The Making Of A Man
June 19th Father’s Day Psalm 1:1-6, I Corinthians 13:4-12 , 2 Timothy 2:1-6
Today we take time our to acknowledge and to thank those men in our lives who have served us as fathers. They may have been fathers, our grandfathers, our uncles, our older brothers, our coaches, our teachers , our counselors, our pastors, or that neighbor down the street. Men who have taken the time to invest some of themselves into us which has made us a better person today.
Well since God created man in His own image, and God is a Creator, then God must have put within every man, the power to create something. The issue is not, will a man create, the issue is always, what type or quality of thing is he creating. This ability makes a man of immense value. Look at a man and say, “you have tremendous potential. So use it wisely.”
When God created us, He created us with the idea that we would grow. We would move from being a baby to being an adult. One of the most important verses for us as men to remember is when Paul wrote, “when I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man I put childish ways behind me.
When a child talks, everything centers around the child. “Watch Me do this.” “Come look at me.” “Get that for me.” “I want this”. When a child thinks the child is still at the center. What is going to be best for me. When a child reason, the child is still at the center. “if I can’t have it my way, I’ll take my ball and go home.”
Do you know its possible to be a 20 year old child, a 40 year old child, and even a 60 year old child. Some of us guys at age13 were chasing after girls, at 21 we were still chasing. At 45, 55, 65 life still revolved chasing skirts as though that’s all we were created to do.
Men, we have to break the cycle of the myths that keep spreading among our young boys if we are going to help make them into men. What are some of these myths. Myth No. 1. Having sex produces instant adulthood. Somehow we think we da man because we tricked some girl with our lies and promises to have sex. Sex does not make anyone more of a man, unless that sex occurs in a marriage in the most loving of ways and that man has fully committed himself to that woman for life. That’s when you can get up and walk away feeling like a man.
Myth No.2 Having sex is an expression of being in love. We have mistaken a feeling inside with love. Love does not need sex for proof that you have it. Love which matters springs not from the emotions of how we feel, but from the mind to do something conscious. Do you want to know if you love her, “How patient are you with her, how loving, how kind, how much will you suffer for her, how humble are you in her presence, how much of your pride will you swallow for her.
Myth No.3. When she says no, she means yes. Our young men who watch the music videos and look at pornography think just because some girls are gyrating their bodies in all directions, that all girls are ready to have sex once they are alone. There are some girls and women who specialize in teasing, but a no is still a no. We need to let our boys to know, that sex one time with a woman or girl they thought she was saying yes, even though she claimed to have said no is enough to be labeled as a sexual predator for 10 years with the law and can end you up in prison serving real time in a real jail
Myth No. 4 You can’t get pregnant just by doing it once. Our young men have no understanding of how menstrual cycles work.. We need to get across the message that every girl and every woman is a valuable person, and to try to use them once for our own pleasure is wrong morally and a stupid decision financially. Just one time can cause some $200,000 in child support payments over 18 years. That does not count the tragedy inflicted upon the child by the father having left and gone somewhere else. Now you can say no to temptation and buy you a house, or yes and mess up three people’s lives not to mention the family you will have later on.
God has a plan laid out for our lives as men to make us into the kind of creators he want us to be. The word of God uses three different images which go into the making of a man in 2 Timothy Chapter 2. The Apostle Paul was writing to Timothy to encourage Timothy to mature in the faith. Paul knew that life gets hard and he did not want Timothy to miss out on what God had for him. In verse 3, it says, endure hardship with us like a good soldier of Christ Jesus.
In the making of every man, there is going to be some hard times. Think about the life of a soldier. Somebody tells him when to get up, when to go bed, when to clean his rifle, when he’s on duty, when he’s not. He accepts this kind of discipline because he knows he’s being prepared for something in the future. His life and the lives of others will depend on the discipline in his life.
On the contrary, we grow up thinking, when I get grown, ain’t nobody going to tell me what to do and where I can go. How many of you know that 18 is nothing but a number that will land you in jail quicker than before you got to be 18. A soldier recognizes there is an enemy out there who is seeking to kill him. There fore there are certain rules which always need to be in place, even if it means suffering some right now.
Verse four says, no one serving as a soldier gets involved in civilian affairs—he wants to please his commanding officer. What would you think of a soldier who has been told the enemy is moving in toward us, be ready we’re moving out at 6pm.” If that soldier was saying, well “I can’t go with you all, I signed up to play in the basketball game tomorrow at 4”, or “I took a part time job and I can’t make the battle.”
How much respect would you have for soldiers, whom you were depending on to defend the city, who were always making excuses for why they were not going into battle this time. Men, we are soldiers. Our marching orders are to protect those in our care, by doing what our commanding officer Jesus Christ instructs us to do. We all have been assigned guard duty. The position is important, because the lives of others are directly dependent upon us seeing the enemy before he reaches us and them.
Its a tragedy when the guard decides to leave his post in order to go have a little fun on his own. How many of us know men who have left the post and are not their for their wives or for their children? How many of us are willing to help make men out of them by saying, “hey man you need to get your act together and go home?”
How many of us have left the post and are out just hanging with the guys, when we pledged ourselves to our families. Those of us who are single, we too have a post to guard because others are looking at our lives to see if Jesus Christ has really made a difference in us, or are we doing the same things they are doing once we leave the church. Thank God for every man here today, who is at the post God has assigned them to be at, for you are too rare of a commodity. We as men, must reach our men, to change the lives our young people.
But men, we can’t be content just being on the scene at home. As sergeants and captains and generals on the battlefield of life, we develop a certain toughness to get us through the situations. But when we come home, we need to become a different kind of soldier to keep the enemy on the other side. We all need a telephone booth, where we can go in as super soldier and come out as mild mannered Clark Kent before entering the house.
Our attitudes probably need changing, our tone of voice may need modifying, our sensitivity level needs to rise, our ability to be affectionate needs to kick in, and our sense of appreciating these people in this home needs to start to increase. If we don’t work on these things, our wives and our children will begin to see us as just angry, complaining men who the less they deal with us the better. Our own homes will become our created prisons of solitary confinement.
The more we remember that our response to them has come down as an order from our commanding chief the better. That way we do not have to wait for them to act a special way before we obey. The commanding officer says, “Love you wife and treat her with respect.” The officer is not interested in whether or not she did not do something we wanted her to do. Jesus reminds us, “yeah I know she’s a hard woman to love, but brother it has not been that easy for me to love you either. “The commanding officer says, “do not provoke your children to anger.” We may say “but Lord do you know how hard headed these kids are.” Jesus says, “yeah they are pretty hard headed, but remember last week when I tried to get you to swallow your pride and you never did get around to it. Now that’s what I call being hard headed. God requires we have a certain level of respect in dealing with our children. Our children are usually willing to forgive us, if we are willing to ask for it.
A good solider is willing to listen to the commanding officer, because the soldier knows the commanding officer has some information which the soldier lacks. God can make every man into a better man, a more loving man, and a more sensitive man, and a more caring man. It all boils down to, are we as men willing to obey what God has said and willing to receive the power of Jesus Christ to make it a reality.
The second image Paul uses is in verse 5 is an athlete in which he says Similarly, if anyone competes as an athlete, he does not receive the victor’s crown unless he competes according to the rules. 2 Tim. 2:5 .Every athlete is disciplined and willing to try all kinds of things to get the job done.
You can have a 145 lb kid trying to get past two 200 lb lineman in football practice. Why because the kid wants to play on the team. Every athlete knows there is a price to pay in order to win. Michael Jordan did not simply roll out of bed one day and say, I think I want to play basketball. Let me check and see if the Chicago Bulls have an opening.
We think becoming a man is something which just happens to us. We think becoming a father or a husband is just going to naturally happen. Well if Michael Jordan had of just said, “I’m going to just show up and play basketball naturally,” we would not know of him any better than we know of Michael Judson.
When we do something naturally as things go along, we are never doing it to make it its best. The natural course of things is always deterioration. We go from good to bad and from bad to worse. If you think I’m wrong, go naturally tomorrow and don’t use some deodorant. The first couple of days you will realize you’re stinking pretty bad. But after a couple of weeks, you will get use to the stink and think its natural. Those around you will not think so.
An athlete makes conscious decision to train, because he knows his body is working against him. We have to examine ourselves daily as men, as fathers, and as husbands. When was the last time we complimented our wives in public in front of others. When was the last time our kids heard us brag on them to somebody else.? When was the last we should have admitted we were wrong and didn’t? How much can our family depend on us to keep our word. How dependable are we really. Where are we going which drains us of our spiritual life? What are we watching that God is not pleased with? Who are we involved with in a manner that needs to change? An athlete keeps his eye on the victor’s crown.
It’s not enough to simply show up for the race. “The Greek athlete was required to spend ten months in preparatory training before the contest. During this time he had to engage in the prescribed exercises and live a strictly separated life in regard to the ordinary and lawful pursuits of life, and he was placed on a rigid diet. Should he break training rules, he would...be a castaway (1 Cor. 9:27), adokimos, ‘disqualified,’ barred from engaging in the athletic contest”
God is not interested in men who are only concerned with projecting the right image. God is making men who are real both at home, on the job, and in the church. Wouldn’t it be great if all of us had to check in at the end of the week and swear whether or not we had gone through the prescribed training God had set for our lives that week as men. Perhaps it would lead us to make different choices for our lives. I had a man once tell me he knew it was time to get out of his marriage because it was affecting his work on the job. Part of the problem in the marriage was he was working so many hours his wife never saw much of him. Its possible to have discipline, but to have it in the wrong priorities.
Some of us are so disciplined to a team, nothing is going to interfere with Thursday night when the game is on. We’re disciplined to making money, that nothing will interfere with us working overtime or taking another job. Let me ask you this, when you’re old and your family wants nothing to do with you because of the way you treated them in your healthy days.
Which one of the athletes that you cheered on with such admiration is going to come visit you in the nursing home, or be there at your side if some accident leaves you in a wheelchair. Which dollar that you earned is going offer you comfort when you’re all alone and hoping somebody will care about you. There was a man in the Bible who had all the women a man could dream of having in his harem, and he had more money than most of us can imagine. Yet he died regretting his life as meaningless. His name was King Solomon.
It’s not enough to be prepared to be ready for the game. Once the game starts, the athlete has to compete according to the rules. Victory is not really victory when others know that you cheated to get it. So what if you were the first to come across the finish line, if the judge saw you push your competitor off the track on the last turn, you will be disqualified. Men as we are running this race for Jesus Christ, are there things in us which may disqualify us. The good thing about Jesus Christ is that even though He is the judge, “He’s willing to say, come over here and let me help you in this area, and let’s fix it now. It’s not too late for you to win the race of being made into a man.”
The final image Paul uses is the farmer in verse 6 which says, “the hardworking farmer should be the first to receive a share of the crops. Now most men want to have a good productive life. In order to get a good crop, you have to have harvested some good seed. The bible tells us, be not deceived, whatever we sow, that is what we reap. Whatever we plant is going to come up. Even though it may be hard to accept, a lot of what we end up disliking in another person, is the result of something we have planted in the person through our actions, our tone, and our speech. People do not just fall out of our love with us. We contribute in some manner to the process.
I can remember how I foolishly destroyed my own joyous reunions when I came through the door at home. Pastor Toby would have her Sam all dressed pretty when I would come home from school, and they would be all happy. I came in with the world’s problems acting like a grouch. One day I noticed they no longer welcomed me like they use to. I find out I was the source of the problem. It took a while before I can change that situation back to a positive one because I had unknowingly crushed their spirits. I think men, we crush spirits more often and more readily than we realize not with intention or with malice. Yet the result is just the same.
The good news is that we can reverse the situation, by choosing to plant something different. Words of encouragement, words of support, little acts of kindness, and changing our schedule to give them some time makes all the difference in the world. For some reason, my wife wants me to be home with her whether we are in the same room or not. I don’t see a big difference between working on the computer at home or working at the church. She does. If she sees a problem then there is a problem and I have to do something to accommodate her if I want to produce a good crop.
The verse speaks of a hard working farmer. The word hard working means working to the point of exhaustion, so tired he can barely put one foot in front of the other. The harder you work, the more of a crop you get. The lazy farmer is going to plant less seeds than he should. He probably will be late getting them planted. Rarely is he going out there to pull up the weeds. Yet he expects to have a good harvest and gets jealous of the guy who produces a good harvest. Now he could have had a great harvest, but the reality is you cannot escape the laws of reaping what you sew.
The other thing about the farmer is the farmer knows, its going to take time to get a good harvest. You don’t throw in a seed today, and eat corn tomorrow. You also can’t wait until harvest time and plant the seed and expect it to grow. A good crop is nurtured from day one. The soil is plowed, the seed is planted. The seed is watered. The weeds are pulled. The insects are removed. There is a waiting process because some things come in over which the farmer has no control. The farmer is committed to seeing the process through to the very end.
In making men, God is made this a lifetime process. None of us quite reach the stage in which we can say, I have no further need of growth or rules or directions for my life. We are always being made. There are always areas of our lives which need to be watered. We are always growing some new weeds which need to be pulled up before they choke out the plants using up nutrients that belong to the plant. Men what’s choking out the priority you ought to be giving the Lord today. How can we become so busy, we no longer have time for worship or service.
God has something better and more rewarding for our lives. Let us be willing to listen in order to be the soldiers, the athletes, and the farmers God calls us to be. All of these qualities are necessary in the making of a man. Let’s close by reading Psalm 1 together again. Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked nor stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers. 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, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers.
Not so the wicked! They are like chaff that the wind blows away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous. For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish. Psalm 1:1-6
The Making Of A Man Sermon
6/19/99 Psalm 1:1-6 1 Cor. 13:4-12 2 Tim. 2:1-6
I. The Acknowledgment Of Fathers
A. Fathers, Grandfathers, Uncles….
B. Those Who Have Invested In Us
C. God Created Us To Be Creators
D. All With Great Potential
II. The Intent To Grow
A. When I Was A Child…
B. When I Became An Adult
C. Child Emphasis On “Me”
D. Children 20, 40 & 60
E. Old Men With The Same Game
III. Breaking The Myths That Keep Us From Making Men
A. Myth 1 “Sex Produces Adulthood”
1. A Man Knows The Place Of Sex
B. Myth 2 “Having Sex Is An Expression Of Love”
1. Love Is Not A Feeling But A Decision
2. Love, Patient, Kindness, Humble, Pride
C. Myth 3 “No Can Really Mean Yes”
1. Videos & Pornography Effect
2. Sexual Predators & Prison
D. Myth 4 “You Can’t Get Pregnant By Doing It Once”
1. Every Girl & Every Woman Valuable
2. $200,000 Decision
3. Destruction Of Several Lives & Families
IV. God Has A Plan For Our Lives
A. Paul To Timothy
B. Maturing IN Christ
V. The Soldier
A. Hardships Endured
B. When To Go, Where To Go, How To Go
C. Life Being Prepared For Future
D. Nobody Will Tell Me What To Do
1. When I Get 18
2. There Is An Enemy Out There
E. Getting Involved In Civilian Affairs
1. I Have To Play Basketball
2. I Have To Work
3. All Kinds Of Excuxes
F. Assigned To Guard Duty By Jesus Christ
1. Others Are Dependent
2. Leaving The Post For Pleasure
3. Sending The Soldier Back
4. Men At The Post
G. Not Enough To Just Be At Home
1. New Weapons Are Needed
2. Super Solider To Clark Kent
3. Attitudes, Affection, Appreciation
4. Angry Complaining Men—Solitary
Confinement
H. Orders From The Commanding Officer
1. Love Your Wives & Respect
2. Jesus Has A Problem With Love Too!
3. Hardheaded Children—Hardheaded
Dads
4. Willing To Listen-Missing Facts
IV. The Athlete
A. Football Suicide
B. Michael Jordan’s Decision
C. Don’t Let It Happen Naturally—Michael Judson
D. Remember The Deodorant
E. Examining Our Actions
F. When Was The Last Time?
G. What Training Needs Changing
H. Not Enough To Simply Show Up
1. Greek Athletes 10 Months Prior
I. Forget Simply Making An Image
1. Being Real Home, Job, Church
2. Having To Check In
J. Disciplined In The Wrong Way
1. Sports Team, Money, Job
2. Who Will Come See You
3. Somebody Who Had It All
K. Don’t Forget The Rules For Victory
L. Jesus Wants To Help Us
VII. The Hardworking Farmer
A. Connection—Sewing And Reaping
B. Planting & Growing
C. We Plant Unintentionally
D. Pastor Rick Blows It
E. We Can Change The Seeds Being
Planted
F. Working For A Good Crop
G. The Lazy Farmer
H. Getting The Job Done
VIII. God Is Not Finished With Us
A. God Wants Our Priorities In Order
B. Psalm 1
