Dependent Warrior
CCCAG, Father’s Day 2021
Scripture: Joshua 1: 1-9
Introductions- What woman really want
A while back, I was working a shift in the ER, and we had one of those rare moments where we had no patients. What made it even more unusual was that I was the only male working in the ER that shift.
Both the providers, the unit secretary, the tech, and respiratory, resource, and all of the nurses were female.
I was the sole island of testosterone in a sea of estrogen.
Men- Here is a pro-tip if you ever find yourself in this situation- be quiet, don’t say a thing unless spoken too.
As often happens during these times the subject of dating in general and men specifically came up.
Some of the women present like men at least 6 inches taller than they were, for others they didn't care about that.
Some liked the cut, super physically fit type guys, Others think dad bods are just fine.
Various habits came up, like drinking or smoking or soft drug use, and again you had your various preferences expressed.
When it came to personality most women wanted a man who would be able to make them laugh.
What was curious to me was for many of the younger women there, they liked the bad boy image.
One of them was very vocal in saying “I need a strong man that will put me in my place”
I was very surprised to here that. I thought that was very interesting because she's also very much a feminist.
So I asked if I could ask a question.
Being the only man there and having all these women between me and the exits so I had to remain safe. She said sure I could ask anything I wanted.
I said like anything else you guys say around me anything you say can and will probably be used in a sermon in the future but I won't identify who you are and she said that was fine.
I said, “you are probably one of the most vocal feminists here and I'm not criticizing that, but I would like you to tell me how do you reconcile feminism with a man who puts you in your place because they sound very opposite.”
She paused and thought about it for a moment and replied, “I think the reason I'm such a feminist is because I hate weak men, and I hate having to be the one in charge all the time. It makes me feel vulnerable, unsafe, and question if this person could take care of me if stuff should hit the fan.”
Many of the other women agreed with her. One even came out and said, “I would rather have a man who might be the bad boy, and maybe not treat me right all the time (she was very clear- aren’t talking about physical abuse) but just being the alpha male, because I feel safe with him around.”
She finished by saying, “That’s the problem with men today- they are all a bunch of wimps that we can push around, and unconsciously, most woman hate men like that.”
Now I know that’s not all woman, but in that group of woman, that was the overall consensus.
So this Father’s Day, I want to explore the root of what it means to be a man. You might think, this is Father’s Day, shouldn’t we just focus on being a good father?
You can’t be a good father without being a good man first.
And ladies, particularly single ladies, don’t check out, because you need to hear about the kind of man you should be looking for in a potential future husband.
So.
For a Christian, being a good man means being a dependent man.
I know that sounds like the opposite of what woman want, but bear with me for a moment.
Growing up, everyone has role models that they shape their opinions, mannerisms, and conduct around.
Now, I have had many male role models in my life. Some were good, somewhere bad, some are very ugly.
But I thank God for my grandfather because even as a Lutheran, he showed me what being a good man was all about.
After all, he was a full-blooded Norwegian.
We are going to read about a man today who learned how to be dependent on God in everything in his life.
This man had one of the best role models you could ever have- in this case Moses. He spent over 40 years being his personal assistant learning how to live for God even when it made no sense to him at all.
We are going to watch a brief video this morning highlighting this principle. The scene is from the series the Chosen, and shows Moses preparing the Bronze Serpent. The background is that the Israelites have left Egypt and are in the desert. They rebelled against God, and God sent poisonous snakes among the people, and they were dying. God told Moses to form a serpent made of bronze, and that is where we pick up the scene.
Show Video
I showed this video because it showed the interactions between Moses- a very strong man, and Joshua, who had been raised by slaves with a slave mentality.
I believe this incident among the others mentioned, like the parting of the sea, being fed supernaturally from God, and the pillar of fire right outside of their tent strengthened and formed Joshua’s character over the 40 years that Moses mentored him.
In Joshua, Chapter 1, Moses is now dead and has named Joshua as his successor to lead over 10 million people into the promised land.
Men, take a moment and let the weight of what was now on Joshua fall on your shoulders.
You are directly responsible for 10 million souls. No more Moses to fall back on. Every decision you make will mean their lives or their deaths.
Joshua has been dependent upon Moses his entire life, and now has to learn to be dependent upon God alone.
This is how Joshua is feeling as we start reading.
Josh 1:1-9
After the death of Moses the servant of the Lord, the Lord said to Joshua son of Nun, Moses' aide: 2 "Moses my servant is dead. Now then, you and all these people, get ready to cross the Jordan River into the land I am about to give to them — to the Israelites. 3 I will give you every place where you set your foot, as I promised Moses. 4 Your territory will extend from the desert to Lebanon, and from the great river, the Euphrates — all the Hittite country — to the Great Sea on the west. 5 No one will be able to stand up against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you.
6 "Be strong and courageous, because you will lead these people to inherit the land, I swore to their forefathers to give them. 7 Be strong and very courageous. Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go. 8 Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful. 9 Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go."
Prayer
Premise: There are three things God calls each man to do in this life. It will effect how you live, how you love, and how you parent as a Godly father. They all have to do with dependency on God.
I. Be strong and courageous
Three times, God tells Joshua to be strong and courageous. There has been a huge lie sold to men in our culture and especially the men in the church about what I means to be a man, and that is equating meekness with weakness.
You remember Jesus’s famous Sermon on the Mount when he says “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth”
Many have used that verse and others to emasculate men in this day, particularly in the church.
Let me illustrate:
I had a partner on the ambulance who once told me that he never knew which Johnny O (my nickname) he was going to work with. Sometimes it seems I was so laid back and seemed to let other people walk all over me, and other times- in true emergencies, that I forcibly took charge and ran that call, and then after the calls switched back to being laid back again.
He said, “On one hand, you are one of the weakest guys I know, and then once in a while, you become one of the strongest guys and medics I know.”
I replied, “You are confusing meek with weak. Jesus commands us to be meek. Meekness is simply strength under tight control. If I didn’t keep it under such tight control, I’d be the biggest jerk you would ever know.”
Another way to look at this-
Would you travel to Nevada and see the Hoover Dam and say, “What a weak structure? Just a bunch of concrete sitting there doing nothing”
Of course not, it’s holding back millions of gallons of water.
In fact, I did some math for you this morning.
Hoover Dam has a constant pressure on it of over 45 billion pounds. 45,000 pounds per square foot.
That’s what makes it so impressive. It may just sit there and seemingly do nothing, but the weight it constantly holds is why people call it the Mighty Hoover Dam.
That, men, is how you exercise your strength. You don’t need to advertise how strong you are, just depend on God’s strength to fill you and equip you.
Another quick example,
When I was in the Army, we had a Lieutenant who was very leadership challenged. He was fresh out of officer training course but somehow didn't learn any leadership skills. During a companywide formation, he got into a very loud argument with our platoon Sergeant where he grabbed his collar which is where you used to put your rank and screamed “I'm the Lieutenant here”.
Our battalion sergeant major happened to be walking by and said, “Sir, can I talk to you for a moment.” The lieutenant walked over within earshot of me and my squad and the sergeant major quietly said, “Lieutenant, if you have to remind a person of your rank, then you are not the leader of these men regardless of what your rank insignia shows.”
That’s a powerful lesson for us as men.
Men, you are not leaders because of your plumbing.
You are not strong because you scream the loudest or use a man’s natural strength to force his will on the others he is around.
You’re not a man because you are popular
Courage isn’t seen in following the latest social trends, especially the ones that spit in the face of God and HIS word.
Strength and courage are found in being able to keep your natural aggressiveness, alpha tendencies, and strength under the control of the Holy Spirit, and not caring what this society has to say about it.
If you live for the one who made you, you will never stand alone, even if no other person joins you. If you are on God’s side, you automatically are in the majority. Take courage in that.
In OT book of Micah, God says this about being a man:
Micah 6:8 He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?
That is what your strength is to be used for- to help those who cannot help themselves and to yield to God’s ways and His will so you can show the world the source of your strength and your courage.
The next thing ties in with this, and shows us the second way to be a man dependent upon God and that is to-
II. Obey
God shows us the way men are to be strong and courageous. Remember His instructions to Joshua-
Be careful to obey all the law my servant Moses gave you; do not turn from it to the right or to the left, that you may be successful wherever you go. Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.
I’m going to say a few things, and I want you to see what emotion they bring up. Just in your heart, see what response comes up?
Obey the law,
Obey the police if you have interaction with them,
Obey God’s commands
Here is the really tricky one and I did unlock the door to my left for a get-a-way route before church-
Wives, obey your husbands.
I think for many, one or all of them made some type of negative emotion come up, or disgust that other people don’t think the same way.
The word obedience today has a negative connotation with most.
We see this in the news. We see this in the schools. We see this just being in public.
I have a lot of friends who are police officers, and they have told me that this last year has been the hardest year ever on the job. Almost every interaction they have with the public, it turns into high drama and very tense situations.
It’s all because of a lack of obedience to established laws, and because of a rebellious spirit that has really taken over our nation. American was built on a rebellion, so it’s always been there but in 21st century America it’s like someone threw kerosene on it.
There is zero respect for lawful authority in our country today.
And I know we want to blame the media.
We want to blame the schools.
we want to blame politicians.
We want to blame the day we live in
But the basic fact of the matter is the blame falls on the men of the church.
The scripture is very clear that “Judgment begins at the house of God”. Sinners will always sin, but when the men of the church take a back seat to leadership and obedience, chaos erupts in the culture.
Maybe not this church, but in the last 30 years or so the gulf between the number of men in the church and the number of woman in the church has grown dramatically.
Men have abdicated their role as spiritual leaders of their homes and left it to the woman…if they are even in the home.
This is the truth- Strong men lead strong families. Men, if your family has fallen apart, God is going to look to you.
That’s not to say that a single woman, either through divorce or who got pregnant by an irresponsible guy can’t raise a child, but both the bible and social science shows the best way to have a stable home, a stable child, and a stable society is to have a father and a mother married in a stable home.
I get how hard it is.
But we have to live as people who will someday given an account, and men, God will be coming to you first.
Remember this from the beginning- God didn’t ask Eve why she disobeyed, He asked Adam. Instead of being a man and protecting his wife, he threw her under the bus.
We need to be better.
Let me show you how- our third part about dependent upon God and being strong and courageous
III. Be a warrior
God has a special place in his heart for men who are warriors.
Consider-
Joshua, the man we are reading about today- a warrior
The man after God’s own heart, David was a warrior. In fact, God built the entire thrown around this man- one that Jesus himself will sit on one day.
In fact, consider Jesus- the ultimate dependent warrior. He took on all of hell, conquered sin, destroyed deaths power, and crushed satan under his feet.
Not only that, but when he returns, he is not going to be a mild mannered suffering servant most paintings and statue’s portray HIM as.
Instead, he will resemble a modern special forces guy, all tatted up and swinging a sword that will absolutely devastate HIS enemies.
Men, God needs warriors to rise up in the church. He has even supplied the armor.
In a moment I’m going to read the section of scripture that deals with that, but I’ll cover it more in depth in a future message.
While this scripture applies to all of the saints of God, I want to especially apply it to the men here.
I’d ask all of the men to rise, and let me read this scripture as your call to arms, your charge to be bold and courageous, and your orders from your commander in chief, Jesus Christ.
Eph 6:10-18
10 Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. 11 Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. 12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. 13 Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. 14 Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, 15 and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. 16 In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17 Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. 18 And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.
Gifts- cards to encourage. Most soldiers in combat carry pictures, letters, or some type of reminder of those at home. These cards can do that for you- find one that is a favorite, and carry it in your wallet so you can pull it out and let it refocus you when it seems you are in that valley of the shadow of death.
Book mark for prayer
