A Masculine Man Is a Self-Controlled Man

Let us turn to Psalm 103 in honor of the fathers, of the men in our congregation, whether they are fathers or not. You may be a biological and spiritual father, and you may not be a biological father yet still be a spiritual father. Both kinds of fatherhood are equally powerful; make sure you are a father to someone. Those words just came to me—there you have the first point of the sermon: make sure you are a father to someone, that you are a mentor to someone. There is a terrible lack of masculine role models in our society today, and an abundance of destructive and negative ones.

Humanity needs men nourished by the Word of the Lord, formed and sculpted blow by blow by the Word of the Lord. Men saturated with the principles of the Kingdom of God, who will give their warmth to someone—to a young boy who is fearful and insecure about his masculinity because he has not had healthy models of proper masculinity. The models he does have are athletes and rock musicians or whatever, movie actors or whatever, who often do not model the values of reality and, above all, the values of the Word of God.

We men have the privilege of being continually seasoned in the Word of the Lord, of being slowly cooked in the Word of the Lord, and I hope that Word is penetrating our lives and our sensibilities. Then we have a great treasure within us, and we must be good stewards of that treasure, sharing it with our children and with our Church. But out there, too, there are many—perhaps even in the same building where you live, or on your street, or a child in your extended family—who have no father or whose family is incomplete, and you can be that man. Open your eyes and be attentive to the needs around you, and you will find someone you can mentor, someone for whom you can be a tutor and mentor.

Thank God our Church is doing excellent work through the Tutoring and Mentoring Center for dozens of children. We hope that one day it can serve hundreds of children, and the city of Boston is taking notice. Our program enjoys a very high degree of respect in the city in terms of mentoring and providing healthy values to our young people through the Passport program, the mentoring program. And we have to go out. God has given us so much and blessed us so greatly that we cannot do anything less than be spiritual fathers to someone, and above all, fathers to our children, to our families, to our extended families in our Church, and also in our community.

So even if you are not a physical father, if you do not have physical children yet or that time has already passed, you can still be a mentor to someone, a tutor, a role model, a source of good counsel for someone—for a young man or a young woman. And some young people need godly men, men of God, so that they can see what a man is, because girls, in their feminine formation, also need not only a mother—the woman who helps them develop their femininity—but a man as well. There is a part of a woman that needs to learn how to relate to a man, how to partner with a man, how to give herself to a man. That is why it is so important for them to find men who do not abuse or exploit them, and men who can exemplify fatherhood and healthy sexuality. That is necessary. We have a great privilege and a great responsibility as men to exemplify the character and masculinity of Jesus.

I do not believe there has been a more masculine being in the history of the universe than Jesus. I am sure He was a manly man, but also tender. He could take children into His arms, bless them, play with them, and welcome them, and children were drawn to Him. He could also rebuke a proud and pretentious Pharisee, take up a whip, and protest the violation of the House of the Lord. He could speak the truth with complete clarity and also say to an adulterous woman, “Go and sin no more. Neither do I condemn you.”

What balance, right? That is a masculine man, a well-tempered personality. I have admired Jesus’ character because of that balance, that equilibrium I see in Him. To me, that is true masculinity. I see it in the Father as well: I see that love and then also that strength, that justice, that clarity within Him. And we men must try to do everything possible to exemplify that masculinity—a healthy masculinity. Modern society desperately needs men who embody and exemplify a healed masculinity. Why do I say healed, and not merely healthy? Because we are all wounded, and in one way or another we all have a degree of sickness within us. We must continually submit ourselves to the Word of God so that, like an out-of-tune piano, it may tune us again and bring us back into harmony with the Father’s key, His masculinity, and His Being—which is neither masculine nor feminine. Yet we are men because God has a masculine aspect, and you are women because God has an aspect that is feminine.

It is not called that; that is what we call it. But there is a music He plays that resembles a woman’s music, and a music He plays that resembles a man’s, and He passed that tone on to us as well. But when we enter the world, the world throws us out of tune, just as a piano that is played a lot needs to be tuned again. We have to listen to the Father’s key and tune ourselves to Him. That is a lifelong process. As the Word of the Lord penetrates our lives, and as we listen to that Word, obey it, and submit ourselves to it, it tunes us again. Then we fall out of tune once more, and it tunes us again—that is how it goes. We must continually listen to God’s key so that it may help us become well-tempered, well-tuned men, so that we play precisely in the Father’s perfect key.

And the world needs this. The world needs that kind of masculinity in this age, and the only place where we will find the point of reference for that masculinity is in the Word and the values of the Word, of the Kingdom of God. May the Lord grant that we always go to that Word so that we may truly be men—in this case, on Father’s Day—giving the world an example of what healthy masculinity is, because this world does not know. Without the Word of God, sexuality breaks out of its enclosure like a wild stallion that suddenly kicks down the fence and runs loose, destroying everything around it. When man breaks out of the enclosure of the Word of the Lord, you can be sure that he will destroy many things. And one of the first things the devil will seek to damage is the sexuality of men and women, their masculine and feminine identity, as we see in this age.

Because the devil knows that sexuality lies at the very center of a man’s or a woman’s life. Freud said it, and people did not believe him; I believe it is true. It is the greatest force in the universe. It causes wars, and it also inspires poems. It is an incredibly creative and also destructive force. It is a divine force, and it can also become demonic. The devil knows that force, and so, when he wants to deal a deathblow to a society, he first goes after its sexuality. He begins pulling at the wires and inspiring man to start tinkering with that delicate mechanism. It is so delicate, and he knows it. Once he destabilizes it, how can it be put back in place? Only the One who made it knows how to restore it.

And then, the more they try, the more they experiment, and the more they try to find the way, the more they ruin it. They begin like an ignorant person trying to work on a brand-new, top-of-the-line car, and then they start doing whatever they want. As a society bleeds out through its sexuality, everything else becomes destabilized: the family, fatherhood, government, and moral, ethical, and religious values, and chaos is sown throughout society. We have, for example, a society that, to some extent—I am sorry if this offends my sisters—is a society in which femininity has gained an unbalanced degree of predominance. In the past, in this country, it was masculinity that became demonic and oppressive, as in the countries of the Middle East and other parts of the world, where men pervert women by literally putting them inside a sack and literally hiding them.

But society can swing to the other side, where femininity is predominant. There is a feminine sensibility that permeates it—not overtly, but it is there. It manifests itself in homosexuality, castrated fathers, and a ridiculous masculinity like the one we see on television and in Hollywood. Then it enters religion as well. God made woman and man for certain things, and when man does not take his place and woman takes the space that man leaves vacant, destructive models begin to emerge, and society loses its bearings and sense of direction. That is why, in this age, the Church must be a place where there is a healed masculinity, because we all need to be healed. Women need to be healed, and men need to be healed as well.

We must ask the Lord for our churches to be places where we can first work through the problems of sexuality or gender, of sexual identity: What is a man? What is a woman? What is a husband? What is a wife? And then, as we work through those issues according to the values of the Lord, setting our homes right, setting our masculinity right, and setting our femininity right, we can become suitable examples for our society out there. When people see our homes functioning according to God’s model, when they see manly and tender men, when they see feminine and strong women who are secure in themselves, and when they see a man and a woman living together and each giving the other their proper place in a beautiful dance of complementarity, society will say, “Wow, I want that too.” Then the values of the Kingdom of God will be able to offer a valid, attractive, credible alternative to that world out there that needs those values.

So there you have the first point. I do not think it is going to be very short, but I am going to do it. But what I want to speak about is God’s mercy and the mercy that we, as parents, must exercise toward one another, just as the Father exercises mercy toward us. But I want to explain that sense of mercy specifically in relation to fatherhood, motherhood, and being children, and I am going to explain why mercy is so important in these times in which we live as parents and children.

Then the Lord led me to Psalm 103. And there in verse 8 of Psalm 103 it says: “The Lord is merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in mercy. He will not always contend with us, nor will He retain His anger forever. He has not dealt with us according to our iniquities, nor repaid us according to our sins. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His mercy.” Look at the predominance of the word mercy in this reading. “He has magnified His mercy toward those who fear Him. As far as the East is from the West, so far has He removed our transgressions from us. As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him, for He knows our condition; He remembers that we are dust.” I am going to stop there.

And I want to say this: this comes from the heart of God. This comes as the result of some reflections I had in the morning when I got up, and that is the importance of mercy and forgiveness in family life. It is about first being merciful toward ourselves, being compassionate toward ourselves, and forgiving ourselves for our failures as fathers, mothers, and children. And I believe there is a serious lack—within the Christian family, and definitely in the secular world—of mercy and compassion toward one another. And we need that.

Just yesterday, during the time of ministry, a beloved sister—and several people—spoke about their sense of... because one of the subjects discussed was forgiveness. And of course, one has to forgive oneself, one has to forgive others, one has to ask God for forgiveness, and one has to ask Him for His mercy. Those are four things that occurred to me. I am going to write them down before I forget.

But several people spoke in one way or another about their shortcomings and their guilt regarding how they had fulfilled their role as parents and as children. And there is much anguish among the children of God concerning our parents and our own parenthood. Sometimes we parents feel inadequate regarding the role we have played in our children’s lives. Sometimes we feel inadequate, like that young man who neglected his father, regarding how we have treated our parents as well. And sometimes a Word speaks to us and reminds us: I have not called Dad; I have not asked for forgiveness; I have not set things right with my parents regarding the past.

And I believe there is a... Since we are moral and ethical people, and we are always grappling with the Word of God, which is continually reminding us of these things, we often feel pain over the wrongs we have committed. And it is important for us to deal with that matter, because I believe there is a kind of guilt that weakens us. The Bible says there is a sorrow that destroys and kills, and there is a sorrow that leads to repentance and therefore turns into an action that corrects the wrong and leads to a change in conduct. Sorrow is not always bad, but if it is something that freezes you and fills you with guilt, it can be destructive in your life.

I believe that when we can rest in the Lord, that releases energies that then allow us to be free to be as God wants us to be—do you understand what I am saying? Many times, when you feel guilty, that keeps you from doing so, because then the failure becomes frozen, and it is as though I am bleeding out little by little through a tiny hole of guilt. And that is why I believe we need to think about that Father who, as a father has compassion on his children, has compassion on those of us who fear Him. And I have a Word for you this morning, father, mother, and I also want to speak to the children for a moment.

To say, hey, okay, you did not do everything right. A sister was speaking about—she is a woman who reflects the life of God in her face, and from what I have seen, her children also reflect His grace—she was speaking about her pain when she was young, always trying to give her children the best. She always worked too much and perhaps was not always there for them. And how many of our parents have had to make the terrible choice between putting good food on their children’s table and giving them the clothes they need to look presentable among their schoolmates, and having time to talk with them, share with them, and go out with them? Because those were the only two choices: they did not earn much money, they had to work two jobs, sometimes on weekends, and their very compassion and sense of duty drove them to work. They wanted to give their children the best because, when they were children, they had nothing, and they knew how hard it was to arrive at school with torn shoes and try to hide them.

And now that they can, here in a society that allows them to work, they have wanted to heal that wound by giving their children what they themselves did not have. So they work hard, and perhaps they do not have the time to sit down with their children and teach them to play the piano, because, first of all, no one taught them to play the piano or sat down with them to do those things. And then we reach a certain stage in our fatherhood or motherhood when we feel inadequate and feel that we have not done everything we should have done. Perhaps some of us made greater mistakes than those; perhaps we broke up a home, fell in love with someone else, and left before coming to know the Lord; we were unfaithful to our wives and our children. Perhaps for years we harmed our family through violent, abusive behavior, drinking, or whatever it may have been.

One day we came to know the Lord, gave our lives to the Lord, and repented. But those distortions of character were still in our hearts, or the consequences of those wounds had already been deposited in the hearts of our family. Like a bone that was broken, they healed, but they were somewhat deformed; and when a bone breaks and heals again, no matter how well it heals, it never returns to being exactly what it was when God made it, when He designed it. And so our family is always limping a little under the burden of that past. The wounds are there. God has forgiven them, but they are there; we can see them. That also makes us feel guilty, and we bleed out a little more still.

And there are many other things as well that cause us to load ourselves down with a sense of guilt and with a burden that remains within us. And I think, brothers and sisters, that this Word from the Lord is for every one of us when we feel as though we have not matched the perfect tone of the Heavenly Father. We have made mistakes. Perhaps we took it so seriously that we hit our children over the head with the Bible, and they rebelled; and now that we are a little older and more sober, we realize that perhaps we should have been a little more balanced with them. That also sometimes makes us feel bad. I believe there are many ways this happens.

Look, no one, no one, no one who is human can say that he or she has been a perfect father or mother. The only perfect mother—the perfect Father—is the Heavenly Father who is up there. We must always aim for His model, so that the glory may always belong to Him alone. There is no mother or father who does not sin; none of us can say, “I did not make a mistake concerning my children.” But you know that God understands that very well, God already knows it, and God knew it from the beginning. And God’s grace, His favor, extends toward you, father or mother. When we feel inadequate, let us take two aspirins and swallow them, lay our heads on the pillow, and say, “Lord, I trust in Your grace; I trust in Your mercy,” because that is what we have to do.

The first thing we have to say is, hey, what happened, happened. I cannot turn back time. I repent; I know that I failed; I want to do better. But at a certain point, you then have to entrust yourself to the Lord’s grace and mercy and know that being a father or being a mother is the most inhuman task—in the sense that only the divine can practice parenthood properly. It is a task God has entrusted to us, and no one gets an A in parenting—no one. Parenting is a riddle God has given us, and at most we score a 70, an 80, or an 85 percent. But no matter how much you may want to, parenting is something you will never be able to do perfectly, because it is like one of those mirrors at amusement parks that are crooked by their very nature: no matter how much you look at yourself, straighten yourself up, or try, you will always come out looking crooked.

Because there are too many elements to take into account in perfect parenting, just as there are in perfect holiness or anything else. There are tens of thousands of seasonings that have to go into making that perfection, and in this world it is not possible. So we will all sin, we will offend, and we will distort; and we will look back at our past and see things that were not right. But what we have to do is entrust ourselves to the Lord’s grace and mercy, continue looking to the Word of God, give ourselves therapy, and move forward in the name of the Lord, trying to be the best we can be—while always looking to the model of Jesus, of course.

And then we are free to acknowledge that, in and of itself, we are already condemned to relative failure. I believe that when a person gives up the ideal of being perfect, it enables that person to do the best he or she can, provided we do not use it as an excuse not to improve our performance as parents. But we have to relax and know that, although we do not score 100, we already have a 100 from the Father; the Father up there gives us a 100, because as a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him. And the Lord makes sure, in one way or another, that along the way His nourishment blesses our children and that they arrive where they need to arrive. Then He always gets the credit, and we give Him the honor.

So I believe we have to relax in that sense and rest in the Lord. There is something else about this, and it is that the society in which we live—I already told you this was going to be a little longer, but I think it is important for us to hear it. I would say that the society in which we live is one of the most demanding societies that has ever existed in all of human history, because it is the most critically, technologically, rationally, and scientifically developed society that has ever existed in all of human history. The generation in which we currently live has the ability to judge things and dissect them on a table under a perfectly penetrating fluorescent light, to see everything with tremendous lucidity and clarity, and to perceive perfectly well the distortions and defects in everything it sees.

But it is also one of the most hypocritical and unpleasant societies I have ever seen in my life. It is a tremendously demanding society. It is a paradox: it is a society that prides itself on being liberal, and yet it is one of the most Pharisaical societies when it comes to scrutinizing humanity. It is very demanding but also full of terrible defects and inconsistencies. It is a strange paradox. Modern man has reached such a level of competence and ability in so many things that it is difficult. Today we are under incredible pressure to perform; we have to perform perfectly, we have to do everything we do perfectly.

Nowadays mothers have to be top-notch executives. They arrive at the office and have to be Margaret Thatcher. Perfect in their—then they arrive home and have to cook perfectly well; they have to make five different dishes, dessert and all, everything perfectly prepared; and they have to be lovers, tigresses in bed, because after all, that is what is expected. Angelina Jolie and all the others set the standard, even though they have divorced a zillion times. It cannot be that J.Lo has to get divorced—wow, what happened? Why? If they were so great, that man would remain enslaved to her forever. So there are all sorts of models, right?

We fathers also have to be perfect administrators, perfect lovers, perfect at expressing tenderness, strong as a lion, tender as a poet, and do everything right as well. There is tremendous pressure, and Hollywood fills us with those distorted images of the woman who gets out of bed perfectly made up—no one knows how—an indescribable beauty, without anything at the corner of her mouth, nothing (laughter). And they kiss passionately right there, and one says, “What a mouthful! What kind of gargling are they doing there?” A person goes twelve hours and then gets up in the morning.

And so we live under that pressure, you know? It is a culture that puts pressure on us; it is a culture that is highly—there are people who really do incredible things. And when you look, for example, at how much society has developed—let us say, when you look at sports—you look at today’s basketball players and compare them with the basketball players of 30 years ago: those fellows with their skinny little chicken legs, shorts that came up to here, and so thin. And then you look at Shaquille O’Neal, who stands, what, six foot nine, and is a mastodon, yet moves with tremendous agility; and those other players look scrawny, like good-for-nothings compared with those of the twenty-first century.

And likewise, when you look at Hollywood—the special effects, the artistic skill, the demands placed on the artists—it is incredible. I believe it is an ultra-developed society. Today’s pastors have to be administrators, they have to be lawyers, perfect counselors, everything. It is terrible pressure. And what are our models? We feel that if we do not put on a $1,200 tie, we are worth nothing. And so there is tremendous pressure in this culture, because this culture has developed enormously. We then transfer that to our lives as fathers, wives, and husbands. We live with a terrible burden on our hearts; we continually feel inadequate.

And the Lord tells us, “Hey, look, I am the compassionate God. Do not allow yourself to be distorted by those models. You are going to mess up, and that is why My grace will be with you: to clean your knees when you fall, skin them, and tear your pants. I will be there to bless you and to make sure that your distortions are not destructive to your children in the future. I will correct them in the future. Rest in Me; lay down your head and sleep peacefully, because I am the One who has compassion, as a father has compassion on his children. Only fear Me, do the best you can, and I will take care of the rest.”

And the final thing I think about this also concerns children in relation to their parents, because our culture is one that has given children a tremendous capacity to criticize their parents. This society is tremendously analytical. The skills of psychology, sociology, and psychiatry have entered into common, everyday use, and our children have studied these tools and acquired these abilities to analyze human processes in a very powerful way. They themselves live with the inferiority complexes that this tremendously analytical culture has given them, and with their own doubts about their identity, their own performance in life, their future, their professionalism, and so many other things, because this is a tremendously introspective culture with a terrible capacity to see flaws in itself and in others. For we possess tremendous skills in this developed society, which is also deformed.

So our children have a tremendous capacity to analyze our fatherhood, our motherhood, our marriages, our churches, pastors, religious Christian people, and to see all the gaps, and all the faults, and all the shortcomings, and all the inconsistencies with a penetrating and profound light. And so it is very easy to see in our parents what they did not do—and for you, as a 50-, 60-, or 40-year-old adult, to look back—and you have two options: to adopt a narrative of victimization, exploitation, harm, and inadequacy, and interpret your family past, your maternal and paternal past, through tremendously cold and analytical lenses, and see yourself, see the glass as half empty, see what they did and what they did not do; or to adopt a narrative of mercy and compassion, and thus also add nuance to that awareness—which is probably not false; what you are seeing is real—but if you place other filters of mercy over those lenses, slightly rose-colored, slightly light blue, you will see very beautiful things: your parents’ love, how they devoted themselves completely to you, how they loved you, how painfully aware they were of their shortcomings, how they did the best they could within limiting circumstances, how they were trapped in the straitjacket of the models they received, which psychologically programmed them to do things they themselves did not want to do.

And so you can—you have the privilege and the opportunity to show mercy and to choose to love, honor, revere, respect, forgive, and bless. When you do that, you are blessed, honored, and prospered, because a child does not have the option of not honoring his father; that is a commandment of the Lord. And you know, child, when you grow up, you will discover that dynamic of being a father; you too will go through that process, through that animation. It reminds us that life is a cycle, and the one who shows mercy receives mercy. So, young people, you too have the opportunity, the privilege, to honor your parents, and to choose between two things in the Mosaic law: to spend your whole life complaining about your parents or feeling hurt by what your parents did not do and the mistakes they made, or to bless them even though you know they were not everything they should have been. You will bless and honor the memory of your parents, and the God who has compassion on the weak will have compassion on you as well.

And when you are weak in your own time, you too will find grace, and in this way you will be psychologically happy and whole, because where there is grace, there is health, and there is healing, and there is God’s blessing, and there is God’s prosperity.

So there you have the half-baked sermon God has for us today. I ask the musicians to come forward, please. Mercy, forgiveness, patience, forgiving ourselves, receiving God’s forgiveness, forgiving those who offend us, forgiving the faults and shortcomings of our parents, because we are a people of grace, we are a people of mercy, and wherever mercy flows, God’s blessing will always be present. Amen? So thank You, Father, for reminding us that You are a God of mercy, that we will always fail the test, we will always fall short in every arena of life, but how good it is to know that our Daddy takes us into His powerful, beautiful, and perfect arms, and cleanses us and blesses us, and kisses us on the cheek, and tells us, “I understand,” and gives us His grace to keep moving forward.

We bless You, Lord, this morning. I ask that a cloud of peace flood our hearts, that Your grace fill every soul present here—the wounded and those who have wounded others, those who have been failed and those who have failed, and those who will fail in the future. May Your grace and Your mercy be with each one of us, Lord. Thank You for Your grace; thank You for Your goodness and Your mercy. And, Father, we will never presume to lean too heavily on that grace; rather, we want to be like You, we want to exemplify the finest values of Your Word. Help us to become better from generation to generation. Thank You for our fathers; thank You for our mothers; thank You for our children; thank You for the Christian family; thank You for the opportunity to show mercy regarding the sins we commit and to be like You, Lord.

I bless Your people this morning. Thank You for sending us Your blessing. Receive our gratitude, in Jesus’ name, amen and amen. God bless you, my brothers and sisters. Happy Father’s Day.