oftentimes you go to old museums and look at art books you see pictures of often times monks and they're standing there in a window and they're holding a skull and they're looking at it and you think well that's kind of dark it is but but you need to understand what really is going on there it's the contemplation of mortality it's not just looking at a skull do you know what he's doing he's looking at himself that monk knows this will be me in a twinkling of an eye strong men grow old and old men die
yes strong men die men who are genius die strong men grow weak and die all men die have you really grasped that as a man i don't mean just played around with it and laughed and told a joke about it have you sat down and really thought about this you're going to die and everything you lived for outside of the will of christ is going to burn everything you say well but i'm not a missionary and i'm not a preacher if you're in this church you know better than to use that language you can be
a policeman and be a policeman every moment of your life for the glory of god and he takes it as service you can be a doctor you can be a ditch digger you can work construction so don't don't play that game it doesn't matter who we are missionary in the congo our construction worker out on the highway if we know christ and christ knows us there's no longer the division of secular and sacred in our life everything is sacred if it's offered to him and he takes it as service to him one of the most
life-changing things that i experienced i experienced before i was converted as a matter of fact it's one of the things that led to my conversion my father i was i was many times afraid of him he was big he was strong he was good i wanted to be like him in so many ways we're running with a roll of wire putting up a fence for the horses put a pole between the wire one man on one side one on the other and you roll it out and all of a sudden when we were talking we
were talking about upcoming basketball season and and all kinds of things and all of a sudden i looked down and then i heard him scream i felt the wire drop i grabbed him we fell to the ground he was dead i realized at that moment it didn't matter if i was like my father who i never thought i would be like it doesn't matter he's dead be strong like him and die courageous like him and die successful and die intelligent and die you fall in love you lose her in the end you need to contemplate
you need to get away from media and contemplate your own death and contemplate everything you have invested in where are your investments when i was at the university of texas i had to study a lot of different things for my major in economics finance just all sorts of things engine engineering everything and i remember after i became a christian and some of my friends said what are you doing and i said i'm not doing anything that i wasn't taught in class and they all knew it was very anti-christian university and they said what do you
mean i said well remember investments i've not stopped investing i've just traded up i'm not going to invest in this place anymore because i seriously believe it's going to burn and everything that's going to burn with it and the one who signs on the dotted line the co-signer with you in this world he hates you he's going to take you for everything you have i'm just changing where i'm investing where are you investing where are you investing in your own godliness how much time a day are you investing in your own godliness because your wife's
greatest need is a new husband a better you how much time are you investing in your wife how much time are you investing in the godliness of your children and an intercession for them how much are you investing in your local church never forget this in the lord's prayer after he says hallowed be thy name thy kingdom come thy will be done he says give us this day our daily bread people make all kinds of nonsense about that text well it's not talking about give us bread for 90 years it's give us daily bread all
these different things and they miss the entire point you know what the point of it is you know what's really going on there you're praying in this way here you see the heart of christ you're saying god my only reason for existence the reason for my breath is that your name be hallowed did it be placed in a category totally distinct from all other categories and honored above all categories i want to live for that for your name being hallowed for your kingdom to come for your will to be done now give me this day
my daily bread lord i don't want riches i don't want luxury i don't need anything just give me enough food and shelter and clothing so that i can devote my life to fulfilling those three things i prayed about just give me the sustenance i need to keep serving you that's what a man does in the creation commission adam's told to go out and bring god's kingdom bring god's rule subdue everything in the world to the will of god for the glory of god i believe in one sense the call of the great commission and every
command to the family and all the commands given to us with regard to every aspect of our life is almost a recommissioning of that in some sense we are to go out we are to subdue ourselves we are to subdue our families we are to subdue the world to the reign of christ that's the only reason we need food it's to do that you see because the world is passing away and i'm well aware that there are so many people that i love that i love so dearly that are passing away with it they're passing
away depart from me i never knew you you see this is not your home this is a place that you have been you've been thrown down into to do battle that's why you live that's why you live now i want to go on to something else i want to look for just a moment at this world and the first thing i want to do is i want to go to a strange passage over in isaiah chapter 3. god is bringing judgment upon a people in this passage god is bringing judgment upon a people and he
says in verse 1 isaiah chapter 3 verse 1 for behold the lord god of hosts is going to remove from jerusalem and judah both supply and support the whole supply of bread and the whole supply of water so he's going to remove this but what else is he going to remove the mighty man and the warrior the judge and the prophet the diviner and the elder the captain of 50 and the honorable man the counselor and the expert artisan and the skillful enchanter one of the greatest acts of god's judgment upon a people is when
he removes the noble men from leadership when he removes the entire population of noble men and there's nothing left but ignoble weak men now who would dispute with me today and say this passage has no application to the united states of america i travel around the world i see men strong angry and many of them mad at us i come home i see silly older men playing with toys i see little boys playing with video games and i see most people no longer even knowing what bathroom they should go in we are under the judgment
of god look at verse 4 and i will make mere lads their princes and capricious children will rule over them and the people will be oppressed once again this is our world i've been amazed for the last 30 years and especially in sitcoms and things like that isn't it amazing that the parents especially the dad is always portrayed as even if he's kind-hearted he's foolish and really doesn't understand anything about the world and in the end the children are the ones that are the counselors but you know what most christian men saw things like that
and couldn't even discern there was a problem why not in the word not in the word not with men of the word and i think both those things are almost equally important brothers the only thing that's going to keep you from this is the word the word the word my my wife one time was teaching a group of women in romania and finally after a couple of days one of them said miss miss chado we really love you know your teaching and your help but on every question that we've had you've basically said just the
same thing we need to be in the word why do you do that and she said well because you need to be in the word i'm sorry it isn't in a way it's really wonderful wonderful that it's not mystical that you don't have to climb up to heaven or drive yourself down into hell to grow isn't it wonderful that it's it's really quite simple read the word fellowship with godly men fellowship with your wife fellowship with your children around the word learn the word isn't it wonderful that it's really that simple and isn't it terrible
how accountable we're going to be on that final day because it was so simple i didn't say it was easy but simple there's no mystery to it no esoteric knowledge that you need you need the word now look verse 5 and the people will be oppressed each one by another and each one by his neighbor and the youth will storm against the elder and the inferior against the honorable is that not our society today is that not exactly where we live now look at verse 12 oh my people their oppressors are children and women rule
over them now most people when they read this they think yeah wicked women ruling over men but there's two possibilities here one has to do with someone like jezebel who was a wicked woman who sought to usurp authority and everything else then there's also debra deborah's kind of difficult to explain isn't she here she's raised up this leader trying to put everything together in the scriptures it's my opinion that that deborah was raised up as a rebuke to men and at no fault of her own do you know how many young girls and a young
man you listen to me i travel all over even here even in my own church how many young girls between the ages of 25 and 35 godly smart intelligent strong capable and they say are we going to be single all our life our only option is to be single all our life are to entrust our lives to boys our age who when they get a little bit of extra money by cool tennis shoes or another video game what are we supposed to do brothers the chinese say there are no bad students just bad teachers what
kind of legacy did you list some of you were laughing what kind of legacy have you left what have you done i am not going to stand here and curse the darkness and make fun of a younger generation i'm not going to do it because when you look in israel a generation was raised up who did not know the lord and whose fault was that the previous generation yeah you guys not might not be playing video games but a lot of you have wasted so much of your time doing the stupidest silliest things of which
men are beyond that no brothers i'm telling you it was a great thing for me to learn that my life that i should go to the casket poured out that life is supposed to be difficult that self-sacrifice hurts that it's not about me you say oh it's about christ be careful of a theology of glory it is about christ but if it goes no further than that the words you've said are nothing more than a meme it's all about my wife it's all about my children and it's all about my church and then it's all
about the elect people of god who have yet to hear the gospel of their salvation that's what it's all about that's what it's really all about i know professional men in this church and i know professional men in other places around the world that are extremely professional extremely busy and they witness to more people in one week than i do in six months through their through their through their professions through their things they have bible studies they encourage their maybe they don't do that maybe they don't have the gift of teaching but you go to
their home and you see their children and their wives they're not about gaining something in this world they're just using the gifts that they have in order to serve in those concentric circles of concern now what do i mean by that this is the way i've ordered my life it was based on a book on evangelism that was written about 40 years ago by a very godly man concentric circles of concern but i took it and changed it up a little bit in the middle of that circle is me you say well that doesn't sound
very christian well it is and what am i saying when i say the middle of that circle is me the greatest thing i can do for everyone else on this planet is to be a better paul washer and what does that mean to seek to be more conformed to the image of christ if i do not start with me in the word and renewing my mind nothing else works nothing else works so first of all as men what do we do to combat this what do we do first of all our great goal should be
to be conformed to the image of christ and character isn't it amazing that the qualifications for an elder are almost exclusively character you say well i'm not an elder i don't have to worry about that what you have to understand is in that list in titus 3 and titus 1 and first timothy 3 what he's basically saying is this an elder needs to be a mature christian and this is what a mature christian looks like a husband needs to be a mature christian and this is what a mature christian looks like character to grow in
conformity to christ which starts by cultivating the mind of christ in the word of god and then growing if you don't know anything about the principles of marriage but you're a man who walks full of the holy spirit and bearing the fruit of the spirit you're going to be okay in your marriage now you need both things but the one without the other just doesn't work and so that's the first concentration you should be thinking of i need to be a clean tool a useful tool an accurate tool and then from there what is our
greatest concern your wife your wife her godliness her sanctification her prosperity as a person her flowering your wife what about me okay you die that's your job you say well i don't like that then don't walk around pounding your chest like a gorilla and saying you're a man because a man is someone who dies to self for his bride because jesus was not a man he was the man and we follow him and then you give your life to your children well i thought children were first now there's your problem greatest thing you can do
for your children men is to love their mom and do you know why so many women hate their daughter-in-laws because it's your fault yeah sin has many consequences so as a husband you neglect your wife you neglect affection intimacy uh growing as friends you neglect all these things and so your wife she needs that she needs that she's a faithful woman she's not going to commit adultery but now you forced her to find it somewhere else and she finds it in her children and her children start supplying for her all the affection that she's not
getting from her husband and then when other people come along to take her children away she can't stand it and it's your fault that's my fault you see when you see obedience and god's commands i i can remember looking at a certain thing in in hebrews 10 taking hebrews 10 and then seeing how it seemed like the entire bible was interwoven into that chapter it was just unbelievable and you've got to see that in every aspect of our life everything is interwoven and if there's a thread that breaks loose here everything else starts to come
undone so that concentric circle of concern it is is to give myself to my wife than to give myself to my children and then to give myself to the people of god and then to give to myself to the world in the sense of sharing with them the gospel of jesus christ
