"First of all, Genesis tells us that men were created by God to be social and spiritual leaders. If there’s one thing that Genesis shouts to us – although it does it in subtle ways – it tells us that at the core of masculinity is a unique and special kind of leadership. We’re not finished with all that that is yet, but it has very implicit social and spiritual dimensions attached to it.
Genesis warns us in different ways – that we can go out in life and accomplish a lot, and we can be a lot and we can do a lot – but if we fail to incorporate these social and spiritual dimensions of leadership into our masculinity, our manhood will always feel incomplete to ourselves, and we will fall short with others.
Genesis tells us that these two dimensions – the social and the spiritual dimensions – are absolutely critical in a man feeling good about himself throughout his life. When men abandon this leadership, for whatever reason, when the pursuit of this leadership is somehow taken away from them – you need to know that chaos always ensues.
When men do not accept the leadership that Genesis presents, or when a society (a society like ours, by the way) ceases to teach young men this social and spiritual dimension of leadership that we’ve seen in the book of Genesis – or even worse, when a society begins to demean this kind of leadership and say it shouldn’t be a part of a man’s life – then it doesn’t take long before that society quickly becomes troubled. When men cease to embrace the things that we’ve been talking about is that society begins to be “dumbed-down”. Men begin to act like boys on a consistent basis. They shun the things that make them men. They ignore them; they no longer embrace them. They’re no longer honored among their society, they no longer reach up high for their masculinity. They begin to act like boys. In the process, women are forced to do what men won’t do.
You know, what’s interesting – there’s a unique passage in the Scripture that speaks to a moment in the life of the nation of Israel. When, because of their rebellion, they turned away from God. They didn’t feel like they needed God anymore and they decided to go their own independent way. So God brings a judgment through the prophet Isaiah and he says to the nation: “Because you’ve ignored Me, because you don’t think you need My instruction, My understanding, I’m going to take real men away from you.” Then, as the prophet Isaiah pronounces this judgment, he begins to describe what that society will look like without real men. I want to read it to you on the screen. Here’s what he says:
“For behold, the Lord God of hosts is going to remove the mighty man and the warrior, the judge, and the prophet, the diviner, and the elder, the captain of the 50; and the honorable man.”
So the real men are gone, basically from that society. And here’s what the society begins to look like:
“And I will make mere lads (that is, boys) their leaders, and capricious children will rule over them, and the people will be oppressed, each one by another; each one by his neighbor. The youth will storm against the elder and the inferior against the honorable. And when a man lays hold of his brother in his father’s house saying, ‘you have a cloak; you shall be our ruler; and these ruins need to be under your charge.’ He will protest on that day saying, ‘I’m not going to be your healer.’” (in other words everybody is saying, ‘somebody, take responsibility for this!’ And everybody’s saying ‘It’s not my problem; I’m not going to take charge of that.’) “For Jerusalem has stumbled and Judah has fallen. The expression of their faces bear witness against them and they display their sin in this society like Sodom. They do not even conceal it. Woe to them, for they have brought evil on themselves, O, my people!”
Their oppressors are children and in this society. Without real men, women have to rule over them. That’s what you see when men – real men are removed; especially the kind of men who would embrace enthusiastically the social and spiritual dimensions of leadership that we see sketched briefly for us, and hinted softly to us in those first three chapters of Genesis. What we saw in Isaiah’s time, we see in part even in our day as men are more and more, shunning the noble aspects of their masculinity. When you see that happen in American culture, you also see the same progression of events. First, men become confused, then they become directionless, then they become troubled. And as that happens in men’s lives, then women suffer; and when women suffer they must fight now for their equality and for protection. Family life is harmed and children are hurt. Do you know what the number one fear of children in junior high is in America today? It’s not the war with Iraq, it’s not biological terrorism. The number one fear of the junior higher in America today is ‘my dad’s going to leave my mom.’ That’s the number 1 fear!
Twenty-five million children today have been abandoned by their dads in America. In the last 10 years, teenage crime is up 600% in America. The youth storm against the elder. Society is oppressed. It begins to rot from the inside out, because there’s no one who can take the ruins and build them up because real men are missing. Men are MIAs in this culture war. That’s what this is telling us about, and so society becomes troubled.
Guys, I want you to write this down. It is the key principle in all we have just been talking about. As men go, so goes the life of the society.
Men will always be in every culture. They are the leading social and spiritual indicator of what will come next in a culture. So if men become irresponsible, what comes next is all of society becomes irresponsible. If men throw down their honor and their nobility, what comes next is Sodom and Gomorrah in that society. As men go, so goes the life and health of a culture. Genesis tells us that men were created to be social and spiritual leaders."