Fight Like a Man: Part 1

What does it mean to be a man according to God's design?

In a culture increasingly confused about masculinity, Genesis 2 points us back to God's original purpose for men. In this message, Pastor Matt Shackelford explores the first marks of biblical manhood and why God's design is still good for individuals, families, and society.

You'll discover:

• Why men are uniquely called to provide through work, strength, and leadership
• How God forms men through relationship, responsibility, and challenge
• Why work is not a curse but part of God's original design for humanity
• What biblical leadership looks like in the home and family
• How sacrificial service differs from selfish or passive masculinity

God did not create men to drift through life. He created them to lead, provide, and use their strength for the good of others.

Scripture: Genesis 2:5-20
Series: Be Fruitful and Multiply

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Today on Moment of Truth, Pastor Matt Shackelford begins a message called How to Fight Like a Man. In a culture that's increasingly confused about masculinity, where should we look for answers? Not to social media, not to popular opinion, but to the God who created men in the first place. In Genesis chapter 2, we discover that biblical manhood isn't about domination or passivity. It's about providing, leading, and serving others for the glory of God. Leadership is not demanding service from others, it's sacrificial service to others.

SPEAKER_05 0:33

Not just here it's not faith.

SPEAKER_06 0:58

Let's take our Bibles. Let's open to Genesis chapter 2. As you are turning there in Genesis 2, I want to tell you a story I saw this week on the internet. There is a guy in Africa, and he is in the African army. His name is he's a South African major. His name is Marius Ells. And he did something pretty crazy. He adopted a hippo. And this hippo, some of you are saying, oh, this hippo became his pet. And he raised it and he fed it for five years and he pet it and he actually spent time with it. He said his children wrote on top of it. He wrote on top of it, and he said, of this hippo that he named Humphrey, he said, it was like a son to me. That's why the world was shocked when in 2011 Humphrey attacked him, dragged him into the river, and ate him alive. True story. True story. Now, people were asking, why would that hippo do that? And here's my answer. This is the most dangerous animal in Africa. In fact, statistically, the hippo is responsible for more deaths than any other, more than the lion, more than the crocodile, more human deaths than any other animal in Africa. It is the most dangerous animal, and you've made it into a pet. And I think here's what happened. At some point, this hippo came to its senses and said, There's something off in my world. Something's not right. I wasn't made to be a pet. I'm a wild animal. And I think the hippo had this realization, this moment, where it said, I'm living in a world where that I just don't understand. I wasn't made for this. I'm an apex predator. I wasn't made for this world. And so I think that's probably what happened. Well, as we come to the text we're looking at today, my proposal is I think that that's how men today feel in this world. This is a world that men do not understand. It's a world, listen to me, it is a world that is confusing men. And as if to highlight the confusion, there are 1.1 million men in prison compared to 80,000 women in American prison. It's a world where men are angry and acting out and confused. And we're seeing that at every level. And you have to ask the question why are men so confused today? Why are men so angry today? What's the problem? How do we fix the problem? I asked that question in a staff meeting, and then I asked it in a director's meeting. These are some of the answers that came out. I'm just going to give you some of these from our staff. Number one, if you want to write these down, I think these could be some of the things that are confusing our men today. Number one, the world hates men. I think Satan certainly hates men. Why? Because he hates all of God's creations and he wants to confuse the world. But our world hates men. I mean, you think about it, this is a world that is against masculinity at every level. In fact, this is a world that misunderstands masculinity. When they see aggression, when they see competition, when the world sees ambition or leadership or vision or any of that, they look at it and say, that's evil, that's wrong, that's not good. When really that's part of masculinity, all those things. And the goal is not to rid ourselves of those things. The goal is actually to bring those things under the submission of the Lordship of Christ. To give you an illustration of that, just this week, I think it was Monday, I woke up Monday morning and I started texting Todd as we do every day. We normally start our day by greeting each other with an insult. Do you do that? Do you have friends like that? We greet each other with an insult. And so that's just masculinity, competition, all that. So I woke up and I sent him the following text message. I said, Todd, I was reading this morning, Romans 14, 2. The weak person eats only vegetables. He's a vegan. Alright? And so I read this today, thought of you, have a great day. Alright? And that's how I started my day. He responds and he says, Well, this weak person's at the gym. Where are you? I respond, and I said, I'm running a 5K right now as we speak. And we go back and forth for a while. But if you were to read the text message string between me and Todd, you would think we hate each other. All right? When really I love him. And that's our love language. But I'm just blown away by this because the world, I think that's how the world looks at men. They look at men being men and they say, that's toxic masculinity. You're mansplaining. You're you're and it's and it is a divisive world that looks at men and says, aggression, vision, leadership, competition, ribbing, any of that, that's against the rules. And it's a world that's confused. I think, second, this is a world that disrespects men at every chance. It's a disrespectful world. And that's where all the toxic masculinity stuff comes from. By the way, it's so hard to lead this generation of men. You have an entire generation of men, and three-fourths of them have grown up in homes without dads. Three-fourths of them. That's from the United States Census Department. I mean, that's crazy that three-quarters don't have the experience that some of you have with a dad in the home. It affects this world. It's so hard to lead this generation because an entire generation of men have had no one sharpening them, no one toughening them up. They've been given participation trophies their whole life. And when they're told no by their boss for the first time, they fall to pieces. A third thought. This is a culture that minimizes distinctions. You and I live in a world that minimizes distinctions between men and women. And we see it in our movies. I mean, the unbelievable thing. You have a 110-pound girl beating up a 250-pound guy. I mean, just the unbelievable things where it's like distinctions, there's no distinction. It's a fantasy world. It's interesting. I was getting into this passage this week, and I tell you, I've read Genesis 1 and 2, I don't know how many times in my life. You know how you read the Word of God and you always find something new? This week I was reading this passage and I was like, I've never seen that. And I was looking at the place where man was created and the place where woman is created, and it's different. The man is formed and created in the wilderness. And the woman is formed and created in the garden. And they both look like the area they were formed in. The man kind of looks like he rolled out of the wilderness, and the woman looks like she came out of the garden. Alright? And it's like, wow, there are distinctions in even the place they were created. That's an amazing thing. Another one, our staff said, today we're missing something called a rite of passage for men. Men are not getting rites of passages anymore. One of our guys on staff said, I had one. And I said, What was it? And he said, My dad gave me a gun. And I was like, man, that's awesome. But it's like, it's like today, our young guys aren't experiencing the rite of passages that we had. In America, maybe the closest thing to a Jewish bar mitzvah or a coming-of-age ceremony, maybe the closest thing we have in our society is the driver's license, right? It's like that moment where you have some freedom and you get a driver's license, and maybe that's the only thing I can think of in American society. But unfortunately, we don't have that moment where dads are pouring in to young men and calling them up to manhood and saying, hey, it's time to leave the basement. Let's get the Pringles dust off of you and get to work. Right? We don't have those moments anymore. And that's a tragedy. Boys need men in their life. Now, girls, girls tend to become women. Nature does it to them. All right? It just happens. And they're usually always ahead of the guys. The guys have to be called up by the previous generation of men. The guys have to have manhood sort of called and pulled out of them. I say it like this men have to step into manhood kicking and screaming. All right? And it's like, unfortunately, there's a fatherless home epidemic. And so as a society, we're pretty messed up. Men are not being called out of their addictions. Men are not being called to repent of their pornography and their abuse of women. Men are not being discipled. Another reason, this is just out of our staff meeting, and I'm gonna give you the list here that our staff came up with. There are very few good examples. These are the names that your central church staff handed to me as the bad examples. Homer Simpson, Peter Griffin, Fred Flintstone, interesting. Everybody loves Raymond. I mean, it's crazy the examples we have on TV. The examples we have where the dad is always the joke, where the dad is always irresponsible, where the dad is always disrespected and doing life wrong. Well, for all those reasons, because this is such a problem in America, we're in a series that I've entitled Multiplication. It's Be Fruitful and Multiply. I want to see us become fruitful in our lives, and I want us to get back to the original formula of God's call to multiply. And so we're looking at Genesis, and what I want to do is I want to take the next three weeks. I want to look at man's role, I want to look at woman's role, and then I want to look at marriage together, all right? And I want to get back to the original formula. In Genesis chapter 2, verse 7, it says that God, the Lord God, formed the man. God formed man. That's what we're going to look at first. Praise God, he's still forming men. That he's still developing men, even in this room. Praise God. But throughout this passage, what we're going to see is God has specific calls for us. And this is the call to every young man to step into manhood with joy and excitement for that role. And every young woman to step into womanhood with joy and excitement. I want you to love being what God made you to be. And ladies, this is not a passage for you to check out today. We're going to talk about ladies next week. I mean, what an amazing place that you're a helper, but that's not a weak term. It's actually a term used for God. You know who else is a helper? God's a helper. In Psalms, God is called our help. It's a term of strength, it's a term of power. Young ladies, you need to listen to this passage just like the young men. Why? Because this is what he must be. This is what to pray for, this is what to expect, this is how to raise boys, this is for single young ladies to look for this. I tell our young adults, I'll be preaching this week at the well, at the young adult ministry, and we're looking at the book of Ruth, and I constantly say the two things that you need to be looking for in a prospective spouse. He needs to have Jesus and he needs to have a job. It's like the old pickup lines used to be, hey, did it hurt? And the girl's like, What? When you fell from heaven, right? The pickup lines today are easy. It's like, hey, and she's like, What? I have a job. You know, I mean, wow! How unique! What an amazing thing. A job in Jesus. We're going to see that work matters.

SPEAKER_00 13:10

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SPEAKER_06 13:32

So let's take our Bibles. Let's stand together. Today I want to talk to you about how to fight like a man. We're not going to deny masculinity. What we're going to do is lean into it. We're going to embrace ambition, embrace strength, embrace leadership, but we're going to submit those qualities to the Lordship of Christ. And I think that's the important point of this passage. I do want to say this. This is a dangerous topic. Anytime you talk about gender, anytime you talk about God's original formula, God's design, this is that passage where I will get uh ten emails. And that's all right. The Imago Day, the image of God is worth it. All right? We've got to recapture that. So let's look. Genesis 2, verse 5. Genesis 2, verse 5, says this. When no bush of the field was yet in the land, and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up. For the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land. And there was no man to work the ground. And a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground. Then the Lord God formed the man of the dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. And the man became a living creature. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden in the east. And there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers. The name of the first is the Pishon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Havael, and where there is gold. And the goal of that land is good. Bejulum and Onex stone are there. The name of the second river is the Gihon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Cush, and the name of the third river is the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria, and the fourth river is the Euphrates. The Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat. For in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die. Then the Lord God said, It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make him a helper fit for him. Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field, every bird of the heavens, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called, every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock. There was not found for him a helper fit for him. So reads God's word. Before you sit down, to win the war on men, it requires a fight. A fight to recover the word on masculinity. We've got to come back to what the Bible says about masculinity. And if you're a man, there's three things that I want you to recover today. I'm just going to put them up on the screen. You need to recover providing masculinity. You need to recover protecting masculinity. You need to recover priestly masculinity. You've probably heard those three terms before. On most manhood lessons that young men grow up with, these are three terms that God has called us to be. We see them all in chapter two. And today we're asking the Lord to raise up a culture of biblical masculinity here at Central Church. So may God bless his word. May each of you be blessed. You may be seated. These are three fights that every man must face. Now, I do want to emphasize chapter one is all about sameness and equality. Sameness and equality. In chapter one, we're both made in the image of God. Whether you're a male or female, you are an image-bearer of God. That means you are co-heirs of Christ if you're a Christian. That means you are, you share in the dignity and value that every person has because to be in God's image is both male and female. Now in chapter two, we sort of zoom in. And in chapter two, what we're seeing is now the distinctions between male and female. There are distinctions in this world. And chapter two has this hovering question over the whole text. What's the question? Well, here's creation, here's the garden, here's the plants, here's the trees, and the question is, wow, there's a lot to be done. Who's going to do this work? There's a lot to do. And the question is, where are the men? By the way, I would say that's a question for all of Christendom. There's about 10 million more single ladies in the church in America than there are single men. And that's the question for us. Where are the men? How do we become God's kind of man? First, we have to fight to recover providing masculinity. Write that down. Providing masculinity. Notice in verse 7. Notice the forming of the man to provide. God is in the business of forming men. You are here today. God wants to form you. He wants to reform you. How is a providing man formed? You might write these three phrases down. First of all, men have to face God. That's what we see at creation. God gives life to man. Man is formed from the dust. He became a living creature. What's the first thing he sees? He comes into a relationship with God. He meets God. And that's true for all of you. If you want to provide, if you want to be a provider, if you want to be formed by God, you have to be in a relationship with God. It's that relationship with God that changes you. It's that relationship with God where he calls you up into new things. He calls you to repent. He causes you to change. He renews your mind. He gives you instruction. You see him as your Lord, and you don't see yourself as Lord. Second, you see that a man is formed through other men, other people who are more experienced, more practiced at living life. God represents this here in verse 15. God gives the man this call to work and to keep the garden. But God's the one in authority. He's the one with experience. He's the one with power. He's the authority on life. And this is true. Again, ladies enter into womanhood naturally, but men have to be called up into it. Men have to be brought into manhood by other men. That's why it's a really good thing, ladies, if your husband can hang out with other Christians. Iron sharpens iron. That's a good thing. Number three, how does a man get formed? We see here that a man is formed through challenges. Challenges. You can't protect your son from every challenge. In fact, I would offer to you that it's a good thing for your son to be challenged. Verse 5 begins with a wild creation. It says, no bush of the field was yet in the land, no small plant of the field had yet sprung up. Now the the small plant imagery here is not just the idea of berry bushes or whatever. It's the idea of like rows of corn. It's agriculture. Here's creation, a lot of work to be done. There's mouths to feed. Who's gonna do it? Who's gonna plant? Who's going to cultivate? That's the idea of this passage. It's the idea of a challenge. And men are formed through challenging situations. It's unfortunate that today that men run from challenging situations. They run from responsibility. Why? Lots of reasons. Today men are enjoying virtual dragons, and they haven't quite seen they need bigger dragons to slay. They need bigger challenges in life than a video game. I want you to notice this with me in this passage. Notice God gives two provisions. He gives the mist and the man. He gives the mist to water the ground. He gives the man to work the ground. What this is saying is you were made to enjoy work, to be active in work. Now, I have a lot to say about work and Sabbath, but we'll come to that later. But right now I just want to focus on the man's work. You were made to work. How many of you have heard the phrase, if you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life? You've all heard that. Right? The problem is, that sounds really good. The problem is it puts work in this thing to be avoided category. It puts hard work, exertion, challenge in this place where it's like all of life is about, man, I wish I could be a kid again when I didn't have to work, and I can't wait till I can retire when I don't work anymore. And it's like it's almost like looking at Baseball and saying the best part of baseball is sitting on the bench. No, you were made to work. You were made to play the game. You were made, and that's why some of our guys, we have we have a couple guys on our staff. One of our guys he came to me and said, Hey, I'm retired, but I'd like to give you two or three days a week. We pay him a dollar a year on our staff. He's an employee. But he's like, I just can't stop working. I enjoy it. I was made for it. And all of us need to have that kind of spirit that God made me to work. There's a pastor in Texas who said, You were made to wake up, serve your family, work hard, go to bed tired. That's what God made man to do. So you and I need to capture, we need to recapture this creation purpose. Don't believe the lie that you were made for a life of ease, that you were made for a life of distractions and hobbies. You can get those things, but you'll never be fully happy in those things. And men need to be careful. Because if you're not working, if you're not engaged in building something, you were created to do something. You're always going to be a worker. And if you're not working something, what's going to happen is you're going to build criticisms of the people who are working. If you're not working, what will happen is you'll build negative work. You'll build up negative words and you'll criticize other people who are working. And that's going to be part of that's part of our nature that we have to avoid. But God has given us a created purpose. It's to work. How do we do that? Write this down. Men provide how? Through their strength. This is part of what it means to be a man, it's to have strength. In verse 15, the Lord God took the man, put him in the Garden of Eden to work it, to use muscle. Scripture constantly connects strength to manhood. In fact, I just looked this up and there were just an innumerable amount of verses that came up to this. I'm going to give you three. Deuteronomy 31, 23, God's command, be strong, be courageous. Joshua 1, 9, be strong and courageous. 1 Corinthians 16, 13, be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. Strength is always connected to biblical masculinity. Always. Boys are built that way. My son, I'll never forget when I was living in Anaheim, and my son and I would work out in the garage, and he was just a little guy. And I'd be over there and I'd look at him and kind of smile, and then he'd come over to me and said, Dad, I'm getting strong, huh? And it's like there is this drive inside of men to be strong. That's from God. Why? So that you can provide. God makes men strong and whatever strength you have to provide for others.

SPEAKER_02 24:45

This is your moment of truth. How is God calling you to respond? If you have any questions about today's message, please visit centralchurch.com or email info at centralchurch.com. God loves you and we would love to walk alongside you in your journey to learn more about God and his redemptive plan for mammoth. I know it's calling you.com.