The Strength and Courage of Jesus: Stories You’ve Overlooked

We explore some often overlooked and untold stories of Jesus by examining moments from his life around the time of his crucifixion. 

We discuss how Jesus exemplifies true manhood through His courage, strength, and dedication to His mission. 

Join us as we dive into moments from the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus’s trials, and His conquest over death and Hades, highlighting why these stories should be celebrated and emulated.

00:00 Introduction: Iconic Male Heroes
01:54 Reevaluating Jesus as a Manly Man
04:24 The Garden of Gethsemane: A Test of Courage
09:49 The Trial: Facing Authority with Strength
13:31 The Harrowing of Hell: Jesus' Ultimate Victory
18:24 Conclusion: Jesus, The Ultimate Epic Hero

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Transcript

0:00

Men. When you think about the movies and the stories that you love and the characters in those stories, who are men that you most would want to be like, who really comes to mind for you? If you think about some recent stories, it might be somebody like Captain America or Thor, right? These kind of heroic, you know, action superhero type figures who save the day, but also like have these incredible physiques and just look like, you know, as manly a man as they possibly could. Maybe you think about somebody like Jack Reacher, you know, who's this kind of little more like real life type character, but has this larger than life personality and body, right? We kind of tend to idolize these very like hyper masculine figures that come out of these stories and movies that we love and think that's the kind of man that I want to be. I want to, I wanna be like that. Maybe you, you go back to stories that are a little bit older, stories that were big during my young adult years. Things like, uh, or characters like William Wallace from Braveheart, or Maximus from Gladiator, or even Aragorn from the Lord of the Rings, movies, characters like that, that just had these kind of epic stories that they were a part of and stood for all the right things in the midst of really, really difficult circumstances. Those were the kind of. Epic hero men that we wanted to be like, or maybe you go back even further to tales and stories for with actors like John Wayne or Clint Eastwood, or Sean Connery as James Bond. You know, any of those kinds of, again, kind of hyper masculine figures who stood out and really kind of represented, yeah, this is what it looks like to be a cool, a badass man. You know, just whatever. It was the kind of man that every man seemed to really want to be like. Now in the midst of characters like that, what about Jesus? Right? It, it almost kind of seems like laughable for me to throw his name into the midst of all of those kinds of really masculine, manly men sort of characters. Because when we think about Jesus, manly man isn't usually the phrase that we would conjure up as a way of being able to describe him. But we're in the midst of this series here where I'm actually trying to say, Hey, I, I do think there are some reasons that we should consider Jesus as a manly man. We should look at him as the man most worthy of following, and the man that we really want to be like Now, no, he's not going to have, you know, a chest and abs like Chris Hemsworth has, and he's not going to be the womanizer like James Bond was, but. I don't know that those things are really what makes a man a man anyway. And most of us as men would kind of recognize that those things aren't attainable or even good for most of us. But what does make a man a true man are things that Jesus really embodies. Here at the Manhood Tribes Channel, we talk a lot about these ideas of the five marks of manhood. And if you've missed me talking about that, go back and watch just our most recent video, uh, episode 48, where I talk about how Jesus embodies the five marks of manhood. But I want to today in this episode, because we're talking about characters and stories, I want to really try to call out some of the stories from Jesus' life that help highlight why he is such a manly man. Why he is the kind of man that all of us would want to follow.'cause I think what we've actually done is a real discredit to Jesus. There are some moments from his life. There are real stories of his heroism and his strength and his masculinity that for some reason have kind of gotten like left out. We just don't talk about these stories as much, and yet they are the kinds of things that if we were reading an old school Western, which show up in those kinds of stories, or if we were reading an. Epic fantasy, we would go, wow, that character is awesome. I wanna be like him. But we as men, in particular in our churches today, don't really talk about those kinds of stories. We don't celebrate the masculinity of Jesus as much, and I think that's a real discredit to Jesus. He is and was a man. He lived as a man, and so we need to celebrate that side of him as well. So today I want to talk about a few stories that are from the time period around his crucifixion. Now, a lot of people, even if you're not religious, you don't know much about Jesus. Probably know a little bit about his crucifixion that he died on a cross in the city of Jerusalem and that he came back to life three days later. And that's the kind of central story of what Christianity is all about. We know some about the the torture and the agony and the pain of crucifixion and how awful it was, and that he had to endure those things, but that's kind of the common stuff that most people know. Even a little bit about those parts of the stories. But there's some. Hidden details in the midst of that story that often get overlooked that I think I wanna pay a little more attention to today that are gonna highlight for us the masculinity of Jesus and really why he is kind of the epic hero that all of us wish that we could beat. That he is the kind of man who actually is worth emulating or following that we want to try to model ourselves after. So let's look at three different kind of moments from this series of things that happened in the story of Jesus around the time of his crucifixion. The first of those moments is actually to be found in the Garden of Gethsemane. This was the time, the night before Jesus's crucifixion where he went to spend some time in prayer before God has Father, and really just to. Kind of beg the father, Hey, would it be possible for me to not have to go through with what I'm about to have to go through? Would there be a way for me to not have to go to death to be put to death for what is about to happen? I. And we see the, the agony that Jesus goes through in praying through these things. He, he wants to have his friends, his disciples close to him, and yet they kind of keep falling asleep. They kind of abandon him in his moment of, you know, real need there. He wants their closeness, their proximity, and yet they just kind of can't summon the ability to stay alert and to stay, uh, able to be able to help him in the midst of that trial. And so he feels. Really kind of alone. He feels like he's going through it by himself. And yet in the midst of that struggle, in the midst of his loneliness and in the midst of his hesitation about going through what he's about to go through, he's, he's kind of begging the Lord, Hey, is there some other way that this can be done? And yet at the same time, he faces that down with a tremendous amount of both courage and strength. We see his courage in the statement where he says in his prayers to the father, yet, not my will, but yours be done. So the courage in that is just for him to be able to say, Hey, I, I really am, I'm submitting myself to someone else, and this is going to take everything I have and more, and I'm not even sure that I'm up to the task, but what I am up to is following. The ultimate allegiance in my life, and for Jesus' ultimate allegiance was his father. He knew that clear and simple, that that's what he was really meant to be about. And so if the father was saying, let's move forward with this, or even if the father wasn't saying anything, but Jesus was clear on that's what the mission was gonna be, and the Father wasn't changing his mind, Jesus found the courage to be able to humble himself, to put his desires and even his fears beneath. His allegiance to his father, that took a lot of courage to know that what that meant was his agonizing death was in front of him, and he was going to have to go through with what he was facing. But it took a lot of strength as well. We see the picture of Jesus in Gethsemane, where he is actually praying so intensely that he is sweating blood. This was a physical trial for Jesus. His body was literally. Pushing back against him saying, this is too much. This is so much stress that he's actually having blood come out of his sweat po. This is a rare thing that can happen medically, but it happens under so much stress and duress that literally the body is saying, no, no, no. Please stop. Don't do this. And so he's having to summon physically the strength to actually push forward into what he knows is expected of him and the steps that he has to take next. All right, so we see Jesus's strength, his courage. We see his allegiance to the father in the midst of this, or really here at the beginning of this very intense trial of what he's about to undergo. But I think because those things happen so quickly in the story, when we read it from the scriptures that we kind of overlook like how intense and how severe this really was for Jesus, this was as agonizing a moment as he had.

Don Ross: 9:12

Ever faced in his entire life, and yet here he is in some ways wanting to not have to go through with it, but finding the strength and the courage to be able to face it and to go through with it. Any of us as men, if we were watching that as a movie, would look at that man and go. Yeah, that's the kind of man that I wanna be. That's the kind of way that I want to face up to the hard things in my life. I want to be able to have that kind of strength and that kind of courage to face down my trials and my fears in that way, the same way that Jesus did. There's a manliness to what he's doing that is admirable and something that we ought to be willing to follow. Now as we move past the Garden of Gethsemane, we come to the trial of Jesus. And here again is kind of some details that we tend to really sort of neglect in the way that we talk about the crucifixion story of Jesus.

10:04

Jesus goes on trial, but not just with. One person or one group of people, but kind of all over the city of Jerusalem, he has to face down some of the highest authorities in all of his world at that time. He goes not only to meet with the high priest and the council. The Council of Elders and religious leaders where he has to defend himself before them, but he also then has to go to King Herod, who was one of the Jewish leaders, and he had to go before Pontius Pilate, who was the Roman governor. Okay, so these are like, these are all the most. Powerful people in Jesus' world. It's like in our day, if you had to go like defend yourself before the Pope and the King of England and the President of the United States, you know, all within about a 12 hour period, like this is crazy talk. Imagining Jesus have to do this. It was, this would, this would be so. Out of our depth and beyond what we could imagine in terms of intimidation and pressure, and yet here Jesus is having to do it in a very short amount of time where he's already been under duress and stress and he's having to face down all of these authority figures. And yet he does it. He does it with unbelievable tact and strategy and peace and calm in the midst of all of the accusations and the chaos and the craziness and the back and forth. And gosh, it's, it's kind of remarkable to watch him navigate this trial or series of trials and the pressure that he's under, as he has to face these incredible, incredibly powerful figures in his world at the time. What we do see about Jesus is that he displays a lot of courage, but he doesn't show any defensiveness. He doesn't get into arguments where he has to try to prove himself. He's not trying to demonstrate his power or to argue his way out of. What he knows is coming with his crucifixion. He's not trying to do any of that. He is simply standing for the mission that God the father has given him. And he declares it very clearly. He talks about it straightforwardly, and for the most part, it seems like you know, at least when it comes to Herod and Pontius Pilate, that they can't really find very much wrong with him. But in the midst of that, it's also clear that what he is standing for is causing chaos and upheaval in the culture around him, and that ultimately is what couldn't be tolerated. And so it does lead to his death, but we see him not backing down from that possibility. He shows tremendous courage in the face of the most severe and dire consequences imaginable and in the face of the most powerful and intimidating people in his world. Could you imagine being in that kind of place and having to do what he did? Again, it's beyond most of us. To have to face the things that Jesus faced. And yet here he is doing it well, displaying an unbelievable amount of manly courage in the midst of some of the hardest trials that he would ever face, and probably harder trials than you and I would ever face. He is a manly man. He is a man who is worth following and worth imitating. And these are the kinds of stories that we as men need to remind ourselves about Jesus so that we can see him as the kind of man that we do want to follow. Okay. One more story, and it's not actually the crucifixion itself, so I want to talk about something that happens after the crucifixion. And depending on the tradition that you grew up in, if you are a Christian, uh, you may not have heard much of this story at all. If you're not a Christian, you probably have never heard this story, but depending on your tradition, it's not something that necessarily gets talked about very much. It is what happens after Jesus gets crucified. In some traditions, this story is referred to as the harrowing of hell, but I don't think that's actually the best terminology for it because we're not gonna actually talk about hell. We're gonna talk about what is sometimes referred to in our language as the underworld, or in the biblical language was just simply referred to death and Hades. It was the place where people went when they died. And in biblical and church tradition, we know that Jesus descended into this place because he died. And as all people do when they die, they go to this place, the underworld, or what was called in that World Shield or Hades. It was the place that dead people went to after they died. Jesus was no different. He went to that place as well, but he did something very different in that place than any other human had ever done. He conquered it. He went into death itself and defeated death. Scripture talks about the idea that he rested the keys from death and Hades, and we see this picture of him in the final book of the Scriptures, the Book of Revelation, where Jesus' pictured holding the keys to death and Hades symbolizing how he has overcome a place. And a figure that no human being had any power to be able to do, and yet Jesus walks right into the place and just simply says, Nope, no more death is not going to have a hold on me, and it's not going to have a hold on anyone else who chooses to follow me. Now it's part of the church tradition that while he was there, he freed many of the dead souls who had lived in times past, but who had their faith in what God was going to do through the Messiah. And so he brought with him out of death so many souls who had already had their faith in him and were willing to follow him. This is a beautiful picture. He becomes, Lord, over death and Hades to where it no longer has to have authority over human beings. These were unconquerable figures. These were things that human beings could not do. Okay? Right. This is the, this is the big boss at the end of the video game, and yet here Jesus is taking on this. Epic battle with death. The very figure who would bring souls down to the land of the underworld and Hades, the ruler of this underworld. Jesus conquers all of it and becomes Lord of that place so that his authority extends to. Everywhere. There is no place where Jesus is not king, and we know from this story that because of his authority, anyone who chooses to follow him does not have to taste death. We do not have to go to this place where the souls of the dead have to go. We get to be with Jesus forever. Now this is the kind of epic heroism that we are looking for in most of our manly figures that we want to be like. These are the kinds of stories that light up the movie screens and that have us wanting to read and reread these epic tales of these heroes that we absolutely love. Jesus is not only no different from them, he's actually the standout version of them. He is the version of hero that all of these other heroes are trying to point to. He is the one who succeeded in the epic battle. This is not just a story. This is something that really happened. This is not a myth. This is not a movie. This is not a fiction. Jesus conquered death and Hades. He defeated the final boss and through. That victory, he achieved victory for us as well. This is the ultimate liberation. This is the ultimate freedom at the end of the movie. If you think about William Wallace yelling, freedom, or you think about Aragorn leading the charge to, uh, set more door free from the power of Sauron. Or you think about the Avengers liberating Earth from Thanos, like this is the epic scene here where Jesus liberates humanity from death and Hades. Nothing else like this has ever happened in all of human history, and Jesus is the man who did it. Okay. These have been some incredible stories and I hope that they have encouraged you and excited you to see Jesus as a man who is the epic hero that you would want to follow If you're enjoying this kind of content, I would love for you to like this video and to subscribe to the channel to help me get this content in front of other men like you who might like to hear these things as well. And I would love for you to comment down in, uh, the comments below, just something about what's a story of Jesus that helps you want to follow him. A man, what's something that you know about him that you think of and go, yeah, that's a manly man that I want to follow. So put that down in the comments. I look forward to responding to what you have to say, and I'll see you again next time here on the Manhood Tribes Channel. We'll talk soon.