In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the importance of bringing every aspect of our lives under the lordship of Christ. He highlights the need to bring our thought life, eyes, ears, heart, hands, and feet into subjection to the law of Christ. The preacher challenges the audience to consider how different their lives would be if everything they did was in accordance with Scripture. He also addresses the issue of training boys to become men and encourages fathers to take responsibility in raising their sons. The sermon concludes with a comparison between hiring an employee and being a pastor, emphasizing the importance of productivity and work ethic in serving God.

Roping off of a mare I shouldn't have been roping off of and I was 11 years old and I threw the rope and the calf went one way, rope went the other way, the mare went the other way, and I went straight away. Broke it again and then about four years later I broke it in a cattle shoot. Two steers decided they would try to stomp me to death, which they didn't succeed. Left with quite a bit of brain damage, but they didn't kill me. And well, I found out that it's been broken for a long time and the bone's starting to die and everything, so this is the second operation on it to try to put me back together. I've had one knee worked on. I've had both hips replaced. I've had this operated on twice and have several pins everywhere, so there won't be a whole lot of me to resurrect once I get done. But working in the jungles, the advantage was I wasn't worth killing and eating. There was so much metal in me. We're going to start in 2 Corinthians. Just look at a text for a moment, 2 Corinthians chapter 10, and then we're going to move on to Romans. We're going to be talking primarily in the context of marriage tonight, because that's what men do, they get married. And that's how men live out their masculinity and their Christianity, primarily in the context of their marriage. And we're going to talk about being men in a world where so few men actually live. Now before we get to this text, let's go to the Lord in prayer. Father, I come before You in the name of Your Son. And Lord, I would be terrified for someone to think that I have come to live in perfect submission even to the things that I preach. I fully recognize, Lord, that I preach a truth that is much larger than myself and a goal somewhere beyond me. Lord, I also recognize that though it is a high goal, my failure has no excuse and that must lead to repentance, faith, and a turning back to You. Father, I pray that You would use this message. Lord, I know that apart from Your grace, I'll be nothing more than a seething demonstration of flesh and arrogance. I know that much about myself, Lord. So I would pray that You would help, that You would give grace upon grace and mercy upon mercy. In Jesus' name, Amen. 2 Corinthians chapter 10, verse 5. Paul says, We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God. We are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. This is a verse coming from the mouth of one who demonstrates biblical maturity, biblical manhood, biblical discipleship, the idea of what it really means to be not only a man of God, but a man before God, and a man who walks in the fear of God. We are a generation after the passing of the World War II group of men. We begin to see a terrible decline in our country with regard to manhood. There are very few men. As a matter of fact, most men reach the age of 30, yeah, even 40, and they're nothing more than decaying adolescents. There is nothing in any society or in the Scripture that talks about someone being a boy and then growing to the age of adolescence, and then becoming a man. There's a period supposedly in modern day psychology in which someone after being a boy at about 11 or 12 years old, they move into adolescence. It is a time of rebellion, a time of selfishness, a time of trying to find their identity and everything else, a time when you should let them roam free, that they should play, and all these other things, and then hopefully, eventually, they become a man. That is not found in any culture outside of our modern Western culture, and it's most certainly not found in Scripture. The Scripture teaches that someone is a boy, and then they become a man. And this modern idea of adolescence is built upon a false evolutionary model, and it has caused great destruction and harm, even in the lives of the people that are in this room. That so many men, they grow old, but they never come into manhood. I tell all the young men sometimes in my church where I attend, boys, that maybe they have problems, maybe their dad is derelict, or they just have a mom and they don't have a dad, and maybe they'll come and spend some time with me. One of the first things I do is I look them in the eye and I say, how old are you? If they say 11, 12, I say, listen to me. I am not going to treat you like a boy. I'm going to treat you like a man, and I'm going to expect you to act like one. And you know what? They do. They do. You say, well, why did you start your sermon in this way? Well, because you have to realize something. When we approach the Scripture, you and I are so influenced by our culture. I mean, a fish doesn't realize it's wet, because everyone else around it is wet. We live in a culture of people who drink down iniquity like it was water. There are so many things that we do in our lives, even this preacher, that are unbiblical, and yet I have still not grown to understand it, or see the errors of my own way. We are called to be a biblical people, and we are called to be biblical men, which brings with it greater responsibility than being a biblical woman. Because one day when nations and individuals and families and clans and tribes and everything else are called before the throne of God, when your family is called before the throne of God, you will be the one called on the carpet as the representative. We are to learn what it means to be a man. Now, there are so many wrong ideas out there, everything from the homosexual and lesbian and feminist psychologists of the late sixties and seventies who told us to get in touch with our feminine side, of which I have never found. If you do find them, if you do find a feminine side in you, crucify it. But then there's the other side out there that thinks manhood is being bully and arrogant and angry, like some soldier out of the Roman Empire, and that's not biblical manhood either. Biblical manhood is to be like Jesus Christ. And the hardest place to work that out is in the context of your family. I preached in Austin, Texas a few weeks ago and they don't have a pastor. And soon as I came down from the pulpit, a group of people gathered around me and a man came up to me and he said, would you be our pastor? I said, sir, you don't even know who I am. You don't know what I am. You heard one small sermon and you think somehow you've discerned that I'm qualified to be a pastor? You know nothing about the way I treat my wife. You know nothing about my relationship with my children. You know nothing about my character, my integrity. The only thing you know is I can put a lot of words in order quickly. Being a disciple of Jesus Christ, being salt, is about bearing the characteristics of Jesus Christ. And doing that in the context of our family and then in the context of our local church. Sir, I want to submit to you that at least 95% of all the problems in your family are going to come right back to you. You're to blame. Not your wife. Not your children. You. And, gentlemen, I will submit to you that 95% of the problems in your local church come from men in that local church who do not act biblically in the context of that local church, but are carried away by emotion as though they were a bunch of old women instead of standing on truth. Now let's look at this text. I don't know if we're going to get... Maybe we'll just get through the introduction tonight. He says in verse 5, we are destroying speculations. Everything outside of the Word of God, everything that comes from the heart of a man, the wisdom of a man, is nothing more than speculation before God. It's speculation. Your behavior with your wife. Upon what is it based? Can you go down right now with me through Scripture and show me the commandments in the Bible about being a godly husband? Or are you living your life as a husband based upon worldly speculations? Upon what you think is right in your own mind? And then in the context of this local church, are you doing things and expecting things and looking for things according to what the Bible says or according to your speculations and the speculations of other people? I've seen it. Families fall apart. Why? Marriages fall apart. Why? Because they're built upon the speculations, thoughts, and wisdom of the flesh, which is earthly, demonic, and leads to death. There's not been a local church in the United States of America that I know of in the last 200 years that has been destroyed from the outside. Tell me one group of believers that have been killed, machine gunned down in the United States. Show me one church that's been bulldozed down in the United States by unbelievers. No. How is it destroyed? The ungodly speculation of immature believers and ungodly people within the context of the local church. That's why Paul says we destroy speculation. If I'm with my wife, she can say something to me. Let's say, for example, I'm headed out the door. I've got tons of problems, tons of ministries and missionaries that I have to take care of, and I'm headed out the door in the morning at 7 in the morning. I've got books. I've got Bibles. I'm running out the door. I've got several meetings that day. It's raining and I get right towards the door and as soon as I'm going out she says, Oh honey, can you take out the trash? Immediately, my flesh is going to react and say, can't you see what's going on here? Can't you see how much work I have to do? Can't you see I'm loaded down? And you're asking me to take out the trash? That is the flesh being controlled by speculation, by emotion, by what I feel, instead of stopping and bringing my thoughts and my behavior in submission to the Lordship of Jesus Christ and putting all that stuff down and going over and hugging her and picking up the trash and walking out the door with it. You see, we live our lives empowered by the flesh many times and led by speculations. You get into the church and you hear people say, Well, I don't think this is right. Well, I don't think that's right. Well, I think he's wrong here. Well, I think they've got this problem and that problem and everything else. And where are the men who will stand up, open a Bible and say, Okay, let's talk. Let's talk. Here's a Bible. Get yours. Show me. Because if it's in here, I'll submit to it. No, it's speculation. Do you suppose? Do you think? What you suppose and I suppose and I think and you think really doesn't matter a whole lot. The only thing that matters is what does God's Word say. That's what it all comes down to. Paul says, We destroy speculation. I want every thought in my mind, every ounce of human wisdom to be destroyed on the anvil of God's Word. God's Word is an anvil upon which you lay that speculation and God's Word is a hammer with which you destroy it. He says, We are destroying speculation and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God. This right here demonstrates our pride. Everything that is not according to the knowledge and wisdom of God is an arrogant thing raised up in His presence. Just like Satan standing up in the presence of God and accusing Job or accusing God. Things lifted up in the Old Testament are what? Idols. Have you ever noticed if you ever have a problem and you ask someone's opinion in the church, well, you know, I'm having this problem. I just don't know what to do. And they'll probably come to you and say, well, brother, I think you ought to do this. Or, well, brother, I experienced that and let me share with you from my experiences. How many people say, well, brother, the Bible says in 1 Corinthians 3, you see, how little of our conversation, how little of our behavior, how little of everything we do is based upon God's Word? It's speculation and high thoughts. We are supposing that we have wisdom. So many people, most people think that they are adequate counselors. Most people think they can pretty much, yeah, I've got some wisdom. Many people think wisdom was born with them and will die with them. But the Bible says that no man is wise. And the wisest of this world is nothing more than foolishness. That's what the Bible says. We're to destroy speculation. If it's not according to the Bible in my life, those thoughts have got to go. If it's not according to the Bible in my marriage, in my family, it's got to go. If it's not according to the Bible in the congregation of the believers, it's got to go. And why does He use the word destroy? Destroying speculation? For the same reason God said when you get over there in the Promised Land, you better destroy those Canaanites. Because those Canaanites you don't destroy, they're going to come back and get you. I want to tell you something. Every speculation, every bit of human wisdom, every bit of antidotal credence, all the smart and quick sayings of men, all those speculations that you do not destroy will end up destroying you. They'll take over. They really will. They really will. And we have got to come to the point where we are destroying speculations. We violently move against them. Anything in my behavior towards my wife, there's no room for justification. There's only two things to be done. One, compare it to God's Word. Two, if it's not according to His Word, destroy it. Crucify that thing. Raised up against the knowledge of God. Now, here's something very, very important. The genuine believer, the one who has been regenerated by the Holy Spirit of God has been granted a gift. And that gift is often called the knowledge of God. The unregenerate heart cannot understand truth. Cannot. And the reason why it cannot is because it will not. And the reason why it will not is because it has a wicked heart that hates God. But if you have been regenerated, you have been enlightened and illumined to the counsel of God, you and I do not have to live like the ignorant pagan. We can get into this Word, we can understand what it means, and we can come to obey it. And we can live a higher life. We ought to have better lives than the unbeliever. We ought to have better marriages. And our fellowship and our communion as a congregation should so far supersede anything the world knows. But if we play by the world's rules, we can't expect to demonstrate any greater grace than the wicked fallen world itself. Now, we are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God. Let me take just a little bit of a detour here for a second. Speculations, not according to the knowledge of God, are against the knowledge of God and fight against His purposes. When someone lives their life believing and communicating speculations, it's not just that they're doing damage to themselves, but they have raised up a standard of war against God and they are fighting God's purposes. Any kind of speculation, any kind of, as it says in 1 John, darkness, esoteric hidden things, secret whisperings, anything such as that, it just destroys and thwarts the purposes of God. Now, why do I say that? Because as men, you and I are to have a spirit of discernment to be able to recognize speculations and stand up against them. We are not to be like old women communicating wives' tales, gossips and whisperers, silly little women who have nothing to do. We hear something, we validate it. Period. I have seen so many things destroyed because men did not act like men when it came to speculation. Let me just give you a little hint, and then I'm going to go on towards marriage, but let me just give you a little hint. Someone comes to me with a problem they have about someone else. Immediately, for a biblical, godly man who does not fear men, a red flag goes up. There's already a violation. What is it? Matthew 18. But we're cowards, aren't we? We won't go talk to someone face to face, but we'll sure talk to others about them. Someone comes to me. Let's say this brother right here. Someone comes to me and they say, I've got a problem with this brother over here. I look at them and I go, I don't know anything about this brother right here, but I know I'm not listening to you. I don't know about this brother right here, but you have just disobeyed God in my presence and I know you have no integrity. So whether what you say about him is right or wrong, that doesn't matter to me right now. I know I'm not listening to you because you did not do what God commands. You see? Cleared it up that quick, didn't I? No problem. Well, what if it is true? That isn't the point. The point is a false messenger brought it to you and you know not to trust him. If I'm climbing up a cliff, my dear friend, if I'm climbing up a cliff and I'm about to fall and I see two men standing up there and both of them hold down their hand like this, say, Paul, grab my hand, and one of them is a man I don't know at all. Another one is a man I know hates me more than any other human being on the face of the earth. Whose hand am I going to grab? I'm going to grab the man I don't know at all. I might not know him. I might not know what he'll do, but I definitely know what this one has already done. That's the way you end speculation right there. In my church in Peru, you'll be disciplined as a gossip. In my church in Peru, you'll be disciplined if you listen to gossip. Speculation destroys everything. Creates confusion. Destroys. And it's not what real men do. Real men don't bow their head. Real men don't just say, well, I'm just going to stay out of this problem. Real men don't listen to speculation. They go right to the source and find out if things are true, period. And also real men recognize that if there's someone running around with a lot of speculation, whether they're right or not, it's not the point. Everything they're doing is unbiblical. Now, this is what he says, we are taking every thought captive to obedience of Christ. This is the key. It is not just external legalistic rules. It is not just following some external order. It's not just cosmetic. It's not just trying to make us look godly on the outside. No, my dear friend, what this is all about is the inward man, the deepest thought being brought into subjection to the law of Christ, to obey as Christ obeyed. To obey as Christ obeyed. And this is in what context? In the context of every aspect of your life. Your thought life is to be brought into subjection to the law of Christ. Gentlemen, many of you will never be able to walk in godliness because you watch so much ungodly television. Because your eyes have not been brought into subjection to the law of Christ. Everything. You see, I am not my own. I have been bought with a price. You are not your own. You have been bought with a price. These are His eyes. These are His lips. These are His ears. His heart. His hands. His feet. And all of it being His, all of it is to be under His lordship. All of it. How different would our lives be if everything we did was in accordance to Scripture? How different would our lives be when we did not understand a solution, we did not move until we discerned the will of God from the written Word? How would our marriages be if we spent time daily studying the Word of God about marriage? How different would our children be? Just to give you an example. In a church that I am helping reconstruct after a great problem it has had, a youth minister came to me. I said, I want to know about the youth. Now let's just sit down and talk this through. He goes, Brother Paul, they have sent me to the biggest churches in America. They have sent me everywhere to all the biggest Southern Baptist churches, everything else. Every model I have ever seen about youth ministry is nothing more than trivial, stupid, juvenile Christian entertainment for kids who are unregenerated. And I said, well, thank you young man. I think I can work with you. But he said, there is no model. I said, you don't need one. Open up the Bible. Look up the word youth. Look up the word child. Look up the word simple, naive. Look up all the words. Look up the word son, daughter. Everything in the Bible. You know what happened when we did that? This is what we found out about youth ministry. How do you do youth ministry? You bring kids together. You have God-centered worship whether they like it or not. And you preach like a scalded dog. And you get them memorizing Scripture because almost every time it talks about youth it tells them to meditate upon Scripture and memorize it. And you stop all these trivial, stupid games designed to keep unconverted children coming so that your church looks good. Speculation. Everything based on speculation instead of the Word of God. The Word of God. If this church took seriously the Word of God, how many would take this church seriously? If I took seriously the Word of God, how long would I last as a free man in this country? The Word of God. Now, I did not intend to stay that long in that supposed three-minute introduction, but I want us to go over to Romans for a minute. And I want to concentrate on something about marriage that I think that will help you as a man. Romans 8 is one of the most important passages in the entire Bible with regard to marriage. Romans 8, verse 28. And we know that God causes all things to work together for good, to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose, for those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren. You know, when we talk about the sovereignty of God, one of the things that makes me most angry is it seems that that term only comes up with regard to salvation. The sovereignty of God is an essential doctrine for every aspect of our lives. If I do not believe in the sovereignty of God, I cannot have a strong marriage. Now, I want us to look at some things. What is the purpose, sir, of your marriage? And if you can learn this, it will help you, it will give you contentment like you've never had it before. Because I want to tell you, much of what we call Christian teaching on marriage is wrong. It tells you that the goal of marriage is heaven on earth. The goal of marriage is this marital bliss, this joy, this little piece of heaven. I'm here to tell you that is not true at all. Some of you are very discouraged in your marriage and the reason why is you've been told what the goal of marriage is and they told you wrong, and when you didn't reach that goal, you think something's wrong with your marriage. Well, I'm supposed to have this marital bliss. My home's supposed to be like a little piece of heaven. It's not. Did I marry the wrong woman? Should I get out of this? What should I do? They've told you the wrong purpose of marriage. Here's what the Bible says is the purpose of marriage. Verse 29, For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son. The number one purpose of marriage is that through marriage, you might become conformed to the image of God's Son with regard to His character. Put it this way, that you might learn to love like Jesus loved. And how did Jesus love? Jesus loved the loveless. So the purpose of your marriage, the sovereign purpose of God, is to use that woman to do one thing, conform you to the image of God. That's it. Now how does that work itself out? Well, first of all, let's look at the basis of most people's idea of marriage. They don't see it as a calling, but as a fulfillment of a desire. A young man comes to me and he comes in the office. Brother Paul, I want to marry this girl. And I say, why? And they say, well, she's beautiful and we can just talk and I love her personality and we can really get along together and just everything. I just feel so great when I'm with her. And I stop him and I say, let me just see if I understand what you're trying to tell me. You want to marry this woman because she fulfills all your selfish, self-centered desires? Is that what you're trying to tell me? He says, no, that's not what I mean. I say, that's exactly what you said, young man. You want to marry her because she's beautiful. What happens when she's not beautiful anymore? And what happens when someone more beautiful comes along and she will? You want to be with her because you can talk. What happens when you can't talk to her? And what happens when you can talk to your secretary a lot better than you can with your wife? You want to be with her because she meets all your needs. What happens when your whole life is controlled by the fact that she has needs? How quick you going to get out, boy? You see why marriages go wrong? You get into them for all the wrong reasons. I'm married to a girl that I love, that I feel things in my heart for her. I love her. It's like Homer Crane sitting down here. He told me before I married her, you have in your presence tonight one of the greatest missionaries I've ever known. So, if you want to know an old missionary, there he is. But he told me when I was about ready to get married, Homer Crane said, Boy, he said, you need someone who can play the piano in your church? I said, yes. He goes, you can pay somebody to do that. He goes, you need someone to work in the women's ministry? I said, yes, sir, I do. He said, you can find somebody to do that. If you're going to marry this girl, you marry her because you love her. And I do love her, but that's not the basis of my marriage. The basis of my marriage is the same basis as my call to ministry. It is a sovereign, irrevocable calling of God. And it is this. God has called Paul Washer to lay down his life, dreams, hopes, desires, and everything he ever wanted. God has called Paul Washer to lay down his life for a girl by the name of Charo Nunez. That's my wife. That's what my whole marriage is about. That's it. That's it. So it has absolutely nothing to do with me. It has nothing to do with my needs, nothing to do with my desires, nothing to do with how happy I am. It has nothing to do with any of that. It has to do with this. God has given me a divine decree. He has spoken forth a command. I am to lay down my life, die, for the benefit of that daughter. That's it. What about me? That's that little adolescent boy talking. A guy came to me one time and he goes, I have to work 12 hours a day to put food on the table. I have to come home. I have to help my wife. I have to do all this stuff. I'm just so tired. I said, well, there is one other option. Believe in Incarnation and come back as a woman. I said, this is what men do. We labor in the sweat of our brow. This is not our heaven and this is not our rest. This is about following Jesus Christ to the cross and dying to self for the benefit of our wives, period. If she's beautiful, wonderful. If she's not, doesn't matter. If she's easy to get along with, wonderful. If she's not, doesn't matter. I'm not going anywhere. Why? Because I'm under orders from the God whom I fear. Now, how does God use marriage to conform us to the image of His Son? Now listen to me. We have to be very careful with our words here. It's nonetheless true. God says He will not allow me to be tempted beyond what I can bear. That's what the Bible says. God has given me a wife who is strong in all the areas where she must be strong in order for me not to be tempted beyond what I can bear. God has orchestrated those strengths in her. Now, God has orchestrated the weaknesses in my wife. He has sovereignly worked and given me a woman that is weak in all the areas where I most do not want her to be weak. Why? To drive me absolutely out of my cotton-picking mind. No. Why has He done that? Because He wants to conform me to the image of Christ. And what does that mean? The very things you sing most about and appreciate most about Jesus Christ are the very things you don't want in your life. What is the main thing? Unconditional love. See, you're in a marriage and you see these weaknesses in your wife, and because of those weaknesses, you think that you're locked into a dead-end marriage. It has no purpose. There's no reason. You just lost out. You made the wrong choice. All these other things. But now, if you'll believe God, those weaknesses can cause your life to be filled with more purpose than you ever imagined. She's weak in an area. She's a certain way in an area that you wish she was totally different, and it actually not only bothers you, it hurts you. But now you know something. God has orchestrated that, given you such a woman so that you will learn to love even though she doesn't meet even the most important conditions that you have. That's what God desires. That's what He desires. And you will find joy and rest in laying down, destroying those silly humanistic speculations and following the Word of God, the sovereignty of God. There's not a maverick molecule in the universe. You say, well, but men can do things, you know. They really mess up their lives. Yes, they absolutely can. Can you explain that? Go talk to a philosopher. I'm a theologian. I don't have to explain it. I just hold those truths to be true. But I can tell you this, my dear friend. God's greatest purpose... Look at me. I mean, why? Why is my knee tore up? Why have both my hips been replaced? Why is this bone dying? Why do I have to be operated next month on this arm? I'm an outdoorsman. To lock me inside is to kill me. Why? Why? Because that's the very thing that an absolutely sovereign God who loves me more than it can be defined knows that I need to make me like His Son so that I might bear an extra weight of glory. Why do you have so many? Some of you are like me. You're in your 40s, 50s, late 30s. You've just come to realize that there's a whole lot of hopes and dreams out there, desires and everything you had for your life that aren't going to be fulfilled. It's driving you mad. You'll probably end up doing something really stupid like committing adultery or getting in debt. And you don't understand that all those things are created by God, not by the devil, so that you'll stop wanting all those things and turn to Him and want Him and be full. And be full. The sovereignty of God. If I didn't believe in it, I certainly wouldn't have a leg to stand on, would I? I'm married to a woman. I have a church in Austin, Texas right now and they want to call me to be their pastor. I spoke with the elders. I right now have no real intention, no clear call from God to become their pastor. But I did talk with their elders because I want to be open. And they said, you know, you've helped us through this time of crisis. You know, the church is back on its feet. Man, we would just love to have you as our pastor. I looked at them. I put my head down and I said, gentlemen, I'm not sure I qualify. And they said, what do you mean? I said, well, when I look in 1 Timothy 3, I'm just not sure I qualify. It says there's got to be a man who manages his household well. I said, my wife and I have a strong marriage. We teach our children the Bible. We're consistent in discipline. And they said, well, what's the problem? I said, it's more than that. When you see me with my wife, you ought to see the fragrance of the love of Christ coming forth out of me onto my wife. You ought to see a man who literally, you know, cherishes and nourishes his wife. You ought to see a man who just, you know, would protect her, guard her, care for her, carry her, do whatever necessary, build her up, promote her. Yea, even make her feel beautiful in a world that tells her she's not. I don't know if I qualify enough to be a pastor. Gentlemen, if I was the president of a corporation and all of you worked for me, let's say that I hired one of you, one of these young boys over here, fresh out of college, didn't know a whole lot, kind of lazy, didn't have a work ethic much, didn't know how to put in 14, 15, 16 hours. I'd look at them the first year and see their productivity was pretty low and I'd probably say, well, they're young, they don't know any better. Keep them on. Give them some chance, you know, keep working with them. But let's say that my best man in the company, the one responsible for 65% of the revenue, I mean the company built around him. Let's say he's married to my daughter and I find out he is treating her disgracefully. I don't care if he's the best guy I got on the job. He's going to have some serious problems because the job means nothing to me. This is my daughter. I look at my life and the lives of the men around me and it terrifies me sometimes. This is not about ministry, not about preaching. So what? I'm not that ineffective employee. Getting called on the carpet with regard to his daughter, that's a whole other thing. A guy asked me one time, he stood up and he goes, what is the Christian response to using physical force? And I said, well, what do you mean? He goes, for example, what if someone knocked on the door and you opened the door and a guy's standing there and he said, I'm going to come in your house and I'm going to kill your wife and children. What's the Christian response? I said, oh, that's easy. I'd kill him. Now I don't know if that's a Christian response, but maybe Southern Christian response. You have the daughter of God. Be afraid. Be a man. Assume the responsibility. We don't train boys to become men anymore. Those of you who are fathers, listen to me well. We don't train boys to be men. We send them off to school. Someone else teaches them eight hours a day. Got that covered. We send them to Sunday school. Someone else teaches them. Got that covered. What do we do? Well, I'm just working in order to give my child all the things I never had when I was a child. And where can you find that in the Bible? And sir, that's not what you're doing. You're working to buy yourself all the toys you never got as a child. We're to be men and we're to live for eternity. And that means loving our wives, caring for our children, and being men in the context of the local church. Now, since I only got this one time with you, I want to just hit the young guys for just a minute. Young guys, listen to me. There is no such thing as biblical dating. If you are dating, I don't care who you're dating, you're out of God's will. Is that clear? If you're a young man and you're dating, you're out of God's will. Period. You can come talk to me about it later. You can be mad if you want. But that's just the truth. There's no such thing as recreational dating. There's biblical courtship. There is no recreational dating, number one. Number two, guys ask me, you know, when can I start thinking about someone of the opposite sex? Well, you can start thinking whenever the thought comes to you. The question is, when can you start acting? You see, when a young man becomes... Sometimes I spend weeks teaching on all this stuff. When a young man becomes around, well now, too young, because fathers do not stand as warriors at the door of their house and protect their children. So young children are violated. But in normal godly circumstances, a young kid, if left to himself, won't even... Guys at the university came up to me and they said, well, you know, when then can we start even courtship? When can we start, you know, even moving? I said, first of all, the only time you ever think about being with a girl is because you feel like the Lord is leading you into marriage with that girl. That's number one. Recreational dating is unbiblical. Okay? Another thing. This is when you can first initiate, begin to initiate the dealings that initiate a relationship. This is when you can begin. When as a young man, you can biblically lead that girl as a spiritual leader. Until that moment, you cannot be with anyone of the opposite sex. Number two. Emotionally, you can care for her. That means you're ready to make a lifelong commitment and not test the waters with any other person. Financially, you can care for her. If dad's still paying the insurance on your car, forget about it. You can't date and physically protect her. That doesn't mean you can whoop every guy in the county, but it does mean you will be whooped by every guy in the county before you allow anyone to pass. That you have enough moral fortitude and courage to draw a line in the sand and say, over my cold, dead, blue, deformed body, will you do that? I love, as most of you, some of you probably know, I love hunting and I love bows and arrows. And I've got some Zwicky Eskimo broadheads at home. They're very, very sharp. They're two-bladed, so they have to be very, very sharp. And I have a little wrench that I use to put those broadheads onto the arrow shaft, because you don't even want to put your hand on the side of them, because if you slip, they'll slice your finger off. And I have a three-year-old boy, and I've built a hickory bow for him. He's got a little arrow that he shoots, and it has a blunt wooden tip on the end of it. It won't penetrate much, except his little brother's eye. But sometimes I'll be taking those broadheads off and on, and my little boy Ian will come up there and he'll want to touch the arrows. And I say, No, son, you can't. These arrows that your dad can handle, they'll kill you. Now one day, son, you'll be man enough to handle these arrows, and you can hunt like a big boy. You can hunt like a man. But you've got a lot of growing before you can do that. One of the greatest problems, young men, that we have today is a lot of young men are wanting to play with big boy toys, and yet they're still little boys. You see, we don't want to pay the price of becoming a man in order to do men things. The Bible says, Become a man, and then God will lead you into the ways of a man. Now there's about five lectures on that, but I just wanted to touch on it tonight. Now we scattered around a whole bunch, and well, I'm not sorry for it, but I hope that some of what's been said has helped you. I know it's helped me. It's been a reminder of how I need to get home and love my wife. Let's pray. Father, I come before You, and I pray, Lord, that You would use Your Word to make us.