When The Church Won’t Say No

And welcome back to Clearcast. I'm your host, Tim Dukeman, here with Pastor Dave and our producer, Martin. And just wanted to recap briefly what we talked about last time, which is that there is an important way that churches need to design the worship service and some of the aspects of church life in a way that's actually going to engage men. And so today we want to... switch gears and talk about how the marks of the church, which would be the preaching the word and sacraments and church discipline, how those need to be done in a way that can actually engage men and bring men into the life of the church, and why men tend to lose interest in churches that don't actually practice the sacraments well or practice church discipline or preach to the conscience.

Pastor Dave, why are sacraments, so sacraments is what you would call a $10 word, what are sacraments and why are they important to engaging men in the life of the church? So, the Lord's Supper and baptism are sacraments, and Jesus has given them significance in marking out who His people are and calling them out of the world and saying, they're mine. And they're saying he's mine through baptism. And then the meal is meant to feed us spiritually. And actually, there's lots of ways that we could have a three-part series on how to do the sacraments right, how to do the sacraments wrong, and this practice and that practice and the other practice, or even our church's particular views on all these things. And that's really not what's in scope, in view, in terms of what I want to talk about today.

All I'm wanting to do is to say, these are sort of the baseline ways. If a congregation or a pastor or whoever is sitting here thinking, well, how can my church grow in this? I'm like, so here's some really practical things. You all preach every week. We're going to talk about how to preach to men. You have sacraments. You do baptisms. You have the Lord's Supper. Here's how to do it in a way that men will say, yeah. And then church discipline. Which is probably the most neglected of the three in terms of common practice. And it's not the sort of thing you're like, yeah, we haven't kicked anybody out in a while. We need to pick a sacrifice. But I want to talk about them in a way. I think they've been feminized in a way that it's lost the value to men. And typically we talk about preaching first in terms of the order of them. But I'd like to talk about the sacraments first.

And I'm going to start by talking about baptism. When someone is baptized in a broader evangelical church, what goes into them being baptized? You tell me. Like what's required, what's expected to get baptized in the church? Often it's just, did you pray the sinner's prayer? Okay, so. It's that. As soon as you get done praying the prayer, they'll baptize you. Okay. Do you have to get baptized? In some churches, yes, in some, no, yeah. I think that my impression, and Timothy's shaking his head no, is that in a lot of churches, baptism is voluntary as opposed to compulsory. They don't see it as a command of Scripture, but simply something you do when you feel up to it. And we've had occasion in our church, and even my own wife, I mean, she's in our church, obviously, kids that grew up in Christian homes, professed faith in their late adolescent years and were never baptized and went to Christian college and were never baptized and came to their mid-20s and no one has ever told them they should be baptized because they didn't have the temperament. Maybe they didn't.

If it's voluntary and you're not the kind of person who wants to get up in front of the whole church and have to give your testimony, well, you're just never going to get baptized. And so my point in bringing all that up is to say it's treated as a voluntary option. You should do it. You can do it. No one's saying you don't need to or we don't care if you get baptized, but it's very much an invitation. And if you decline the invitation, it's okay. But if you do come for baptism, I say, what is expected of you if you come to baptism? You said, well, what's expected generally is that you've prayed the sinner's prayer, which means you've made some very simple, basic acknowledgement that you would like to have Jesus be a part of your life. I don't actually know the sinner's prayer. I didn't grow up in the church.

I know it's like asking Jesus into your heart, but if there's a script for it, I don't actually know what it is. But I think I've got the sense of it. Is there anything else that would be seen as necessary in coming to the waters of baptism in the church generally? No. So, what role does the church play in baptism? They're the facilitators. What do you mean their facility? I mean, because they have the baptistry? Yeah. And they'll dunk you. Okay. But when I first came to church in this mega church, and I had just come to faith, it was a Christian church, and I wanted Vanessa to baptize me. And they were all for that. Like, there was no turbulence at all in terms of wanting someone else to baptize me. They didn't really...

I think your word facilitator is accurate, at least in my experience. They didn't have any... There's no structure. They have no say over it. There was no structure. I mean, they would... I mean, I suppose if you came and were like, I don't want to do this, my parents are making me do it, that they might be like, well, maybe we should work on that. But generally, they were like, we have the pool, and who do you want to do it? And it was meant to be a... an experience, a memorable experience. Yeah, and almost an act of self-expression in some ways. Yeah, and oftentimes there was an expectation or at least an opportunity to make a testimony and to say something brief about what God had done for you. And then whoever you wanted could baptize you. And maybe that you wanted the pastor or...

something to baptize you. But if you wanted someone, if you wanted your parents to baptize you or your girlfriend, in my case, that was fine. And I don't think that was an extraordinary approach. That's not our approach to baptism. That approach that I'm describing, it's like, it sounds really nice. But what I hope you can hear is that there's no expectations. attached to baptism. And it's one thing if a child wants to be baptized, a young child. But if you've got a grown man who wants to be baptized, which was my case, I was in my early 20s, there was no communication of expectations or obligations or examination of my profession of faith. That was all absent. And that's not absent here.

And I never did get, Vanessa didn't baptize me and I didn't get baptized in that church. I ended up moving not long after that to a different church and then eventually down to Bloomington and was baptized in the church down in Bloomington. But what comes along with baptism in our context? Well, for one, examination. by the elders, usually two of the elders. And they have a series of questions that we ask them to answer. And then we expect the answers to be commensurate with the candidate's age. We're not expecting an eight or 10 year old to have the same perspective or experience, say, as a 25 or 30 year old. But there actually is an expectation and an examination.

And that examination is real. And what I mean by it's real is the elders can actually say no. And we actually have said no to people. And it's not like you're not a Christian and you're a terrible person and you're going to go to hell and nothing can be done about it. That's not at all what it meant. What was meant was we don't think that you understand the gospel well. And what it often led to was... a period of focused discipleship on their areas of immaturity or lack of understanding to strengthen them, to prepare them. And that's something that men can go, yeah, I can, okay, I need to grow. I need to learn. I need to figure, like, I need to become something. I'm not. And they go, I'd like that. That would be good. And then they get to have a period of time where that discipleship is happening and they get connected to another, an older man, a father in the faith. And so that's one of the things that goes on in our church. And that's true for credo Baptists. So people who are coming to faith later or who are professing their faith to be baptized. But we also have in our church people who are baptized as infants. And obviously you're not asking these infants any questions. They're not,

They don't speak. They can't answer. They're just not capable. Their parents are asked questions, and their parents make vows, take vows. And so do the adult or the child who's being baptized, who's been examined, or the parents who are having their child baptized. Vows are always a part of it. Vows about the authority of Scripture. Vows about their need for salvation. submission to authority. Those are all parts of coming to the waters of baptism if you've not been baptized as an infant or coming to the Lord's table if you were baptized as an infant. There's an examination that goes along with those things. And I think that's just a masculine thing to do. We say there's an expectation, there's a bar, and we want you to meet that bar.

You need to meet that bar. And not everyone's going to meet it the first time that they come to it. And I think men go, okay, at a really basic level, what that communicates to the people around is you take this seriously. It matters to you. You believe this is important to God and it should be important to me. And men can sink their teeth into that. They can appreciate it. for baptism and just briefly about self-exam, about, or I mentioned elders examining you for coming to baptism or being admitted to the Lord's table. But also we require when people, we exhort people when they come to the Lord's table, each time they come, that they would engage in self-examination, that they would look at themselves and examine their lives and search out.

the sins and the weaknesses and the failures and actually consider whether or not they're truly repentant for those sins. And that if they're not truly repentant for those sins, that they shouldn't come to the table, but rather should repent first. So, that communicates this is serious to us. This is serious to the Lord. All we do is read to them. Read 1 Corinthians 11, where Paul speaks about examining himself, and he attaches sickness unto death. as being one of the consequence handed down from the Lord for eating in an unworthy manner. And so we warn during the Lord's Supper about these dangers and call us and heed the call from Scripture to self-examination as we come, so that we come humbly, so that we come in faith, and so that we don't just come as a function of this, just what we do. It's Communion Sunday.

men, for one, they notice it. And if I fence the table, they understand that not everyone is welcome here and that what's happening is consequential. And there is a danger associated. Actually, the majority of what's said about coming to the Lord's table in Scripture and historically, as the church has understood it, is a warning much more than it is an invitation. a warning with an invitation attached. It's not the other way around, but the predominant communication is consider and be careful and take to heart and repent before you come to this. Lest the Lord judge you for it. Right. Yeah, I mean, Corinthians says that if you don't examine yourself, you're eating and drinking judgment to yourself.

I think one of the biggest things I noticed after coming here about our church is that at other churches, they either don't fence the table at all. There's no warning people away from taking the supper. Or if they do fence the table, it's only in the sense of if you are not a Christian, then this meal isn't for you. That's it. That's the only fencing they do is this isn't for non-Christians. But here it's not only this isn't for non-Christians, it's also this is – also isn't for people who won't come under the authority of the church. This sacrament is being administered by the authority of the elders of this church, and that authority is real and it has to be respected. There's also, if you won't repent of your sin, if you want to hang on to your sin, this meal is not for you and you will be drinking judgment if you do. Yeah, and those are often, as, you know, being the one who actually presides, you know, as ordained pastor, being the one who presides over the,

over the meal, I don't know if you guys realize it, but those things are intense things to say. I'm sure that I know they're intense things to hear too, but Timothy's nodding. He's like, but we take it seriously. And I think that when men see other men take the word of God seriously, they go, okay, harking back to something that's respectable. You know, I've been to churches where when you walk in, there's a basket of bulletins and there's a basket of communion elements. And you just pick it up on your way in. And then they have a time where maybe they turn the lights down and they play some comforting music. And it's just a time of good feelings. And I think that that is harmful to the people who are partaking in that way because they're not being warned about what's going on and what they're doing.

And they're not receiving the benefit of what's going on because no one's ever explained it to them. Going back to baptism, how can you grow up in a Christian home, go to a Christian church, go to a Christian college, get to adulthood, and no one told you the benefit of being baptized? In baptism, God claims you as his own. And you should want that more than anything else in the world. You should want God to say, he's mine. She's mine. And no one has ever told them that. They're just like, well, it's just a symbol. It's just some imagery that's heartwarming. And it's a nice occasion for some pictures, a pretty dress, or a nice outfit, and then a lunch with family. Baptism, it may have those elements, but it's much more than that. There's authority being communicated in those things.

The right administration of the sacraments is to administer them manfully and to call men to recognize the authority that's been given and being communicated and exercised in the administration of the sacraments. Men will take that stuff more seriously if the church takes it seriously. If they just pick up a wafer and a little cup of grape juice on the way in, I mean, it might as well be a pack of gum. It's almost a party favor. No one knows if you're taking it, if you're not taking it, what's going on, whether you're baptized or anything about you. And I think that's a failure. Yeah, I think about things that we do as rituals in our daily life or that we see people do, like taking the present being inaugurated and taking the oath of office or a witness being sworn into the witness stand.

We recognize that these are weighty things and that something important is happening and that we shouldn't be flippant about it. And those are commitments not taken lightly because there's consequences attached to them. But I think that many churches have a hard time communicating to people the weight of the sacraments and the importance and significance of what's going on spiritually when you eat the bread and drink the wine or when you go in the waters of baptism. Like, there is a profound spiritual element there. And there's also the element of that we should take these sacraments with fear and trembling, that God has put his power into these things. Yeah, I think some of the rise of sacramentalism generally, whether it's men being attracted to Eastern Orthodoxy or to Rome, is in part, they take this stuff seriously. Like, right or wrong, they're serious about it. They're like, this is important. But the evangelical church is just like, we're like, well, it's just about a relationship. And it turns out men are not wired all about relationship. They want something to live for and something to die for, not just to be liked.

That's the sacraments. I think the rightful administration, we're not going to talk about exactly what that looks like or what deviations would be and how bad they are. But this is a manful way of doing them, to have boundaries and to say yes and to say no and to make judgments. One of those judgments leads into the next mark of the church is church discipline. And church discipline is sort of, I think when people think of church discipline, they're often just thinking about excommunication. And it's almost like it's a theory they've heard of, but they've never really seen it. Or if they've seen it, it was quick, it was hidden, it was, it's almost like it was apologized for. I don't think church discipline should be that way. Church discipline is the, The church doing their job of making judgments of who's in and who's out. If everyone's in, then being in doesn't matter that much. When I was in high school, there were tryouts for this team or that team. Not everyone who wanted to be on the basketball team ended up on the basketball team or the football team or the wrestling team. It's like, yeah, we only have so many spots and you didn't make it, so maybe next year.

And that meant being on the team was important. But if no one conducts tryouts, so to speak, or if no one says you're in or you're out, if those judgments are never made, then men are like, well, no one takes this seriously. It would be like if you had a, or on the other side, if you had a football team where you could not come to practice and not listen to the coach and still be. allowed to be on the team and play in the games. The value of being on the football team would be diminished radically in the eyes of everybody involved because there's no expectations of you and there's no way for you to transgress the boundaries. Right. Yeah. And so, what I think is that when it comes to church discipline, if you want men to take Christianity seriously, then the church has to take the gospel truth seriously and they have to guard it.

That's what Paul tells Timothy is that he's to guard the good deposit. And guarding means keeping some people away from it and saying this isn't where you belong. In 1 Corinthians 5, Paul rebukes the Corinthians for not putting out the man who had his father's wife. It was just awful for the church. It was like they were boasting about something that should have been there. Such a shame to them. If you want men to take you seriously and take the gospel seriously, they have to understand there's some cost associated with it, that there's some boundary. And it requires some effort and some attainment to participate. And that if they're not interested in that, then they're not in. Men generally want goals. They want...

They want to know what's expected of them. And when you say, there are no goals here. You're great how you are. We accept you just as you are. And you really don't need to change. You could if you want to. But there's no clear lines in the sand or lines from Scripture that say, this is required of you. We can't really expect men to take that. They're just not going to take it seriously. Because we're not putting our money where our mouth is. Yeah. And that's what I think about with a big part of getting, like, a church working well is for people to act like the things we say are happening in the church life, in the sacraments, in the preaching, like, they're really happening. Like, we have to act like that's really what's going on and think about, like, how much does the way we're treating this line up with what we say about it. Yeah. And if you have no discipline, then it doesn't line up at all. Right.

In the last couple of months, we've had two different excommunications announced at our church, which is not normal that we have two excommunications announced in a year, let alone a couple of months. But that has been the last couple of months. And at the most recent announcement, I decided that I would preach on Matthew 18 and explain what it meant to tell it to the church and what excommunication was. And probably, at least for me, I mean, you guys were there, but the hardest part for me was to describe what excommunication meant. And what I said in the sermon, I had said across the table to the man who was excommunicated earlier that week as I looked him in the eye. And I said, it's important that we realize what excommunication is. What it means is that the church has judged that your life is not, is incongruous with Christian faith, and that you should no longer consider yourself or call yourself a Christian, and furthermore, that if you die with this judgment outstanding against you, that we have no reasonable hope that you will go to heaven, and you shouldn't either. That's incredibly hard to say, that's incredibly hard to hear, and exactly what it means to be put out of the church.

And some people would just be furious at that level of intensity. But what I found is that Christian men, they can take a hold of that. They can say, oh, as I was preaching and watching the congregation, there are times when I preach where it feels like you could hear a pin drop in the room. All the kids are quiet. The kids are never quiet, but all the kids are quiet. And all the rustling and fumbling around of the papers and the whatevers, it all stops. And everyone's hanging there going, oh. And that was one of those moments. And I was looking at the different men's faces in the church to see. And they're all humbly just, they're looking and they're all just like nodding, going, yeah, that's tough. I don't want that to be me.

And that's exactly why you do church discipline is so that they'll be warned away from committing the same sins and coming under the same judgments. That is, and I'll tell you, you know what the most scary thing is when you have that kind of announcement is when you have visitors on the days you have that. That's happened though. Timothy, weren't you, so Timothy was a visitor. years ago when we had an announcement like this. Can you talk about that? Yeah. When – Paige and I were still visiting. I don't think we'd started membership class. We really liked the church. And actually, it was the first Sunday that her parents and her sisters decided to also come to Clear Notes. So it was their first Sunday at the church. And you guys made the announcement. There was an excommunication. There was – I think you guys – talked about it for about five to ten minutes, kind of updated everybody on who and sort of the why and how you got there, right? Obviously not revealing all of the sin and shame and nakedness associated with it, just what was relevant to the church, to the entirety of the church. And I remember I had two thoughts immediately. The first was,

Of course, my wife's family is here. And the second was, but thank God that we're at a church that actually practices church discipline. I had never actually, it was the first time I'd ever actually seen an excommunication or experienced a church that actually practiced church discipline. In all my years growing up in the church and then when I was at college in churches, which I would have considered really good, sound, biblical churches. I had never experienced or seen an excommunication take place. And so it was, you know, there was some fear about how my wife or her family would take that. But there was also, there was, I was just thankful that there are churches that are faithful to God's word and faithful to do that work of discipline. There's such a strong impression when you're coming to a church.

and you see someone be excommunicated or be announced, that, oh, this is real for these people. This is not a paintball game. We're playing with live ammo. When we say that we want our lives to revolve around the glory of God, we're willing to do costly things to make that happen. And I can't... I can't oversell how important it is to have that. Because, yeah, like he was saying, I hadn't really basically ever seen it practiced. I mean, the only time I'd ever seen someone be excommunicated before is because they stopped coming to the church. And they were excommunicated for non-attendance. And it's like, okay, yeah, like, that's good, I guess. But that's not the same thing as we rebuked you for your sin.

And you won't stop and you won't repent. And now you're being expedited for your sin. Like, because there's a sense in which the person who's being disciplined for non-attendance has already left on their own. They're not being kicked out. They're being, they'd already left. Yeah. And so, to just sort of wrap up with this element of church discipline is, I think that discipline and, this is conflict. This is ground zero for the conflict. That can happen in church when it's being publicly announced. And when my wife first started going to our ascending church in the first week or two, she had the same experience you did, Timothy. She shows up. She doesn't know anybody there. It's a couple hundred people. She doesn't know anybody. And one of the elders, she doesn't know who the elders are. But when somebody gets up and they read a statement about a man who's been excommunicated, And her sense coming away from it, having, I don't think, ever seen that sort of thing before, was similar to what you said. Like, these people take this stuff seriously. This is a place where they will actually take care of me and they will protect me. Her response was, they will protect me and I need that. And so, it's counterintuitive. It doesn't make any sense that if you were going to do this, that it would be attractive or helpful. But Jesus told us that

His sheep hear his voice and they know him. And I think that when you see these things going on, this is the voice that is particularly men. The women are helped by it just as well. They need to hear Jesus' voice. They need to hear him say no. They need to hear him say no. Now, I want to move on to the final mark of the church, which is preaching. We were talking off air. about what's the difference between, what is a sermon? What is preaching? What is the difference between an exegetical sermon and an expository sermon and a topical sermon? And I've jokingly said, they're all elements of a sermon. And if you don't have all of those things, none of those things are bad preaching. But the goal of preaching is not just to bring out all of the potential meanings or aspects of the sermon like a commentary would, which I'm afraid a lot of expository preaching today has just become, I'm going to read a bunch of good commentaries and I'm going to be like a mashup. My sermon's going to just be a mashup of all of the good things that maybe other people have said sprinkled with some of my own insights. I literally had, at a church I was at before, the pastor preached a sermon series

then he took that sermon series and turned it into a commentary on that book of the Bible. Yeah. It was that direct. Yeah. And that's not, commentary is not preaching. And simply expositing is not preaching. I think that it's one thing for somebody to just get up and start telling you what to do and really not have what they're saying even related to the Bible. Maybe it's related to Lord of the Rings, or maybe it's related to... The Chronicles of Narnia are related to some Christian adjacent thing. But what they're talking about is music, it's literature, but it's not scripture. It's like, well, that's bad. That's not expository preaching. He is telling you what you should do or think, but it's not coming out of the scripture. And I think there's been a reaction against that that says, oh, well, expository preaching then is basically me doing a deep dive into...

the language and the syntax and the context and the Greek and all these things. And what I want to do is bring all that information to you. And I remember when, Timothy, when you first started pastor's college and I just said, I just think talking much at all about the original languages is a waste of time. Thank you. And preaching. And it was like a dagger to your heart. I like Greek. And I'm not saying you shouldn't, but I'm saying talking about that to the congregation, is missing the mark. They don't speak Greek. You're just showing off and you're not helping them. You're neglecting the work of actual preaching. What I always tell people about preaching is if you like reading commentaries, especially if you're Reformed and you like reading older commentaries, you want to read Matthew Henry or you want to read John Calvin or you want to read the church fathers and their commentaries, that's fine.

But if you want to know what preaching is, read their sermons. Because if you were to compare Calvin's commentary on a text versus his sermons, you'd be like, I think I can tell that the same guy probably wrote this, but he can go on for pages and pages about this theological thing or that other element of the text in his commentary, and almost none of it actually shows up in his sermon. He talks to his people. And there'll be nothing in the commentary about how Rome is abusing this passage or this text. And he'll preach a whole sermon on how Rome's abused the passage. I'm like, well, it wasn't in the commentary. And I'm like, yeah, the commentary is just him explaining the text. But his sermon was him applying that text to his people who were having to be warned constantly against going back to Rome. And so, sermons are not commentaries. They're not meant to communicate information.

And I think that's what a lot of expository preaching has become. And approaching exposition exegetically is sort of like the bee's knees. It's the way to do it. But in the end, what do the people come away with? They come away with some interesting tidbits or facts or context that they may not have known before, but they didn't come away with what they needed, which was to have the truths of that passage impressed upon them in such a way as that they were called to repentance and faith. And every single sermon, if it's being done well, and if you want men to be attentive to the sermons, you have to call them to repentance and faith. They should be convicted or convinced or persuaded. They will from time to time be angry about what was said. Sometimes, Tim, you mentioned like, sometimes I think I was the subject of the sermon. And you say it with a smile on your face. But not everybody always says it with a smile on their face. And truth be told, there's times you haven't had a smile on your face.

And you're just like, well, I just, I just, yeah, it was good, but I just think you were wrong about this thing. And I'm like, that was actually the very point that was for you and I wasn't wrong about it. And you and I can, we can, you know, and we go back and forth about it. Yeah. That's, that's what will get men engaged in preaching. If you just want to have a bunch of slides and a bunch of graphics and a bunch of illustrations and a bunch of humor, you're not going to get the men. The kids will remember the graphics. The kids can be engaged and they can write fun pictures and stuff like that. But I'll tell you, that sermon that I just preached about church discipline, I've got an eight-year-old son who, during the process of the sermon, and when you're talking about church discipline, this is the sort of thing that kids probably are trying to figure out what exactly is going on here. My eight-year-old son wrote a letter.

based on what I was saying to the man who was being excommunicated and then walked up to him and gave it to him afterwards. He was understanding what I was saying. Oh, wow. And it's like, okay, so my eight-year-old can track with it. And it was not a fun sermon. It was simple. It was understandable, but it wasn't a bunch of laughs and a bunch of humor and a bunch of great analogies and stories along with it. And he understood it. And he tracked with it, and he was compelled to love the man who was being excommunicated and to write him a letter calling him to repent. Very briefly, like an eight-year-old would do it, with pictures drawn on it as well. It was just very sweet. That's very sweet. And if he can track with that sermon, and you can look it up on our website and hear it if you're curious, that sermon was preached April 28th.

of 2024 on our website, clearnotechurch.com, you look it up. That was the sort of sermon that the men were engaged with. That was one of the times where it's like everyone was quiet and everyone was paying attention and everyone was considering themselves. That was actually the point of the sermon. One of the things I said, maybe the most provocative thing that I felt in the sermon was like, someone else in this room will end up being excommunicated someday. We all think it's never going to happen. It doesn't happen. And what I'm doing is preaching a sermon, not to tell you that guy's just the most awful person in the world, but to say, you're not so different than him. And that if you give yourself to your sins, then you will come under the judgment of God as it's expressed and articulated through the church. And so you ought to fear becoming hardened and inoculated against your sins. And that was the point of...

and the sobriety that everyone was feeling. Men can get a hold of that. Men will say, this is serious. This is for me. This is for my wife and my kids. This is something that we need to be aware of. And I think that's why we have men in our church. If we had simply apologized for having to discipline, well, we have to do this thing, but it's hard. We have to do this thing, but it's sad. And we have to do this thing, but it's unfortunate. It would have completely undercut. all of the work. As an example, your kids will never be helped by you disciplining them if you apologize to them for having to do it. Don't apologize to your kids for spanking them. If they need a spanking, love them enough to give it to them with joy. And then hug them and pray with them and continue to love on them. It's not a departure from your love from them to discipline them. It's an expression of your love for them. So don't apologize for it. Well, if we can understand that in our

our homes, then I think we should be able to understand that in our churches as well. And that's something that men need to be told. It's like, this is real. You said, these aren't blanks. We're playing with live ammo here. It's like heaven and hell hang in the balance of this stuff, so we're going to go for it. And we're going to preach to your conscience. We're going to try to present the truth. Whatever the text is that day in such a way that you're considering yourself and your own areas of weakness and areas where you need to grow and to remind you and to show you that God is merciful to sinners who aren't there yet, who aren't doing well yet. Because none of us are where we will be one day. And I just think it's helpful for us to acknowledge that. Men will come to hear that. That's what Paul did when he was under arrest and he was preaching before Agrippa and they said, well, we'll hear you again on this.

What did he say to him? How did he get the king's attention? Well, I understand your ignorance. You've never really been taught and it wasn't really, you know, it's not your fault and we're trying to help and we're not really as bad as you think we are. We're just as bad as you. Yeah. That wasn't anything of what Paul had to say. He reasoned, he prodded, he pushed to where the men were like, I think he's talking about us and I think he might know what he's talking about. We'll hear you again concerning this. That's how we ought to preach. Men will come to that.

They'll get there on time and they'll stay awake. And if you take a different approach, a sympathetic, comforting, sort of easy path from here to eternity, you're going to lead a lot of people. A lot of people are going to be led astray. Yeah, one of the things that I've always appreciated about our church is that when you sit under the preaching of this church, you are faced with the weight of your sin. It is inescapable. If you come to our church, you will hear about your sin, you will feel the weight of your sin, and your excuses will be taken away from you. So, why is this appealing to men, though? I'm sitting here thinking about everything that you guys are talking about, the vows and the church membership, the baptism sacraments, discipline, preaching, all these things are tied together.

Why does this appeal to men, though? Like, what is it about these things that... I think that, I mean, scripturally, I think that the law, this is one of the effects of the law being written on our hearts. Like, unless you're completely hardened in your sin, you know you need, you know you're not perfect and you know you need to grow. And simply having someone point that out and tell you where and how that should take place and that God will meet you in it and help you with it is like, that's life. The goal of, you know, Tim was describing, well, you're going to feel convicted and you're going to feel this. You're also, I hope, going to feel hope that those things can change by the power of God. Right. The answer, though, that it's written, the law is written in our hearts, doesn't answer the specific masculine quality of it. And I guess my, I don't know what you would think of this response, but I would just say women seem to be more concerned with inclusiveness and with...

with social connection, with belonging, and men are more concerned with boundaries, with protection and guarding their families, with... I don't know, I don't wanna be too stereotypical. I know there's gonna be people, if anybody from my background listens to this, some of them are gonna be offended. I don't apologize in advance, but just expect that. Yeah, and so I think that it's getting back to how did God make men? Like he made Adam and he put him in a garden and he said, go and rule this whole world I've made and given to you. So how? Take a wife. Here she is. Isn't she beautiful? Have children with her and go and bring order. Men want to work. Like they want to go conquer something. They want to go bring order. They want to pull the weeds and plant the flower, plant the potatoes.

they don't wanna just be told, no, it's just fine that we're just fine the way you are. I think part of the reason, there's a lot of young men who would say, who might not like that message. And I'm like, but you're also the most depressed generation that's ever existed. Like you're not happy with what you're doing. So all I'm trying to say is the sky is blue. God made you and wired you a certain way. The church should recognize that because God tells us about all this stuff in his word. And then we should act accordingly. We should go for the men and expect them to behave the way and to aspire to be what God made them to be. Right. When you're talking about that, I'm thinking about the male principle, which is that God made man and gave him responsibility. And when you come to the church and you become a member of the church, you take vows. That's responsibility. You're taking on a responsibility. That's why...

That's why I'm asking the question, because I think that's what it appeals to to men is that this is hitting me where at the most formative, as you said, like where God has the principle that God has made me with, which is that I would be responsible, that I would take dominion and be responsible. That's right. That's right. Yeah. And so to end with this, I'm thankful to God constantly to serve a church where I can do this work. And I'm thankful to the men who've trained me and invested in me and taught me to do this work. It doesn't come naturally to us in our society, and it's still difficult, and we still fail. But the pressure I feel from our congregation is that if I were to pull my punches, if I had apologized during the announcement or the sermon about dexcommunication, I would have heard about it.

And it would have been the men of the church being like, well, why'd you do that? And it may have been worse from the women. That's the interesting thing is the women actually probably would have been the ones that were more upset because they've become accustomed to men with broad shoulders carrying the heavy loads. And they're just like, why are you doing this? Like, why are you not doing what we need you to do? And that's sweet. You can't put a price tag on that or say this is what it's... what it's worth. It's just incredibly sweet. And so I love having brothers. I didn't grow up with a dad. I didn't grow up with brothers, but God's given me a brother and brothers and fathers through the church. And it's connected to and tied to all of these things. And if they weren't present, I don't think I would have lived or seen any reason in continuing in a megachurch, in a place where these things were absent. I had better things, more manly things, even if they were worldly.

still more manly things to go do and pursue and i would have done it