without any question. But you can’t set aside the larger counsel of scripture. And Paul wrote to Timothy, he’s preparing for leadership in the church in Paul’s absence after his death, and he said, «Listen, you can’t put a widow on the widow’s list to qualify for benevolence or help unless she’s over 60,» in a point in history when the average life expectancy was less than that. She can’t even make the list unless she’s a freak of nature. And then on top of that, she has to have to have demonstrated character worthy of your engagement. She’s got to be faithful to her husband and well known for good deeds and bringing up children and hospitable and washing the feet of the saints and helping those in trouble. That’s a high bar.
But you see, we’ve been having some sort of a sloppy Christianity with kind of a permanent adolescence where there’s no expectations of anyone and we find some verse peeled out of context that Jesus was all about love and we should just have a group hug and let’s sing one more verse of Kumbaya. Folks, gender is not confusing. Biological sex is not confusing. And we need transformation to come at many levels of our culture for us to be able to begin to raise generation of godly men so that we can have godly families and our children will have an opportunity in the future better than the opportunities that we’ve inherited. And that begins in the church. It begins in the church long before it begins in the halls of Congress or the State House or the corridors of the Supreme Court. It’s a biblical assignment. I’m not suggesting to you it’s easy.
I’m suggesting to you it’s worthwhile, that it’s valuable. I’m also saying to you, I’m not suggesting it, that our culture is working very aggressively in opposition to almost all of these things. They’re manipulating the language. They’re indoctrinating your children. And if they escape the educational system and they go to higher education, in those places, for the overwhelming majority, tragically even too many of the Christian institutions are propaganda centers. You better pay attention. That’s why your faith in your home as something communicated to your children is the best thing. They need a healthy spiritual immune system far more than they need a physically healthy immune system. And I believe they need a healthy physically immune system. God is moving. He will help us. But it’s gonna take a response of courage, fellows. We’re gonna have to care more about our families and the principles of God and bringing them into our homes than the messaging we get from our culture.
The difference between our friends and our secular friends should be marked. And it should be more than our vocabulary and our beverage list. God is moving. I wanna close with a blessing. I wanna give you a blessing. If you’ll stand with me. I put it in your notes. I even gave you the scriptural reference. I’m not making this up. It may be the most frequently pronounced blessing in the history of people of faith, and it seems appropriate to me in the 21st century. I don’t want us to ever lose sight of the fact that we live beneath the blessing of God. He watches over us. He cares for us. His truth is not burdensome or loathsome. It brings liberty and freedom, amen? May the Lord bless you and keep you. May «the Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord turn his face towards you and give you peace,» amen. God bless you.