Stronger Men - Saddleback Weekend Message

[MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] Saddle that church, they show good to see all the house of God tonight. Why don't we stand up to our feet and let's praise the one who is with us in every season of life, amen. Come on. [MUSIC] Wait all I see is the battle, you see my victory. [MUSIC] Wait all I see is a mountain, you see a mountain move. [MUSIC] Walk through the shadows, your love surrounds me. [MUSIC] There's nothing to fear, there's nothing to fear now. For I am safe with you. Come on, let's sing this together when I fight. So when I fight, I fight on my knees with my head lifted high. God, the battle belongs to you in every fear. They are your feet, I'll sing through the night. God, the battle belongs to you. [MUSIC] And if you are for me, who can't be against me. [MUSIC] For Jesus, there's nothing impossible for you. [MUSIC]

Wait all I see are the ashes, you see the beauty. [MUSIC] Wait all I see is a cross, God, you see the end. [MUSIC] So when I fight, I fight on my knees with my head lifted high. God, the battle belongs to you in every fear. They are your feet, I'll sing through the night. God, the battle belongs to you. [MUSIC] Ain't nobody fortress, you're gonna be for us. Nothing can stand against the power of our God. You're shining the shadows, you in every battle. Nothing can stand, nothing can stand against the power of our God. Sing all mighty fortress, hit all mighty fortress. Sing you're gonna be for us. Nothing can stand against the power of our God. You're shining the shadows, you in every battle. Nothing can stand against the power of our God. [MUSIC] Nothing can stand against the power of our God You shine in the shadows You win every battle Nothing can stand against the power of our God So we're not fired Fight on my knees We might have 60 lives Oh God, the battle belongs to you Every fear they had your feet I'll sing through the night Oh God, the battle belongs to you

You know God, the battle belongs to you Amen, the bad life, battle belongs to our God, our Almighty God No matter what we're facing today No matter what trials we may face tomorrow He is the same God, He is close to us He's not a God that is far The Bible says that He will never leave us No for saying that He is close to us So we can worship Him, we can give our thanks to Him So come on, let's lift our voice Oh, the saints and angels Bow before your throne And so the elders cast Their crowns before the land of God and sin You are worthy of it all You are worthy of it all For from you are all things And to you are all things You deserve the glory So do you You deserve the glory Yes, you do Come on, the saints are the saints of angels Oh, the saints and angels Bow before your throne And so the elders cast Their crowns before the land of God and sin Come on, you are worthy of it all You are worthy of it all For from you are all things

And to you are all things You deserve the glory Yes, you are worthy of it all You are worthy of it all For from you are all things And to you are all things You deserve the glory From the rising of the sun To the setting of the same We will worship you long Come on, let's lift our voice to Him day and night Day and night, night and day That incense arrives Day and night, night and day That incense arrives Day and night, night and day That incense arrives Day and night, night and day That incense arrives Day and night, night and day That incense arrives Day and night, night and day That incense arrives Day and night, night and day Day and night, night and day You're worthy of it all You're worthy of it all For from you, for from you are all things Can't tell me no matter what things You deserve what the world is on with grace

You're worthy of it all You're worthy of it all For from you are all things And you are all things You deserve the glory Come on, see, you're worthy of it all You're worthy of it all For from you are all things And to you are all things You deserve, you deserve the glory Come on, let's sing it one more time You're worthy of it all You're worthy of it all For from you are all things And to you are all things You deserve the glory Sing, you deserve the glory Oh, you deserve the glory Come on, let's tell them right now You deserve the glory Oh, you deserve the glory You're worthy filled with your glory You deserve the glory Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah

Hallelujah Hallelujah Sing Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah Are you a part of my need? Worthy is a lamb Worthy is a lamb You are holy Holy Are you a God? Oh my I'll hear this filled with your glory Worthy is a lamb Worthy is a lamb Worthy is a lamb Worthy is a lamb Worthy is a lamb Worthy is a lamb Worthy is a lamb Worthy is a lamb Worthy is a lamb Worthy is a lamb Worthy is a lamb ♪ Are you Lord God ♪ ♪ Oh, my King ♪ ♪ Where the is the man ♪ ♪ Where the is the man ♪ ♪ You are holy ♪ ♪ You are holy ♪

♪ Oh, hey ♪ ♪ Are you Lord God ♪ ♪ Oh my, I believe where the answer is ♪ ♪ Where the answer is ♪ ♪ Where the answer is ♪ ♪ Where the answer is ♪ ♪ Where the answer is ♪ ♪ Where the answer is ♪ ♪ Where the answer is ♪ ♪ Where the answer is ♪ ♪ Where the answer is ♪ ♪ Oh my, oh my ♪ ♪ Oh, oh my ♪ ♪ Oh my ♪ - Amen, Jesus is holy and he is worthy of all of our praise and worship. It is so great worshiping with you. Welcome to Salabak Church. I'm so glad that you're here. My name is Nicholas if we haven't gotten to meet yet. And I would love to know where you're watching with us from. I know that every single week we have so many people from across the US, in California, Louisiana, Florida, and all around the world like in South Africa or in Australia who watch and join us for church every single week. So I'd love to know where you are joining us from. Let us know in the comments down below. I also wanna take a moment right now and invite you to hit the link in the description down below

or download our Salabak app. Both are gonna give you access to our digital program that'll help you to follow along with our service today. Now if you're new here, we would love to welcome you. So make sure to go to the app, hit the new year button and hit online community as your campus so that someone from our team can personally welcome you to our church. Now this week we are kicking off our stronger series and we're gonna hear a little bit more about that in a moment, but throughout this series we are engaging in our five week challenge and we would love to invite you to participate in that. You see, we believe that when we commit to consistently attending church, our faith grows exponentially. And so if you live nearby one of our physical campus locations, we would love to encourage you in these next five weeks to attend in person with us. We have locations all across Southern California and around the world and you can find more info about these by going to salabak.com/locations. And if you don't live nearby one of these, that's okay too. We would love to invite you to participate in the five week challenge by joining us here in the online community every single week. Well, let's go ahead and hear a little bit more about our stronger series together. - Every weekend I get about 30 minutes with you and I absolutely love those 30 minutes.

But I've never once walked off that stage thinking I said everything that needed to be said. In fact, I often think there's more, more of what God has to say to you about your marriage, your kids, your work, the stuff that you're caring that nobody sees. So every week, I'm taking what we talked about on the weekend and going deeper for the drive in, for the morning run, the dishes after the house finally goes quiet, wherever you are, whatever your week looks like because you were never meant to be strong on your own. (upbeat music) This is the stronger podcast. New episodes every Monday, wherever you get your podcasts. (upbeat music) (audience applauding) - Well, church family, so good to be together. I wanna say welcome to those of you who are joining us online and all of our campuses. Today, we're starting a brand new message series called stronger and you just watch. We're launching a podcast this week, which I'm very excited about. As you heard me say in that video, there's so many moments where I feel like there's more that God wants to say than we have time to get into. So we're gonna do this as an experiment. You'll let us know on the backside

if you think we should keep doing it and we believe God wants to use it. Just to bless you and take us deeper in what we talk about. So today, as we launched this series called stronger, I gotta do a little bit of a trip back to last summer. We had the World Cup. How many of you guys were like way into the World Cup this last summer, just out of curiosity? I know our Argentina campus was. You were way into it, you almost won. We were sad about that. But you know, on the World Cup, there were all these commercials. Some of you guys maybe are like more into the commercials than others. How many of you guys like you watch the commercials? You're like, you're into it, okay? So I was watching this summer and there was this one commercial that just kind of stopped me in my tracks. It was actually for a bank and the advertisement had nothing to do with banking. But there was a guy in the commercial. He was a soccer player. And then at the end, there was this one line What would you like to have the strength to do? And what struck me about that question was the reality that so many people in society at large right now, they feel weakened, and there's a weakening of agency. So many people, they feel overwhelmed with life, they feel overwhelmed financially, and they live weakened lives.

And that's not God's design. What God wants for you, what God wants for us as a church family is that we would live with strength. And what God does, through His Word, He gives us a different kind of strength than what the world has to offer. So throughout the course of this series, we're going to come to God's design of how God designed life to work. And in particular, we're going to dive into what the Bible teaches all the way back in the book of Genesis, that God has a design for how we do life as men, as women, with marriages. We launched the Stronger Home Initiative last year. So let me give you a little snapshot of where we're going with this series. We're going to talk this first week about what it means to be a stronger man. And how do you live into the fullness men of God's design for you? Next week, we're going to talk about stronger women, and actually Stacey's going to bring that message because she's a much stronger woman than I am. You know, I'm not a woman, so she'll be able to relate to you ladies out there. Third week, we're going to talk about stronger marriages. And then the fourth week together, we'll tie that with the home. And then the fifth and final week, we'll look at God's desire for us to have generational impact. Now, what I love about our church is that we have so many people at different places in the journey spiritually, different places in their life. There are a lot of people in our church who are single. There are a lot of people who are married. There are single parents. And what I believe is wherever you are, God's design and His wisdom can strengthen your life. Now, I do have to say on the front end of this message for the women who are married and in church with your husband this weekend, there's going to be a little bit of a temptation when I say something because I'm going to come strong today. When I say something that maybe you really want your husband to get, you might be tempted to one elbow him or say, "Amen," real loud. That's my best female, amen. And I just want to encourage you to resist that temptation, okay? Because, again, next week, it's coming for you. And then, in addition to that, there are some of you that maybe you'll hear this message, and then your husband goes back and starts to apply what he heard this weekend,

and you're going to be like, "You're just doing that because that's, again, my best voice. You're just doing that because you heard the sermon." And I want to encourage you, like, give him a big, like, loud, your amazing cheer when he does it, okay? So, you guys with me? Track it with me? Okay. So, we're going to look today at Genesis chapter 1. If you have your notes, I want to invite you to pull them out. We're going to go all the way back to Genesis 1. And what I want you to hear from me as we jump in today is that this whole series is from my heart to you as a pastor around what I believe is one of the most important subjects of our day. That I watch so many people who have been confused around the fullness of God's design. And even in the church, there's so many people that don't know what the Bible teaches. So, I want to dive in to the Word of God, what God's Word says about gender, about marriage, about how we relate to one another, and how we build stronger lives as a result of God's wisdom and his design. So, in Genesis chapter 1, beginning in verse 27, I want to invite you, if you will, to read aloud with me at all of our campuses, Genesis chapter 1, 27, and 28 says this. So, God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number. Fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground." Now, for six days, God's created. And as he created everything he made, he said, "It's good." So, he creates the land, he creates the sea, he creates the skies. All of it, he says, "It's good." And what we need to recognize is that God's stamp is different on humanity than any other part of creation. Now, I do have to say here at Saddleback, we love dogs. And people oftentimes bring their dogs to the Lake Forest campus.

But there's a reason why we don't baptize dogs, because dogs are not made in the image of God. I know we love them, but they're different. We had one lady come up after service one time, wanted to know if we could baptize her cat. And we're like, "No, we cannot baptize your cat." We don't do that around here. There's another church down the road that you might be able to find that could do that. I think it's called the Satanist Church. They'll do that for you, but not here. And the reason why is humans are made in the image of God, and notice how he says, Male and female, he created them. So you might underline that statement. So God, he gives equality to men and women in the Garden of Eden on the sixth day when he creates. He says, male and female are made in the image of God. It says that he blessed them and said to them, be fruitful and increase in number. Fill the earth and subdue it. So the same blessing, the same stamp that God gave to man, he gave to woman in his image, a blessing to go forth. So he sends Adam and Eve, he says, I want you to go forth, be fruitful and multiply, to work together to accomplish my purpose here on planet earth. Now this is beautiful. And what I hope that you can see is the good news and all of this that God gives a gift of sons and daughters that would work together to accomplish his purpose. God loves his sons and God loves his daughters. And God is not at competition in his mind with his love for his sons or his love for his daughters. God wanted a big family with sons and daughters together,

experiencing the fullness of his love. So this gives us dignity to both men and women that we see in Genesis chapter one. That God gives dignity to both men and women. And what I've noticed many times, and you've probably seen this before, the guys are together, they're talking down about the women. The women are together, they're talking down about the men. And what I believe is really important is that for both genders, men and women to give dignity to one another, to lift one another up and value the opposite gender. And so often we get confused about this. Now there's not only the dignity that God gives to men and women, but now in Genesis chapter two, you're gonna start to see as God makes Adam, you're gonna see this double click that God does in the scriptures on the sixth day of creation. So he creates mankind, you see this in Genesis 1, 27 and 28. But then we almost go backwards in Genesis chapter two to the moment when God first makes Adam and then he makes Eve. And I want you to notice in Genesis two, verse 15, it says, "The Lord God took them in, "and he put him in the garden of Eden "to work it and take care of it." So I want you to underline those two phrases, to work it and to take care of it. So this is intentional.

Before Eve comes into the world, God says to Adam, the first man, he says, "You are here in the garden of Eden "and your assignment is to work the garden "and to take care of it." Now there are two words that we see in the Hebrew, the original language, and I wanna unpack them for just a moment. The first word is habbad, and it's gonna come on the screen. Can we say that together? Habbad, nobody said that, right? But I think we're close enough. And what that word means is it means to work, to serve or to cultivate. So God says to Adam in the garden, you have an assignment, it's work. Work is not after the fall, work is before sin enters into the world. So men are given the job description, you're to work the garden and cultivate it. And the second word is shamar. Can we say that together? Shamar. And what that word means is to keep, to guard or to watch over. So he gives the provision assignment, and he gives a protection assignment to man right in the garden of Eden. So Adam now is given this commission from God,

that he would dignify work, and he would dignify the protection that Adam was supposed to give to his wife, Eve. Now Adam was all alone for a little while, we don't know how long their Bible verses about to God, a day is like a thousand years, but what we do know is there was a given period of time where Adam was alone. And you have to imagine, for just a moment, Adam like in the garden of Eden, with the art vark and the cats and the dogs and all the animals. And God looks at this, and it says that when God looked at Adam in Genesis two, verse 18, it says the Lord God said, "It is not good for man to be alone, "I will make a helper who is suitable for him." So God is going to make a helper that comes alongside, and Adam and Eve are going to work together. They're gonna be given an assignment by God, and they have unique and distinct roles in the relationship. So the second thing that we see in Genesis two, and we'll unpack this more, is we see a distinction between the role and the assignment that God gives to man and to woman. And these distinctives that he gives to man and woman are to compliment one another and work together. Now if we look at culture, we're so often told that we need to be at opposition with one another,

but God's beautiful, perfect design is that we would build one another up and compliment one another in relationship. So God looks at Adam and says, "It's not good for him to be alone." Now right within this, God gives Adam a very clear instruction, and you may remember If you were in a little Bible study class at church, you probably remember reading that moment where God creates Adam and Eve. He puts them into the garden and he says, there's all this stuff to Adam. He says, there are all these plants, all this vegetation, all this fruit to Adam. He says that you were to eat any of this, but there's this one tree called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and you're to not eat of that one tree. And that instruction, it's very important for us to see. God gives the instruction to Adam before Eve ever enters into the equation. So Adam knows the command from God. Eve actually hears the command through Adam and we're gonna see what happens as a result of their response to the enemy in the next chapter. But I want us to notice the spiritual responsibility that God gives to Adam and then he looks at him and he says, it's not good for him to be alone. So he causes him to go into a sleep, verse 20.

But for Adam, there was no suitable helper who was found. So the Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep. And while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs. He closed it up, the place with flesh, and then the Lord God made a woman from the rib that he had taken out of the man and he brought her to the man. Now, when you look at the Bible, if you have a physical Bible in front of you, you will notice that this next section is indented in the Bible. And the reason why it's indented is because Adam sees Eve for the first time and he breaks out into a song. Now, I broke out into a song, last service, it was horrible. I'm not gonna do it this time, okay? I'm just gonna read it with a little bit of a cadence, okay? So Adam looks, he's like, this is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh, for she shall be called woman, for she was taken out of man. So Adam is so elated after looking at all these animals. He's like, finally, here's this woman. And this woman that comes forth, God designs woman for man and man for woman to be together in relationship with one another. And it says then, this then, for this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and they will become one flesh, the man and his wife were both naked and they felt no shame. Now, if you look at that verse one more time, let's just keep it on the screen.

For this reason, a man will do what? He will, can you say it with me? He will leave, he will leave. It doesn't say he will stay in his mom's basement and play PlayStation until he's 27. He will leave his father and mother and then he will be united to his wife and then they will become one flesh. There's an order that God establishes. So a man leaves his family of origin. He gets united to his wife in marriage and then they consummate the marriage. So this is God's design. So sexual intimacy is designed to happen after the covenant of marriage. A man and woman get married and God's design is then that they would enter into sexual intimacy. It's a beautiful gift that God gives to mankind. There's a joy, there's reproduction, there is the blessing that goes forth into all of creation because of the beauty of this design. We have perverted this design in our culture and we've gotten confused about the order. And it's not just the definition of marriage that is given from school systems. It comes down from generation to generation that many people have bought into a lie that they don't have to do marriage God's way but they could somehow still experience the blessing and the benefit of God's design.

And what I wanna tell you is when you receive this gift from God, there's a blessing that comes when you reject that gift, there's pain that we experience as a result. And so God's design is for our flourishing. And that means that in the context of marriage, there's a deep covenant commitment. And so many men, I'm speaking to those of you who are single, so many men have a warped view of sexual intimacy. And there's so many dumb things that men say. I feel like, I shouldn't even say them, but you've heard them before. Like men will say, I'm just gonna test drive it like a car. And you're like, no, that's not a car. That is a daughter of Most High God. And you are to love her and protect her. And your assignment before the Lord is to have a kind of purity of your heart to protect her. And if you're one of the young women in our church and you're dating somebody, and he's taking advantage of you with sexual intimacy and putting pressure on you, you run from him. That's not love, that is him meeting his own need. And what God is saying is there is a beautiful way to do it. And when we receive it, there is a gift that flows into our lives. Now, part of the challenge for us now is that we stand on the opposite side of the fall and the impact of sin. And for Adam and Eve at this point,

the dignity has been established, the distinction has been established, but now enter in in Genesis chapter three. pervert the relationship that they have with one another. So God says, this tree, you're to not eat of it. The enemy, the tempter, Satan comes. And in verse six and seven, what we see is he's tempting Eve, and he says that the word says this. When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and she ate it. She also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate it. And then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were both naked, so they sewed fig leaves together, and they made coverings for themselves. And this is the first moment, shame enters into the human race. Sin has come, Adam had a responsibility between he and Eve before the Lord that he would protect her. And instead of standing between her and evil, he stands by and lets the enemy get right to his wife, and as a result, sin enters into the world. Now, in their nakedness, they hide from God, and God comes into the garden. And in verse nine, this is the question of scripture that God asks over and over again in scripture. You see this, the Lord God called to the man, and he says, where are you?

Now, when God asks a question, God never asks a question for his own information. God is not like, oh, I can't find you on life 360, where are you? God is saying to Adam and Eve, he's coming to Adam first, and he's saying, where are you to expose to Adam the condition that he now finds himself in? Now, in verse 12, we see this condition deeply embedded in the brokenness of man. In Genesis chapter three, verse 12, it starts. It says, the man said, the woman you put here with me, she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it. The blame game starts in Genesis chapter three, verse 12, and it's been going for thousands and thousands of years. And the natural tendency is to want to blame somebody else for our choices, and now what the enemy has done is the enemy has distorted the image that God has given in relationship between a man and a woman. So sin enters into the world. In Genesis chapter three, verses six through nine, 16 through 19, the curse of sin, the brokenness of sin enters into the world. So the rest of the story of scripture is going to be God redeeming what was broken because of sin. Now, we live on the other side of the fall, and you've got to ask the question, well, what do you do with all of this? And the confusion that we have in our culture right now

is not just because of social media, it's not just because of a school system, the confusion comes back to the enemy's attempt from the beginning of time to put man and woman at odds with one another to get us to tear one another down and to not live into the fullness of his design. So what I want to do as your pastor, I'm speaking to the men, I want to call out of you the beauty and the dignity of your manhood right now. And I want to lift before you a bigger vision that God has for you. I understand that there are so many messages that tear men down in our culture right now. You can watch any movie, YouTube shows, men are often, if not always, the butt of the joke. And the reality is that's a part of the strategy to tear down, and what we want to do in our church is we want to build the men of Saddleback up. We want to build you up with the identity that God has given to you. So my hope is in the next few moments that from God's word, your heart would be encouraged that you would be inspired and you would walk out of the service at all of our campuses with your head held high, your shoulders back, receiving the identity that your heavenly father has given to you. So there are four things, there are four particular identities that I want us to notice.

And if you listen to the podcast this week, we go deeper on this. So I wanted to spend a lot of time on Genesis 1, 2, and 3. And if you didn't get it in your notes, somebody told me last service, they didn't get it 'cause I flew through it maybe or didn't come on the screen. It was first dignity with gender. It was second distinction. And number three, it was finally the distortion that the enemy gives. So we're now looking, how do we get back to the dignity and the distinction for both men and women? Men this week, women next week. So we're gonna look at second Timothy chapter two verses one through seven. And very briefly, Paul is speaking to a younger Timothy and I want you to notice how he speaks into identity. So it says this, Timothy, my dear son, be strong through the grace that God gives you in Christ Jesus. You've heard me teach these things that have been confirmed by reliable witnesses. Now teach these truths to other trustworthy people who will be able to pass them on to others. He calls him a son. the Most High God. To my dear son, he says, endure suffering along with me as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. Soldiers don't get tied up in the affairs of civilian life or they cannot please the officer who enlisted them and athletes cannot

win the prize unless they follow the rules. And hard-working farmers should be the first to enjoy the fruit of their labored. Think about what I'm saying and the Lord will help you, Timothy, to understand these things. So he's speaking to these four identities. You also see in 1 Corinthians chapter 16 verse 13. Paul is speaking again. Listen to what he says. "Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men. Be strong and let all that you do be done in love." Now these four identities again are all over the pages of Scripture. We saw them in Genesis 1, 2 and how God relates to Adam in Genesis 3 after the fall. And I want you to see them. The first one is that God calls men to be leaders. God says a part of your identity is that you would initiate, that you would be the one to go first. This is why it's lame when a man allows a woman to get on her knee and propose to him. It should never happen that way. It should never be that way. If you man, if you can't have the courage to get down on a knee to ask a woman to marry you, you should not have a life. So I'm encouraging you right now to initiate in the relationship. But it's not just initiation in the relationship with dating. It's spiritually initiating. It's when there's a problem in culture. It's men going towards the problem. It's men accepting responsibility that God has given to us spiritually. So Paul uses the image of athlete and we're going to talk more about that on the podcast. But one of the things that an athlete does is an athlete trains. An athlete takes responsibility. It's the breeding ground for leadership. Any great leader will tell you that athletics is the breeding ground for the kind of leaders that make a difference in culture and society. Most CEOs, most leaders in government have some form of an athletic background because it's training you to be an initiator. So God gives that responsibility. So often what culture teaches us is that men should sit back. They should let the women do the work. They should watch by while it happens and what the Bible says is that men in love, in kindness, in grace, they initiate. So in culture, a leader oftentimes will use their power for their own benefit and their own blessing. But the definition of leadership that the Bible gives in Matthew 2028, Jesus would speak and he would say the son of man speaking of

himself did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. So a leader in God's kingdom is someone who sacrifices and lays down their life for the good of those around them. So men, God calls you to be someone who sacrifices in leadership for the good and the blessing of those around you. This is not just marriage. This is also in any family where there are men and women. And I think about my two sons who are 20 and 17 years old. And one of the things that you notice in a young man, I'm speaking to the single women who are listening to me right now, if you want to know how a man is going to treat you after you get married, what do you do? You watch him with his mama because the way that he treats his mama is the way that he's going to treat you after you get married. And so we train our sons. We say, we open the door for women. It's chivalry does not have to be gone in our day. Amen. I will amen myself on that one. I know you I said you can't. It's okay to open the door. I've heard of dates where men let the women pay for the meal. That's wrong. That's tough. That's not leadership. So men initiate they serve. They lay down of themselves to bless those around them. This is true for young men who are not married. This is also true in the context of marriage. There is a spiritual leadership. And sometimes for men we don't want to be undignified around other people. I watch this so often. This will tie into the next identity. Men in the worship service. What kind of I can tell they want to lift their hands in worship, but it's a little bit of a it's like a rock. You know rock and roll a little bit. I'm kind of into it. And there's something about a man that is willing to go first spiritually to lead his family, open the Bible, read the word of God, lift his hands in worship because he's grateful for all that God has done. So your strength as a man comes out of that overflow of your relationship with God which leads to the second identity of a lover. So God calls men from their heart to be lovers of those around them to love and bless. He gives him the stamp of sonship. And many men, what happens is that perhaps you have a wound from your past with your father.

And that identity of son has been impacted by the way that you were raised or treated by a dad. And what your heavenly father wants you to know and see today is that he calls you his son. He calls you into this image of sonship that the father's love is poured into our hearts that we might pour that love into the hearts of other people around us. And when a man gets secure in the love of the father, his heavenly father, it transforms the way that he relates to those around him. Men, we want to be at a place where we're not trying to fill a deficit of love that we didn't receive from another human being. You want to fill that deficit with the love of God the father and the more secure I am in that sonship, the more I'll be able to love those around me. Now friends, some of us, maybe when we hear these definitions, we have images of men in our mind. And maybe for some of you women, you're like, that's not what I witnessed in my dad. That's not what I witnessed in my friends or my brothers. And what we're doing here is we're lifting this up to see the beauty of God's design to give a vision for our sons to live into, to give a vision for the men of this house to live into. And could you imagine if men would be secure in their heart to love their families, to sacrifice and to initiate the power that this would produce in our culture, the power that it would produce in our church and communities around us? Friends, we do not need the government to fix our problems. We need men to own their role to love and to serve their families. Statistics will show us right now, the problem of this in our culture right now, what is happening is the problem of fatherlessness. And this should not be a partisan issue. This is not a right and a left issue. This is a biblical issue. And there are so many studies that show us, even from President Obama, when he was the

president that issued all this research, 85 percent of youth who are currently in prison grew up in fatherless homes. Eighty percent of rapists come from fatherless homes. President Obama, when he was president, did this research showing that five times more likely to live, people are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit a crime if they come from a home without a dad. We don't need, we don't need policy, we don't need somebody else to fix the problem. The greatest advantage that a family can have, that sons and daughters can have, is a father and a mother who are both present to love and to invest in their family. And the invitation is to receive that identity from God. Now, I'll just say a couple other things on this. As men, you're here in church this weekend. And I want to commend you. If you're listening to my voice, you're here. And many of you are here with your family. One of the greatest ways that you can lead your family is by being consistent. One, with your reading of the Bible. And two, with your being in church on a weekly basis. Like there is a power when your sons and daughters come in early in the morning and they see you as dad, opening the Bible, praying and seeking the heart of God. And you don't have to make a big deal about it. You don't have to snot those cry when you're doing it. You can just open the Bible, worship Jesus, love him, serve him and your family will be blessed as a result of it. In addition to that, your engagement in church is leading your family spiritually. And I know that there is a busyness in our culture, there's sports, there's school events. That's why at Lake Forest, we got forest services. That's why we have 18 campuses across the world. So there's like no excuse for timing. There's so many places that we can go to go to church at Saddleback or another church.

But that consistency, what it does is it takes our families deeper in their pursuit of God. So that's why we're doing what we're calling the five week challenge. So over the next five weeks, we're saying, what would it look like to establish this habit in our lives at a deeper level? To say, I'm going to be consistent leading my family in church spiritually. And what it does is it will strengthen our faith. This series every week is going to tie together. It's so very important. Our team has worked so hard, you saw earlier some of the images, but I just want you to see them again. What the team has done to help encourage us on this journey of the five week challenge, I think it's going to come on the screen right now. So this five week challenge, it's in the app. And what I love about it is there's such a deep sense of satisfaction when you close that ring, baby. And how many of you have your watches and you're like, you'll go for steps. No, okay, I guess I'm in a club by myself. But what I love about this is there is this resource that we're saying we want to come alongside of you to support and encourage. And I believe that if we would say God, I'll make this habit consistent that we'll experience the blessing of that in our homes and in our church as a result. So I'm very excited about that. Now you'll also notice in your note. There's a little bait and switch here. There's a biblical example in your notes. I'm not going to give you those today. And you might have been asking, why is he not giving those to me? Well, the podcast has those biblical examples. So if you go listen to it this week, you'll get those examples. Somebody came to me after service and they're like, please give me the blanks. And I can just feel like the booze coming from our campuses now because you just love to fill in your blanks. But I'll give you another blank. The third identity that we see is God's design not just for leader and lover, but protector. And notice how Paul says to Timothy. He says, endure suffering along with me as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. So the soldier identity is that a man would say, I have a responsibility to protect those around me from evil. And I heard this story, this last week about a young boy from Michigan from Alpina Township in Michigan,

his 12 years old, his eight year old sister was playing in the background backyard. You may have heard this story. And a man jumps into the backyard and starts running away with his little sister, his eight year old little sister. This 12 year old boy runs into his bedroom, gets his $3 slingshot that his mom bought off at Amazon, gets a marble from the house and goes out with two to three marbles and starts pulling them back to shoot at the man who's running away with his sister. He hits the man in the head with the marble. He hits him in the back and his sister gets loose and runs home. And later the man is found who tried to kidnap his sister with this big old nut at the top of his head because a 12 year old shot him with a marble. How did that get in there? How did that young boy intuitively know that he should protect his sister? Certainly has wonderful parents. But there is inherent in the design of man that God gives us the responsibility to protect. So if I were to say to you late at night, one night somebody starts breaking in the house and I lean over to Stacy and I say to her, "Babe, somebody's breaking in. Can you go check and see what's happening?" You would immediately lose respect for me because you know you inherently know that's my assignment from God to protect and God designs it this way. This is why little boys turn every stick into a sword at three years old in the backyard because they know there is this inherent design to fight off the bad guys to protect the innocent and this is true. If you are a man and you are listening to my voice, there is something about a man that stands between evil and those he's called to protect and he says to the enemy, "You're going to have to get through me to get to my family. You're going to have to go through me to get to the people that God has called me to protect." So there is an assignment and a dignity to your role as a protector and this is spiritually saying, "God, I will stand in the gap for my family." This is why we don't give our 12-year-old kids phones and say, "You just take it and do whatever you want with it." Sometimes parents will give technology to a child with no protection and it's like giving a little porn magazine in the pocket that that kid has constant access to the enemy's strategy to destroy them. And if you are a man and you're listening to my voice and that's your kid, you are called by God to protect your family. That protector identity is given by God. Now it's also connected to this last one and we'll finish on this is the provider identity. So notice in 2 Timothy, Paul says to Timothy, "And hard-working farmers should be the first to enjoy the fruit of their labor." There is a provision aspect to manhood that God says your assignment as a man is to work. Your assignment as a man as long as you are physically able is to provide for your family and there are a lot of men

that would love to depend on their parents for a really long period of time into their late 20s, early 30s. That's not a man you want to marry young women. That's not the kind of man that we're after. We are after, I'm talking to those of you who are young single men, college students right now, that those skills that you're developing to provide right now. And it's not that men work and women don't work. My wife works, you're gonna hear her preach next weekend, that that's her vocational, that's her job that she does. So, we're not against men and women both working, but there is a responsibility when a man says, "I will first assume responsibility to provide for my family, to provide for those around me, so that God can use my life to bless, so that I can be generous, so that I'm not relying on somebody else to take care of my needs my whole life. God gave you hands, He gave you feet, and you are called to be a provider. And I wanna encourage you to receive that identity from God." Now, here's the good news. This dignifies your work. This dignifies Monday morning that when you wake up and you go to work on Monday morning to your business to step into your career, you are receiving from Almighty God the dignity of work that came before the fall. And this is a beautiful thing. Now, women, when your husband gets up to go to work on Monday morning, you oughta just go, "Baby, I'm so proud of you. You're an amazing provider for our family.

I'm so grateful for how hard you work. I'm so grateful for your faithfulness. I wonder if there are anybody in the house today that is grateful for the men that work hard, their diligence, their faithfulness, their willingness to say, "I will go forth and provide." Now, when I share all of this, one of the things that I recognize is that this whole subject of men and women has become a very contested subject in our culture. And I hope what you've seen in my heart today as a pastor is my goal is simply for us to go back to what the Bible teaches. This should not be a contested subject. There's so much beauty in what God has given. Now, there's a ton of pain that we experience. And I know that there are some of you that are listening to my voice. You have the pain of your relationship with your family of origin. Or maybe some of you women, you have the pain of the way that you've been treated by men in your life. And what I hope that your Heavenly Father, you can hear from your Heavenly Father, is his deep love, his desire to enter into that pain with you and to walk through and to give you the beauty of this image that he is the perfect Heavenly Father. He's the one that is able to heal all of those wounds. And there are some of you men that are listening to me today.

And as we walk through those identities, you recognize that there's a part of you. God is calling you forth to step into the manhood that he's given to you, the assignment, the identity that he's given to you. And I want to encourage you today before your Heavenly Father to receive that identity with dignity, you are called to be a man. It is a wonderful role and assignment that God has given to you. You are a son of the Most High God. You are loved, you are chosen, and you can live out of that love for the rest of your life to love and to bless those around you. Could you imagine if every man that was listening to my voice were to embrace biblical manhood, what it could produce in the community around us? It would produce men that serve, that love, that sacrifice, that laid down themselves, their lives for the good of those around them. And that's what I want for my life. That's what I want for my sons. That's what I want for the men of this house at Saddleback Church, that we would be distinguished with the way that we lead, the way that we love, the way that we protect, and the way that we provide. I want to invite you to receive that today, to receive that identity from your Heavenly Father. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to respond and let the Holy Spirit

work in our hearts right now for a moment. And I just want to make a little space at all of our campuses. There are some of you today that maybe there's some prayer requests that you just need to bring before your Heavenly Father. And just recognize, I need you right now. I need strength that only you can give. And in just a few moments, we're going to worship together. There's going to be an opportunity if you want to write down a prayer request and just receive prayer. In just a few moments, the buckets are going to go by. And we would love to pray into, there's something today that you even just have heavy on your heart to pray over you, to pray with you, that you might receive from God the beauty of His design. I want to invite you also, if you will, just to bow your heads for a moment. And some of you today, I can't help but think that some of you just need to recognize, some of you men, you need to recognize and receive the identity of your son's ship. And I want you to hear your Father's heart towards you. He sees you. He calls you a beloved son. He says, this is my son with you. He's not asking for you to have perfection. He's asking you, son, to receive your identity from the Most High God. And today, if you just want to say,

from your heart to God, I want to receive a fresh, my sonship as my identity before Almighty God. I just want to invite you to lift your hand to say, I just want to receive that identity at all of our campuses. You're just saying, "Pray over me." And I want to pray a blessing. Anybody today saying, "I want to receive my sonship afresh." So Father, I thank you. Just keep your hands up for a moment. I thank you today for those that are saying, I want to live out of this identity. I want to receive your love. Father, I pray that you would fill each heart with your love through the Holy Spirit, that you would touch deep into men's hearts in our church, that these broken places of our heart would be filled up with your love. Lord, we recognize that there's so many wounds and pain that we carry and we need to receive afresh from you, your love. Now, others of you, maybe there's just some area of your life today that you need to lay down before God and just say, "God, help me." Some of you who are women in the room, you just need to ask God to bring some healing into your heart, just open your heart to Him right now. It's like, "God, I need your healing touch." And Lord, we thank you that by the power of your spirit, you are present with us in this moment. And Lord, that your heart towards us is love.

And Lord, I pray that you would help us as we strive and we enter into obedience in your call on our lives. We're thank you for the beauty of this gift that you give to our lives. It's in the mighty name of Jesus that we pray. Amen, amen, amen. What a great message from Pastor Andy. And we're gonna go ahead and continue to worship in just a second, but before we do, I wanna give you an opportunity to respond to that message. There's a next step you wanna take, or if there's a prayer request that came to your heart as Pastor Andy was speaking, I wanna give you the opportunity to let us know about that. You can hit the link down below to access our digital program, or you can fill out a next steps card in the Salabak app and let us know how we can be praying for you and walking you through whatever you're facing. So as you're filling that out, let's go ahead and join our church family as we continue to worship through singing. What a humble sacrifice. Love that wash me clean. Love that wash me clean. Oh love that wash me clean. What a blessed misery. His punishment my peace. His punishment my peace. Oh His punishment my peace. See me I never boast. And may I never boast in anything except the cross of Jesus Christ. May I not forget the bloody shed. He is by His sin. I am alive because of Christ. I am alive. We see Alleluia. Alleluia. Praise the one who sent me free. Death has lost its grip on me. Say Alleluia. Alleluia. Jesus rose in victory. He's alive alive in me. Alleluia. Alleluia. Praise the one who sent me free. Death has lost its grip on me. Say Alleluia. Alleluia. Jesus rose in victory. He's alive alive in me. Alleluia. Praise the one who sent me free. Death has lost its grip on me.

Alleluia. Jesus rose in victory. He's alive. He's alive. ♪ Except the cross of Jesus Christ ♪ ♪ May I not forget the bloody ship ♪ ♪ It is by His death I am alive ♪ ♪ Because of Christ I am alive ♪ ♪ Because of Christ I am alive ♪ ♪ Because of Christ I am alive ♪ - Thank you so much again for joining us for church today. Hey, don't forget to join us for church for the next five weeks as we engage in our five-week challenge. You can go to the Saddleback app right now and check off that you've attended this week. Well, whether you're joining us in person next week at one of our local campuses or here in the online community, we cannot wait to see you as we continue our stronger series. We'll see you then. - Hey everybody, I just wanna say thank you so much for being a part of our online community here at Saddleback and joining with us for this weekend's online experience. I also wanna personally invite you to be a part of our brand new podcast that's launching. We're doing this as an experiment to take what we do on the weekends with the messages to a deeper level and conversation that you can get every Monday and you can actually find that by clicking on the link to the playlist. We do hope that it encourages you, that it helps you in your journey of faith and we'd love to hear from you how God uses it in your life.