The NXR Podcast - SUNDAY SERMON - The Destructive Power Of Soft Men

00:00:00.300 Amen. This morning we continue with our series through the book of Joshua. If you were with us last week, I gave a little bit of the 30,000 foot view and some of the broader context.

00:00:09.920 The plan was to deal with the first 11 chapters of the book that all have to do with the conquest of Canaan.

00:00:17.120 And so we see Joshua at the helm of Israel being used of the Lord to conquer all the pagan, wicked Canaanite tribes,

00:00:24.760 to put them to the edge of the sword to death, and in the case of some, to drive them out.

00:00:30.580 And so we've finished Joshua chapter 1 through 11.

00:00:34.180 That's the conquest, all the different battles that occur with Israel in Canaan.

00:00:38.980 And then the next few chapters, several chapters, in fact, deal with the allotments of land

00:00:44.500 as specific apportioned inherences for each of the tribes of Israel.

00:00:51.100 And so all scripture is God breathed and inspired and useful.

00:00:55.940 And so I believe that these chapters are important so you can read them and should read them.

00:01:02.840 But I'm not going to be skipping these chapters to give you, you know, something that's extra biblical.

00:01:09.260 We're skipping a few chapters of scripture so that we can teach other scripture.

00:01:14.260 So we're not going to be spending months through the apportioning of land inherences for each of the tribes of Israel.

00:01:23.620 But it is valuable, and I encourage you to study it on your own time.

00:01:27.480 Today, we're actually going to conclude our series through the book of Joshua by looking at chapter 23.

00:01:33.700 Some of Joshua's final words, his farewell address to Israel right before his death.

00:01:39.480 and I'm going to be taking a sneak peek at Judges,

00:01:43.820 which is the next book,

00:01:45.640 and what happens after Joshua dies

00:01:48.200 so that we can see the result of this is what God brought about.

00:01:51.480 God gave strength to Israel to conquer her adversaries.

00:01:55.580 They did inhabit the land as God promised.

00:01:59.000 Everything that God said through Moses and through Joshua

00:02:02.040 was fulfilled.

00:02:03.500 God was faithful.

00:02:04.900 And then we'll skip forward to Judges

00:02:07.420 rather to be able to briefly look and say,

00:02:09.980 okay, so God did his part.

00:02:11.420 He did all these things.

00:02:12.780 What was the final result?

00:02:14.400 Spoiler alert, it was not good.

00:02:17.320 God was faithful.

00:02:18.640 Israel was faithless.

00:02:20.820 Israel is the premier case study in the Old Testament.

00:02:25.580 Old covenant Israel, according to the flesh,

00:02:28.480 is the premier case study of not the faithfulness of men,

00:02:32.500 but rather the grace of God.

00:02:34.280 That is what Israel is used to do again and again,

00:02:37.140 is to display God's grace in the midst of man's faithlessness,

00:02:42.340 not his faithfulness.

00:02:43.780 And so we'll see that today, the result,

00:02:46.060 but I also want us to see a little bit of the progression

00:02:49.100 of how is it that Israel fell?

00:02:51.960 How could it be possible to have Yahweh as your God

00:02:56.640 and for him to be so incredibly faithful

00:02:59.080 and to fulfill everything that he said

00:03:01.800 and to supernaturally to go before you,

00:03:05.040 to be the Lord of battle, to fight all your adversaries on your behalf, to deliver to you

00:03:12.240 a good land flowing with milk and honey, to sustain you in the wilderness with manna from

00:03:18.040 heaven, to part the Red Sea, and then to part the Jordan, and to do all these great and glorious

00:03:23.780 things, to be exceedingly kind and gracious, and yet for that people to fall away. How is that even

00:03:31.700 possible. And so I want us to look at the progression of sin. I believe that there is

00:03:37.380 practical application as it pertains to individuals, as it pertains to you and I,

00:03:43.780 as New Testament Christians. How is it that we could fall away, right, to not just pick on Israel?

00:03:49.620 The reality is that you and I, God has been good and kind and faithful and strong for us,

00:03:54.820 and we still sin. We still rebel against him. At least I'll speak for myself. I do. I know you

00:04:02.460 guys probably don't, but I do. I still rebel against the Lord despite all of his kindness.

00:04:09.140 So I want us to look at the personal individual application of the goodness and faithfulness of

00:04:14.040 God and yet the ways that we squander his grace. But then I also want to draw out, I believe,

00:04:21.280 a corporate application for nations. We see that Israel, not just as individual people,

00:04:29.220 but individual people, if there's enough of them, that makes up a society. It makes up

00:04:33.680 a body politic. And that Israel as a whole, as a nation, fell from grace. They fell from what God

00:04:41.780 had given to them as his good gift. They squandered that and forfeited God's goodness, God's kindness.

00:04:49.600 but it didn't happen in a moment. It didn't happen overnight. There is a progression,

00:04:54.820 is what I'm saying, both at the individual level, for you and I, even as New Testament

00:04:59.540 individual Christians, and at a societal level, corporately, there is a progression of sin.

00:05:06.960 And so that's where we'll probably spend the most of our time today, recognizing the progression

00:05:12.980 of sin, the steps that come along the way so that we can be alert, that we can be watchful,

00:05:20.360 that we can look for these things and say, wait a second, I know this path and I know where it

00:05:26.560 leads so that we don't get halfway down the path of sin that leads to death and then determine,

00:05:33.920 oh, maybe I should turn around or maybe I should pick another course, but that we would be able to

00:05:39.200 recognize the progression of sin at the start so that we can make no provisions for the flesh,

00:05:47.180 as John Owen would say. Starting to see and recognize the correlation between sins of omission

00:05:54.880 that always lend towards sins of commission, meaning there are certain things that are sinful,

00:06:02.240 not because we do something that God has forbidden, that we actually commit a sin, we do something

00:06:08.220 wicked. But often what first starts out before doing something wicked, it often begins as us

00:06:15.520 neglecting to do something that is righteous. That would be a sin of omission. You're omitting

00:06:20.200 something. So there's the good that you should do, that you ought to do, that you neglect,

00:06:25.000 that lends towards the evil that you should not do, that's forbidden, that now you're engaged in.

00:06:30.100 And these are the things that we see in this case study of Israel. Israel is a wonderful example

00:06:37.080 for us to recognize no don't do that no don't do that yes engage in this righteousness yes be very

00:06:45.560 active you see in Israel there are good kings they're few and far between but there are good

00:06:50.980 kings and some of them are good kings in the sense that they they restore the temple or they

00:06:57.180 restore certain altars to to worship good altars to worship Yahweh or they they call the people to

00:07:03.960 repentance. They call the people to righteousness. And that's one degree of a righteous king. And

00:07:09.980 there are some of those in Israel throughout the Old Testament. They are the minority report,

00:07:15.820 these good kings. But then there are great kings in Israel that are exceedingly rare.

00:07:21.660 There's only a couple. You can count them on one hand. David would be an example of this,

00:07:26.000 but also would be Josiah. And the difference from good to great, in this instance, the good

00:07:32.640 kings that would call the people to righteousness and to worship of Yahweh versus great kings like

00:07:38.320 Josiah is that Josiah would say let's worship the Lord and reinstate right worship in Israel

00:07:44.480 and principled pluralism is demonic and he would tear down all the altars that were raised to

00:07:53.300 false gods he didn't just build the right altars and call the people to right worship but he would

00:07:59.140 take out his hammer, in the proverbial sense, and smash the bales, smash the asherah poles,

00:08:07.260 smash idolatry, and all that which would be present only to lure the hearts of Israel away

00:08:17.160 from the true God. So I want us to look at Israel. I want us to look at the fulfillment of God's

00:08:23.440 promise, which is explicitly in our text today, Joshua 23, his farewell address, and how the Lord

00:08:30.220 fulfilled and made good on everything that he promised to Israel. But I also want us to look

00:08:35.460 beyond the text into Judges, namely chapter 2, and see after God fulfilled all these good things,

00:08:43.380 how does Israel respond? How does Israel steward the grace of God? Or more specifically, how do

00:08:49.920 they fail to steward the grace of God? And then how does that apply to us and the ways that we

00:08:54.480 fail to properly respond to God's kindness and goodness, this great salvation? How do we, as the

00:09:01.280 author to the Hebrews say, neglect such a great salvation that's been given to us as individual

00:09:06.960 New Testament Christians, but then also applying it in a political, social, cultural context? How

00:09:13.940 do nations or in our case a republic or what was supposed to be a republic how do we collectively

00:09:20.960 at a corporate level how do we also squander the grace of God through sins of omission that lend

00:09:27.720 towards sins of commission and how do we see that culturally in a relevant and applicable sense

00:09:34.160 today so with all that being said let's go ahead and stand for the reading of God's word again our

00:09:41.360 text is going to be Joshua 23. And again, this is going to be the final sermon in this series

00:09:46.800 through the book of Joshua. Our next book of the Bible, Lord willing, is the book of Ezra. And I've

00:09:52.940 told you a few times, but some of you I recognize are new faces today. And so that you might be

00:09:58.080 aware of the plan. The book of Joshua is going into the land initially to conquer it, to inhabit

00:10:04.300 it. But then Ezra is going back into the land. After God has brought about his promises, Israel

00:10:11.620 is then faithless to steward God's kindness. Israel is then taken into exile, removed from the land

00:10:18.300 under judgment by God because of their sin, but then they're sent back to re-inhabit the land,

00:10:24.020 to rebuild the ruins. And so I think all this is applicable for us at this time. You see that,

00:10:30.480 that, you know, in the case of America, that we've gone into the land, inhabited the land,

00:10:36.240 and set up a Christian nation for all intents and purposes, the covenanters, the founders,

00:10:41.660 the pilgrims, that it was a Christian nation. It is, I would argue, a Christian nation currently

00:10:46.680 under God's judgment because of our apostasy. And the judgment, I believe, will be more severe,

00:10:51.580 not less, because of our founding, because of that Christian origin. But now, if we have any

00:10:58.220 hope at all in many ways Joshua kind of sets for us the framework but Ezra will be even more

00:11:04.000 applicable more relevant for us because it has to do with rebuilding the ruins after faithlessness

00:11:10.020 has torn apart the foundations and so that's the the plan and the reason for Joshua and Ezra all

00:11:16.000 that being said the final thing and then I'll read the text is it because a lot of this is political

00:11:21.620 and it's cultural and deals with societies and deals with history and all these things I think

00:11:27.820 it's incredibly important because within evangelicalism as a whole, I think that this

00:11:32.160 has been neglected in preaching. There's very little political application, very little even

00:11:38.060 cultural application. That said, I struggle with this. And so you can always pray for me and I

00:11:45.100 welcome your prayers, but I want to do a good job balancing between, okay, evangelicalism as a whole

00:11:50.300 is weak in this regard. And so I want to bolster up where evangelicalism is weak, things that have

00:11:58.860 been neglected, like political application, political theology. Protestants don't have it.

00:12:04.000 We had it. We don't anymore. You talk about it and immediately you're going to be criticized by

00:12:09.540 evangelicals. They're going to say, just preach the gospel. And that's it. So I want to bolster

00:12:15.120 where on the whole, Protestants have been weak,

00:12:17.920 especially in our time.

00:12:19.280 And yet at the same time,

00:12:21.080 you as an individual local church

00:12:24.360 that I've been charged to shepherd as a local pastor,

00:12:27.880 I don't want us to just be providing

00:12:30.940 the resources in this area

00:12:33.600 that the church as a whole is lacking,

00:12:36.860 but then all you get is political theology.

00:12:39.920 So all that being said,

00:12:42.020 I may, I'm gonna pray about this

00:12:43.580 and talk to Connor about this,

00:12:44.720 but I may put in a few weeks break

00:12:47.780 in between Joshua and Ezra

00:12:49.500 so that we don't just go from take the land,

00:12:52.780 retake the land, and a whole year,

00:12:55.100 you guys are like, that was great political theology,

00:12:57.320 but it's been a year

00:12:58.320 since I've heard something about parenting.

00:13:01.080 Or, you know, and so I want to probably pause

00:13:04.840 and spend a few weeks with just, I don't know,

00:13:08.360 maybe like a mini series that you could call

00:13:10.020 Gospel Bangers, you know, or something like that,

00:13:12.040 where we just, you know,

00:13:12.760 just do some of that for a little while,

00:13:14.240 just good for us locally, our soul. And then sure, we'll go back into Ezra. So all that being

00:13:21.380 said, again, our text is Joshua 23. The Bible says this, a long time afterward, when the Lord had

00:13:27.900 given rest to Israel from all their surrounding enemies and Joshua was old and well advanced in

00:13:33.800 years, Joshua summoned all Israel, its elders and heads, its judges and officers and said to them,

00:13:40.700 I am now old and well advanced in years and you have seen all that the Lord your God has done to

00:13:47.380 all these nations for your sake for it is the Lord your God who has fought for you behold I have

00:13:54.640 allotted to you as an inheritance for your tribes those nations that remain along with all the

00:14:01.700 nations that I have already cut off from the Jordan to the great sea in the west the Lord your

00:14:08.140 God will push them back before you and drive them out of your sight, and you shall possess their

00:14:14.360 land just as the Lord your God promised you. Therefore be very strong to keep and to do all

00:14:21.460 that is written in the book of the law of Moses, turning aside from it neither to the right hand

00:14:26.720 nor to the left, that you may not mix with these nations remaining among you, or make mention of

00:14:34.040 the names of their gods or swear by them or serve them or bow down to them but you shall cling to

00:14:41.640 the Lord your God just as you have done to this day for the Lord has driven out before you great

00:14:47.800 and strong nations and as for you no man has been able to stand before you to this day one man of

00:14:55.260 you puts to flight a thousand since it is the Lord your God who fights for you just as he promised

00:15:01.920 you. Be very careful, therefore, to love the Lord your God. For if you turn back and cling to the

00:15:08.940 remnant of these nations remaining among you and make marriages with them so that you associate

00:15:15.040 with them and they with you, know for certain that the Lord your God will no longer drive out

00:15:20.980 these nations before you, but they shall be a snare and a trap for you, a whip on your sides

00:15:28.040 and thorns in your eyes until you perish from off this good ground that the Lord your God has given

00:15:34.880 you. And now I am about to go the way of all the earth and know in your hearts and souls, all of

00:15:42.060 you, that not one word has failed of all the good things that the Lord your God promised concerning

00:15:48.620 you. All have come to pass for you. Not one of them has failed. But just as all the good things

00:15:56.820 that the Lord your God promised concerning you

00:15:59.120 have been fulfilled for you,

00:16:01.200 so the Lord will bring upon you all the evil things

00:16:05.000 until he has destroyed you from off this good land

00:16:08.620 that the Lord your God has given you

00:16:10.600 if you transgress the covenant of the Lord your God,

00:16:14.780 which he commanded you,

00:16:16.300 and go and serve other gods and bow down to them.

00:16:20.220 Then the anger of the Lord will be kindled against you

00:16:23.280 and you shall perish quickly from off the good land that he has given you. This is the word of

00:16:29.620 the Lord. All right, please be seated. Let's go ahead and dive in. The first thing that I've

00:16:34.960 written in your notes is this. We're going to deal with the results of Israel's victory. The results

00:16:41.300 of Israel's victory. God was with them in battle. The Lord fought for them. The first 11 chapters

00:16:47.300 that we spent months going through in the book of Joshua details all the individual battles

00:16:52.940 in this conquest of Canaan, God was faithful. The Lord fought for Israel. He fulfilled all that he

00:17:00.460 promised through Moses and through Joshua. Israel indeed inhabited the promised land. They took

00:17:07.560 the land. They took every square inch of the land. But one of the things that we immediately see from

00:17:13.620 the text is that they did not, at least at this point, drive out every single one of their adversaries

00:17:21.560 from the land. Many of their adversaries were put to death. And what's significant for us to

00:17:27.080 recognize is that the kings of these pagan Canaanite tribes, they were destroyed. They were

00:17:33.940 put to death. And there are some cases where individual tribes, every single person, man,

00:17:39.220 woman, and child, was put to death. Jericho would be an example of this, spare Rahab and her

00:17:45.860 household because of a gospel covenant made with Israel. But every single inhabitant other than

00:17:52.060 Rahab and her household in Jericho was put to death. But this is not the case with each of the

00:17:57.500 cities, each of the tribes in Canaan. Some of them are wiped out entirely. Others are driven out of

00:18:03.640 the land entirely. But then others, you have the soldiers and the chief men of war, and you have

00:18:10.440 the king in particular, that they are put to death. But certain citizens of this particular

00:18:16.860 Canaanite tribe, this particular Canaanite kingdom, the citizens are allowed to continue

00:18:22.060 living and living in the land, inhabitants in the land. So when Joshua deals out allotments of land

00:18:31.040 in Canaan to each of the tribes of Israel, respectively, one of the assignments to each

00:18:38.000 individual tribe of Israel is that they need to finish the job. That the job is not completely

00:18:44.780 done. That there's still work to be finished. Now, the death blow to the pagan Canaanite tribes has

00:18:52.500 already been delivered by the Lord through Joshua. And so if you were with us last Lord's Day, I

00:18:59.080 liken this to Jesus. That Jesus is the better Joshua, right? Yeshua, deliverer. That Jesus is

00:19:05.340 the ultimate Joshua. That Joshua is one of many Old Testament types that is a symbol of the

00:19:11.900 antitype, that is the actual substance, who is Christ. So Joshua is a type, an example, a symbol

00:19:18.440 of Jesus. Jesus is the better, ultimate Joshua. And Jesus does for us what we see Joshua do for

00:19:25.480 Israel. Jesus does for the church. And Jesus does it in the final, spiritual, eternal sense. What

00:19:32.440 Joshua does in the physical sense for Israel. Joshua for Israel, he goes into the land empowered

00:19:39.760 by God and he cuts off the head of the snake. When it comes to the wicked pagan Canaanite tribes,

00:19:47.220 he crushes their kings. In fact, there's one instance that we saw where Joshua faces five

00:19:53.180 Canaanite kingdoms all at once. They unite against Gibeon. Gibeon has a covenant with Israel.

00:20:00.660 Joshua comes to their defense and Joshua seals up these kings.

00:20:05.100 They're taken captured and they're sealed up in a tomb, alive.

00:20:08.940 They go into this cave.

00:20:10.300 They roll big stones in front of the mouth of the cave while the rest of Israel is running

00:20:15.020 down all of their fighting men, all the soldiers, and putting them to the edge of the sword,

00:20:20.120 putting them to death.

00:20:21.100 When they finish all of that in the battle, they then circle back to the cave, remove

00:20:26.160 the stones.

00:20:26.720 Joshua has his men take these five kings out, lay them on their backs, and then he has his chief men

00:20:33.620 of war come and take turns putting their feet on the necks of these kings. And so my point is,

00:20:40.460 Joshua, like Christ, as a type of Christ, he cuts off the head of the snake. He allows for Israel

00:20:48.600 to step on the neck of the kings. What Joshua does not do, and it's not necessarily a failure

00:20:56.620 on Joshua's part, but what Joshua does not do is he doesn't wipe out each and every single

00:21:03.960 individual of the pagan Canaanite tribes in the land of promise. He gives the land, he conquers

00:21:10.800 the kings, he chops off the head of the snake, and then he gives the land to each of the various

00:21:16.160 tribes, and each of these tribes have a responsibility, a duty before God to finish

00:21:21.740 the war, to finish the battle, right? That the sting of death has been removed, but there's still

00:21:29.380 work to be done. The head of the snake has been severed, but there are still people that need to

00:21:35.240 be conquered. And that's where Joshua leaves it in chapter 23. That's the result of this victory,

00:21:43.940 is that there are still wicked inhabitants in the land, but the full force of their strength

00:21:50.300 against Israel has been neutralized. So there's still work to be done. There still may be

00:21:55.780 casualties and sacrifices that Israel has to make. Israel may still have some of their own men die in

00:22:01.760 battle, but the victory is secure. And this is what Christ has done in the ultimate sense through

00:22:07.640 his life, death, resurrection, and glorious ascension. Jesus is the better Joshua. He's cut

00:22:13.260 the head off of the snake, that Jesus has bound the strong man. It's one of the parables that he

00:22:18.780 He tells he's bound the strong man so that we, his people, the church, can go as true Israel.

00:22:25.260 We can go and plunder the house, the house being this world that we see in the scripture,

00:22:31.560 this great cosmic battle between the archangel Michael and Lucifer, the devil, and those angels,

00:22:39.160 fallen angels who chose to rebel with him against God.

00:22:42.220 And Michael cast down Lucifer.

00:22:45.220 He cast him down out of heaven.

00:22:47.620 And the Bible says, but woe to you, O earth, for the devil has come down to you.

00:22:52.760 And so the devil was, in a sense, he was steward of this physical cosmos, of the world.

00:22:58.960 God is still sovereign.

00:23:00.560 The devil is still a created being underneath the autonomous sovereignty and liberty of God

00:23:06.920 as the only autonomously free being in all the universe.

00:23:10.260 So the devil is still on a leash, as I preached last week.

00:23:13.420 But he did have stewardship, dominion over the world.

00:23:17.060 Why? Because God set up Adam as his viceroy, as his steward, his manager over the earth.

00:23:24.700 And Adam forfeited that to Satan through his sin.

00:23:28.160 And so Lucifer became a steward, having a certain degree of dominion over the world.

00:23:33.260 This is why when Satan tempts Jesus in the wilderness,

00:23:37.080 and he offers Jesus all the kingdoms of the world, this was not an empty offer.

00:23:42.020 This was real.

00:23:42.780 When Jesus says, or Satan rather, says to Jesus,

00:23:45.920 I'll give you all the kingdoms of the world

00:23:47.360 if you'll simply bow down and worship me.

00:23:49.820 Satan is promising to Jesus something

00:23:52.000 that he actually had possession over.

00:23:54.520 And Jesus' answer, unlike, you know,

00:23:56.460 the modern evangelical today is not,

00:23:58.500 well, I don't care for the kingdoms of this world

00:23:59.920 because I'm apolitical.

00:24:01.480 That's not how he responds.

00:24:03.340 Jesus says, I don't want you.

00:24:05.060 This is paraphrasing Jesus,

00:24:06.540 but this is the proper interpretation.

00:24:08.500 He says, I don't want you to give me

00:24:09.820 the kingdoms of the world,

00:24:10.620 Not because I'm not interested in earthly kingdoms, but because I don't want them given to me.

00:24:16.520 I will take them.

00:24:18.440 I'm not going to have you give them to me by idolatry and sin, but rather I worship God alone.

00:24:26.280 I am perfectly righteous.

00:24:27.760 I've come to fulfill all righteousness.

00:24:30.460 And by my sinless life, my substitutionary death and my victorious resurrection, I will take the kingdoms of this earth.

00:24:38.480 I don't need you to give them to me. So you have God. God gives stewardship to Adam of the world,

00:24:46.020 the house being the world, the earth. And then Adam forfeits his dominion, his stewardship to

00:24:51.780 Satan. Satan then has dominion over the earth. He is the strong man. But Jesus comes and he binds

00:24:59.800 the strong man by his life, death and resurrection. We now as the New Testament church as spiritual

00:25:05.840 Israel, our job is not to take out Satan. Our job is to plunder the house because Satan has

00:25:13.940 already been tied up in the basement. Jesus did that. And that's the same situation that we see

00:25:20.200 in the book of Joshua. Joshua, as a type of Christ, Jesus, Joshua goes and he cuts the head

00:25:26.060 off the snake. He takes all the strong men, all the kings of these pagan tribes and many of their

00:25:31.100 fighting men and he puts them to death. But Israel still has work to do to finish the job. Each of

00:25:38.520 the various tribes in their land that's allotted to them. So too Jesus has bound the strong man

00:25:43.880 in his earthly ministry 2,000 years ago. But the church still has work to do. We're now going and

00:25:50.020 following up. Jesus has given to us, rendered the great significant victory. The pivotal battle

00:25:58.120 in the war has already been won, but that doesn't mean the war is over. It's a guarantee at this

00:26:05.340 point. It's a foregone conclusion, but we're not called to simply sit on our hands. There's work

00:26:11.160 to be done. And by God's grace, the church, because of Christ, the church will succeed

00:26:17.800 where Israel failed. Joshua took out the kings of Canaan. Israel was called to finish the job.

00:26:26.280 they did not. Jesus has taken out the strong man. Satan bound him. He's not cast in the lake of fire

00:26:33.240 yet, but he is significantly bound. Jesus has bound the strong man, and the church is called

00:26:39.440 to plunder the house, and the church will. That doesn't mean we're doing a perfect job in each

00:26:45.540 moment, each century throughout history, but by God's grace, the church will succeed in the way

00:26:52.320 that Israel ultimately failed.

00:26:54.980 And that's the correlation between the two.

00:26:56.920 So here's the result of Israel's victory.

00:26:59.960 The result is their compromise.

00:27:03.240 God brings about a great victory for Israel.

00:27:05.840 And then Israel takes this grace

00:27:08.660 and allows it to cause them to become licentious

00:27:12.860 and lawless and apathetic.

00:27:17.100 Maybe you've heard, I think it was Cotton Mather

00:27:19.060 or maybe it was his son or father increased mother.

00:27:24.400 But he said that it was that faithfulness produced blessing or prosperity,

00:27:30.540 but the daughter devoured the mother.

00:27:32.460 Have you heard that phrase before?

00:27:33.960 That faithfulness produced, it gave birth to prosperity and blessing,

00:27:40.020 but the daughter devoured the mother.

00:27:42.600 The blessing produced by faithfulness,

00:27:45.860 ultimately that blessing

00:27:47.920 then caused people to stop being faithful

00:27:51.580 because they already had what they wanted.

00:27:54.340 They took it for granted.

00:27:55.500 They became apathetic.

00:27:57.260 They became lethargic.

00:27:58.940 They compromised.

00:28:00.180 They became licentious,

00:28:01.420 all these different things.

00:28:02.860 I mean, that's one of the chief warnings

00:28:04.340 that we find in the New Testament

00:28:05.500 again and again from the Apostle Paul

00:28:07.140 is don't allow grace to become a license for sin.

00:28:10.780 So this is a principle that we find

00:28:12.380 throughout all of scripture.

00:28:13.760 God's grace through Joshua

00:28:15.140 cutting off the kings of Canaan.

00:28:17.540 And then Israel takes it for granted.

00:28:19.720 And they take prisoners

00:28:21.060 where they should have given no quarter.

00:28:23.180 They make compromises and treaties

00:28:25.000 where they should have continued

00:28:26.720 and finished the conquest, right?

00:28:29.320 And in the same way,

00:28:30.380 even New Testament Christians,

00:28:31.660 you and I, we continue to sin in part

00:28:34.280 because we've allowed grace

00:28:36.260 to become a license for sin.

00:28:38.740 I'm no longer under law.

00:28:40.000 I'm under grace.

00:28:40.820 And so it doesn't matter.

00:28:42.320 I can sin and God still loves me.

00:28:44.300 And so I have no motivation for obedience, which is terrible, terrible.

00:28:50.840 The motivation for obedience is that Christ died for us.

00:28:54.960 He died for us.

00:28:55.840 We're motivated now from grace.

00:28:57.660 Grace is supposed to be the wind in our sails.

00:29:00.480 Grace is not the excuse to disobey.

00:29:03.500 It's supposed to be for the Christian, the chief motive to launch us and fuel us and

00:29:08.480 push us into further obedience because God is gracious.

00:29:12.180 How could I deny him?

00:29:14.620 How could I betray him?

00:29:16.940 And so this is the big theme from the book of Joshua.

00:29:20.480 And that's what we're going to see now,

00:29:21.880 the result of Israel's victory,

00:29:24.420 lending towards their licentiousness,

00:29:27.520 their compromise, and taking the goodness of God for granted.

00:29:31.100 I've written this.

00:29:32.020 Israel had just finished a long and tiring conquest of the land of Canaan.

00:29:36.060 They appear to have silently determined that they were now done with war.

00:29:41.560 They had witnessed the barbarism of the authoritarian leaders of Canaan. And now their

00:29:48.200 own leader, Joshua, was dead, going the way of all the earth. That is, he was going to die.

00:29:54.780 In Joshua's absence, a poisonous potion of fatigue, right? There's a sense in which Israel

00:30:01.140 is tired. That's understandable. Apathy. That's less understandable. And a misguided pity. And

00:30:08.660 I'm going to come back to this one.

00:30:09.860 We don't think of that.

00:30:10.840 We think of I'm tired and also maybe a bit lazy.

00:30:14.480 Fatigue and apathy.

00:30:15.360 But I also think there's an element of pity,

00:30:19.140 misguided, unbiblical, sinful pity for Israel's enemies.

00:30:24.820 So a potion, poisonous potion of fatigue, apathy,

00:30:28.240 and misguided pity for Israel's enemies was brewed, set in.

00:30:32.680 The post-war sentiment, you might say.

00:30:35.520 I think that's fair, right?

00:30:36.700 Israel just got done with this long war that was arguably a year long, maybe longer, but at least

00:30:42.860 multiple months, several months. For several months, they have been at war, going up against

00:30:49.940 many of these adversaries that were superior to them. The tribe of Ai would probably be the only

00:30:57.000 exception. Ai had a total population of 12,000, about 3,000, you know, fighting men. And so Israel

00:31:03.860 was larger and stronger than they were. But in all the other cases, it seems as though Israel

00:31:09.500 is outnumbered. Or they're at least inferior in regards to their weaponry, their tech, right?

00:31:16.960 Other guys have chariots. They have horses. And Israel, you know, doesn't. They have more primitive

00:31:23.780 weapons of war. They don't have the resources that some of their opponents have. And so in all

00:31:29.160 these cases israel is outmanned outnumbered the lord again supernaturally fights for them and so

00:31:34.780 they're granted victory but still it's understandable that israel is tired that after months and months

00:31:41.820 of war israel says we kind of like to be done with war for a while we would like to rest and

00:31:49.120 so that's easy i think for us to see okay there's apathy okay there's fatigue but there's also pity

00:31:55.420 There's pity.

00:31:56.560 And we'll get to that in a moment.

00:31:57.860 So it's this post-war sentiment.

00:32:00.080 Israel just got done fighting all these battles.

00:32:03.140 I mean, and they were fighting against giants.

00:32:05.020 And they were fighting against barbaric people.

00:32:08.400 Right?

00:32:08.540 They're not just fighting against kingdoms that, you know, well, you know, there's some

00:32:12.000 good things about the Canaanites and some good things about Israel.

00:32:14.880 And it's just a fight over land.

00:32:17.080 No, the Canaanites that Israel is going up and facing are horrible, horrible people.

00:32:23.220 They're performing human sacrifices.

00:32:27.220 Some of them are filleting their enemies alive and hanging skins on the walls.

00:32:33.280 They are a barbaric, vicious, vicious people practicing necromancy, practicing divination.

00:32:42.720 They're a pagan, wicked, heinous, sinister, barbaric people.

00:32:48.980 And so Israel had seen certain atrocities.

00:32:52.540 I don't know. Maybe some of them got PTSD. They're like, we're done. We got the land.

00:33:00.280 The immediate threat has been neutralized. The kings have been taken out. Most of the men of

00:33:05.180 war have been taken out. And yeah, there's still some inhabitants here, but we're done.

00:33:10.520 We're done. We're taking a break. The post-war sentiment took root in Israel. It has been said,

00:33:17.180 and I want to deal with this saying for a little bit. You've probably heard it,

00:33:20.740 but I want to break it down.

00:33:22.320 Hard times create hard men.

00:33:24.980 Hard men create soft times.

00:33:28.100 Soft times create soft men.

00:33:30.340 And soft men create hard times.

00:33:33.700 I'll say it again.

00:33:34.340 Hard times, difficult times,

00:33:36.600 times of trial and tribulation,

00:33:38.540 that's used as the furnace to forge hard men.

00:33:43.280 Hard times make hard men

00:33:45.640 because you have to be a hard man

00:33:48.100 or you're done.

00:33:50.740 You're defeated. You're eradicated. In difficult times, hard men are created to rise to the various

00:33:58.680 challenges. So hard times create hard men. But here's the problem. Hard men, ultimately,

00:34:05.280 they face the challenges. They overcome those challenges and create good times, soft times,

00:34:13.460 War creates warriors, but warriors end wars.

00:34:19.700 And ending wars creates peace, and peace creates Americans.

00:34:28.780 What we've got today.

00:34:32.140 100% soy diet.

00:34:35.900 Weak, limp-wristed, effeminate.

00:34:40.700 And that's what you get.

00:34:43.460 right the faithfulness produces it gives birth to blessing to prosperity but the daughter

00:34:52.100 devoured the mother and that's what we see in Israel and I mean it's it's uncanny

00:34:59.500 the correlation that's what we see today it's incredibly applicable and relevant so hard times

00:35:07.220 create hard men hard men create soft times because they vanquish the difficulties and challenges

00:35:13.420 but then soft times create soft men

00:35:16.560 and soft men create hard times.

00:35:21.640 That's one of the lessons

00:35:22.760 that I feel like we're learning right now.

00:35:25.460 Well, that was way too hopeful.

00:35:29.060 I assumed for a second

00:35:30.620 that we might be learning a lesson.

00:35:32.740 That's one of the lessons

00:35:33.700 that's happening right now.

00:35:35.260 I don't know if anybody's learning it

00:35:36.540 but one of the lessons

00:35:37.680 that's happening right now.

00:35:38.780 So let me just give,

00:35:39.520 here's an example.

00:35:40.580 Trump, Biden.

00:35:41.260 right it's like well he's mean his twitter account and so a whole bunch of women voted for biden

00:35:51.320 and what we're discovering over these past three years is it turns out that nice men

00:35:57.240 can actually rack up a higher death toll than mean men

00:36:01.780 that soft men can actually do more devastation than hard men.

00:36:10.200 Did you know that?

00:36:12.560 Hitler, bad.

00:36:15.320 Stalin.

00:36:19.880 There are different kinds of tyrants, is what I'm saying.

00:36:26.260 And think about this as it pertains to tyrants,

00:36:29.020 particularly political civil tyrants that would be civil leaders in positions of civil authority

00:36:35.420 it's not a coincidence that jesus says in the case of john the baptist right he was a voice

00:36:40.720 crying out in the wilderness he was a hard man right that guy with his diet was not soy it was

00:36:46.980 locusts right you want to toughen up men right that guy he's he's eating locusts in the desert

00:36:53.040 and wearing camel skin and jesus literally says that he says what did you go out into the desert

00:36:57.540 to see a man dressed in soft clothes. Now notice the next thing that Jesus says, and I don't think

00:37:03.560 this is a coincidence. He says, if you want to find a malikos, an effeminate man, and just for

00:37:10.280 the record, effeminate, real quick, let me clarify this, because people, Christians don't get this.

00:37:15.400 Effeminate is an insult, but feminine is not. So the difference between feminine, just this

00:37:25.280 disclaimer matters. There's a dynamic difference between feminine and effeminate. Feminine is when

00:37:32.980 a woman who's actually feminine embodies who God's called her to be. That's great. Femininity

00:37:40.320 is wonderful. We celebrate that. Effeminacy is when a man is doing woman face.

00:37:48.180 a feminacy is dylan mulvaney but but femininity is my wife back there holding our son

00:37:57.620 listening to the preached word as a domestic woman who loves her vocation there are a lot

00:38:04.360 of people that are really concerned about my wife but by god's grace she's not concerned

00:38:07.820 she actually likes it she actually likes being a mom believe it or not crazy i know

00:38:13.300 so do you see the difference femininity good that's a woman being a woman if feminacy

00:38:21.640 bad that's a man larping as a woman that's the difference and jesus addresses this and he uses

00:38:30.140 that that greek word that lends or that's where we get this word a feminacy let's not there's

00:38:34.860 other texts as well but he says what did you go into the desert to see right john the baptist

00:38:40.520 the prophet you went to go and see a man a man's man a hard man right you went to go and hear his

00:38:49.920 sermons okay these are not Andy Stanley sermons this is not Joel Osteen you went to hear John

00:38:57.800 the Baptist sermons you were you're gonna get some good old-time religion you were gonna get

00:39:01.360 some fire some brimstone right like Jonathan Edwards his famous sermon sinners in the hands

00:39:06.940 of an angry God, right?

00:39:09.360 Where they actually found claw marks

00:39:11.200 on the back of the pews

00:39:12.500 after he finished preaching that sermon

00:39:14.500 because people were sitting so terrified

00:39:16.180 that they were clawing on to the pew

00:39:18.440 in front of them for dear life, afraid.

00:39:20.480 He's talking about, you know,

00:39:21.760 you're like a spider hanging from a single thread,

00:39:25.400 barely hanging on.

00:39:26.740 And underneath you is the jaws of hell.

00:39:30.480 I mean, that's how people used to preach.

00:39:34.040 And that's how John the Baptist preached.

00:39:36.040 The ax is at the root of the tree.

00:39:38.120 Who warned you, brood of vipers,

00:39:41.300 to turn from the wrath of God?

00:39:45.020 Like people would show up to his preaching

00:39:46.520 and he'd be like, wait, you're not supposed to be here.

00:39:49.400 You're the very person.

00:39:50.440 It's like a pull of washer sermon.

00:39:52.120 You know, people are clapping.

00:39:53.360 And he's like, I'm talking about you.

00:39:55.280 I don't know why you're clapping.

00:39:57.300 I remember a Valentine's card.

00:39:59.240 Somebody did this.

00:39:59.980 I thought it was hilarious.

00:40:00.780 It was roses are red, violets are blue.

00:40:03.000 I don't know why you're clapping.

00:40:04.140 I'm talking about you.

00:40:05.700 Beautiful, romantic car.

00:40:08.240 But preaching like that, that kind of preaching,

00:40:12.700 that's how John the Baptist was.

00:40:13.740 So Jesus said, would you go into the wilderness, the desert, to see?

00:40:18.900 Not a soft man wearing soft clothing.

00:40:22.480 And here's the point.

00:40:23.840 I don't think it's a coincidence.

00:40:24.980 He says, if you wanted to see that, where do you go?

00:40:27.640 To the desert?

00:40:29.020 No, Jesus specifically says, if you wanted to find a soft man

00:40:32.420 wearing soft clothes. Where would you go? A palace. Where would you go? Washington, D.C.

00:40:42.000 The White House. Congress. The courthouse. You want to find a soft man? Where do you look?

00:40:52.560 Politics. Civil leaders. Softest men you could ever find. Most of them aren't even men at this

00:40:59.780 point. I mean, we've replaced half of them with women. And then the other half are also women,

00:41:04.920 but of a different kind. And that's Jesus. For the record, Jesus says, soft men gravitate towards

00:41:16.920 palaces. They gravitate toward, if you want to find a soft man, don't look to the preacher.

00:41:24.200 Now, we've got plenty of soft men in pulpits today too, sadly. But in the words of Jesus,

00:41:29.220 Don't look to the prophet.

00:41:31.880 Look to the president.

00:41:35.660 That's where you'll find him.

00:41:36.900 If you want to find a soft man.

00:41:41.360 Hard times create hard men.

00:41:43.920 Hard men create soft times, better times, times of peace.

00:41:48.000 And then these soft times create soft men.

00:41:50.880 And then soft men, due to their softness, their effeminacy, their weakness,

00:41:55.660 they create hard times.

00:41:59.220 Israel is struggling with what I would consider

00:42:01.940 to be the post-war mentality,

00:42:04.480 the post-war sentiment.

00:42:07.160 We did this.

00:42:08.300 We did this war thing.

00:42:09.540 We did the conquest.

00:42:10.940 We're done.

00:42:13.060 We're done with it.

00:42:16.320 We've seen atrocities.

00:42:18.000 We saw the barbarians of Canaan.

00:42:21.120 I mean, there were even giants.

00:42:23.580 What we saw is some of them were cannibalistic.

00:42:27.860 God, we're done.

00:42:29.800 We fought the barbarians.

00:42:32.200 And we won.

00:42:32.960 And sure, some of their children are still alive and can grow up.

00:42:36.640 But we've got time.

00:42:39.460 We don't need to run them down.

00:42:41.020 We don't need to finish the job.

00:42:43.580 We're tired.

00:42:46.420 We're a little bit lazy, apathetic.

00:42:49.720 And, and I do think this is an element.

00:42:52.820 And, well, we just, we're merciful.

00:42:57.940 Right?

00:42:58.420 DEI, man.

00:42:59.940 Israel's, you know, DEI policy.

00:43:02.480 Diversity, equity, inclusion.

00:43:05.780 We're cutting edge for our time, Yahweh.

00:43:07.900 I mean, we want to, you know, you're a God of mercy

00:43:10.220 and we want to be merciful too.

00:43:13.220 And so we're going to tolerate.

00:43:15.700 We're going to include.

00:43:17.760 We're going to carve out space.

00:43:21.000 And we're going to have a neutral public square.

00:43:24.140 Seems Christ-like, compassionate.

00:43:27.680 And principle pluralism, Yahweh.

00:43:31.060 Classical liberalism, Yahweh.

00:43:35.600 Just a little bit of polytheism.

00:43:38.480 Just a sprinkle.

00:43:40.280 Just a sprinkle of idolatry.

00:43:43.520 But out of kindness.

00:43:45.900 And at the end of the day, you know, it's the thought that counts.

00:43:49.840 It's the intention.

00:43:51.160 It's the motive.

00:43:51.760 As long as our hearts are in the right place.

00:43:55.300 So yes, apathy.

00:43:56.680 Yeah, maybe a little PTSD.

00:43:59.400 Yeah, fatigue and tired, but also pity.

00:44:05.060 And in biblical terms, that word pity can go either way.

00:44:09.780 There are times when the Bible says that God pitied Israel and is righteous.

00:44:16.600 So there is a righteous form of pity.

00:44:19.580 There's a righteous kind of pity, a compassion, a compassion that is genuinely compassionate.

00:44:28.220 But there is also a type of pity that is wicked, that is misguided, that's perverted.

00:44:35.640 It is tweaked and twisted.

00:44:38.700 It's pity where there should not be pity.

00:44:41.860 And the Bible talks about this.

00:44:43.080 Think of Deuteronomy, Old Testament law.

00:44:45.260 It talks about when it comes to dealing out justice, your eyes shall not pity.

00:44:52.960 You should not show favoritism to the rich.

00:44:56.300 And this is rehashed out by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, also by the book of James.

00:45:02.960 Somebody comes in with fine clothing, not necessarily soft.

00:45:05.860 It could be soft, but fine, rich clothing.

00:45:07.780 You can discern this is a person of status, a person of, I don't know, prestige.

00:45:15.440 And you say, hey, come and sit in this nice seat.

00:45:17.220 And then somebody dressed in shabby clothing comes in.

00:45:19.460 Oh, you sit on the floor by my feet.

00:45:21.800 So you are not to show partiality in regards to favoring the rich.

00:45:25.880 But that's not the only way the principle applies.

00:45:28.800 The principle applies across the board in both directions.

00:45:32.500 The Old Testament says you shall not pity, show favoritism to the rich, but also not pity the poor.

00:45:37.780 So there is pity that comes from God that we might call mercy.

00:45:43.660 And it's righteous.

00:45:45.900 It has to do with compassion.

00:45:47.320 But there's also pity that is sinful and twisted and tweaked, perverse,

00:45:53.080 that is not compassion, but rather it's tolerance of wickedness.

00:46:02.760 It's tolerance of wickedness.

00:46:05.500 It's like the difference between sympathy and empathy.

00:46:08.720 Sympathy comes from the root word compassion.

00:46:12.580 Compassion lending towards love, a pure, genuine, authentic love.

00:46:18.500 So real love is compassion.

00:46:20.260 And compassion, that's where we get sympathy from.

00:46:23.720 Empathy, however, is not necessarily the same.

00:46:27.860 And I won't make a big debate out of the words

00:46:30.320 because it depends how you use the word empathy and blah, blah, blah.

00:46:32.520 But a lot of the ways, I'll at least say this, a lot of the ways that the word empathy has been

00:46:38.280 used by our culture in the West today is what the Bible would describe as a sinful pity.

00:46:46.960 It's not sympathy, compassion, genuine love, but rather it's favoritism. It's discrimination.

00:46:55.640 it's i'm going to elevate this person not not because of anything uh that's objective or just

00:47:03.820 or fair but simply because i'm going to arbitrate between you know this person and that because i i

00:47:12.360 like this person they're poor or they're a minority and you know this person over there

00:47:18.280 they may be doing the right thing but it doesn't matter this is a woman this is a man this this

00:47:24.720 person's a minority ethnicity this person's white

00:47:27.780 this person's lgbt lmnop you know and this person's just traditional family makes me sick

00:47:37.600 that's that's not righteous pity that's wicked pity and israel had some of that

00:47:46.280 for their adversaries so there's apathy there's fatigue and there's a misguided sense of pity

00:47:55.320 So they're living now in good times.

00:47:57.640 The head of the snake has been thoroughly removed.

00:48:00.500 The kings have been cut off, many of the fighting men,

00:48:03.040 but the job is not entirely done.

00:48:05.340 There's still work for each individual tribe of Israel

00:48:08.880 to do in their specific land

00:48:10.920 that they've received as an inheritance.

00:48:13.860 There are still inhabitants, wicked inhabitants,

00:48:16.300 that are not to be tolerated under the law of God.

00:48:20.840 And yet Israel chooses to tolerate that.

00:48:25.240 Now, as this further applies, I think, to our time and our culture today,

00:48:28.160 I've written this.

00:48:28.940 We are entering a time where there will soon be, I believe,

00:48:33.760 all right, don't quote, this is not scripture.

00:48:35.280 This is not gospel truth.

00:48:36.400 I'm just giving you my assessment that could be wrong,

00:48:39.000 but obviously I think it's right because it's my assessment.

00:48:41.560 So we are entering a time where it's funny when people say,

00:48:44.100 you know, I think that, you know, people say,

00:48:48.260 you're just giving your opinion, but you're acting like it's right.

00:48:52.960 That's why it's my opinion.

00:48:55.280 I think all my opinions are right.

00:48:57.080 That's why I hold them, right?

00:48:58.760 I mean, who says, all right, this is one of my views

00:49:00.800 and I'm very committed to this view

00:49:02.500 and I'm also convinced it's wrong.

00:49:06.380 Like all of your opinion, everything you believe,

00:49:09.220 you believe it because you think it's right.

00:49:11.020 So anyways, here we go.

00:49:12.900 So this is my opinion, which I think is right,

00:49:14.720 which could also not be right, but I think it's right.

00:49:16.560 Here we go.

00:49:17.100 We are entering a time where there will soon be

00:49:19.240 a massive crop of young, hard men.

00:49:21.960 We've had soft men.

00:49:23.620 I believe that the hard men are coming.

00:49:26.960 Many of them will be young.

00:49:29.180 These young hard men will not follow titles.

00:49:33.280 I believe that they will care very little for credentials and letters after names.

00:49:39.220 They will not follow titles.

00:49:41.240 They will only follow courage.

00:49:44.160 But in their zeal, being young,

00:49:46.780 in their zeal, they pose a threat of destroying all that is good in the world along with the evil.

00:49:55.380 In their quest to vanquish the evil of the land, they pose the threat of being overly zealous and

00:50:01.440 destroying the good along with it. So the key, I believe, the key is for the strength of these

00:50:10.000 young hard men to be harnessed by even harder men, but who possess softer hearts.

00:50:19.240 The solution, right, the solution to there are hard men tyrants, totalitarian, authoritarian

00:50:28.180 tyrants. You study history, you've got that type. They're bad. And then you've got weak tyrants,

00:50:37.120 soft tyrants they're also really bad right a hard authoritarian type of totalitarian

00:50:45.080 tyrant that guy could rack up millions of deaths

00:50:49.360 and then you've got soft totalitarian men who can hit a hundred million

00:50:55.660 the solution what i'm saying is the solution to an authoritarian spirit

00:51:05.620 is not DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion.

00:51:11.600 The solution to bad hard men is not bad soft men.

00:51:19.640 The solution to evil hard men is good hard men.

00:51:25.660 We want men who are even stronger, even harder.

00:51:30.220 Hard men with soft hearts.

00:51:32.480 the solution to both kinds of tyrants, both kinds of evil men, evil hard men, evil soft men. The

00:51:39.340 solution for an evil hard man or an evil soft man is a good man. A good man. That's the solution.

00:51:47.820 Good men. And good men are not weak. And part of the problem is that, again, within evangelicalism,

00:51:54.340 as we talk about things like gender, we talk about biblical manhood and biblical womanhood,

00:51:58.900 we have completely severed biblical masculinity

00:52:02.020 from anything that would even come close

00:52:07.000 to resembling physical strength.

00:52:10.560 How many books have been written over the past few decades

00:52:14.220 about a biblical masculinity has nothing,

00:52:17.360 you know, you can be biblically masculine

00:52:19.360 and you're in every way fulfilling God's commands for men

00:52:22.920 and you also have to ask your wife for help

00:52:24.960 to open a pickle jar.

00:52:28.900 as though these things are completely separate they're not they're not

00:52:33.980 i have come to learn as a 37 year old man who where a lot of my professional career has been

00:52:42.520 inside work labor intellectual labor reading books and i've come to realize that there's a

00:52:50.220 deficiency there and it does correlate to my the goodness and the well-being the health of my soul

00:52:55.880 It's not just exterior.

00:52:57.760 That's a Gnostic idea.

00:53:00.140 The physical is completely separate from the soul.

00:53:04.340 Now, there is a connection.

00:53:05.880 There's a correlation with men who work in the dirt being good men.

00:53:13.520 There is something to be said for hard physical labor that shapes character,

00:53:18.420 not just physical muscles, not just biceps,

00:53:21.820 but it shapes character, virtue.

00:53:25.880 and there's a sense in which virtue can be lost and squandered and underdeveloped with weak,

00:53:33.180 and I mean physically weak, soft men. What we've done over the past few decades is completely

00:53:38.260 sever biblical masculinity from anything that any of our predecessors would have thought of

00:53:44.860 when they thought of masculinity. We've said that masculinity has nothing to do,

00:53:49.560 nothing to do with working with your hands. It has nothing to do with hunting.

00:53:54.760 It has nothing to do with being able to change a tire.

00:53:58.100 It has nothing to do.

00:53:59.100 And these are things that I've been, as I'm getting older,

00:54:03.180 as I now have a son who's a year old,

00:54:05.980 I'm thinking, and there's certain ways I may be able to include him

00:54:10.000 in my work as a pastor, but a lot of ways that he won't be able to.

00:54:13.660 I've been thinking, well, I might need to carve out a little bit of time

00:54:16.700 to start a business, not even to be that profitable

00:54:19.960 or to be a millionaire, but just to do something with my hands

00:54:23.140 a few hours a week that I can include my son in when he gets older. So it's not just dad's going

00:54:28.840 to go to work and read books, you know, and my hand cramps as I turn one of the pages because

00:54:34.040 I've become, you know, like, no, like, I mean, it's good for dad and it's good for him to get

00:54:39.120 outside and do something. The solution for evil hard men is good men. The solution for evil soft

00:54:47.340 men is good men. But what we've done as a society is we've said, hey, we had some hard men,

00:54:52.660 totalitarian authoritarian terrible men and so we'll solve it by being soft and when i say soft

00:55:00.180 think inclusion and one of the things that we've done in the spirit of inclusion is we've said we

00:55:06.200 will not tolerate dogmatism anybody who says some kind of dogmatic statement that this is true

00:55:14.400 it's it's undeniably true it's true whether i was ever born or not mark that man he's a dangerous

00:55:21.120 man. Anybody who believes in universal truth, transcendent truth, immutable standards, and

00:55:29.240 they would say it publicly and say it with conviction, mark that man. He's a dangerous man.

00:55:35.940 We've seen men like that before. No, you haven't. Now, the men that you saw like that before,

00:55:43.740 they were hard men, sure, but they weren't good men. They were hard men on the outside,

00:55:49.700 but they also had hardened hearts.

00:55:53.420 Now the solution to evil is good.

00:55:59.160 Not hard or soft, but good.

00:56:02.860 Masculine men who are hard men,

00:56:04.780 but who are also good men.

00:56:06.320 Feminine women who pursue femininity

00:56:09.200 in the biblical sense as a virtue

00:56:11.120 that are also good women.

00:56:16.700 I believe that we are entering a time

00:56:18.820 because this is the cycle of history.

00:56:21.000 We see it with Israel.

00:56:22.900 We've seen it over the last 2,000 years of church history.

00:56:27.020 We've seen it in our nation's history.

00:56:29.560 That's our history.

00:56:31.040 Tough times.

00:56:32.540 There's tough men.

00:56:34.040 Tough men rise to the challenge.

00:56:35.480 They make good times.

00:56:36.940 Produces prosperity.

00:56:38.360 The prosperity creates soft men.

00:56:40.840 The soft men let everything go to waste.

00:56:43.400 Now you're in tough times again.

00:56:45.360 And I think that in future generations,

00:56:48.820 I think that there's going to be a lot of young men

00:56:51.320 who have very little tolerance for effeminacy.

00:56:56.440 Very little tolerance.

00:56:58.280 Because they're going to grow up in a world

00:57:00.020 that wasn't destroyed by a totalitarian type,

00:57:03.520 but was destroyed by a weak, soft Joe Biden type.

00:57:08.280 They're angry.

00:57:09.660 Young men, do you know that?

00:57:10.620 Young men are angry right now.

00:57:12.960 They can't buy a house.

00:57:14.980 And you could.

00:57:15.740 it's like oh well we have tough times too no no it's not the same statistically it is not the

00:57:24.880 same you did have tough times uh-huh the 70s were rough inflation was bad i'm aware i've done the

00:57:30.660 homework it's not the same when it comes to wages and cost of living it's like well we had 18 percent

00:57:39.020 Yeah, on your $40,000 house.

00:57:43.200 It's not the same.

00:57:45.440 The American dream is virtually impossible today.

00:57:48.960 It was possible in the 80s.

00:57:51.760 It's virtually impossible today.

00:57:54.120 Our children, our young boys are going to grow up into a world

00:57:57.300 unless God does a miracle where they cannot do what you did.

00:58:01.260 And I mean in brass tacks, practical, financial ways.

00:58:04.140 They cannot do what was normative for Americans to be able to do.

00:58:08.660 And you know what they're going to feel?

00:58:10.620 Anger.

00:58:13.000 And they're going to be hard men.

00:58:15.940 And if all the older men they have to look to are soft men,

00:58:20.180 they won't give them an ear.

00:58:22.680 They're not going to take counsel or direction from soft men

00:58:27.100 who created the hard times they're now living in.

00:58:31.260 The only people these young, hard, angry men will listen to

00:58:35.200 will be men who are good men, but even harder.

00:58:38.660 men. There's an illustration. I heard this story once where there were some young bull elephants

00:58:45.620 and they relocated the elephants to some kind of, I don't know, some different habitat where,

00:58:55.060 you know, there was fence standing, you know, where people could come and visit and see the

00:58:57.840 elephants. And the elephants were just, they were young male elephants, young bull elephants, and

00:59:02.940 they were just destroying everything. They were just going crazy, knocking over trees, hurting

00:59:08.080 and gouging the other animals with their tusks.

00:59:10.660 And they didn't know what to do.

00:59:11.780 They were trying to train them.

00:59:12.860 They were trying to tamp them down.

00:59:14.780 And then eventually they came up with a solution.

00:59:16.920 They got older bull elephants

00:59:19.160 and they put them in the habitat with them.

00:59:23.320 And the younger, you know, elephants were doing their stuff

00:59:25.720 and the older bull elephants were like, uh-uh, pipsqueak, cut it out.

00:59:30.340 And they put those young bull elephants in line.

00:59:33.960 But here's the thing.

00:59:34.980 that would not work with the longhouse,

00:59:39.800 with mom spelled marm, M-A-R-M.

00:59:43.120 It would not work by taking female elephants.

00:59:47.360 Now they needed older male elephants

00:59:50.100 that were in every bit as strong,

00:59:52.240 if not stronger than the young male elephants,

00:59:54.260 but also had harnessed their strength.

00:59:58.460 Self-control is not weakness.

01:00:00.900 Self-control is strength harnessed.

01:00:04.980 But right now, young men, they have strength.

01:00:09.480 But the problem is they're not listening to older men who even have some wise counsel.

01:00:13.900 But those older men, they're being tuned out because although they have wisdom, in some sense, they don't have strength.

01:00:20.880 And in fact, some of these older men are the very reason why we're living in the hard times that we live today, because they tolerated wickedness.

01:00:28.180 Like Israel, they tolerated the Asherah poles.

01:00:30.980 They tolerated the Baals.

01:00:33.100 They tolerated all the wicked inhabitants.

01:00:35.700 They're the ones who allowed evil to flourish and grow on their watch.

01:00:40.640 So young men aren't interested in what they have to say.

01:00:43.740 They're not interested.

01:00:47.020 So what do we need?

01:00:48.660 We need young hard men.

01:00:50.580 And we need some righteously indignant angry men.

01:00:53.340 We do.

01:00:55.080 But we need wisdom to go along with the zeal,

01:00:57.640 which means we need older men.

01:00:59.280 And we need those older men to be good men, to be wise men.

01:01:02.640 but also to be strong men.

01:01:05.140 We don't need them to be guys with PhDs

01:01:08.860 in an ivory tower of seminary

01:01:12.220 that have wisdom and exegesis,

01:01:16.100 but are soft.

01:01:18.420 When it comes to the culture, soft.

01:01:21.100 When it comes to politics, soft.

01:01:25.420 Right, the kind of man,

01:01:26.480 like I've heard it said before,

01:01:27.680 you know, one of my pastor friends,

01:01:28.940 he said there was a time not that long ago,

01:01:30.720 he said just a few, five years ago,

01:01:32.280 where people would come to our church

01:01:33.680 and they would say,

01:01:34.400 you know what I love about this church?

01:01:35.660 I can't tell if this church politically

01:01:37.360 is conservative or liberal.

01:01:38.860 And he was like, and I took it as a compliment.

01:01:41.860 I thought that that's a sign

01:01:43.220 that we're doing a good job.

01:01:45.320 You know, that we're not biased, you know,

01:01:47.400 and people come and, you know,

01:01:49.060 we're just politics is left out of it.

01:01:50.740 And people, you know, they can't tell if we're,

01:01:52.680 you know, if we stand up against abortion or not.

01:01:55.520 We're nailing it just like Jesus.

01:01:57.020 Jesus wasn't left wing or right wing, you know,

01:01:59.060 third way, middle way, that's the way.

01:02:01.760 And he's like, I'm now ashamed when I think of that.

01:02:05.260 How shameful as a leader.

01:02:08.740 Essentially what I said is that all of God's truth,

01:02:10.940 this whole book, we won't ever apply it.

01:02:13.240 Not beyond these four walls.

01:02:15.260 In fact, we'll be so ambiguous, so vague,

01:02:18.140 so weak, so inclusive, so tolerant

01:02:21.940 that you won't know if the pastors here

01:02:25.560 vote for Democrats or Republicans or independents.

01:02:30.360 you won't have a clue. That's not a compliment. That's an indictment. But that represents, I

01:02:39.020 believe, the majority of churches today, not the minority. That kind of Christianity is on its way

01:02:46.820 out, and to which I think we should say good riddance. Praise God. But the new type that

01:02:53.780 comes in its place, here's the question. Can we, by the grace of God, break the cycle? Because I

01:02:58.680 don't want to just play ping pong every 50 to 80 years between weak guys and then hard

01:03:06.500 totalitarian guys. What you need to break the cycle is good guys, strong, but righteous.

01:03:16.180 Otherwise, we're just going to get another, a new set of problems. And we'll just go back and forth,

01:03:21.200 back and forth, back and forth. So Israel had hard men, it had Joshua, it had Moses.

01:03:28.680 But then those hard men, they did their job.

01:03:32.100 They were successful.

01:03:33.480 Israel fell on good times.

01:03:35.580 And the good times produced weak men in Israel.

01:03:39.420 And those weak men tolerated evil in Israel.

01:03:43.480 And the evil rose up.

01:03:47.360 And we'll have to talk about that another day.

01:03:50.680 In a nutshell, the pattern is like this.

01:03:53.080 The progression of Israel's downfall,

01:03:55.740 whether it be corporately, for society as a whole, or individually, for you as an individual

01:04:00.760 Christian, the pattern remains the same. Pity is first on the list. Pity leads to compromise.

01:04:09.040 Compromise leads to idolatry, and idolatry leads to slavery and suicide. Pity, Matthew Henry, he says,

01:04:19.780 when Israel had got the good land God had promised them, they had no zeal against the wicked

01:04:25.220 inhabitants whom the Lord commanded them to extirpate. Pretending pity, not a real compassion,

01:04:31.840 but pretending pity. But so merciful is God that no man needs to be in any case more compassionate

01:04:39.460 than him. There's your problem, brothers and sisters. Our problem is that for decades in the

01:04:45.980 West within Christianity, we have pretended pity and we have humored ourself. We may not have ever

01:04:52.480 verbalize it or set it out loud, but in our hearts of hearts, we thought that we were more

01:04:56.660 merciful than God. We thought we were kinder than him, more loving than him.

01:05:03.100 God says, no tolerance for this. And we say, no, some tolerance.

01:05:08.240 Because God, you're kind of mean. But we're just trying to be, you know, Christ's light.

01:05:15.520 How arrogant is that? Think about that. Think about Jesus, for instance.

01:05:20.280 Think about, here's just one example.

01:05:23.520 And we'll land the plane here.

01:05:24.980 Evangelism.

01:05:27.740 If nothing else has marked American evangelicalism

01:05:31.740 over the past 50 years, I think it would be this.

01:05:35.160 We have thought that there is a way

01:05:37.120 of somehow being just as faithful

01:05:39.140 without compromise on doctrine, on truth,

01:05:42.180 that we can be perfectly faithful

01:05:43.660 without compromise on the truth of the message,

01:05:47.820 but somehow in our tone and methods, right?

01:05:51.220 Message, substance, methods, tactics.

01:05:54.300 We have humored ourselves to think

01:05:56.480 that without any ounce of compromise on the message

01:06:00.460 that we could somehow in our methods

01:06:02.820 be so kind and so nice and so likable

01:06:07.620 that people would respond to the gospel

01:06:11.480 at a greater degree than they did with Jesus.

01:06:15.720 Now, we don't connect the dots

01:06:17.100 and draw out the unavoidable, inevitable, logical conclusion,

01:06:21.460 which is this.

01:06:22.140 We think that we're better than Jesus.

01:06:25.560 That is what pastors in America have thought for 50 years.

01:06:28.740 They thought they could do a better job than Jesus.

01:06:31.360 That's what it all boils down to.

01:06:32.560 That's the quickest way to say it, and it is fair.

01:06:34.800 I can do a better job than Jesus.

01:06:36.880 And what I mean by that is Jesus preached the truth.

01:06:40.220 Do you know what the result was?

01:06:42.380 All right, and this is a big spoiler alert,

01:06:44.080 so if you haven't read the story,

01:06:45.380 you're gonna be upset with me,

01:06:46.520 but Jesus preached the truth and he died.

01:06:51.060 He was killed.

01:06:53.140 They hated him.

01:06:56.940 They hated him.

01:06:58.060 That was the result.

01:06:59.500 Faithfulness led towards persecution.

01:07:04.220 Jesus preached the truth and he was put to death.

01:07:06.360 We think that we can preach the truth

01:07:08.080 just as true as Jesus ever preached it

01:07:10.260 without an ounce of compromise

01:07:11.400 and yet will be applauded.

01:07:13.240 Jesus preached the truth and he died but that's because and again no one would verbalize this

01:07:19.760 but think about the logical implication what we're saying is this Jesus preached the truth

01:07:23.900 and he was crucified for it but that's because Jesus just wasn't really strategic

01:07:29.700 but I am no no if you're not getting some of the treatment from the world that Jesus got

01:07:37.120 it's not because you're more strategic than Jesus it's because you're more compromised than Jesus

01:07:42.840 period jesus preached the truth and he was hated i preached the truth and i'm applauded

01:07:51.100 that's because you look nothing like him and the truth that you preach is not the truth

01:07:56.220 period you're not better than jesus you're not you pity but it's not a true pity not pity

01:08:06.580 according to the word of god not the true compassion the true mercy that god pitied

01:08:11.220 Israel. No, your pity is pitying where God says, don't. Your pity is a tolerance of what God hates.

01:08:19.900 You tolerate evil. You tolerate that wicked woman, Jezebel. The one who puts to death my prophets.

01:08:29.020 By Jezebel, the spirit of Jezebel is still alive and well today. And she still kills the prophets,

01:08:34.380 faithful preachers. And one of the reasons why she's allowed to do what she does is because

01:08:38.880 the evangelical church protects her. You tolerate that woman, Jezebel, who puts to death the prophets.

01:08:48.380 Any preacher that has a little bit of audacity, a little bit of courage, just a little bit of

01:08:52.880 gall, who would stand up and preach what the Bible says about men and women, Jezebel's gonna hate

01:08:58.720 him. And if he even begins to offer a defense, you know who will be the first people to protect her?

01:09:04.120 Russell Moore, David French, the Gospel Coalition, the Evangelicals will protect Jezebel

01:09:13.280 and they'll stand along with her condemning John the Baptist. Pity. Where your eyes should not pity,

01:09:23.940 you pity. And out of pity comes compromise. Compromise, idolatry. And idolatry lends to

01:09:30.640 slavery. And slavery is always accompanied by suicide. Israel eventually joined even with the

01:09:38.700 pagan tribes in human sacrifice of their own children. That detestable practice that they

01:09:45.000 swore to themselves that they would never do. Yeah, we'll pity them. We're not going to put

01:09:49.140 them all to death. We're going to be compassionate. We'll never join them. Or at least we'll maybe

01:09:54.400 join them in marriage, some of their cousins, but not their worship, not their idolatry. Okay,

01:09:58.240 some of their idolatry. We'll allow them to have a high place here, high place there. You know,

01:10:02.520 I'm married to a pagan, so I'll go with her occasionally to worship, just to be kind,

01:10:06.460 just to keep the marriage, you know, on good terms. But I'm never going to, you know, engage

01:10:10.860 in that barbaric act of human sacrifice. And there goes your son into the fire.

01:10:16.200 In the final analysis, Israel went all that way. But it all started with multiple pluralism.

01:10:23.360 it all started with principled pluralism it all started with pity and the name of pity in the

01:10:28.920 name of compassion tolerating what god hates and eventually everything is twisted and perverted

01:10:34.880 and tweaked eventually you have an entire society that calls good evil and evil good

01:10:40.160 and that's where we are today and the result is going to be angry hard strong young men and they

01:10:47.960 need desperately need that strength to be harnessed but the only ones who will be able to harness that

01:10:53.940 strength will be older men who are better men wiser men good men but they won't be listened to

01:11:00.800 unless they're also hard men because soft men created the mess we're in today and soft men

01:11:07.120 we're done with that but all we'll do at the end of the day is ping pong back and forth unless there

01:11:14.280 is righteous men, unless there is revival, reformation, turning back to God, calling

01:11:22.700 upon him by name. That's what we need. And this is the same thing that we need in our individual

01:11:30.360 lives as it deals with sin. We're not called to quarantine sin, bind up sin, manage sin.

01:11:36.920 we're called to mortify it,

01:11:40.840 to take no prisoners,

01:11:43.300 to make no provisions for the flesh,

01:11:45.320 to not commit the sins of omission

01:11:47.420 that lead towards the sins of commission.

01:11:50.220 It applies at every level.

01:11:52.840 Israel is a brilliant, profound case study

01:11:55.720 for societies today and for the church,

01:11:59.880 certainly today,

01:12:00.780 and for each of us as individual Christians

01:12:03.080 as we seek to be like Joshua,

01:12:05.360 to take no prisoners,

01:12:06.920 to be like Josiah, not just calling people to right worship, but tearing down the items.

01:12:14.800 So let's do it by God's grace. Let's do it. Let's call upon God now to strengthen us toward that

01:12:21.740 end. Lord, we ask for your help. We ask for your mercy. We ask for a righteous pity. We don't

01:12:27.460 deserve it. Israel did not deserve your pity. They chose to compromise. They did not obey what you

01:12:35.220 said to do it was their fault that the nations were permitted to rise back up and enslave them

01:12:42.500 and yet you still had pity on israel not because of their faithfulness but because of your kindness

01:12:51.060 and lord we pray that you would do likewise with us you are sovereign whatever you do we know it

01:12:59.040 will be just but we are appealing not to your justice but to your kindness and mercy we pray

01:13:05.380 lord that in the case of western civilization in the case of our republic these united states of

01:13:11.260 america that rather making a case study out of us like you did israel which you would be perfectly

01:13:16.780 just to do we cry out for your mercy instead we ask lord that you would actually change the hearts

01:13:23.420 of the people, that you would cause us to repent of our sins, that you would cause us to grow in

01:13:29.460 love for righteousness so that we likewise would grow in a righteous hatred of that which is evil,

01:13:35.640 that we would not tolerate it, that we would carve out no provisions for the flesh. But Lord,

01:13:41.040 we know if you are to do this at a societal level, it must first start with the house of God in our

01:13:46.700 individual hearts and lives, in our homes, with our wives, with our marriages, with our children,

01:13:53.140 Help us, Lord, to be ruthless

01:13:56.260 in the ways that we fight sin.

01:13:59.640 Ruthless in our repentance.

01:14:02.640 Ruthless in our sanctification.

01:14:05.780 We pray that you would do it, Lord,

01:14:07.280 for your glory and for our good.

01:14:10.140 That our children and our children's children,

01:14:12.700 two generations down the line,

01:14:14.280 that they would have a fighting chance.

01:14:18.540 We pray these things in Jesus' name, amen.

The NXR Podcast - September 17, 2023

SUNDAY SERMON - The Destructive Power Of Soft Men

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