Tonight's topic is a man is strong and I'm going to say it man is strong and courageous.
! God calls men to be strong and courageous or you can even say mighty men of valor.
! 1 Kings 2 verse 2 says when David's time to drop to die drew near he commanded Solomon his son saying
I'm about to go the way of all the earth be strong and show yourself a man.
Okay be strong and show yourself a man. When you're a man it shows. How does it show? It shows with strength.
Men are to be strong. Be strong and show yourself yourself a man. 1 Corinthians 16 13 says be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.
Okay 2 Samuel 23 verse 8 talks about David's men that were around him and they were called mighty men.
Joshua 8 verse 3, Joshua chose 30,000 mighty men of valor and sent them out.
The definition of valor is strength of mind or spirit that enables a person to encounter danger with firmness or courage.
Okay you can't separate courage from strength.
Deuteronomy 31 6 says be strong and courageous. You see this all throughout the scriptures.
Be strong and courageous. 1 Samuel 4 9 says take courage and be men.
2 Samuel 10 12 in the KJV says be of good courage and let us play the men for our people and for the cities of our God.
So basically courage is strength in action. Okay.
If you have strength, but you don't have courage, you really aren't that strong.
The way that strength plays itself out is courage.
Courage is strength in action.
Courage is brave action in the face of danger, adversity, sacrifice or risk.
The more danger, the more adversity, the more risk or sacrifice involved in the action, the more courageous it is.
Aristotle said courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality with which guarantees the others.
And this is why we all love in the movie gladiator when they say strength and honor, right?
Because that is quintessential man characteristics, right? Strength and honor.
There's, but there's a difference between masculine and feminine strength.
We're not just saying men are only strong. Women are strong as well.
Strength isn't distinctly masculine, but there is a difference between masculine strength and feminine strength.
Okay.
One of the most definitive differences between men and women is actually physical strength.
Okay.
Jack Donovan says strength is not an arbitrary value assigned by human cultures.
Increased strength is one of the fundamental biological differences between males and females.
Aside from basic reproductive plumbing, greater strength is one of the most prominent,
historically consequential and consistently measurable physical differences between males and females.
He goes on and say,
It is fashionable today to put the word weaker in quotation marks to avoid offending women when they are referred to as the weaker sex.
Quotation marks will not alter the basic human truth that men are still on average significantly physically stronger than women.
Quotation.
Serious people should be able to admit that something is generally true when it is a verifiable fact.
There is no good reason to be coy about it.
He says,
There is no human culture where men who are weak are considered manlier, while women who are muscular are considered more womanly.
Okay.
It is almost inconceivable actually to mistake an extremely muscular man for a woman.
And extremely easy to mistake an extremely muscular woman as a man.
God has very obviously made men overall to be characterized by strength.
This points to his role.
That's why 1 Peter 3.7 refers to women as the weaker vessel.
This is referred to that for a reason.
So basically, that's kind of the backdrop for this, but I would like to talk to you about basically the tale of two men.
Okay.
The weak man and the strong man.
And I want to describe to you what a weak man is, and then we'll look at what a strong man is.
I got a little cold here, so I apologize.
But we'll look at a weak man and a strong man.
And when we look at these, I want you to think about, am I a strong man or am I a weak man?
Are there areas where I am weak that I could grow stronger in?
Are there areas that, as a man and what I'm called to be as a man, I'm weak because I'm not showing the strength that is quintessentially masculine?
Okay.
So let's look at a weak man.
The weak man can't handle much.
Okay.
He can't carry his own weight, can't carry the weight of others, and can't handle more.
Okay.
He says things like, I can't.
I'm really tired.
All right.
He collapses under weight in general.
All right.
We don't want to be a weak man who can't handle much.
The weak man is fragile.
He can't take a beating.
He can't take a hit.
He can't take a joke.
He's thin-skinned.
All right.
We know men like this who, it's like super sensitive.
You can't even tell a joke because they can't take it.
A weak man is fragile.
A weak man is weak in adversity.
He runs from hard things.
He can't handle hard things.
Proverbs 24, verse 10 says, if you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small.
Okay.
How is your strength?
What do you do when it comes to adversity?
How are you when adversity comes your way?
Do you run from hard things?
Do you run to hard things?
Can you handle hard things when they come into your life?
Theodore Roosevelt said, never throughout history has a man who lived a life of ease left a name worth remembering.
He also said, a soft, easy life is not worth living if it impairs the fiber of brain and heart and muscle.
Okay.
The weak man is weak in adversity.
The weak man is effeminate.
Okay.
What does it mean to be effeminate?
Characterized by excessive softness, delicacy, and self-indulgence.
The weak man is not effeminate.
He's not a metrosexual.
He's not obsessed with personal appearance, fashion, style, grooming, and what people think about how he looks.
Okay.
This has, weirdly enough, become a thing where young men are obsessed with how they look, even pounding their face with hammers to try and make their jaws grow more beefier, I guess.
I don't know what would be the word for that.
But, I mean, it's effeminate that you'd be so obsessed with your looks and so obsessed with what other people think of your looks and really so obsessed with what other men think about your looks.
I mean, essentially, it's kind of homoctual when you think about it, that that would be the focus of these men.
But this is the world we live in.
Okay.
It's weakness.
It's not strength.
Weak man is a complaining, whiny victim who blames others.
Okay.
He sounds like an undisciplined, spoiled little girl.
He gives voice to and is led by what some would refer to as your inner little you-know-what.
Okay.
That fleshly internal voice that always wants to whine and complain.
That whiny little voice inside of you that needs to be silenced and put to death.
Every one of us has that.
Okay.
You're trying to do something and you can sense that inner whiny voice that's inside of you that doesn't want to do things or wants to make excuses or wants to avoid responsibility.
And every single man in the course of his life has to silence that voice.
If we gave way to that voice, all that comes out of it is weakness.
The weak man is mentally weak.
He refers often to his mental health.
But what he really means is mental weakness.
Okay.
We live in a day and age where mental health is constantly being spoken of.
And that's what's appealed to.
And there definitely is real chemical imbalances.
But the weak man uses mental health as an excuse for sin.
Which is not.
There is no excuse for sin.
Each and every one of us has to take responsibility for our sin.
There might be things that make it more difficult.
But God's grace is sufficient for all of us.
And at the end of the day, most people aren't mentally sick.
They're mentally weak.
Really, what it used to be is what we call mental sickness a lot of times now is just what the old-fashioned men who are our grandparents used to just call weakness.
Okay.
Mentally weak.
We've just diagnosed mental weakness and given people an excuse for it.
It used to just be that we would encourage people to actually get strong and learn how to get through adversity and learn how to handle things.
But now men can't even.
Okay.
And that's not what, that's not the kind of, that's not the kind of men we're called to be.
The weak man is emotionally weak.
Okay.
He's overly emotional, led or controlled by emotions and how he feels.
All right.
If you're one of these guys, you are not called to be led by your emotions.
You can be emotional.
You can have emotions.
That's, there's some weird stoic version of masculinity that says you can't have emotion.
I'm not talking about that.
But when you're ruled by your emotions, led by your emotions, controlled by your emotions.
Okay.
This is weakness.
This is not what you were called to do or to be.
And what ends up happening is we end up only doing things when we feel like it.
If I only did things when I felt like it, most of the things that I would be supposed to do, I wouldn't do.
Oftentimes my flesh doesn't want to do what I'm supposed to do.
Oftentimes my flesh doesn't want to do what a responsible man is called to do.
I can't be led by my feelings.
My feelings need to be underneath the rule of myself, not me underneath the rule of my feelings.
It's a weak man who's ruled by his feelings.
It's a weak man who, you never know what you're going to get because he's so weak and controlled by his own feelings.
The weak man is physically weak.
Okay.
Wasting testosterone on the broad shoulders that God gave us.
Okay.
He doesn't care why God made him physically stronger than women.
He's lazy.
He doesn't want to put in the work.
Look, don't waste the strength of your youth.
Proverbs 20 verse 29 says the glory of young men is their strength.
But the splendor of old men is their gray hair.
Men, God made you strong for a reason.
Okay.
God made you strong for a reason.
We could choose to use that strength for the greater good, for God's glory.
Or we can waste it.
Or we can be fine with just being weak.
But the fact that God gave us the ability to be strong and to have stronger muscles is for God's good or for men's good and God's glory.
What are you doing with it?
Weak man is a consumer.
He has nothing of value to give.
Consumership.
Consumerism makes men weak and passive.
Doesn't mean you can't buy anything.
It just means watch the commercials in between the football game.
What are they trying to do?
They're trying to sell you manhood.
And the manhood is sold by what you buy.
What you buy doesn't make you a man.
What you consume doesn't make you a man.
This is a twisting of what's true.
And yet it's what's being sold.
And it's what's being believed.
That, oh yeah, if you have that truck or you have this or that or whatever gadget, this is what makes you a man.
Those things don't make you a man.
Ultimately, they make you weak if you're dependent on consumerism.
Okay.
Weak man is a consumer.
Weak man is a coward.
He's afraid and worried, powerless and inadequate.
He fears man.
He's crippled by fear of cost, fear of loss, and fear of failure.
It's amazing to me how many men are paralyzed right now because of just a fear of failure.
Whoever said failure so bad?
Where in the world did we get that into our psyche?
Look at every single man you've ever looked up to, ever thought, wanted to emulate.
Any single person you ever thought did great things.
If you can find one of those who didn't fail and fail often, I would love to hear about it.
Because I don't think that man exists.
Where in the world did we get this goofy notion that failure is a bad thing?
What has it done?
It's created weak men.
Weak men are constantly afraid to fail.
So they don't talk to women.
And when it gets hard, they just break the relationship.
They don't do hard things because they're afraid of failure.
They don't take risks and do things that could potentially not go well.
And because of that, what ends up happening is we don't grow.
We don't get stronger.
We just stay in a place of perpetual weakness.
Because we're afraid of failure.
We're afraid of loss.
We're afraid of a cost.
Next, someone once said, I don't know who said it, but fail boldly.
Okay?
A man fails boldly.
A man knows that failure isn't the end.
And so he keeps after it.
Gordon Dalby once said,
The weak man is weak in faith.
He doesn't believe God.
He doesn't believe in who God made him to be.
He's pessimistic.
He's defeated.
We might say, why try?
Why even try?
He has a small view of God, so he has a small view of himself.
He has a small view of God, so he has a small view of what's possible.
He has a small view of whether God cares or not.
Therefore, he has a pessimistic view on life, which causes him to be weak.
Okay?
Constantly thinking that everything's going to go bad.
Constantly thinking that no one has your best intentions in mind.
It just fosters weakness.
It just fosters this pessimistic look on life that nobody wants to be around.
Because it just basically means that everything that comes my way is going to overcome me.
It's weakness.
I love, uh, is it John Harbaugh?
Is it the Chargers coach or is that Jim?
I think it's Jim.
Either way, it doesn't matter.
His dad used to say to him when they'd go to school, he says, all right, guys, to his sons, he'd say,
we're going to approach this day with an enthusiasm unknown to mankind.
That's what he would say to them every day.
And then when he got the Chargers job and they asked him what he's going to do on his first day as Charger coach,
guess what he said?
That's what he said.
He said, we're going to approach each day with an enthusiasm unknown to mankind.
Does that make you feel weak when you hear that?
Does that, you look at him and you think, wow, what a weakling.
What a, no, someone who's pessimistic about life, who constantly has more faith that bad things will happen to them,
that something good will happen to them, that is pinnacle weakness.
That's someone who doesn't know God.
That's someone who's weak in faith.
When you know that God is for you, then you don't talk like that.
You don't think like that.
You don't foster that in your children and your spouse.
The weak man has a weak will.
He gives up easily.
He doesn't finish.
He's undetermined.
All right, brothers, do you finish?
Are you one of those guys who starts a million things but never finishes them?
If we go into your house, would we see just the trail of unfinished projects all over the place?
There's few things worse than the devil speaking to your wife while you're not home,
telling you that you care more about yourself than her every time she looks at the unfinished trim
or the unfinished tile or the unfinished room or the whatever it may be.
You don't want that.
But that's the kind of thing that happens when we're weak and we don't finish what we start.
A man finishes what he starts.
He doesn't give up easily.
He finishes.
But a weak man, he's undetermined.
He's undetermined.
The weak man is weak in conviction and character,
not firmly held or little to no basis for his beliefs,
no backbone, no consistency,
easily bought, swayed, manipulated, or influenced.
Okay?
Do you have character?
Do you have conviction?
Do you know what you believe?
And do you have reasons behind it?
Do you have strong reasons behind what you believe?
You know, you can be really strong and impress everybody in the gym.
What about your convictions?
You can be really good at work.
Men love to hide behind their skill at work.
Where are your convictions?
Do your kids know God?
You profess Christ.
Do they know God?
They might know that you spend a lot of time at work.
They might know you're really good at something.
They might know the size of your muscles.
Do they know your God?
Do you have conviction?
Do you know what you believe?
Do you know the scriptures?
The weak man is weak in conviction and character.
The weak man is untrustworthy.
He makes weak commitments.
He can't be counted on.
He breaks his word.
He's unreliable.
Michael Foster and Dom Tennant said,
untrustworthiness might as well be a synonym for weakness.
Can you be trusted?
The weak man is indecisive.
Double-minded.
James chapter 1 verse 8 says,
A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.
Are you a decisive person?
Is it hard for you to make a decision?
Again, are you afraid of failure so you can't make a decision?
What are the men you respect?
The men you know are strong.
There are people who make strong decisions.
They don't...
It doesn't mean decisions aren't hard.
It just means that they make them.
It just means they make mistakes.
They keep going.
Are you a decisive man?
Are you one who is him-hawing or, you know, constantly, I don't know what to do.
I don't know what to do.
You've seen the Godfather.
You saw what he did to the what's-his-face when he couldn't make a decision.
He slapped him in the face and he said you could act like a man.
And he said he didn't know what to do.
Men are decisive.
They're able to make decisions.
That doesn't mean they get it right all the time.
It just means they keep making decisions and they keep going.
They don't give up.
Okay?
A weak man is indecisive.
He's double-minded.
A weak man is weak in obedience.
Okay?
He's disobedient.
He's unholy.
A weak man is weak in battle.
He won't fight.
He won't protect.
He's passive.
Okay?
He looks at his wife and sees that she's dying on the inside, that she would love to be fought for.
Maybe she's never been fought for by any of the men in her life.
And he just, he's passive.
Doesn't go after her.
Doesn't fight for her.
Maybe he fought for her, won her heart to get married.
After marriage, not so much.
That's a weak man.
Weak man in battle.
The weak man is weak with women altogether.
He goes to the woman to get his strength.
Newsflash.
She can't give it to you.
You go to the woman to get your strength, she can never give it to you.
Well, I know it feels like she can.
And this is why we go to, why men go to pornography.
Because when you go to porn, she never says no.
It's counterfeit grace.
Right?
She's always there for you.
She never says no to you.
She never puts you down.
Right?
But this is a counterfeit.
It makes you feel powerful when you go to a woman and she gives you what you want.
And you never have to work for it.
You never have to do anything.
It's counterfeit grace.
It's counterfeit strength.
You're weak.
Pornography, living together, selfish flirting.
These all make you weak.
Porn makes men weak.
No doubt about it.
The weak man is afraid to talk to women.
Afraid to ask a woman out.
Afraid to stand up to a woman.
Okay?
It's amazing nowadays how hard it is for a man just to talk to a woman.
Single men unable to actually ask a woman out.
Just ask for her number.
This is at unprecedented levels where men just have given up.
They don't talk to women anymore.
Okay?
That's weak.
They can't be afraid to talk to women.
Can't be afraid to ask women out.
And they can't be afraid to stand up to a woman.
Doug Wilson says,
A woman knows that a man who cannot stand up to her is going to have difficulty standing up for her.
Okay?
If she never sees you stand up to her, and not in some inappropriate way, but in a loving, firm way, standing up to her.
If you never stand up to her, how will she ever know that you'll stand up for her?
She doesn't.
She'll think you're weak, because you are.
If you're looking for sympathy from a woman, you might get it.
But if you're looking for sympathy and attraction, you'll never get it.
Women are not attracted to a man they feel sorry for.
Okay?
So stop going to the woman to get sympathy.
That's not what you go to her for.
All right?
You want her to be attracted to you, and you want her to have sympathy for you?
Women are not attracted to a man they feel sorry for.
This is weak.
It's not what they want.
In the same way, when a woman's boyfriend acts like a woman's girlfriend, he shouldn't be surprised when she says she just wants to be friends.
Okay?
He doesn't need another...
She doesn't need another girlfriend who's actually a man.
Right?
She already has girlfriends for that.
When she's looking for a man, you know what she wants?
Strength.
She wants strength.
The weak man has weak focus and vision.
Selfish.
Jack Donovan says, when there's no heroic objective in sight, boys will dare each other to do all sorts of stupid things.
Okay?
This is so true, by the way.
And I know you know it's true because you're laughing.
When there's no heroic object in sight, this is what we do.
We dare each other to do all kinds of stupid things.
Proverbs 29 and 18 says it's similar.
It says, when there's no prophetic vision, the people cast off restraint.
Okay?
The weak man doesn't have vision.
No heroic vision.
Ends up just doing stupid stuff.
We have whole shows and YouTube channels and whole worlds devoted to entertaining us with the stupid thing that men do when they don't have something bigger to live for.
The weak man has false strength.
He has the appearance of strength, but is actually weak.
Okay?
So he's unbroken.
He just has bravado.
He's macho.
He has a pseudo strength.
He's abusive or domineering.
He's harsh or controlling.
He's chauvinistic, believing that men are superior to women.
That's goofy.
Okay?
And it's just as goofy, too, to say that women are better than men.
And for men to just kind of capitulate to that as just kind of a deference to a woman to try and win her over.
It's ridiculous.
Okay?
Men are not better than women.
Women are not better than men.
And when we play these goofy games, we win stupid prizes.
Right?
It's weakness.
The weak man is chauvinistic.
He's misogynistic.
He's woman-hating.
Kind of the little rascals, the He-Man Woman Haters Club.
There's nothing cool about hating women.
Okay?
Which, by the way, at the root of most pornography is hatred of women.
You'll never lust after a woman you honor.
So, at the root of pornography, some form of hatred of women.
It's that lack of respect and honor for women.
Respect and honor is sexual discipline.
Okay?
The weak man is arrogant.
He's condescending.
He's angry.
He's hateful.
He's violent.
Gordon Dalby says,
Hatred is a cover-up for powerlessness.
Creating a false sense of strength when the truth is frightened.
Uncontrolled, unrestrained anger or hatred that results in violence is weak and cowardly.
Much like a school shooter.
Whenever we look at guys like this, we think, what a weakling.
Right?
When people do these mass shootings.
What a weakling.
Just preying on the weak out of anger and vitriol and some form of weird strength that they think it is.
It's not strength.
It's weakness.
They're cowards.
The weak man, he trusted himself, his talents, his gifts, his personality, his intellect.
He might have a reputation of strength with the brothers, but is weak in leading his wife and winning her heart.
Who cares if you're a big deal with the bros if you can't even win your own wife's heart?
Or, if she doesn't think you're, if she's not impressed with you,
the weak man is insecure.
He has a weak identity.
He's afraid to be real.
He can't be himself.
He doesn't know who he is.
He's not confident.
He doesn't know or believe the gospel.
Okay?
The weak man is built on something that is sand, that can be taken away from him.
Okay?
Putting your hope in something that can be taken away from you is the very definition of weakness.
You're only as strong as what you put your hope in.
If you put your hope in God, if you put your hope in the unchangeable creator of the universe,
that gives you strength.
If your hope is in some weird substitute, some idol, some, something that you have no control over
and that can't, that is constantly changing, you don't know what it's going to be to this day or the next,
then that makes you weak.
If your hope is in the unchanging nature of Jesus Christ, there's strength in that.
Because you always know that he will be the same yesterday, today, and forever.
Okay?
So that's a lot.
But that's the weak man.
All right?
What about the strong man?
What does the strong man look like?
The strong man can handle weight.
Okay?
He carries his own weight.
He carries the weight of others, not just himself.
He handles more, regardless of feeling tired or that he can't.
Doug Wilson says men don't carry things because they happen to have broad shoulders.
They have broad shoulders because God created them to carry things.
Okay?
We're created to carry more.
The strong man says, I can handle it.
I can take on more.
I trust in the grace of God, and I know God gave me these shoulders for a reason.
Bring it on.
Strong man is tough.
He can take a beating.
He can take a hit.
He can take a joke.
He's thick-skinned.
He's not just tough.
He's tender.
He's a velvet brick.
Okay?
It's one thing to be tough.
Can you be tough and tender?
John 11, 35 says Jesus wept.
Well, a tough man doesn't weep.
Jesus did.
Jesus wept.
1 Thessalonians 2, 7 says, Paul says, we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother
taking care of her own children.
Paul was certainly tough, but he was also tender.
1 Thessalonians 2, verse 8 says, being affectionately desirous of you.
Philippians 1, verse 8 says, I yearn for you all with the affections of Christ Jesus.
Jesus was affectionate.
Okay?
A tender man is affectionate.
What do men need?
A lot of men need affection.
What do homosexual men need?
You might think, well, they don't need affection.
You better believe they need affection.
They're perverting the affection that they think they need, but really at their core,
homosexual men are longing for affection, and they're longing for male affection.
We can't be afraid of that.
Men need affection, and men should be affectionate.
This is what Jesus showed.
He said, I yearn for you all with the affections of Christ Jesus.
We need to be affectionate.
Men, a strong man is strong enough to be affectionate.
He can give hugs.
He can be tender.
All right?
This is a strong man.
A strong man is meek.
What is meekness?
Meekness is controlled strength.
Okay?
If you're strong, but you can't control your strength, that's not really strength.
That is a strength.
That's a weakness.
Meekness is true strength because it's controlled strength.
It knows the appropriate time to use strength and the appropriate time to not use the strength.
Okay?
A strong man is born for adversity.
Proverbs 17, 17 says his brother is born for adversity.
He runs two hard, heavy things because he can lift them.
Lamentations 3, 27 says it's good for a man that he bear the yoke when he's young.
Okay?
If you're a young man, bear the yoke.
Do hard things.
Carry heavy things.
There's going to be a day when you're not going to be able to do that.
Do it now.
Take on more.
Fill up your schedule.
Do things that someday you're not going to be able to do.
That's what young men are for.
Okay?
The Bible says this over and over again.
A strong man is hard.
He's solid.
He's firm.
He's rigid.
He's not easily broken by circumstances and difficulty.
A strong man doesn't complain or whine.
He silences that illiteral voice and puts it to death.
John Lovell says, your body is a liar.
At the first sign of discomfort, it yells, hey, I don't like this.
Then when discomfort graduates to pain, the body screams, I can't take anymore.
I'm dying.
Our bodies are such drama queens.
The body is like a spoiled and petulant child that cries out at the first moment its comfort
is challenged.
While babies get to evoke this right, you know, I contend that is one of the most pathetic
attributes in a man.
What I've found over the course of my life are a thousand different physical limitations,
nearly all broken by grit.
Whatever you think is a limit, do not be surprised that on the other side of that horrible moment
is a little more ground you can cover.
You are stronger than you realize, and you only need a test to prove it.
Do you believe this?
It's true.
Okay?
There's always something on the other side.
The strong man is mentally strong because his mind is stayed on the Lord.
Isaiah 26.3 says, you keep in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you because he trusts
in you.
There's a way to be someone who has a stayed mind, a steady mind.
It's one who has their mind stayed on Christ.
Where is your mind?
What is your mind tossed to and fro to?
Are you stressed?
Are you anxious?
Or is your mind stayed on Christ?
Are you ruled by the peace of Christ?
A strong man is emotionally strong.
His emotions are submitted to truth and to God.
A strong man is physically strong.
He stewards the testosterone and the broad shoulders that God gave him.
He puts in the work.
I'm not saying you need to be the rock.
Okay?
I'm not saying you need to be some huge bodybuilder, but you do need to use your God-given strength
and ability to gain strength for his glory and others good.
That's good stewardship.
Okay?
And you need to use it for the right purposes.
A lot of times when my boys are growing up, they'd use their strength to hurt their sisters
and say, hey, is that what your strength is for?
No, Dad.
It's not what it's for.
It's like, yeah, that's not what your strength is for.
We don't need to teach our kids that it's wrong to use their strength.
Sometimes parents do this and that's the wrong mentality.
The thing they did wrong when they hurt their sister is not that they used their strength.
It's that they used their strength inappropriately.
That strength, God made them strong and you should affirm the fact that they are strong.
Then you just have to teach them how to use their strength.
Use your strength to protect your sister, not to hurt her.
Strong man is confident and courageous.
He fears God.
Proverbs 14, 26 says,
In the fear of the Lord, one has strong confidence.
No fear of man, no fear of cost, fear of a fight, no fear of loss.
Okay?
Strong man is strong in faith.
He believes God.
He believes in who God has made him.
He's optimistic.
He believes in Romans 8, 31.
If God is for us, then who can be against us?
Okay?
That's the kind of optimism that you want.
The kind that comes from God himself.
If God is for us, then who can be against us?
Do you believe that God is for you?
Or are you hell-bent on believing every single narrative that comes your way
that says that everything's against you?
The world's against you.
The system's against you.
The government's against you.
Your spouse is against you.
Your parents are against you.
Everyone's against you.
A lot of us have faith in the opposite direction.
It's not an absence of faith that is our problem.
It's that our faith is what the Bible calls unbelief,
which is essentially not an absence of faith.
It's just faith, having more faith that bad things will happen to me
than good things will.
I have more faith in my ability to screw things up
and other people's ability to screw things up
than I have in God's ability to save me and to do good for me.
What do you believe?
2 Timothy 1.12 says,
I'm not ashamed for I know whom I have believed.
Do you know him?
Do you know God?
Are you strong in your belief?
I don't know where all you're at.
I don't know all of you.
Some of you came here.
Maybe you're weak in belief.
Okay?
Your weak belief needs to be challenged.
Right?
And do you have more strength in your belief of all other things
and you can't believe that the God who created you could love you enough
to send his son to make a way that through him
and his death, burial, and resurrection,
your sins could be covered, forgiven,
and that you could be given the inheritance for eternity of a son
so that your sins would no longer be held against you
and that you could have eternal life.
Do you believe that?
Is that so far-fetched?
No, it's not.
It's the good news.
It's the gospel.
Jesus came to prove that true.
He came to accomplish that.
And he did.
And if you believe it, there's no greater thing.
A strong man is strong in faith.
A strong man has a strong will.
He doesn't give up.
He finishes.
He's determined.
Theodore Roosevelt said,
Courage is not having the strength to go on.
It's going on when you don't have the strength.
Winston Churchill.
These are two of my favorite quotes.
Winston Churchill.
Some people say you didn't even say these.
But we don't know who said them,
so I'm just going to keep them with Winston Churchill
because I like Winston Churchill.
Winston Churchill said,
Success is not final.
Failure is not fatal.
It's the courage to continue that counts.
And he also said,
Success consists of going from failure to failure
without loss of enthusiasm.
I love that one.
Okay?
Failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.
That's what men do.
You think you're going to figure out some way
to live as a man or you don't fail?
Good luck with that.
I'd love to see how you figure that one out.
You will fail.
So what?
When you're going through hell,
you know what you do?
You keep going.
David Goggins says,
Don't stop when you're tired.
Stop when you're done.
That's good advice.
Sounds like you have got this.
Strong man is strong in conviction and character.
He has strong beliefs and doctrine
that are based on something.
He has backbone, spine, and consistency.
He fears the Lord.
Strong man's trustworthy.
He makes strong commitments
and has a strong word.
He can be counted on.
He's reliable.
Can you be counted on?
When you say something,
can people trust that what you say,
you will do?
That your word is your bond?
Psalm 15 verse 4 in the CSB says,
He keeps his word no matter what the cost.
That's a strong man.
Ezra 10 verse 4 says,
Be strong and do it.
Strength is doing what you say you're going to do.
Brent Hanson said,
We need men who commit.
That means making choices
that cut off other options.
Uh-oh.
Well, what about FOMO?
Fear of missing out.
I mean, if I make a decision,
I make a commitment,
that means I might miss out on something better.
Exactly.
You will.
You will miss out.
That is what decide is.
The strong man is courageously decisive.
He's single-minded.
In fact, the Latin word,
where we get the word decide from,
literally means to cut off.
Okay?
A decision is killing off other options
to firmly establish a single course of action.
It looks something like this.
I'm sorry, I have a prior commitment.
Some of you may be listening to that
and you think,
Did he just speak English?
I don't know if I've ever heard that phrase before.
Is that another language?
Men have to say,
Sorry, I have another commitment.
I can't do that.
Hey, you want to go to the show?
You want to go to this thing or whatever?
Well, I actually have another commitment on that.
But, this sounds a lot better.
No, the man says,
No, I have a prior commitment.
I can't go.
It's that simple.
There's no him-hawing about it.
There's no arguing about it.
There's no, you know,
It's just, hey, sorry.
I can't go.
I have a prior commitment.
That's what a man does.
He's strongly, courageously decisive,
and single-minded.
A strong man is courageous
and strong in obedience.
Joshua 1, 6-9 says,
Only be strong and courageous,
being careful to do according to all the law
that Moses, my servant, commanded you.
Do not turn from it to the right or to the left.
He's strong and courageous in obedience.
It takes courage to obey God,
to be consistent to obey God.
1 Kings 2, 2-3,
David said,
I'm about to go the way of all the earth.
Be strong and show yourself a man,
and keep the charge of the Lord your God,
walking in his ways and keeping his statutes,
his commandments, his rules, and his testimonies,
as it is written in the law of Moses.
This is what he told Solomon right before he died.
Be strong and show yourself a man.
What kind of strength did he tell him to do?
The strength that obeys God.
Strength that obeys God.
There's nothing stronger than a man who obeys God.
Nothing like it.
1 Chronicles 28, 7-10 says,
I will establish his kingdom forever
if he continues strong in keeping my commandments
and my rules as he is today.
Strong in keeping commandments.
Strong man is strong in battle.
2 Corinthians 25, verse 8 says,
Go act.
Be strong for battle.
He stands against lies and evil.
He's a freedom fighter
against all the things that are against the truth.
Strong man is strong and courageous in speech.
He speaks the truth without fear.
Strong man is strong with women.
He goes to the woman not to get strength,
but to offer it.
And that's what a woman wants.
A woman doesn't want you to go to her to get strength
because she knows she can't give it to you.
All right?
She wants you to go to her to offer her your strength.
That's what it's for.
This ends up being someone who's confident to talk to women,
to ask a woman out if you're single.
And it's a man who knows how to appropriately stand up
to a woman for her good.
Strong man has a strong focus and vision.
He has vision for every area of his life.
Do you have vision for your life?
Do you know where you're going?
Do you have a plan?
Do you have purpose?
Are you just kind of meandering through life?
Aimless.
John Piper says aimlessness is akin to lifelessness.
Are you aimless or do you have vision?
Strong man is broken.
What do we need to be broken of?
Our own strength.
The strong man is broken of his own strength
and embraces the strength that comes from God.
He's not relying on his flesh
and the strong arm of the flesh.
He relies on the person and work of Jesus
to be his strength.
He relies on God himself.
He's not trusting in himself.
Strong man is secure.
He has a strong identity.
He's comfortable in his own skin.
Everything he has in Christ,
he's free to lose everywhere else.
He has nothing to prove,
therefore he has nothing to hide.
If you have something to prove,
you always have something to hide
because you can't prove it.
Okay?
If you're trying to prove that you can be someone,
you can't,
which means it'll necessitate you hiding things.
All right?
Everything you have in Christ,
you're free to lose everywhere.
If you know who you are in Christ,
you're free to be misrepresented everywhere else.
If you're right in Christ,
you're free to be wrong everywhere else.
Some guys cannot be wrong.
They fight tooth and nail to be right,
even when deep down they know they're wrong
because their hope isn't being right.
If your hope isn't being right,
then you're never free to be wrong,
which means you're a really rough person to be with.
Okay?
That's not the kind of man you want to be.
So the question remains,
that's the strong man and the weak man.
Question is,
how do we get stronger?
How do we get more courageous?
We don't want to be strong, man.
It's easy to listen to those things and say,
well, of course,
I want to be strong.
How do I do that?
Well, how do you get more strong?
Physically.
You carry more weight.
It's the same thing for all other areas of strength.
You got to carry more responsibility.
Take things on.
Hey, you're a man.
You can do it.
You can handle it.
Again, God made your shoulders broad
because he made you to carry heavy things.
And that's not just physically.
It's in every area.
So add weight.
Add responsibility.
See how you come through.
See how God's grace is sufficient for you.
Okay?
Embrace adversity.
Do hard things.
Comfort makes you weak.
Difficulty and resistance build strength.
Gene Michael Hoff says,
Hard times create strong men.
Strong men create good times.
Good times create weak men.
And weak men create hard times.
Okay?
Embrace hard times.
Philip Brooks says,
Do not pray for easy lives.
Pray to be stronger men.
Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers.
Pray for powers equal to your tasks.
Then the doing of the work shall be no miracle.
But you should be the miracle.
And then Teddy Roosevelt said,
I wish to preach not the doctrine of ignoble ease,
but the doctrine of the strenuous life.
The life of toil and effort.
Of labor and strife.
To preach that highest form of success,
which comes not to the man who desires mere easy peace,
but to the man who does not shrink from danger,
from hardship, or from bitter toil,
and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph.
You have to embrace adversity.
You know one of the ways you can do that too?
You know one of the ways you can grow stronger?
This is one you don't hear a lot,
but I want you to listen.
Fasting.
You know,
the old-fashioned Christian discipline
of giving up food on a regular basis.
Fasting is weakness training.
Okay?
Fasting is training yourself to say no
to what your flesh wants when you're weak.
You understand that?
When you fast,
you're actually making yourself weak,
and you have to train yourself to say no
to what you want in your weakness.
Since most sins are committed in moments of weakness,
fasting is a useful tool.
When you're tempted to break your fast
because you're voluntarily weak,
hungry, cold,
and have to pee a lot,
and you say no to your flesh,
you're training yourself to say no to your flesh
when you're involuntarily weak.
A soft generation doesn't fast because it's hard.
A hard generation fasts to become hard.
Okay?
We need to be able to say no
in times of weakness.
Clearly, most of us,
we look at the worst of our sins,
the most difficult of our sins.
We end up falling into it at a time of weakness.
Have we trained ourselves to say no
to what we want in times of weakness?
God gave us a means to do that.
It's called fasting.
Do you have a regular fasting rhythm?
A man should think of this.
How do we get stronger, more courageous?
We build the brotherhood.
Proverbs 27, 17 says,
Iron sharpens iron,
and one man sharpens another.
Do you have brothers in your life
who sharpen you?
Are you surrounding yourself
with strong men
and a strong church?
Some men don't think church is important.
Are you kidding me?
You're going to be a strong man
on your own?
Yeah, like all the other men
who've ever done that.
None.
That just never happens.
You want to be a strong man,
you've got to be surrounded by strong.
You want to be a strong man,
you've got to be surrounded by strong men.
You know where a good place to do that is?
A church with strong men.
If your church doesn't have strong men,
I highly advise you
to go find another one.
Okay?
The church of course
should be full of strong men.
That's super important.
We should be watching other men.
1 Samuel 17, 51-53 says,
David ran and stood over the Philistine
and took his sword
and drew it out of its sheath,
this is of Goliath,
and killed him
and cut off his head with it.
When the Philistines saw
that their champion was dead,
they fled.
And the men of Israel and Judah
rose with a shout
and pursued the Philistines
as far as Gath
and the gates of Akron.
And the people of Israel
came back from chasing the Philistines
and they plundered their camp.
These are the same men,
older men,
who were afraid to go out
to the battlefield
day after day after day.
They saw one act of courage
and they were all inspired.
This is what men do
when they're with each other.
One courageous act
inspires the rest.
This is why you need
other men in your life.
Do you have men
who you see do courageous things?
Are the men in your life,
the brothers in your life,
the friends in your life
who are men,
do they do things
that inspire you?
If they don't,
what's going on?
And start with you.
Are you a man
who inspires the men around you?
And are you building
a brotherhood of men
who inspire one another,
just like David did
to the Israelites?
We get stronger
through experience,
proven track records,
small wins,
like David killing
his lion and his bear.
Before he killed Goliath,
he killed the lion
and the bear.
And when he came to Saul
and said,
hey, I'll take on Goliath,
his cries were,
I've killed the lion
and the bear.
This uncircumcised Philistine
will just be like one of them.
Okay?
I'll cut off his head
and feed his flesh
to the birds of the air.
Okay.
How did he talk like that?
He killed the bear
and the lion first.
What's your proverbial
lion and bear
that you need to kill
that you're avoiding?
Go kill it.
So when the giant comes,
you're ready.
Frank Thornhill says,
stronger generations
weren't fearless,
they were practiced.
Frank Thornhill also said,
strength is built
in mundane commitments
honored repeatedly.
Do you have these?
How do we get stronger
and more courageous?
We take risks.
We do what we're afraid of.
You face your fears.
How do we get stronger?
We go to the Lord.
You're only as strong
as your source.
Ephesians 6.10 says,
be strong in the Lord
and in the strength
of his might.
2 Timothy 2, verse 1,
be strengthened by the grace
that is in Christ Jesus.
1 Chronicles 29.10 says,
in your hand are power
and might,
and in your hand
is to make great
and to give strength to all.
Do you believe that?
Do you believe that God
is the source of your strength?
Do you go to him
to get strength?
Do you believe every morning
when you pray to him
and ask for strength
that guess what?
He'll give it to you.
That even when you're faithless,
he is still faithful.
Do you believe that?
You won't be a strong man
until you do.
He is the source.
You must be strong
and courageous.
We have to embrace
weakness and brokenness.
2 Corinthians 12.9-10,
God said to Paul,
He said to me,
my grace is sufficient for you,
for my power is made
perfect in weakness.
Therefore,
I will boast all the more
gladly of my weaknesses,
so that the power of Christ
may rest upon me.
For the sake of Christ,
then,
I am content with weakness,
insults,
hardships,
persecutions,
and calamities.
For when I am weak,
then I am strong.
Do you hate to be weak?
Do you run from weakness?
In the Christian ethic,
it's strength.
Weakness is strength.
How do you get stronger?
You weigh on the Lord.
Isaiah 40, 28-31.
Have you not know?
Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
the creator of the ends of the earth.
He doesn't faint.
He doesn't grow weary.
His understanding is unsearchable.
He gives power to the faint,
and to him who has no might,
he increases strength.
Even you shall faint and be weary,
and young men shall fall exhausted,
but they who wait for the Lord
shall renew their strength.
They shall mount up with wings like eagles.
They shall run and not be weary.
They shall walk and not be faint.
We must go to the Lord to get strength.
It actually says in 1 Samuel 2, 12,
that the sons of Eli were worthless men,
because they did not know the Lord.
Why were they worthless?
Well, they were totally weak.
If they didn't know the Lord,
they had no strength worthy of anything.
Don't be a worthless man.
1 Samuel 17, 36 said that David
has defied the armies of the living God.
He said, I'm sorry, he said Goliath.
This Goliath has defied the armies of the living God.
The reason he had boldness
is because he knew that his God was greater.
Do you know that about your God?
Have you been filled with the Spirit?
Are you continually looking to be filled with the Spirit?
Look at the difference between Peter pre-filled with the Spirit
and post-filled with the Spirit.
He's a different guy.
Do you embrace the filling of the Spirit of God
and know that it's for you?
In closing, I say the two verses I started with.
1 Kings 2, verse 2.
Be strong and show yourself a man.
In 1 Corinthians 16, 13,
act like men.
Be strong.
Amen.
Thank you.