Men Of Consequence | A Father's Day Message | Secrets of the Chill People

👊 What does it actually mean to be a man?

In a world where many men feel isolated, stuck, and unsure of their purpose, the answer isn't found in becoming tougher, richer, or more successful.

It's found in becoming a man of consequence.

In this Father's Day message, Brandon Adkins explores what Scripture teaches about biblical manhood, leadership, strength, and purpose.
A man of consequence:
🔥 Submits his strength to God
🏠 Strengthens his home
⛪ Strengthens his church
❤️ Loves and serves others faithfully
🙏 Recognizes he can't do life on his own

Whether you're a father, husband, young man looking for direction, or someone searching for purpose, this message will challenge and encourage you.

At Fierce Church, we're helping you walk with Jesus step-by-step because The Best U is in Community.

#MensMentalHealth #BiblicalManhood #ChristianMen #Purpose #Fatherhood #FierceChurch #MensMinistry

Transcript

Father’s Day Welcome And Dad Humor

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Good morning. Happy Father's Day. If we have a mate, my name is Brandon. I get to be the worship pastor here, and I'm excited to share God's word with you today. I thought I'd start with a dad joke or maybe a dad tip. The next time that your child doesn't want to eat their dinner, you can say, hey, you better eat your dinner. There's hippos out there that are hungry hungry. It's okay. It's not great. But I do have a dad story, fatherly story this week. I was I was hanging out with my seven-year-old son Caleb, and he looked at me and he went, Dad, do you think I'll be a good dad? And I was like, Yeah, buddy, of course. I think you're gonna be a great dad. And he went, Yeah, I got the dad jokes down. And I was like, Yeah, you do. And that's like 80% of it right there is the dad jokes. So you're 80% there. And I think the next 15%, I'm just playing along with him at this point. I think 15% of it is sneezing really loud. And he laughed and went, uh, chew, as loud as he could. And I was like, that's it, man. 95% of the way there. And I think the last 5%, if I remember right, is I think it's having one thing that you're really, really decent at cooking. Like I'm not amazing at making eggs, but I'm really very decent at making scrambled eggs. So I imagine we'll probably have more conversations, hopefully, before he becomes a father to circle back around and fill him in on the rest of the stuff that goes into being a good dad. But because there's more to it than that, right? We hope that there's more to it than that. We believe, I believe that there's more to it

Why Significance Beats Success

SPEAKER_01 1:36

than that. There must be, because there's something in us, men and all of us, really, but I think especially men and fathers that wants to matter. We want to make a difference, right? We want to be um men of significance in the lives of the people around us. We want to build something. We want to use our strength to protect and to provide. We want to leave something behind. I don't want to know that just my life that my life mattered, but that I mattered in the lives of the people around me. Nobody wakes up, I don't think, one day and says, I think I want to waste my life. No, you want your life to matter. But the challenge is that there's all these little counterfeit distractions out there. Do you know what I'm talking about? This is where it gets tricky because we want to we want to matter, but it's very possible, man, to be successful and still not significant. It's very possible to be a man of success but still not be a man of much significance. You could make all the money, you could build a successful career, you could win the approval and the respect of your peers, you could build and run a house successfully, you could have children that even like you, you could sneeze very, very, very loudly and still have missed the deeper calling that the Lord entrusted to you. And unfortunately, men, we see the failure rate is very high. Right? The failure rate is very high. We don't have to look very far to see it, but there's hope. There's hope this morning, and it's right here. It's in God's word. That's what we're gonna look at today. We're gonna look at Psalm 128. And Psalm 128 gives us a better picture of a man. It shows us a man whose life does not end with himself. His fear of God blesses his work, his faithfulness blesses his home, his connection to Zion, the people of God, blesses the people of God. His life reaches beyond him to his children and his children's children, and it affects peace and prosperity for his entire community. There is hope, but it's a slim hope. We won't hit it by accident. It's a it's a two-meter thermal exhaust port in the Death Star. It's a very challenging shot. It's very hard. It's a slim hope because of sin. Because of our sin. We got to talk about our sin problem. If we're gonna talk about being men or fathers of significance, we've got to first be real about where we are, our condition because of sin. It's a it's a slim target. Because of sin, we often want personal blessing without covenant responsibility. We want personal blessing without having to deal with the covenant responsibility. Men, especially, we can drift toward isolation, passivity, distraction. We can fill our lives with a bunch of little hobbies or work or other distractions. We can drift towards self-promotion, self-protection, self-preservation. We may sincerely love God in private, we may, but we may remain detached from the people and the mission and the generational work of God. We may have abdicated and neglected some of the responsibilities that God entrusted to us, and those seemingly small compromises have a way later of taking us out down the road and sidelining us from ever having any real significance. So the question, this Father's Day, men. The question is not, do you tell a mean dad joke? The question is not, do you do you earn the right amount of money? Do you drive the right car? Have you built like a successful home and your kids like you? That's not really even the question. The question is, who is closer to Jesus because you're in their life? Who is stronger in Jesus because you're in their life? That's the question. That's the question we need to grapple with this morning. That's the question we need to kind of let mess us up a little bit this morning. And think of people. Think of people in your different contexts at work, at school, if you go to school, in your family, in your home. Who around you is closer to Jesus because you're there? Who's stronger in Jesus because you're there? We're gonna wrestle with that this morning.

Psalm 128 And The Goal

SPEAKER_01 5:27

I'd love to invite you if you're if you're willing and able to stand, I'm gonna read our passage. We don't always do this, but I think sometimes it's not like a liturgical stand-up, sit-down kind of a church. If you're new, we don't always do this, but it can be sometimes really meaningful to demonstrate by our posture how much we we revere and respect the source of truth and wisdom that God's word is. So if you're able, I'd love to invite you to stand up. I'm gonna read this over us, and we'll jump into it. Blessed are all who fear the Lord, who walk in obedience to him. You will eat the fruit of your labor. Blessings and prosperity will be yours. Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house. Your children will be like olive shoots around your table. Yes! This will be the blessing for the man who fears the Lord. May the Lord bless you from Zion. May you see the prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of your life. May you live to see your children's children. Man of consequence. That's a man who is after it, right? That's a man who's not just good at dad jokes, but he affects impact and positive impact for his children and his children's children, the next generation. That's what we're after, amen. Amen. You can have

Defining The Fear Of The Lord

SPEAKER_01 6:36

a seat. Did you notice what he started with? The man of consequence starts with the fear of the Lord. Verse 1 said, Blessed are all who fear the Lord, who walk in obedience to him. And the fear of the Lord is maybe sometimes an abstract concept. It's kind of sometimes hard to wrap our head around. What is the fear of the Lord? We need to get a good sense of that before we move on because really this whole psalm is laying out the different blessings that go with the fear of the Lord. The fear of the Lord is not terror. It's not like worried that God's gonna smite me at any moment or I'm gonna burst into flames if I tell a lie or something like that. Here's what it is fearing God means having a reverence for him that greatly impacts the way we live. The fear of God is respecting him, obeying him, submitting to his discipline, and worshiping him in awe. The fear of the Lord even includes fearing his judgment on sin. And we know, of course, we know, our sins are covered by the blood of Jesus. Absolutely, it's done, it's covered at the cross. But we also know that our God is a consuming fire who hates sin. And so the fear of the Lord is what quickens us to repentance and motivates us to obey. One way you could think about the fear of the Lord is to think of it in action. Like, what do you do if you're doing the fear of the Lord? Well, you're you're following God's instructions and patterns that he says are blessed, because he says they're blessed. He says living a certain way is blessed, and because he said it, I'm gonna do it. It's not the same thing if it's just that I happen to like living this way. I happen to like attending church, or I happen to like singing songs or reading my Bible, I happen to like those things, and those things happen to be blessed. That's fine, but that's not the same thing as the fear of the Lord. The fear of the Lord is he said it, and I trust that he's telling me the truth. I trust that he is the source of all truth and he's the authority over my life because he said it is blessed. I believe that it's blessed. And the inverse is true as well. I fear him withholding blessing from me if I fail to live in those ways. That's the fear of the Lord showing up. So a man of consequence, before he does anything else, he starts with surrender. He starts with submitting his strength and his will and his opportunities and his resources. He submits it to the Lord out of the fear of the Lord. So maybe that's the revelation for some of us this morning. Before we go any farther, all you needed to hear at church today was stop asking God to bless a life that you're unwilling to submit to him. I'll say it again, stop asking. It's just time to stop asking God to bless a life that you're unwilling to submit to him. Rather, put God back at the center, put him back on the throne where he belongs before you try and lead anything else or ask him to bless it. Deal? Deal. Thank you. So now we're gonna talk about three contexts where we see the man of consequence submitting his strength to God, uh, walking in the fear

Strengthening Your Home With Faith

SPEAKER_01 9:19

of the Lord. There's three contexts right here in Psalm 128. The first one is the home, the next one's the church, and the next one's the next generation. So we're gonna start with the home first. A man of consequence strengthens his home. Verse 2 said, You will eat the fruit of your labor. Blessings and prosperity will be yours. Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house, your children will be like olive shoots around your table. This guy is a blessing in the home. Are you noticing that? He's a blessing in the home. He's deciding to be a blessing in the home. He works hard. It says, You will eat the fruit of your labor. He provides a house. It says, Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house. He prepares a table. Your children will be wild or like olive shoots around your table. This guy knows how to hustle and work hard and affect blessing in his home. And I love the garden imagery in here, the all the wild, the young olive shoots and the fruitful vine. I think that's really cool because I think it there's a few things we know about young olive shoots and fruitful vines. And so I think that that that imagery, that wording kind of sheds light on some of what is the work in the home as the man of God, as the man of consequence is going to try and strengthen his home. Well, there's a couple things we know. First, we'll look at the young olive shoots. It says your children would be like olive shoots around your table. Young olive shoots are loaded with potential, but not much else. Right? Olive trees for the first three to five years don't produce anything. And children, similarly, are bundles of potential, but they're terrible at everything, right? Can't drive a car, they're utterly unemployable, they spill stuff, they're clumsy. Have you seen their artwork? It's a mess. It's like people are as big as buildings. I'm just joking, I love my kids' drawings, but um, but there's not much fruit coming, not not comparatively, there's not as much fruit as there would be later. So for the first three to five years there's of a of an olive tree's life, there is no fruit. It only becomes fruitful after the first three to five years, but then it doesn't reach its peak for like 50 years. It doesn't reach its peak yield for 50 more years. And that only happens if a grower, if a gardener, goes in there and intentionally shapes and nurtures and prunes and corrects and and like nurtures this thing to be its most fruitful self. And so you can probably see the parallel. You've met these people, you've met these young people, you've met these 18 to 25 year olds who it's like, dang, I you are like a beacon of joy and positivity, and it's you got your kind of act together a little bit, at least you're very respectful, very honoring. You're a delight to be around. And I suspect that some nurturing went into that, some shaping went into that. I can even kind of picture the grower in that garden being intentional with that and bringing that fruitfulness to its maximum yield. And you've met maybe the opposite, too, where it's like, man, I don't know, there's not much fruit growing here. Unkept wild olive trees produce a relatively small yield. They grow kind of thistly and sticky and hard, not really great to be around. And the the small amount of fruit that they do yield is kind of bitter, it's not good for anybody's enjoyment. So a man of consequence takes seriously the responsibility to prune and to nurture his young olive shoots so they'll be maximally fruitful. In other words, he disciplines his children and shapes Christ's character and kingdom culture into them. He stewards and develops their potential. He stewards the responsibility, something given to him by God that God wants a good return on. He develops the potential of his young olive shoots. Kids need a lot of stuff. They need structure, they need consistency, they need your attention, your affection, your grace, your encouragement. Maybe the least popular thing to talk about that kids need is discipline.

Discipline That Forms Character

SPEAKER_01 13:03

And that's what we're gonna talk about right now. So, um, guys, I know discipline can be kind of a polarizing hot button issue in today's society. I I'm not gonna tell you like a how-to in parenting. I don't believe that there is one right way to discipline a child. I think every child's different and needs different things. And I know that it can be off-putting to hear a talk about discipline. So I'm what I'm gonna try to do is just kind of a brief survey of some of the concepts in the Bible about discipline for your consideration. If I say anything offensive, please forgive me. And feel free to email me at carter at fierce.church. That actually might get me in more trouble if I think of it. Discipline, though, discipline is about character formation, not behavior control. So disciplining your child is not bending and twisting them into a shape that you happen to prefer or that you find more convenient. That's selfish. That's not godly discipline. Discipline is training them to love wisdom and righteousness, training them to hate folly and rebellion. Discipline is training them to know where the blessing is, to walk in the fear of the Lord. Remember what we said the man of consequence is a man who fears the Lord, who walks in the fear of the Lord. And in the home, that means training your little ones how to do the same thing, how to walk in the fear of the Lord. Discipline is applying a measured amount of pain. It is. If it wasn't painful, it wasn't discipline. Um, Hebrews 12 11 tells us this. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. No discipline. There is no discipline that is not painful. If it wasn't painful, it wasn't discipline. Later, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. That's what we're after, right? With our young olive shoots. That's the fruit that can grow. They could produce this awesome harvest of righteousness and peace that'll bless them for the rest of their lives and everybody that they come in contact with if we're intentional to shape and to nurture and to discipline them as they go. Counting to three is not discipline. Sorry. The thing where it's time to leave and the child doesn't want to leave, and then they melt into this puddle of fit throwing and tantrum, and you go, okay, I guess we'll just leave you here then. Which has that ever worked? That is not discipline as well, because there's no corrective action. There's nothing opposing what they're doing and saying, we're not doing that, we're doing this now. Um, discipline applies a temporary hurt now, measured amount of temporary hurt now, in order to prevent lasting harm later. And there's a difference between hurt and long-lasting harm, isn't there? There's a difference between a little bit of pain and actual damage, right? And that difference is where the gift of pain that is discipline lives. It's what trains our hearts. I'm gonna say spanking is not child abuse. Again, that's Carter at fierce.church. If you've been affected by any of the issues raised in this morning's sermon, discipline should hurt, and it should hurt both parties. It should hurt the parent as well. It should sting, it should kind of burden your heart, it should break your heart when you have to apply some pain to your child. Of course it should. It would be a bad sign if it didn't. And I want to just caution any parents who are trying to discipline their young olive shoots. If you've grown calloused or numb toward applying discipline to your child, I want to challenge you to pause the discipline, reschedule that discipline session, go have a quiet time with the Lord and ask him for a fresh and tender heart because it should, it should burden your heart. Discipline is done with precision and restraint. Discipline is not venting the full fury of your anger. It's not flying off the handle and running your mouth. That would be closer to child abuse. That's not what discipline is. Discipline is done with a great amount of restraint. You have more power than you're going to use when you discipline. Discipline is rigorous and costly for the parent. How many know how hard it is? It is hard work to be consistent. Is consistency with your children hard? Because what'll happen is you'll come home from a long day of work and you'll slump into the couch and you'll settle down after about five minutes into this sedimentary state of rest. And then as soon as that happens, the moment that happens, a little bit of drama starts to boil over over here and then start to really boil over. And now you got to wrestle yourself up off the couch. And you got to kind of shake yourself awake a little bit because I can't, I can't just run in full steam and fly off the handle and be angry. I've got to actually, with grace and care, dignify the humans that I'm helping to shape. I have to start to pull apart and sort out who pulled whose hair, okay, and who disrespected their mother. And now okay, you're gonna need, well, you're bringing this kind of hellish fleshy culture into the home, and that's not the culture we're gonna do. We're gonna do the culture of the kingdom, which is grace-filled and honoring. And so we're gonna have to carefully correct this, and you're gonna need a timeout, you're gonna need to apologize to your mother, and that kind of thing. It's a lot of hard work, isn't it? But check it out it's hard work, but it's good work, it's it's rewarding work, and the promise is right here in verse 2. It says, you will eat the fruit of your labor. It's laborious, but it is so fruitful. If you spent time around some of these children, it's like, man, this it is hard work, but man, it just pays off immediately. Um, of course, children don't just need discipline, they also need nurturing. Give them your attention and your care. And if you're taking seriously the challenge to discipline your children, I want to challenge you to examine your encouragement to correction ratio. So it should be at least five to one at least, if not like a thousand to one. For every one thing that you're like, we got to correct this, we gotta stop doing this. You're telling them a thousand things where, hey, here's where you're awesome, here's where you're killing it, you're doing it right. I'm so proud of you here and here and here. When you do this, you look like Jesus. This is awesome, it's going well. Right. So examine that as you go. But a man of consequence knows when to be firm and when to be tender. And on the subject of tenderness, let's talk about wives.

Cherishing Your Wife With Delight

SPEAKER_01 19:16

Uh, we're gonna talk about the fruitful, the fruitful vine. In verse 3, it says, Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house. Uh, we know, we know some, I love again the garden imagery. We know what to do with young olive shoot. What we know to do with a fruitful vine is a fruitful vine needs less pruning and more harvesting and enjoying and delighting in. I got a chance to go pick blueberries on vacation. We have a picture of us picking blueberries there, some of our family picking some blueberries. It was awesome. We got to visit my wife's Uncle Pete and Aunt Cheryl. And while we were with them, um, Aunt Cheryl, her one of her neighbors grows blueberries, and the neighbor was out of town and had asked Cheryl if while she was gone, would you please go pick these blueberries? And we got to go, we got it was awesome. We like rode on a boat across the lake and then got off and got to pick blueberries. It was like amazing. I ate more blueberries than I think we sent her home with. But um, what I came to understand was that it wasn't like, hey, feel free to come by and pick some blueberries. It was like, will you please do this? It was like, I'm gonna be out of town, can you let my dogs out? Can you come harvest the blueberries? Because apparently the fruitfulness of the bush depends on regular harvesting. And so um, if you leave ripe blueberries on the bush, what'll happen is they'll just sit there and they'll begin to rot. They can they can turn in that can turn into disease, that can attract pests. Somehow it like stifles the flow of nutrients to produce more fruit. So the fruitfulness for that whole bush for the whole season will be diminished if you don't regularly harvest the blueberries, and maybe you see where I'm going with it, are fruitful vines of wives. Enjoying the harvest makes the vine maximally fruitful. And it's part of what we've been entrusted with. We've been, we've been men, fathers, husbands, we've been entrusted with these beautiful, fruitful vines that the Lord expects expects us to steward and to maintain and to be the grower in the garden, helping to look over that. So your spouse will bloom and flourish as they see you enjoying them. Can I tell you, men, can I tell you one of the biggest secrets? Actually, it works both ways. Spouses, can I tell you one of the biggest biggest secrets of having an enjoyable spouse? You ready? It's enjoying your spouse. That's it. Like it's not just that, it's more than that for sure, but it's not less than that. Right? Just like raising great children is more than just disciplining them, but it's not less than discipline. Get the foundational first things in first, and the rest of it will flow. Some sometimes enjoying the harvest, harvesting the fruit of the fruitful vine and enjoying it, letting your wife see you delight in her is having a meaningful conversation with her. More often than you are. And I'm taking this myself. So scheduling some couch time. Listen, a man of consequence can have a meaningful and pleasant conversation with his wife about more than just the kids or the groceries or the yard work or the errands. Right? There's times where you can pull apart and you can see the two magic words you can use, man, are what else? As you're having a conversation and you suspect this might become, wait a minute, this might become a meaningful conversation. What else? Mmm, yes, yes. Okay, I understand. What else? Tell me more. Surely there's not more to this story, but I'll ask again just in case. What else? And before you know it, you might have just had a meaningful conversation with your spouse. That could go great. If you've mastered the what else, you could try. How does that make you feel? It's riskier territory, but try it. And then maybe the highest risk is what do you think the Lord might be doing in that scenario? The thing you want to avoid doing is trying to solve any of the problems that come up. So she might hand you a problem, and the temptation is like, I'll come in and help fix this, which creates a lot more problems. So what you're trying to do is just hear and listen and win the girl. You're not trying to win the scenario that she's creating, you're trying to get to her heart and actually win her, right? Amen. As with children, be generous with your encouragement and your appreciation. So find with specificity. Say, not just, hey, you're great. But when you did this, it was awesome. And here's what it did for me and for the family. You were so awesome at this. Be generous with your praise and your appreciation. Don't, under any circumstances, curse the inheritance with comparison and discontentment. Don't meditate on and think about, or even say out loud, my vine is not as fruitful as I wish it was, or as fruitful as theirs is. That will destroy your garden. Resenting your spouse is burning down your own garden, and it's about the most ungrateful and wicked thing you could possibly do with a good inheritance your heavenly father gave you. So fear the Lord and don't do it. A man of consequence strengthens his home by cherishing his wife and nurturing and shaping his children. That's the home. Let's talk about the next context.

Zion Today Means The Local Church

SPEAKER_01 24:28

This is only a second point, so we're going to speed up a little bit. A man of consequence strengthens the church. Verse 5 said, May the Lord bless you from Zion. From Zion. We needed to pull apart the context a little bit, and I love how understanding the context really kind of gives you a little more insight into what the assignment is. This Psalm, Psalm 128, is a it's a song of ascent. Some of our Bibles say at the top, even before the text of the of the scripture, it says, a song of ascent, ascending to Jerusalem to worship in God's house. Zion or Jerusalem, which are interchangeable, was the gathering place. The father would take his family to worship God and offer sacrifices. Psalms of ascent are Psalms, there's 15 of them. The contemporary way we could think about Jerusalem or Zion in this text is the church. Specifically, we mean the local believers at a specific location. It's the gathered church. Check it out. It's here. Check it out. God's blessing is attached to the place of his presence and work. The church. A man of consequence brings his family to the place of God's blessing. What didn't happen in our context, in the in the original context of the original audience of this scripture, what didn't happen in ancient Israelite culture is the Israelite mother didn't set the alarm the night before and wake up really early and get the kids ready and then sneak in and kind of nudge the Israelite father and say, Hey, you coming with us this morning to Jerusalem? That just didn't happen. Like that's just not the context we have. What did happen is a man who feared the Lord brought his family to the place of blessing. And as the Israelites convened at Zion, they were reminded that they belonged to a covenant community where they would be with people who thought about God and his kingdom alike, who viewed life alike, and who pursued the same values as they as they were. A man of consequence gets his family to church. A man of consequence also takes responsibility to build the church. He understands that the church is his to build. It's there because I'm supposed to belong to it and be a part of it and actually help be it and help build it. 1 Corinthians 14, 26 says, What then shall we say, brothers and sisters? When you come together, each of you has a hymn or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Everything must be done so that the church may be built up. Everything must be done so that the church may be built up. A man of consequence, a man of significance, a man who fears the Lord hears that and says, That's mine to do. No one else is coming. I'm supposed to do that. I'm supposed to pick up a hammer and invest my strength in building the church, the people, the gathered church, the community of believers. So, men, if I may, high challenge moment, but I think you came to church to hear the truth. If I may, if you're not serving the Lord, I don't know what you're doing. And I I'm told that I look furious if I don't smile. So I'm not mad actually at all. I'm I'm confused. I'm puzzled. If you're not serving, I don't know what you're doing. I really mean it. I don't understand, I don't recognize that behavior or understand it. I don't know why you wouldn't serve the Lord at church. I'm nonplussed. Because God blesses our belonging to the body of Christ, not just our attending, right? So I'm confused. Why would you forego a lot of good blessing that could be yours if you were to belong, if you were to pick up a hammer and start building here? Um I'm also confused because there's eternal investment available to you. And I know probably every adult in this room at some point has invested in something financially, at least even just a savings account where you put a little money in and it grows and you get more money back, that money's gonna blow away. And you know that. You could be investing in something that doesn't perish. You could be investing in something that is eternal, the kingdom of heaven. So I'm confused why you wouldn't want to do that. I also really don't get it because it is so super fulfilling to serve the Lord, isn't it? Is anybody does anybody here serve? And you've you could attest to how fulfilling it is to get to see the miracles that God does up close. We get a front row seat to the miracles that Jesus does every time we serve. I know when I'm leading worship, what I'm doing is this, largely, the executive function of what my brain and body is doing is this some and maybe vocal cords or singing, some some songs. That's I'm those are the elements that I'm doing. But then somehow, that's the natural stuff, but then supernaturally the Holy Spirit comes in and fills it up, right? And and the and the Lord does what only the Lord can do, and He moves in people's hearts and like affects change and rearranges things and redeems and restores and saves people and saves marriages and saves eternities and saves lives. That how could you not want to be a part of that? It's awesome, it's so exciting and so fun and so fulfilling to do, and it's really fun. Like it's a fun environment. I don't know of a single uh context in the church that's not fun to be a part of. Like I some of the best friendships that I have, some of the best friendships you can have are forged in the context of a serving team, right? Yeah, amen. Um, also, we make it super duper easy. So we're gonna show a QR code. You can scan this QR code and sign up to serve right now. And I promise it's so easy. You could scan that thing, and within maybe a couple weeks have been followed up with, trained, and find yourself serving, like you're already scheduled. So it's so easy. Uh Jim Frice, Dave Clement, Kevin Bloss, Britt Carter, David Russo, Jim Locke, Brad Pruitt. These are some of the men that I look around, as I look around, I come through, yeah, amen. Let's hear it. Heroes. Like these are some of the men. I walk through church on a Sunday morning or on a on a Sunday night, and I see these guys serving, and it's like, yes, this is it. This is like a bright shining beacon of strength being poured into and and and sown into and invested here to create a rich soil for you to come and benefit from. And I wonder, where are you? Like we need you. Join us. It's good. We are, I'm not gonna say we'll be stronger with you, I'll say we're weakened without you. Right? Amen. So, a man of consequence builds the church. Another context we're gonna look at is a man of consequence strengthens the next generation.

Becoming A Guide For Others

SPEAKER_01 30:58

So, um, in verse six, it says, May you live to see your children's children. May you live to see your children's children. And I'm gonna extend this, I don't think it's reaching beyond the scope of all of scripture, but definitely this passage to say that's not just biological children. That's spiritual children as well. So we talked about discipline, and you might be like, Brandon, that doesn't apply to me at all. My children are grown, they're past the discipline stage, they're out of the house, they're adults. Or maybe you don't have kids at all. You might not have any biological children of your own, but everybody, everybody has the opportunity to be a spiritual father, or a spiritual big brother, or a spiritual mother, or a spiritual big sister. Every single person. I'll introduce you to some of mine: Pete, BJ, Steve, Nate, Dave, Mark, not our Mark, but also our Mark, John. And the list goes on, and I could tell you stories about each one. That at different moments in my young life, I'm here today, and I'm I am the man I am today because of their influence and their impact. And really, all they did was say, follow me as I follow Christ. They didn't say it in those words, even. They just like, by their friendship, by their intentionality with me, what they were doing is they saw I was following, I was trying to follow Jesus, and they said, I'm following Jesus too. Follow me as I follow Jesus. They were imperfect, but they were intentional. Many of them didn't have any formal training in ministry at all. They weren't professional pastors or anything like that. They just took seriously the responsibility that was theirs to take some responsibility for the young ones around them, like me, and bring them with as they went. They saw me out wandering in a field, trying to follow the Lord, trying to find the path to Jerusalem, and they had found it and they said, Hey, over here, come over here, it's over here. This is the way to Jerusalem. Let's go together. Um, this is vitally important, guys, because Jesus says in Matthew 7 14, small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only if you find it. So, men, if you found it, even a little bit, even imperfectly, if you found it, wave your arms to the next generation and say, Over here, over here, follow me as I follow Jesus. Let's go together. It's so important, guys. The kingdom of heaven is hard to see. You might even say it's invisible. You can't see it, right? It can be hard to follow the Lord, can't it? Don't we need guides along the way? A man of consequence is willing to be an intentional guide, revealing the kingdom to those around him. Have you ever needed a guide? Yeah, I have. It's quiet in here. Have you ever needed a guide? Yeah, me too. Uh, how about this? Man, have you ever been sent to the store by your wife to pick something up? And you get there and it does not exist. I I tell Erica all the time, I need to know what it is, name, brand, color of the packaging, roughly the size, what aisle it's in, what shelf it's on, and I get there and it does not exist. And I think I've been pranked. And I call her and I say, I'm here and it doesn't exist. And she says, Are you looking with your brand and eyes? And I say, Those are the only eyes that I have. So, yes, if you're not familiar, brand and eyes are when I look for something in the spot she said it would be and it wasn't there, and then she comes over and looks in the exact same spot and it materializes out of thin air. This happened to me recently, actually, where it was uh it was the last week of school for my seven-year-old, and it was field day the next day, and I was overhearing he was on the purple team, and he a seven-year-old boy didn't have a purple t-shirt, and so he couldn't have been on the yellow team or the green team or the red team, he needed a purple t-shirt, and I became aware that we needed to get this purple t-shirt. And later that day, um, I happened to be out. I was picking up my teenage kids from a friend's house, and we're driving home, and I thought, you know what? I'll I'll save the day. I'll get the purple t-shirt, I'll be the hero. It was ambitious, I'll grant you that. It was ambitious for several reasons. First, it was 9:30 at night, and I'm getting dumber by the second at that hour. It was at 9:30. Most of the stores that would naturally carry a solid purple t-shirt, like a craft store like Hobby Lobby or something, long closed. But the real reason it was ambitious is because I'm colorblind with blue and purple. So I wore this shirt as an example. I'm told this is a blue shirt, but if you told me it was purple, I wouldn't argue with you. So the trip was not without its frustrations. We started at Woodman's, which doesn't sell clothing. So log that away. I see a I see a building that size, and I think, what couldn't you sell? And the answer is clothing, apparently. So we we went to Target after that, and I found the very girliest purple shirt ever. Like flowery girly. If the goal was to make my seven-year-old son cry, that would have been the right shirt to get. So then we left and we went to Walmart, and it was at Walmart. It's an hour in. The gas light is on in the car. I'm having, I'm over it. I'm gonna get this purple shirt. I'm walking into Walmart, and I had a moment and I just stopped in the in the entryway of Walmart and I said out loud, you know, it's a special kind of discouraging being on a hunt looking for something you literally can't see. I physically can't see it. I might have picked up a purple shirt and not known it. I can't tell you how many times to my to my teenage children I walked around and said, I held up a shirt and said, purple? Purple? No, not purple. And just so you know, guys, if you see a 40-year-old man at Walmart at 10:30 at night going, purple, purple, just check on him. Like, you okay, bud? Can we call somebody for you? Because I was I was not okay. And I I I tell you that story circling back around, a man of consequence strengthens the next generation. As frustrating as it was to pick up another purple shirt, or actually it was a navy blue shirt, or as I call it, a fake purple shirt, and hold it up to my children and discover, nope, I have not achieved my goal. This is still not a purple shirt. As frustrating as it was to know I hadn't achieved my goal yet, it would have been infinitely more discouraging without them. As snarky as they were about it. They loved the whole thing and they still laugh about it. Um and guys, it's hard to see the kingdom. It's hard to see kingdom fruit in our own lives. I'll say it maybe maybe to say it a different way. It's we're colorblind to kingdom fruit in our own lives a lot of the time. So you'll see it. You've seen maybe young people come on fire for the Lord, and it's like they're got a new lease on life, and they change all their Spotify playlists to Christian music, and they're opening their Bible on their lunch breaks, they're sharing the gospel with their coworkers. It's great for the first month. And then that honeymoon phase kind of ends, and in that second month, some real life hard stuff hits, or maybe they slip back into a sin pattern and they're super discouraged. They kind of bottom out. There's this moment right here, and they bottom out and they look back and they're like, was that even real? Like, is this even working? Was I ever saved? Was there ever any fruit? And that right there is the moment where men of consequence, spiritual fathers and brothers come alongside and put your arm around and say, Hey, hey, hey, don't give up here. This is fruit right here. I see. That's the purple shirt. That's the kingdom right there. When you spoke to your wife that way, the tone was dignifying and honoring. You were gentle, you were kind, you were, you were gracious. That's it, man. Here, here. That's the kingdom of heaven. You found the purple shirt. Here, here. Cheers. Keep going, don't give up. And likewise, sometimes they'll pick up what they think is a purple shirt. They'll say, I think the Lord's calling me to do this terrible decision. And you graciously get to say, I think that's fake purple. I think that's navy blue. That I don't think that's quite, it's a close counterfeit, but it's not quite the same thing. Maybe you've seen people, even not new in the Lord, you've you've walked with them a long time, and they come to you one day and they're like, Hey, great news. You know that thing that I've always wanted to do? Well, I prayed about it once, and I have a special peace that must be God. So I did it, or I'm gonna do it. And by the way, that that model for decision making is not particularly biblical at all. There's nothing in scripture that's like just this general, flowery, fluffy sense of peace must be God. It might be God, or it might be that the enemy's happy backing up and just letting you make that bad choice because he didn't have to tempt you into it. But brothers, men of consequence, mothers of consequence, it's ours. When we see a young one start to do that, we step in and say, Whoa, whoa, hey, I'm not the Lord, I'm not the Holy Spirit, I'm not telling you what to do, I'm not mad at you, but can I just tell you that that looks like a navy blue shirt, not a purple shirt? Okay? Men of consequence, strengthen the next generation. And the question is, we're willing to be intentional guides, revealing the kingdom to those around us. The question that we started with was remember, this is the question we're gonna like kind of let it mess us up this Father's Day is who is closer to Jesus because you're in their life? Right? Think of some names. Or maybe who's the Lord calling you to be intentional with and help them get stronger in Jesus by being in your life? Who in your family or on your serving team or in your small group or at work or at school or in your neighborhood? Maybe it doesn't mean opening scripture with your coworkers, maybe it doesn't mean leading them in quiet times during lunch. Maybe it just means you stop compartmentalizing your faith. Maybe you you just decide I'm gonna be the same guy on Monday that I was on Sunday at church. Maybe you just lead by your integrity, maybe by your life you're saying, follow me as I follow Jesus. And maybe down the road there's a conversation to be explicit and to share the gospel directly with them. But until then, you can do it. You can do it covertly. You can minister without quoting a single verse of scripture for a long time in a relationship. So to recap, a man of consequence strengthens his home by nurturing and shaping his children and cherishing his wife. Man of consequence strengthens and builds the church. Man of consequence strengthens the next generation as a willing guide, revealing the kingdom to those God's put around him.

Come Back To The Father

SPEAKER_01 41:06

Deal. Now you might say, Brandon, that all sounds great. I'd love to do that even. I see some context, but I feel inadequate. I don't know how. I didn't maybe I didn't have the spiritual fathers that you seem to have had, or I didn't have this modeled for me well. And I'm sensitive to that. Like I really get there are spiritual orphan, there's there's a spiritual orphanage thing happening in our society. It's really, it is hard. Can I encourage you? What we do then? We started correctly, we started by saying this is way too hard for us. We started by saying this is the two-meter thermal exhaust port on the Death Star. It's a very it's an impossible shot to make, actually, for anybody but Jesus. And so we return to Jesus. The man of consequence looks to the man of consequence, Jesus Christ. That's what we do. Jesus is the Son who brings us to the Father. Jesus is the older brother who is not ashamed to call us family. Jesus is the shepherd who gathers scattered men. Jesus is the Savior who turns orphans into sons, and sons into fathers. So this Father's Day, the call is simple. Come back to the Father. Bring your strength to your house. Bring your strength to the house of God and father those coming behind you, because God's blessing was never meant to stop with you. I'd love to invite you to stand again. We're gonna sing a song in a minute. I'm gonna, but first I want to stand in in reverence and awe out of gratitude and respect for God's word one more time. I'm gonna read this over you as a blessing now. This is for you, man of consequence, fathers, mothers, sons and daughters. Blessed are all who fear the Lord, who walk in obedience to him. You will eat the fruit of your labor. Blessings and prosperity will be yours. Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house. Your children will be like olive shoots around your table. Yes! This will be the blessing for the man who fears the Lord. May the Lord bless you from Zion. May you see the prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of your life. May you live to see your children's children.

SPEAKER_00 43:15

Peace be on Israel. Amen. Alright, folks, that's all the time we have, but thank you so much for listening to this sermon. If you got a lot out of this, feel free to share this with somebody who might need it. Also, there's a ton more content on our website, on our YouTube channel, on our Instagram channel, on our TikTok channel. Feel free to check all that kind of a thing out. Also, if you're interested in leadership type stuff, go ahead and check out our other podcast or any other blogs or videos or anything over at BibleLeadership.com. And whatever else you do, make sure that you believe that for some debate today.