THE CONFERENCE - Biblical Patriarchy - Session 4 - Eric Conn ｜ Blueprints for Christendom 2.0 2024
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Summary
Pastor Dusty Devers is a man of courage. He was brave enough to stand up for biblical patriarchy and speak against it in a speech at the Evangelical Theological Society of America in 2000. In this episode, Pastor Devers shares the story of a woman who sent her husband to work as a promise keeper so that her husband could reconnect with other men his age.
Transcript
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Thank you, Pastor Joel. I appreciate the height of this podium.
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We have some pastors at our church who are about 6'5", and normally I'm reaching and leaning in so that I can get to the microphone.
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But they made this one short. Joel actually has to lean down, which is also quite interesting.
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As we look at everything that's going on in our culture, it's an encouragement to me.
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You know, we've heard Dusty speak, we've heard Joel, we've heard Pastor Brian.
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And what an encouragement that God has not left his church in the dark without teachers or alone.
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I want to pray for us and then we'll get started on today's talk,
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which will be recovering a vision for biblical patriarchy.
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Father, we thank you so much for the souls gathered here.
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We thank you that you are faithful to your bride, to the church.
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God, we ask that you would continue to build her up in faithfulness.
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Lord, we thank you, especially for the men gathered here, that you have made them bold.
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We thank you for Dusty Devers, for his faith that he's willing to put into action.
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God, would you give them courage as they are fighting literally demonic powers?
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Would you put your arms and your angels around them?
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Father, would you also inspire other men to be raised up, that they too may be courageous,
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that they may fight the good fight of the faith.
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Lord, and help us to see that our generations are brought to you.
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God, we ask all these things in the high name of Jesus Christ, our King.
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Well, I want to begin this talk again on biblical patriarchy, everybody's favorite doctrine.
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particularly if you're a feminist on Twitter you you probably hate me you might know who I am
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maybe you blocked me that's okay but I want to start this talk with actually a talk that comes
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from the year 2000 or rather in the 2000s this talk is what I think is fantastically good one
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theologian stood at the Evangelical Theological Society to deliver a scathing indictment of the
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American church. And a feminist followed him, so you know how brave he was actually being in this
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situation. And he specifically addressed the failure of complementarianism to make much of a
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dent in the orthodoxy or the orthopraxy of the church, right? The complementarian doctrines,
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which had been around since the early 90s, 1989 and following, had made little impact, both on
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the teaching of the church, but worse, on the practice of the church. Complementarianism had
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become, he said, a weak compromise with feminist teachings. As such, it had resulted in a church
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that was softly patriarchal, he said on paper, but fundamentally egalitarian in practice.
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Wasn't that what we find in the church so much today? We use words like headship,
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but they mean nothing, right? For all intents and purposes, he said, the conservative
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and the complementarian wing of the church was pragmatically egalitarian.
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Now, among other signs of demise, the speaker noted how many wives are encouraged to work outside the home
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and how child care is relegated to daycares and public schools.
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You know how excited people get when you talk about women working outside the home,
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Now, this brave speaker told the story of one complementarian wife who sent her husband to promise keepers.
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Thank you for laughing because that is ridiculous.
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She told this to a sociologist so that her husband could, quote, reconnect with other men his age.
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Of this incident, the speaker said this, and I find this fitting.
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He said, this complementarian woman does not seem to recognize that she is sending her husband off to be with one his own age as though she were a mother sending her grade school son off to summer youth camp.
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How often does this sort of thing happen in the church today?
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Likewise, our speaker said, because the church had blindly adopted psychotherapeutic practices, which he said, and he's right,
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They're inherently Marxist and anti-hierarchical.
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Because of this, evangelicals had neutered headship of any meaningful authority.
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Instead, the church had foolishly adopted a servant-leader model.
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This comes largely out of the Promise Keeper's movement.
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And what it did was empty the concept of virtually all its authoritative character of actual biblical headship.
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So the speaker, also being brave, he said, what should we do about this?
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And this is actually when I think it gets really good.
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We had a simple and clear solution for the church moving forward.
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It was not appeasement, as you see from so many people today.
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No, but he said that the church needed to recover biblical patriarchy.
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He said, quote, unless evangelical churches are willing to be countercultural
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against not just the secular culture, and here's the thing I want to underline, not just against
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the secular culture, but also against the evangelical establishment itself. That's what
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we're facing. He said, unless we do that, the future of complementarian Christianity is in fact
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bleak. He went on to say, more patriarchal complementarianism will resonate among a
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generation seeking stability in a family-fractured Western culture in ways that soft-bellied, big-tent
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complementarianism never can. So he's advocating we need to be bold. We need to oppose all the
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sexual craziness that's going on in our culture and specifically in our churches. Well, he rightly
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pointed out that patriarchy is not a secondary issue within Christian theology. It's a matter
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of vital importance. Many of you, rightly so, would ask the question, as you come to a conference
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like this, okay, covenant succession, I get that one, that's important. Post-millennialism, I get
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that, that's important, but really patriarchy. Why is that in this series of talks for building
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Christendom 2.0? Well, C.S. Lewis was wise to this, and our speaker pointed it out. In fact, C.S. Lewis
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included male headship as part of his book, Mere Christianity. Well, why did he do that?
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The speaker says this, male headship has been asserted and assumed by the Christian church
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with virtual unanimity from the first century until the rise of contemporary feminism.
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That's a bold statement in the church today. Patriarchy has been the baseline for 2,000 years,
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and only recently have we abandoned it. He went on to say this, if we are to reclaim the debate,
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we must not fear making a claim that is disturbingly counter-cultural, and yet,
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he said, strikingly biblical, patriarchy. Patriarchy is a claim that the less than
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evangelical feminists understand increasingly. Indeed, he said Christianity is undergirded by
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a vision of patriarchy. Now, finally, our speaker concluded by saying this, patriarchy for the
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Christian is essential. Egalitarians are winning the evangelical gender debate, not because their
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arguments are stronger, but because in some sense, we are all egalitarian now. That's the reality we
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have to face in the church. Practically speaking, most people are egalitarian or feminist. He went
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on to say this, our response must be more than simply a reaction. It must instead present an
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alternative vision, a vision that sums up the burden of male headship under the cosmic rubric
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of the gospel of Christ and the restoration of all things in him. It must produce churches that
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are not embarrassed. We cannot be embarrassed that when we say our father, we mean that we
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are patriarchs of the oldest kind. Amen indeed. What a great speech, right? It's phenomenally
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accurate. The majority of Christians today really are functionally egalitarian. Headship has been
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robbed of its authority. Why? Because we have ignored scripture for too long. We have ignored
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the faith of our fathers on this issue of biblical sexuality, and we've let the woke sociologists do
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are theologizing for us. Now, despite having greater power and influence than ever, think
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about this. How many churches are on every street corner in the South? How much money does the
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gospel coalition have in these major conference circuits? How much money is represented? And yet
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for all that, the church is being more shaped by the world than it is shaping the world. Why is this?
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why is it that evangelical leadership has in mass betrayed us on the issue of biblical sexuality
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well this failure of church leadership is i think typified most by the speaker himself
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well who was this brave speaker oh it was none other than dr russell moore
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right russell moore the now leftist editor-in-chief at christianity yesterday
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right his speech if you try to find this has been scrubbed from almost every major publication
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in which it was linked denny burke cbmw ets it's all gone you can't find it
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and in 2023 russell moore said this in an article for christianity today he said i put more trust
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in Beth Moore today, that is the Anglican lady priestrics, right? I put more trust in Beth Moore
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today than Russell Moore when I delivered that speech. This is where we are as evangelical
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leadership has left us, right? The patriarchy he once defended was, he said in the article,
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more John Wayne than Jesus, right? An obvious nod to the evangelical left and Kristen Kobaz Dumas.
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Now, why do I bring this up in this talk? I want to illustrate by this example just how far the
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church has fallen in just 20 years. I mean, think about this today. If you talk about patriarchy
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at all, who gets mad on Twitter? It's the conservative Christians. A dark cloud, so it
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seems, looms over the church, which seems to have all but abandoned these historic doctrines
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of patriarchy. And so I think we are in a desperate lurch. Again, I think as you look at
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leaders like Russell Moore, what you see is something like in The Lord of Rings, Saruman.
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You exchange the truth for a lie, and what do you get in return? Money, power, power among the
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leftist elites especially. But I think as Moore said 20 years ago, our task remains the same.
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It's not simply to fight a feminist culture, but to oppose the evangelical establishment itself.
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It's encouraging to see everybody here, but I wonder if you've ever thought about the fact that maybe there's 800 of us here.
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and a lot of times people ask me, Eric, do you actually think, do you actually believe
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that patriarchy could be recovered? Absolutely. That's my answer as well. Yes, absolutely it can
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be recovered. But the more important question is, what is true? As we look at the scriptures,
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are we convicted about the clarity of God's word on this issue? So many people have not even looked
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at the historic commentaries, the confessions, or the church fathers on these issues.
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We listen more to sociologists and psychologists. But there's encouragement for us as well, and I
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want to give that to you today. This is not the first time the church has been badly on the ropes.
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I love this quote from G.K. Chesterton. Someone asked him about the church, and again, in his time,
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there's been lots of times where the church seems to be doing poorly. He said this,
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on five occasions in church history, the church has gone to the dogs, but on every occasion it
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was the dog that died. This is the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. He conquered the grave. He is
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the risen Lord. And so for us, as we seek out his word, and we want to do that today and ask the
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question, what is biblical patriarchy? We do so fundamentally from a position of hope.
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So if we look at this question, how is patriarchy to be recovered?
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Well, I love what Dr. Joe Boot, who's here with Ezra Institute,
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Every revival, every reformation is fundamentally looking back to the law of God
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and to our fathers and doing the deep work of repentance.
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I also love what Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones said about this
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You'll remember in that passage, Isaac had departed to Gerar,
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Well, the Philistines had stopped the wells of Abraham, Isaac's father.
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And so he realized Isaac did his desperate situation.
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He realized that his people's survival depended upon him,
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He didn't send for the technocratic experts of his day.
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No, he went back to his father's wisdom and he said,
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if I know anything about my father, it's that he knows where the water is.
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This is what Lloyd-Jones says about that passage in his sermon.
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the man who experiments in the midst of a crisis is a fool. There is great value in the readings
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of church history and the study of the past, and nothing surely is more important for us
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at this present time than to read the history of the past and to discover its message afresh.
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The issue today, he said, is that we think that our problems are new and that we think that they
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are unique. And the church and the world have never been confronted by such problems before.
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But Lloyd-Jones said, and I find this quite helpful, every time you get one of these great
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and glorious and mighty periods of true revival, you will find that in every instance it seems to
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be a returning to something that had been obtained before. Every time the church is thus revived,
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she seems to be doing what Isaac did. She is going back to something that had happened before,
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rediscovering it and finding that ancient supply and so there is nothing that I know of Lloyd
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Jones writes that is more striking in the history of the church than just this principle
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all right so as we discuss patriarchy we'll lay out some points general principles and points for
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what is biblical patriarchy we have to face the fact that our need is not something novel or new
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or faddish, right? How many times do we have to read a new sociological study or read from a
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professor at the University of Oklahoma or wherever else? Sorry, Oklahoma, right? We have to read from
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these professors that we now know that the word effeminacy doesn't mean effeminacy because
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somebody in 2024 found out that the church fathers and everybody else for 2,000 years was
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quite simply wrong, right? That is, of course, nonsense. We don't need a new definition from
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Rachel Hollis about motherhood or womanhood. We don't need a new defense of lady pastors
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from an up-and-coming lady pastorics in training at a reform denomination. And we're all going to
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pretend, by the way, along the way that she won't ever become a preacher, even though that's what
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keeps happening, right? Our starting point, most of all, cannot be appeasement of our culture.
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I appreciate so much what Dusty Devers had to say because I think that is the heart of the issue.
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When you look at biblical sexuality in the church today, I think what you should notice
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is that our theology is developed more from cowardice than from the Word of God.
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We are simply embarrassed about what Scripture teaches. It was interesting to me that when
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Russell Moore in 2023 completely flip-flopped on his position, it wasn't because he came up with a
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new interpretation of the text. And so what do we need to do in this moment and in this time is to
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go back to our fathers, to Genesis and Abraham, to the patriarchs, to the Puritans, to the reformers.
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All right, these are the men who built the first Christendom. And what we need to do is re-dig
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their wells and go back and study what our fathers said, right? I think it's fitting that as we go
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back and we study them, that we should truly learn what it means to rule well as a king and as a
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father. Fundamentally, what we have to do is we have to put the ancient landmark back where it
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was moved. And this means that we have to go back and we have to read the old dead guys. Because the
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one thing about it is they had problems, but they're not our problems. They weren't enmeshed
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in 1960s liberation sexual theology. They had problems, but not those. So what I want to do
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now is give just a brief defense of biblical patriarchy. And as we jump into this, I want to
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make a couple baseline recommendations. A talk like this is bound to bring many questions.
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and so as you have questions it's good to talk to your husbands it's good to talk to pastors
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but it's also good to read so i want to recommend to you a book that has been most helpful to me on
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this issue which is masculine christianity by mr zach garris he's actually a pca pastor
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and he's done a phenomenal job outlining the biblical historical doctrine of patriarchy
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This book, by the way, you can get it in hard copy, also Canon, the Canon app.
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If you already have the app, you can listen to it there.
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The other book I want to recommend is also by Zach Garris.
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And this is titled Honor Thy Fathers, Recovering the Anti-Feminist Theology of the Reformers.
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And this will be released this summer, Lord willing, from New Christendom Press.
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He essentially goes through Calvin, Vermigley, Luther.
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He says, what do they have to say about women, biblical sexuality, pertaining to what is now feminism?
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The final recommendation I want to give to you, particularly if you're a pastor,
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but anyone studying God's word, is that you rely on the older guys.
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So when you're going through commentaries, it was very common, at least for me,
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in seminary that we're reading new commentaries.
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commentaries. You read R.T. France on the Gospels, and guess what? He has a very egalitarian view
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when you get to sexuality. And an older and a wiser pastor told me, he said, really what you
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ought to do is your bedrock for sermon preparation should be John Calvin. It should be Matthew Henry.
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It should be John Gill. It should be William Gouge. And as I started making that transition in pulpit
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ministry, what I started to notice was how backwards we actually are today. I said, wait a
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minute, these guys would get canceled on Twitter if they put these things on there. So then I
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thought to myself, what if I did it for them? And that's actually one of the most interesting
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things. I often get charged with this, but people say, you're just trying to be a shock jock, Eric.
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And I say, actually, I was reading William Gouge on the fifth commandment and he's got some burners.
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And so here they are for everybody's enjoyment.
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So now as we turn to this question of biblical patriarchy, I want to lay this out in nine
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And again, I want to just emphasize this, the question, so often you'll see this among
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reformed pastors even, but people will say things like, well, yeah, that's a cool principle
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And I think it's true, but I just don't think today that's practical, right?
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I don't, I just, in my experience, I don't know if that could actually happen.
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the fundamental question that you ought to be asking again particularly for pastors
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but fathers and husbands the question is not is this popular the question is not is this going
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to be practical are the feminists going to like it is taylor swift going to like it that's not
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what we're asking right again we're saying is this true and so we begin with clarity
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about what the scripture teaches and from clarity we move to courage and then courage means that
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somewhere along the lines we're actually going to have to assert these principles we're actually
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going to have to live them we're actually going to have to say to a transgender family member
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i'm not going to that wedding and the reason i'm not going is because this is a public
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statement and i know that because i've read william gooch
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right so in this talk we're tying together confessionalism post-millennial vision and
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all the rest hopefully as we go about it the the final thing i'll say as we jump in now and i
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promise we're going to jump in right these are general principles and i don't know if you've
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ever noticed this pastors probably have definitely when you give general principles in today's
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culture, people's minds like short circuit, right? Well, what about the exceptions? I'm going to give
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you a general rule that is good for women to be mothers. This is the glory of women, right, is to
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be mothers. And people will say, what about my triple amputee? Well, yeah, that's an exception.
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But we don't make the rules based off the exceptions.
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so it's a good practice that as you hear these again if you have questions by all means talk
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to your husbands talk to your pastors talk to your friends point number one what is biblical
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patriarchy first of all patriarchy simply means father rule right patriarchy means father rule
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in our culture patriarchy is obviously a dirty word it's supposedly responsible for every evil
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that has ever happened, right? The patriarchy has actually been smashed, so they tell us,
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and yet the women who are in charge are killing more babies than ever, if that's in fact what's
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happening, right? Feminists run the day, and yet they tell us it's still the patriarchy's fault,
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right? It's thought that before 1960, pretty much all women were treated like dirt,
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right but again patriarchy means father rule it comes from the greek word patriarches
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and is a combination of the words potter for father and arco for rule as zach garris says
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in his book it describes the practice of men providing for and protecting women and children
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as well as men leading in church and in society right in its simplest form patriarchy means that
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father's rule in home church and in society. Now, it's also interesting that Peter and Paul both
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use this word, patriarches, and it's always positive. So Acts 2.29, for example, Peter refers
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to David the patriarch. They don't seem to be embarrassed about this language. And so if you
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ask the question, well, why are we going to use that word? Number one, because it's a lot easier
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to say than complementarianism. But number two, I think it is the biblical word that's used to
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describe the interplay between the sexes and particularly men leading in these three spheres.
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It's a biblical word. We should use the biblical word. I don't really care what the feminists
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think about it. So that's number one. Number two, patriarchy is about a multi-generational
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covenantal vision, right? This is what separates Andrew Tate masculinity from what we're talking
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about here. Yes, men should be strong, but for what, right? They have to have what Brian just
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talked about with a vision for generations and legacy. I don't have strength so that I can spend
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it on myself doing the sort of buy a Bugatti and have 30 women in your harem thing that Andrew Tate
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does, right? This is a man who has no vision. That's the fundamental problem, among many other
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problems. So patriarchy has to be about this multi-generational and covenantal vision that
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husbands and fathers have for their families. The Lord is known, by the way, in the Old Testament
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as the God of your fathers, right? God meant to impart this vision upon his people and in their
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hearts. And when he visited Abraham in Genesis 15, what did he do? Well, he told him to look at the
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stars and envision his sons, both numerous and ruling the cosmos, right? This is what Dusty was
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talking about. What we want to fill our men with is this hope. Look at your life. Someone did this
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with Jonathan Edwards, by the way, and they looked at like 200 years after his life, and it's like
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dozens and dozens of his sons are lawyers and senators, probably back when senators were a
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better thing, right? They impacted their society. All these people came from him.
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This is actually a similar thing, what we find in Virgil's Aeneid. Aeneas descends into the grave,
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and what does he do? He meets his father, and before him is paraded all the future generations
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of his sons. That's the sort of vision that gives you hope. And God told Abraham, this is what is
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going to happen, ultimately to bring Christ from your loins. This God-given and patriarchal vision
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calls each of us to look down through the generations and by faith start building because
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we believe God's promises. Number three, the scriptures themselves are patriarchal.
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and somewhere a feminist brain just like short-circuited again she had a meltdown
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right but all of us i mean even when i first started looking into this i said i don't know
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are the scriptures really patriarchal this is like 10 years ago well let's look at it even
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elizabeth caddy stanton you remember her she was the first wave feminist she is the one that said
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that christianity i'm quoting christianity is inherently patriarchal and that's why i hate it
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when the feminists say it's patriarchal and then you read the scripture and you say
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she's she's right not that she hated it obviously so what did she do she published her woman's bible
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which deleted all references to patriarchal rule right this is what the scripture teaches
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biblical patriarchy scripture is actually quite clear on this issue in the scriptures for example
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we learn things like this. Adam was created before Eve, and she was made to be his helper on his
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mission. Genesis 2.15. God named mankind after the man, not the woman. Genesis 5.1-2. Adam was the
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one who, as ruler, named his wife Eve, mother of all living. Even though Eve sinned first, what did
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God do? He called Adam to, first and foremost, to be accountable. And this makes sense when you
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consider that Adam ruled and had authority over his wife, and thus he was responsible. He was the
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responsible agent for Eve's sin. In fact, Adam was responsible covenantally for all humanity.
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This is what patriarchy means. Later, we learn that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob would be referred
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to as the patriarchs. Why? Because they ruled their families. Abraham was promised land and
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offspring and given the covenant of circumcision, which applied to who? Male offspring. These
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promises were inherited by his descendants, but specifically by his sons. And the Apostle Paul
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includes Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as patriarchs in Romans 15.8 when he says, Christ became a
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servant to Jews. Why? To confirm the promises given to the patriarchs. So the New Testament
00:29:35.600
doesn't seem to have a problem with patriarchy. In the Old Testament, we think about the civil
00:29:41.180
structures. Well, elders, prophets, judges, priests, kings, all men. We do have the one case of
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Athalia being the queen, but she is a usurper. Judgment falls upon her head. The heads of
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families, men, were chosen for civil government, Exodus 4.29. Of the old covenant structure,
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Herman Boving says this, quote, the entire organization of the nation was along patriarchal
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lines. You see, what's important to read the old guys, right? It's along patriarchal lines in clans,
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families, and households. Each group had a head or representative or prince, a man. All these heads
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or princes together formed the members of the assembly. When they gathered, the congregation
00:30:25.820
of Israel was thus gathered, end quote. Well, what about Jesus? This is one that I get a lot
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on Twitter, social media, but also in email. Wasn't Jesus like a modern-day hippie? Didn't
00:30:40.520
he have like really long hair and flip-flops? Hung out at coffee shops in Boulder, Colorado?
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Well, that's not actually what we find from the biblical record. Jesus not only had shorter hair
00:30:53.400
like the Jewish men of his day, but he exercised manly authority. What did he do? He applauded John
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the Baptist because he wasn't soft. And this is from Matthew 11. The Greek word that's used there
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is malikos, which means effeminacy. He's applauding John for not being effeminate.
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God sent Christ in the flesh as a man. That seems obvious, but again, as previous speakers have said,
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we're not even sure what men are anymore. Christ came as a man. He was resurrected with a male
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body. He taught with authority, and he overturned the tables in the temple. God's people, in fact,
00:31:33.400
expected a male Messiah because the prophecies were about a man, and God's leaders had always
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been men. Point number four, gender rules are rooted in creation. Gender rules are rooted
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in creation. Now modern feminists like to claim that gender rules are just cultural, right? These
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are things that we made up because of John Wayne, not Genesis 1 through 3, which is in fact where
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they come from, right? The New Testament authors, including Jesus, root these teachings continually
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in creation. So for example, when Jesus is asked about marriage in Matthew 19, what does he do?
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He makes a beeline for Genesis and for the creation account.
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When Paul says in 1 Timothy 2 that he does not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man,
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he ties it specifically to the creation account.
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Adam was created first, therefore Adam is to rule.
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While he was created second, it is Adam's helper.
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This was one that I had the most enjoyment over on Twitter
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because I quoted Paul without telling people where it was from,
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and they said, you're twisting the word of God.
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I said, no, this is literally word for word what the text says.
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Here's the point in talking about our natures being rooted in creation and in God's design.
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If God made a woman a certain way, everywhere she goes, every sphere,
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It's not just that she's easily deceived when we're talking about the church, but not the family.
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And then the sphere that nobody likes to talk about because it's so controversial is society, the public sphere.
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God did not arbitrarily assign tasks to men and women apart from the sexual nature that he gave them.
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Contrary to modern thought, these physical and biological differences affect a person's entire being.
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Men and women have different bodies, different minds, different personalities, and different dispositions.
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I read an article recently in a newspaper, and this is how you know it's a good newspaper.
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They said there's a new sociological study, and it proves a fundamental reality.
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Like, I did not need this article to know that that was true.
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right that's how crazy our society is and that's how far even the church has fallen
00:34:09.820
so this means that when we talk of roles that men and women occupy they're not arbitrary
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this is why God gave women certain physical components right they have breasts and womb
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men have more muscle mass on average than women right there's a reason for this and it's related
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to their purpose. This is also why, if you understand nature rooted in creation, this is
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why it's a problem when a woman says, I could preach a better sermon than most men. No, in fact,
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you could not. That's as equally absurd as if I said, I could give birth better than most women.
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You cannot do the thing. It is not rooted in your nature. No matter how many crazy articles
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Number five, women are made for motherhood.
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One of the primary aims of the feminist movement,
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they're outspoken about this, is to push women into the workforce.
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Frederick Engels wrote about this before and after the Communist Manifesto.
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They said, what we want to do is destroy the middle class of working people.
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If we do that, then we can push our communist aims.
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The only way we can do that is by destroying patriarchy.
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There's a reason that Betty Friedan was a Marxist.
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She fabricated her study about how miserable women were in the 1950s.
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We moderns have a hard time fathoming that it's been atypical across history
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to have women so prominent in the workforce as today.
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But you look at 1950 and before, it simply wasn't happening.
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Not in American history, but in world history.
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For thousands of years, women were seen as naturally caretakers in the home.
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Creation tells us that women are made to help the man.
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She does this, get this, she makes immortal souls in her womb.
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And you're trying to tell me that spreadsheets are better.
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She makes immortal souls in her womb, and the home is her proper sphere.
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the church fathers said this for thousands of years a woman can put on pantsuits she can occupy
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a corner office she can sterilize her body for decades via the pill but all the while her
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biology screams out she is made to be a mother her menstrual cycle her breasts her womb they sing
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the song of her creation her glory is motherhood it was chesterton i think who so aptly put it this
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way. He said, feminism is the muddled idea that women are free when they serve their employers,
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but slaves when they help their husbands. You have to understand that's what our women are
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being inundated with. All the feminists and the crypto feminists on Twitter, you know who they
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attack the most? Moms who stay home. And as men, we have to be the protectors to say, no,
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my wife is not going to take that because I'm going to stand in the gap
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point number six men are made to be courageous warriors and workers if you ask me why is
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patriarchy so important for this project of rebuilding christendom it's for this reason
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christendom simply cannot be recovered without recovering biblical masculinity when you look
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at the first Christendom. Men like Charlemagne and Alfred the Great and Jan Sobieski. Well newsflash
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they were not pietistic effeminate versions of men that we have today. They saddled up their horses
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and they defeated an enemy that outnumbered them 200 to 1. This is what we need if we're going to
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defend the perimeter. Genesis 2 15 says that man was put in the garden to work and to keep. Why?
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Because man was designed for vocational work, right?
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The man who doesn't provide for his family is worse than an unbeliever.
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Men are made to be warriors for the sake of their people, right?
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A man who has not bled, a man who has not suffered, a man without scars, is no man at all.
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Women will bleed in childbirth and menstruation.
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Among other things, this means that a man must have a capacity for violence, for the good of his people.
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He has to be meek in the sense that he knows how to restrain it,
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So when Paul says in 1 Corinthians 16, act like men,
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it's clear he means that men must be physically courageous.
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The church tends to over-spiritualize this element of masculinity
00:40:02.820
as though Paul were merely calling for spiritual strength.
00:40:06.720
They think when Paul says act like man, they mean have a really good quiet time.
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Quiet times are important, but you have to do far more than that if you're going to be competent and capable as a man.
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God gave men chests and muscles and deep voices so that they would learn how to command respect and act with gravitas and auctoritas or manly authority.
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so we must reject the false effeminate version of manhood that is so often pushed on us by the
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church today one of the things that draws the most ire perhaps in the realm of fathers and
00:40:47.960
sons protecting is the issue of modesty right this is uh if you talk about yoga pants people
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get really mad i don't know if you know this right there's a coveted thing among feminists
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that has been just embedded in the culture that women think they're free when they take all their
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clothes off in public. And brothers and fathers and husbands ought not to allow this. Why? Because
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they love their daughters. And when daughters are intoxicated and drinking during a Mardi Gras parade
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and doing all sorts of lewd gyrations, the question we ought to ask is where are the men?
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Men are to protect their women and particularly their sexual purity.
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Number seven, women are not made for military or combat.
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This is incredibly unpopular, and I would say law enforcement is included.
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Deuteronomy 22.5 tells us, this is actually very clear.
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A woman shall not wear a man's garment, nor shall a man put on a woman's cloak.
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for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God. Read that again. Whoever
00:41:58.360
does these things is what? An abomination to the Lord your God. That's some pretty weighty
00:42:05.360
language. Not only does this prohibit cross-dressing, but the text refers specifically
00:42:11.440
to a woman who puts on military garb, right? Women are not to serve in the military or combat roles
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because it is a violation of their nature, right?
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Women are not designed to give or to take punches.
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They're not made to enter the arena or the agon.
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We continue to push them into these areas, right?
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Women in the UFC, I think it's against a woman's nature.
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It's disgusting to see women cave each other's faces in, right?
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But other sports, women in full-contact sports, you see this with the NFL.
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They're continually trying to push women into playing.
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Women have leagues, and you know what they found out?
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Cutting sports are notoriously destructive of a woman's ACL, her knee joint, right?
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They have such catastrophic rates of knee failure in women that doctors have said,
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we need to stop putting women in full-contact sports.
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Again, to which we could say, yeah, no kidding.
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The other area where we've connected it in Ogden is women and cultural pugilism.
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Part of the problem is we have women in politics as well.
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We have women all over the place doing things that normally men should be doing.
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And while we admit that the world is messed up and there's going to be some imperfect situations,
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we also have to stand by the principle that women do not need to be out front even in the culture
00:43:45.420
war fighting for us the thing we should ask ourselves if there are no men to do it why is that
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then maybe we should raise some up maybe we should train them but again the woman's role
00:43:59.400
is primarily the home i think i'm crazy on this john gill who served 100 years i believe before
00:44:06.100
Spurgeon in the same church, he applies this principle on Deuteronomy 22.5, and he says this,
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it is very unseemly and impudent and contrary to the modesty of her, that is the woman's sex,
00:44:19.340
or there shall not be upon her any instrument of a man, any utensil of which he makes use of in his
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trade or in his business. So he's not just saying military, he's also saying trade tools.
00:44:31.360
John Gill says as if she was employed in it that is the trade her business was not to do the work
00:44:37.880
of men but to take care of her house and her family and the apostle Paul says the exact same
00:44:45.160
thing we just don't like it number eight men are made to rule in family in church and in society
00:44:54.580
fathers are called to rule in the family this much is clear of all the controversial things to say
00:45:00.860
this is probably the least, but yet it still doesn't happen. Paul is clear in Ephesians 5.25,
00:45:07.240
for example, that the husband is head of the wife. They are not joint heads of the household.
00:45:13.640
As my friend Pastor Rich Lusk often says, anything with two heads is called a monster.
00:45:20.580
There is one head, which is the husband. He has both authority and responsibility to rule his
00:45:27.440
household. Well, this is the failure of servant leader model. Well, he has the responsibility to
00:45:32.420
serve his wife's every need, but he has no real authority. But that's never leadership. You have
00:45:38.840
to have both, authority and responsibility. And the man is to love his wife as Christ loves the
00:45:44.720
church. She, in turn, is to submit, and here's the part that you all love, she is to submit as one
00:45:52.220
inferior in rank. Let me say that again, as one inferior in rank, right? They're both equally
00:46:01.780
valuable before God, but they have a different hierarchical ranking. Our society hates this.
00:46:09.440
I think this is one reason, this is the language, by the way, of the Westminster Confession,
00:46:14.000
but this is one reason why the complementarians in 1989, when they formulated their statements,
00:46:19.680
This is why they said we're anti-hierarchalist.
00:46:31.700
The necessary subjection of the wife is to that degree of subordination where God has placed all subordinates
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and how he has subjected them to their superiors and set them in a lower rank.
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All that means in hierarchy, it's very, very simple.
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And the church fathers taught it for millennia.
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Christ has appointed men to lead in his church.
00:47:08.500
And again, 1 Timothy 2 and elsewhere, Paul affirms this.
00:47:12.180
We need to recognize that preaching and pastoral ministry
00:47:15.640
is a form of spiritual combat and spiritual warfare.
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And this is one reason why a woman's nature
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Finally, we'll conclude with this as we wrap things up.
00:47:43.380
right thomas watson on the fifth commandment taught that the civil sphere just as the church
00:47:50.540
is an extension of the family starts with the family flows outward as such it's clear in this
00:47:57.560
structure and in westminster that only men may rule we see this principle in exodus 3 where the
00:48:04.300
fathers are appointed to rule in the civil sphere but again this is controversial today but actually
00:48:09.360
biblically quite clear. If a woman cannot lawfully rule in her home, which scripture says she cannot,
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and in the church, how then is she going to rule other households and churches?
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This makes no sense. She is not fitted in her nature for this task. And again, if you think
00:48:28.120
I'm crazy, here's R.L. Dabney. He says this, does not the apostle here assign the home as the proper
00:48:35.280
sphere of the Christian woman. That is her kingdom, and neither the secular nor the ecclesiastical
00:48:42.540
commonwealth. Her duties in her home are to detain her away from the public functions. A wise God,
00:48:49.720
and here's the point, this is in God's wisdom and his goodness and his mercy to us, right? These
00:48:55.280
structures are good. A wise God designs no clashing between his domestic, his political,
00:49:09.780
but it's patriarchy in this order that God has set,
00:49:15.980
because it is a good thing for us and for our families
00:49:25.200
Number nine, patriarchy must be marked by contagious joy.
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Everybody thinks, especially on the feminist side, that we're in Ogden and we're just really angry.
00:49:38.720
We're actually a bunch of friends in a really old church basement that probably has mold.
00:49:45.060
And the week before we got here, all Brian did was sing the same songs.
00:49:56.400
As Pastor Doug has led the way on so many of these issues for so many years,
00:50:02.500
You can't fight a culture war without a culture.
00:50:10.560
We are establishing hardy cultures that are worth defending.
00:50:15.240
We are building cultures that are filled with psalm singing and feasting and robust worship
00:50:20.960
and the study of God's Word and Christian education.
00:50:32.380
Only when we have this great culture are we prepared to fight,
00:50:39.880
So as we embark on the battle to defend God's design for human sexuality,
00:50:48.200
The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him,
00:50:55.460
It is not a hatred for feminism or a sexual perversion,
00:51:04.300
It's our love for the purity of Christ's church.
00:51:10.200
talking about King Loon from C.S. Lewis and the Horse and His Boy.
00:51:15.260
It's this principle that we talk about often in Ogden.
00:51:21.380
Right? Quoting from C.S. Lewis, I'll share this with you. He says this,
00:51:26.460
This is what it means to be a king, to be first in every desperate attack, to be last in every
00:51:31.860
desperate retreat, and when there's hunger in the land, as must be now and then in bad years,
00:51:37.280
to wear finer clothes and to laugh louder over a scantier meal than any man in your land.
00:51:44.000
This is a vision, a joyful vision for patriarchy.
00:51:48.500
i want to charge you finally as we close particularly the men dusty spoke at length
00:51:54.860
about this i love what he said i want you to think about your grandsons especially again
00:52:01.980
what will disappoint them is not that you died in the fight and you gave it your all
00:52:10.080
what will disappoint them in you is that you were a coward and that you didn't fight this fight
00:52:16.000
evangelicals have said this for the last many years this is not a hill to die on
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brothers and sisters biblical sexuality and patriarchy is a hill to die on we have to be
00:52:30.340
willing to plant our flag here and we do so because we know what our father's taught
00:52:37.160
we have the confession behind us it may be depressing as you look about we are badly
00:52:44.960
outnumbered by the feminist hordes and the culture and yes even our church institutions
00:52:49.200
to which I say to you what a time to win glory. We have been chosen to stand in the gap as did
00:52:56.320
the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae and we fight not for ourselves but for our progeny not because it
00:53:03.980
is easy but because we look with faith to the future generations of our sons and we come full
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circle with patriarchy. When we die, let us die spent in the fight for Christendom. Then we may
00:53:17.560
say, as Théoden did on the Pelennor fields, as he lay dying, I go now to my father's, in whose
00:53:24.640
mighty company I shall not now be so ashamed. Amen? Let's pray. Father, we thank you so much
00:53:33.340
for your grace. We thank you for your word. We ask that you would revive and reform and build
00:53:39.440
up your church in such a manner that we crush the gates of hell. Father, build up your kingdom
00:53:45.660
for the sake of your son, Jesus, in whose name we pray. Amen. Amen.