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A Message To Men
I. Opening Words
On this Father’s Day, I want to speak to all of us, but particularly to those of us who are male…
II. Origin of Man
For just a moment this morning I want us to go back to the beginning…
…Back to those incredible and indescribable events of the origin of man and our world…
In the beginning, God created the earth, and the earth was without form and void…and water (untamed, cold, lifeless water) covered everything and darkness covered the water…
It was chaos…it was total and deep darkness…
But God spoke into that darkness and into that chaos, in order to create life.
He moved into that primordial sphere of mystery with imaginative power that brought beauty and life out of the confusion.
A. Darkness means confusion
The Bible speaks of several different kinds of darkness – most of them more figurative than literal… (e.g. Christians have been “called out of darkness into His marvelous light.”)…
But the darkness in the beginning was different…it was literal, but it also means “confusion”…it was disorder and random chaos.
When the curtain lifts and the Biblical drama begins, we immediately see Christ at center stage.
The story opens with God confronting the original sphere of mystery…
…the darkness covering unformed, unfilled waters.
There was no design…no order…no beauty…no life – just darkness.
The Spirit of God hovers about the darkness…
SUDDENLY, GOD SPEAKS.
With power greater than the darkness, He moves into mystery and gives life through His Word.
o GOD SPOKE, TO THE DARKNESS.
o GOD SPOKE, TO THE CHAOS.
o GOD SPOKE, TO THE DISORDER.
o GOD SPOKE, TO THE CONFUSION.
B. He Began To Create
Then, He began the six day process of creation.
…Grass, trees… sun, moon, planets…fish and foul…animals
Finally on the sixth day He created man.
Man was different… “God created man in His own image.”
The first thing God told Adam to do was name the animals…
In other words, speak the name of each animal and that’s what he would be.
Believe me when I tell you this morning that Adam – having been made in the image and likeness of God – had the power of God’s spoken word in him!
Like God, man was called to speak into darkness… to move into the confusion of an unnamed kingdom of animals and to assign every one of them a name!
Could it be that God intended men to behave like Him by courageously moving into whatever spheres of mystery they encounter and speaking life-giving power into whatever confusion they face?
III. Adam’s Silence
Let’s look at what happened…
o God gave Adam paradise…
o Charged him to eat anything except ONE tree…
o Gave him a wife
Gen 3:1-6
1 Now the serpent was more cunning (craftiness) than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden’?”
2 And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden;
3 but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, ‘You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.'”
4 Then the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die.
5 For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate.
NKJV
A casual reading of these scriptures and we fall in line with tradition, casting blame on Eve for the fall of the human race.
Most people assume that while the serpent and Eve conversed, that Adam was elsewhere.
Most of us have supposed that after Eve sinned, she went and found Adam and tempted him to eat the forbidden fruit.
Most of us have been taught that Eve made the first step in sinning against God and that Adam was merely following her example.
But a more literal translation of that verse would be, “she also gave to her husband, right there with her”.
Some translations say, “who was with her”.
Here’s the problem…
And here’s why we’re in the mess we’re in…
When Satan began a conversation with Eve to lure her into his world of disobeying Deity…
…Adam, made in God’s image…had the power of God’s spoken word in him…
…STOOD THERE AND SAID, NOTHING!
HE WAS DESIGNED TO SPEAK BUT SAID NOTHING!
HE SHOULD HAVE SAID, “SATAN, THIS CONVERSATION IS OVER…!” HE SHOULD HAVE SPOKE TO EVE…
ADAM’S SILENCE PLUNGED THAT FIRST FAMILY INTO A WORLD THAT NEITHER THEY NOR WE WERE EVER SUPPOSED TO BE IN!
GOD SPOKE INTO CHAOS…DARKNESS…DISORDER AND IT BECAME CALM…LIGHT…ORDERLY AND BEAUTIFUL…
…BUT WHEN ADAM STOOD SILENT…
…WHAT WAS CALM AND LIGHT AND ORDERLY AND BEAUTIFUL BECAME A WORLD OF CHAOS AND DARKNESS AND DISORDER AGAIN!
From that moment until now, men have been more silent than spoken…
And the condition of our world…
The condition of our culture…
The condition of our families…
Is due largely to the silence of man!
B. Abraham’s Silence
It didn’t stop with Adam.
Two millenniums later, Abraham and Sarah had been promised (God’s spoken word) a child…
But when it didn’t happen when they thought it should…
Sarah, Abraham’s wife, told her husband to take Hagar and have a son with her…
Abraham knew it wasn’t right…
But said nothing!
And look what it has done…the Arab nations came from that silence of Abraham… THEY DESPISE ISRAEL.
Adam was passive and uninvolved.
His sin began with his silence.
And most of us, if not all of us, are just like him.
IV. Silence Is Deadly
Adam’s silence was lethal.
It was the severing of the relationship…
It was deadly… “by Adam we all die…”
We are silent in our relationships…wives…children…
We disappear into our work, our hobbies, sports…cares of life…
…things that matter less than relationships.
The silence is lethal…it’s deadly.
It’s time for men to speak.
We were designed to speak.
We were designed to create.
We were designed to cast a vision to others.
Speaking is the gateway to relationships.
Silence is the gatekeeper.
Speaking can bring life out of death…light into darkness…order into chaos.
But silence can destroy.
The problem with Teen Culture…
The problem with our society…
The problem with our relationships…
Is that too many men are silent and passive!
It’s time for men to be the men that God designed us to be!
It’s time to stop relying on the women to be the spiritual ones!
It’s time to stop depending on the women to do all the praying for our families… our church… our community… our country!
We were created in God’s image and it’s time for us to act like it!
Maybe you’ve been damaged…maybe you’ve got issues…maybe you’ve got secrets that nobody knows about…
IT’S TIME TO SPEAK TO THAT CHAOS…THAT DARKNESS!
Our culture has created weak men.
“Get in touch with your feminine side…” they say.
I tell ‘em I don’t have a feminine side!
We’re either at one extreme or the other…
Some are soft and feminine and weak…others are hard and silent…
But God wants us to get back to His image!
What kind of God is he?
He’s a warrior.
He’s mighty.
He’s a Rock.
Jesus Christ was a man’s man.
He was not weak and a wimp…
He wreaked havoc in the temple one day…
He took on the whole place…
Turning over stone tables…
But then He could turn around and speak with compassion to a woman, or a child… and even another man.
He spoke and chaos became calm…
He spoke and blind eyes were open…(etc.)
He was a man not afraid to speak!
