Matt Chandler - Manhood Restored

If you have your Bibles, go ahead and grab those. We’re going to be in First Corinthians 16 for the first part of this sermon, and then I’m going to put up a series of texts for the second part. Now, I want to tackle a subject today that has actually been on the agenda for quite some time, and yet it ends up landing in a season of life in 2018 where I’m all the more provoked to preach it. I want to talk about something that I have seen grow more and more out of favor, and that is the discussion of manhood and what it means to be a man. The reason why I think this sermon, which has been planned out for a while, lands at a perfect time is because more and more, the very concept of masculinity is being viewed through the lens of what is problematic. Yet, what I want to argue is that it’s a lack of biblical masculinity that has actually led to much of the turmoil and brokenness we’re seeing in our culture. So, if you’re a woman here today, and you’re thinking, «Oh my gosh, I came on man Sunday, ” I just want you to breathe because you have a big role to play in all of this. I don’t think that I’m only talking to the men while you’re over here, having nothing to do with it. I believe this has everything to do with you, and I want to lay out a couple of reasons why before we dive in. The first would be that as a member of this body—our mothers, our sisters, our daughters—God has placed you here to encourage men to act as God would have them behave. Secondly, as I mentioned during our Beautiful Design series and want to reiterate, it’s massively important for you to understand what God is calling men to so that you might think biblically and have high expectations for how men should approach, treat, and talk to you. This way, you have a biblical filter by which you can assert, „That’s not okay!“ You can state, „You don’t get to talk to me that way, ” or, „You don’t get to treat me that way, ” standing on the authority of the Word of God, rather than some whim in your soul. What we’re discussing today is extremely important, and I think it comes at a time in our culture when there are two predominant false narratives that are harming us. The first false narrative is what I’ll call the machismo narrative. Many of you, if you’re my age or older, likely grew up with this. Here’s what I wrote: machismo severs emotions and elevates sexual conquest and athletic prowess as measures of masculinity. If you grew up with a dad who said, „Quit crying, suck it up, be a man. Men don’t act like that; quit acting like your sister, ” all of that is machismo nonsense. Brothers, anyone grow up in that house? „Quit crying; quit feeling what you feel. Men don’t feel.“ This machismo is ridiculous; it’s toxic to the male soul, destroys human flourishing, and teaches that brute force and violence, as well as misogyny, are masculine. So, why is it killing us? I had an opportunity to go down to South Texas this week to take a little break, hang out with some friends, and chase whitetail. Save me the email; don’t email me about how we shouldn’t do that. I’ll send you back some texts from Genesis and a picture you don’t want to see. So, down there, we were sitting around a table talking about how we grew up, and of the four men at that table, three had this kind of upbringing. Our dads weren’t evil men; they just surrendered themselves to a picture of masculinity that is very popular yet wrong. „Suck it up, don’t feel; quit crying; men don’t cry.“ Oh gosh, that cuts out Jesus and King David. If you want to go one-on-one with King David—manly man—my money’s on him. It may not be much, but I’m going to win. I’ll double it up; even though the odds won’t be in your favor, that dude killed a bear and a lion with his hands, and I know you do CrossFit, but my guess is you’re going to get yourself lit up. This is one of those false narratives, and when men embrace it, you get Harvey Weinstein. That’s what you get when this narrative is the norm: „I’m entitled; it’s mine; I’ll take what I want; I’m a man.“ It’s a lie—it’s from hell; it’s demonic, and our daughters and sisters bear the violence of this. But it’s not the only false narrative. The other false narrative, predominantly if you’re 30 and under, is that there is no difference; there is no distinction between men and women. There’s nothing for the man that isn’t also for the woman. It flattens out gender, makes it fluid, and teaches that there is nothing distinct that a man is called to and nothing distinct a woman is called to. It’s just that we’re humans called to act Christianly wherever we go. John Piper is a friend of mine, and we actually disagree a lot on this subject, but here’s where I do agree with him: he says this when we…