Live Free with Josh Howerton - Is Biblical Manhood Toxic Masculinity?! | Live Free with Josh Howerton

Episode Date: August 11, 2025

In this episode of Live Free, Pastors Josh Howerton, Carlos Erazo, and Paul Cunningham kick off the "Love Life" series from a brand-new podcast studio set with a timely conversation: Is biblical manhood the same as toxic masculinity? Drawing from the Song of Solomon and Ephesians 5, they unpack God’s design for masculinity, marriage, and sex—highlighting the call for men to lead with humility, not dominance. From breaking down Christ-like leadership in a family to analyzing the viral Sydney Sweeney and her American Eagle ad, this episode challenges cultural norms and calls men to live with purity, strength, and sacrifice. This isn’t about hot takes, it’s about holy living.   👍 Like, Comment, & Subscribe for more life-changing podcasts! 🔔 Turn on notifications so you never miss an update!     📝 SHOW NOTES Subscribe now to receive the show notes directly in your inbox with each new episode. These notes are filled with key insights and scripture to help you reflect and grow deeper in your faith – https://lakepointe.church/shownotes    👇 DON’T MISS OUT! Ready to approach relationships God's way? Click the link to check out our marriage resources! https://lakepointe.church/marriage/ God calls us to community! Click the link to register for ROOTED. https://lakepointe.church/rooted/   ⛪ ABOUT LAKEPOINTE CHURCH:We believe that Lakepointe is a movement for all people to Know God, Find Freedom, Discover their Calling, and Make a Difference. With 6 DFW locations and programs for all ages, there's something for everyone.  🤝 Support this ministry and help us reach more people with the Gospel: https://lakepointe.church/give    STAY CONNECTED:🌐 Website: https://lakepointe.church/👍 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lpconnect/📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lpconnect 🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@lakepointechurch   🎧 LISTEN ON THE GO! ▶️ Live Free on Spotify / https://open.spotify.com/show/353ryGdZNlebaiqkCcy3Yc▶️ Live Free on Apple Podcasts / https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/live-free-with-josh-howerton/id1669321198

Welcome to Live Free with Pastor Josh Howardton. We're so glad you're here. Lake Point Church is a movement for all people to know Jesus, live free, and make a difference with their lives. And this weekly podcast is all about helping you do just that. Each episode is a deep dive into the Word of God tackling life, culture, and faith with truth and clarity so you can be equipped to live free in Christ.

Thanks for tuning in. And be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode and follow us on all our social platforms to stay connected to everything happening with Live Free. Now, let's dive into today's episode. Well, hey, welcome back to another episode of the Live Free podcast. Hey, hey, not just another episode, the first one in the new digs. Welcome to a brand new sets. Let's go.

New Pots to you. This is amazing. Look at this place, man. Man, new season. Let's call. We're ready. Carlos, you do a good job. All team. Everybody did a good job, man. This is amazing. Alisha Gugginson family and rest of the team. Thank you guys. This is amazing. It really is.

So, man, I'm here with Pastor Josh Howerton and Pastor Paul Cunningham. Carlos killed this in his backyard. Oh, yeah, that's right. You didn't know like, what's he pointing about? What light are you talking about? No, dude, I'm talking about. Look on the little concrete. Oh, yeah.

That's it. Yeah, that's, that's, definitely not plastic. Not at all. Definitely not bought it. If it is, we're going to fix it. I don't want a plastic one. Definitely not about in Hobby Lobby. And I'm kidding.

I don't even know where we got it. Guys, how's it going? Really good, man. We just got back from California. And we just finished at the movies. Let's go. It was amazing. Hey, by the way, I have an announcement to make.

Uh-oh. Wait, did you watch Tube Tum. You watched Tumstone? No, I did not. Not Timstone. Oh. I did watch. I'm literally walking in, hiking in Canada up a mountain and getting text from him

about movies that he should watch. I'm hiking on a mountain. This important matters. I did watch Braveheart, though. Okay. Well, what we think? I thought it was pretty good. Oh, my gosh.

All right. I thought it was great, man. You got to be American. It's Scottish. It's Scottish. That's hilarious, dude. Yeah, it was pretty good. I mean, you know, just is Mel Gibson at his, like, peak.

Peak, peak. Yeah. Mid-90s Gibson. You tell me why do you think this movie was so, like, you know. so big. I mean, everything is out of it. You know, everything. The guy gets the girl.

You got the whole fighting for freedom. You got lay down your life for a greater cause. There's a little gospel in there. Yes. It goes along with some of the stuff we're talking about today. It's like, man, just true manhood and masculinity. That's right. He was willing to do whatever he'd do, but to protect his family, to protect his nation,

lay down his life, everything, yeah. Quotable. Oh. Come on, man. What is it? Is it the, they may take our lives? But they'll never take our freedom. Love me a good, by the way, I've been to Scotland before.

I wish I would have seen this movie before going to Scotland. It would have given me a whole different experience. Wait, can I celebrate some things from that to movies before we start talking about the Bible? Yes. So this was not, you know, this is our first pod post, like everything all in. It's like we had a pod that released after week four of at the movies. But we didn't got all our day to end. over 120,000 people attended at the movies in person.

That's crazy. The number that really matters is a little over 2,300 people indicated first-time decision to follow Christ in four weeks. I literally on my way walking down to record this pod, talk to Margie on our team, granddaughter trusted Jesus during at the movies. Glory to God, all that stuff. And, and, and, this is led up to the official launch

of Lake Point Sunnyvale. Come on, somebody. We did soft launch during at the movies, but hard launch this week. Shout it to everybody joining from Sunnyvale. Yeah, by the way, if you want information

about joining Sunnyvale campus, you can text the word launch to 20411. That's amazing. Hey man, coming up in this episode, is the biblical picture of masculinity a toxic version of masculinity? If the Bible says

the husband is the head of the household, what do you do if the wife is more spiritually mature than he is. And how should a godly man respond and make sense of this ongoing super mega viral Sydney, sweetene, American Eagle ad? I can't believe you've, yeah, we're going to talk about it. The people ask for it. Not just kidding.

People demanded. And man, thanks for liking, subscribing. Shout out to everybody who has already downloaded the show notes. We have over 1,700 people already. It's awesome. Subscribe. It's basically our all in one deeper dive recap of everything we discuss in this podcast episode. so all the wisdom.

Gold nuggets, key takeaways, highlighted Bible verses, book recommendations, and discussion questions for people to take it to their group and continue the conversation. We believe that your discipleship happens in relationships, and there is no such thing as an isolated Christian and the way we live free in Christ is in relationships. And so to download show notes,

go to lakepoint. That church slash show notes. If you're on YouTube, you can just go ahead and click the link in the description of the video, or you can text the word notes to 20411. You can do it right now if you want and it actually works

as opposed to the last episode where you wanted to do it. I'm literally going to do it. Yeah, yeah. And man, yeah, yeah, that's, go get the show notes. I'm just waiting for the test. Let's do it.

By the way, as you find it, shout it to Michael Campbell. He is a corporate pilot. Did you know he checks out Live Free podcast as he's flying 41,000 feet in the air? Are you kidding me? Audio version.

Bro. People of feet. Audio version. I hope so. I'm going to assume. He's probably like on a pilot. and, you know, he's just kind of, he's going, man. It's probably, yeah, so shout it to Michael Kendall.

That's amazing. Yeah. All right. Well, let's dive in. You, uh, we are starting a new sermon series. This is a big deal. We have started. Yep.

And this is probably like a little bit of a different book of the Bible. Yeah. Very different. Very different. And so Love Life, Song of Solomon. Pastor Josh, I'm sure. I'm very sure that there is stuff or there are things that did not make it into the sermon. There's a lot.

This one there was a lot. And I'm not going to even get to all over here. First of all, man, this series is really important to me. Like at Lake Point, the big deal is we don't just want to make great disciples. We want to build strong families. Because in the long run, at our church, the way that we're going to make generations of strong disciples building great families. So, man, I want our church increasingly to become the place where every dad and every mom everywhere is like, if you want to raise great kids, you got to be at Lake Point. and become great grandparents and help raise great grandchildren, all that stuff.

I want to be like, point. And this is a Bible thing. If you don't know what this is, so here's some stuff that was really interesting to me. What we're going to be doing is preaching a cross-section, essentially like chapter by chapter through a book of the Bible called The Song of Solomon. Or, interesting, there are two titles, Song of Solomon or Pop Quiz. What's the other title? Song of Songs.

All right. So this was really interesting. So yeah, a couple things that didn't make it into the message. So you open a Bible to a song of Solomon or a song of songs. You're going to see one of two, two titles. There's a reason for that that's actually kind of interesting. So a lot of people call it Song Solomon because the purported author is King Solomon. I'm going to get to three, there are three theological views about how to interpret this book real quick. I'll get it in a second. What's really interesting is the reason, I didn't know this until like literally this week. I felt stupid. the reason it's called song of songs. I'm going to try to pronounce the Hebrew correctly, is it Shir Hashirim, which translates literally to Song of Songs. And I was always like,

why is it called Song of Songs? What's that even mean? I literally didn't learn until this week. When Hebrew does that, Song of Songs, it implies a superlative. It's saying it's the best of. So in the same way that we call Jesus, the king of kings,

it's like he's the best king there ever was. of Kings. The reason it's called Song of Songs is saying, by the way, according to Second Kings five, maybe, it says that Solomon wrote a thousand and five songs in his life. So when it calls this one this year, Hacharim, Song of Songs, is saying, best one he ever wrote. Greatest hits. Greatest hits. Yeah. Yeah. Best one he ever wrote. First Kings four, but yeah. Ah, dang, I was so close. First Kings four. So, I mean, that's a big deal. So it's saying this is the best one. notice it's about a marriage. So interesting.

It's very interesting. Very interesting. So like that's, the Bible's emphasizing, hey, man, marriage is a really big deal. It's a really big deal. And not just about a marriage,

like sexuality. Marriage, sexuality, intimacy. You even get, you get into conflict. We'll get into this later in the series. It's very, there's a very predictable pattern

that should feel familiar. It's like you got the dating courtship, you know, deal. You got the marriage that happens. You got the honeymoon that's in the song. and then there's two chapters about a fight they have. It's like, that's a pretty familiar pattern.

All mixed in. But yeah, so anyway, let me keep going. Three views. So the whole thing's a song. And I kind of mentioned this in the message. It's kind of like Hamilton or if you're from the, if you were alive during the Carter administration, the Blues Brothers, where it's just like,

they just randomly sing. It's like just people singing each other. That's what this book is. Okay. There's generally three views about what this song of songs is. Some people think it's Solomon telling his own story of falling in love with one of his wives. That's a whole different concept.

We missed the mark a little bit there. A schumite woman. Some people think it was Solomon telling his own story. By the way, where we get the Shunamite woman that it talks, some Bibles translated Shulamite, but Shunamite is another story. translation. There was a town named Shunum in the Jezreal Valley in Israel, and it's just telling the story of Solomon falling in love with this girl, and here's how it went. Second predominant view is Solomon is telling the story of the ideal romance. That's honestly, it's like the predominant

view, if I'm kind of getting the lay of the land right. The one that's hilarious to me is in different seasons of church history, because as you'll see throughout the series, heads up, my Mama's in the car. There may be like a few quick, we're not going to get crazy in this podcast, but there may be just a few quick moments where we hint on intimacy, sexuality in this pod. So if you got, you know, tiny ears, that's up to you. But we're going to be pretty PG here. But there are in the, I mean, there's no way around it. There's some stuff in the book that's a, it's like metaphorical, but it's like very obviously sexually descriptive. Like, we'll get to that later. And there were different seasons.

in church history were like the Puritans in particular and then during the Victorian area, the pastors were like, brother, in a way, that's in the Bible. And so they, so they kind of came up with, well, maybe instead of this talking about like bedroom stuff, this is like an allegory about how God loves the people of Israel or Jesus loves the church. And they thought this was less awkward. Yeah. That's all right. Dude, I got a quote. Do you want to be a little weird? That's all of Dude, I got a quote. You want to hear a funny quote? Please, do, please.

I found this week in message prep a quote. This is like just shows you how funny this is. This is from a Puritan named John Trapp, a Puritan author. So in Song of Solomon's chapter 4, he writes his thing describing the woman that he's falling in love with. By the way, this is after the wedding. So an appropriate comment now. And he's making a comment about her breasts and he describes them like two fauns. Okay.

And that's later. And he's praising it. This is like an ancient Israelite compliment. So John Trapp gets real uncomfortable. Like, surely the Bible wouldn't talk about a husband talking about that. So this is, he takes the allegorical approach trying to squeeze it, you know, in there that maybe this is about Jesus and the church. And this is his quote. He makes it about the Old Testament and the New Testament.

He says, fresh and lusty, even and equal. understand the two Testaments hereunto resembled for their perfect agreement. I'm like, bro, that ain't what that's about. I'm sorry, man. That's not, come on, man. Good try. Good try. That's not what that's about.

And then because of just some of the nature, and we're not going to get weird, but the nature of some of the, like, honestly, pretty graphic, like illusions that's made to marital intimacy throughout this book. ancient Jewish traditions, they forbid Jewish boys under the age of 30 at times from studying this book. They were like, hey man, this is a mature audiences only book. And part of that was because you're going to see it three times for dads, moms, especially for like teenagers. One of the refrains of the song of Solomon three times, and it's like spaced throughout the book is this command. do not awaken love before it so desires.

So obviously, there's a lot of... Wait, what would we kind of pause? It would we please. Paul, is there any just general Song of Solomon stuff that you've come across? You're like, we should get this in about the book, or you want to save it. Save it.

I'm glad you actually did that overview of just the different ways of interpreting. But yeah, I was actually teaching this earlier to our ministry residents, and I went over those views. And it's just kind of like the people who think it's less awkward if it's not about sex, but about our relationship with God.

I'm like, I don't know that they had to get that graphic. Yeah, yeah. That's weird, man. So Paul, just to clarify, would you say that it is, because sometimes, like, when you read something in the Bible, it can be about this, but it also kind of potentially has a metaphorical meaning. So what you're saying, that that's not an option. Well, I would actually, what you just said, I'm more of a dual meaning person that some people would actually call it like the typological view, that it is about human love. But in another sense, it ultimately points, can point to divine love. And even I didn't have this open to talk about this, but it's actually kind of fitting. Because if you're in Ephesians 5, Ephesians 5 is where Paul is addressing husbands and wives and talking about family relationships. But he actually gets a point. He says, this mystery is profound. And I'm saying it refers to Christ in the church. So even like right there is like, hey, I'm speaking husbands and wives, but it can also can speak to that. In some ways.

In some ways. Yes. I'm probably like it was kind of a dual thing. No, I will say, we didn't plan to talk about this. The official position in Roman Catholic Church is that the, and there are some ways that I agree with this, some and not all. The official position of Roman Catholic Church is the way that God designed the act of marital sex was intentionally designed as an icon. I think they'll sometimes use that language, an icon of the gospel. And we don't get it.

You have to get kind of weird and creepy to kind of give examples, and I just don't feel like it. But that, yeah, but so they do that. Okay. Yeah. But that's, yeah, thank you, Paul. Sometimes I'll assume things. Ephesians 5 is the reason that some people will go, oh man, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, It's an allegory.

Yeah. Okay. And I'm like, no, it can be very literal about husbands and wives, but it can also point to, yeah, God's love for us is even greater and vice versa. That's it. Man, honestly, anytime we have a conversation on sexuality for some people, it can be obviously a more sensitive topic. You have any quick thoughts on, how should a Christian think about sexuality in general?

Yeah. So like, let's just, if you just zoom out, I think this is really, really important because there's a, I didn't get into this in the message. there are some very significant parallels between their culture and our culture. One of them is they lived in a very sexually degraded surrounding culture. So for instance, I don't have time to mess with this in the message. When he writes this, they're surrounded by Canaanite religion. One aspect of demonic false religion is it always perverts sexuality.

Always, always, always. So in Canaanite religion, you got like, you know, pagan religions, You've got things like Molick where they're burning babies alive as sacrifices. Obviously, the fruit of sexuality and intimacy. You have Asherapoles, which were like literally just huge phallic symbols that they would, I'm serious. Just huge phallic symbols on the tops of hills intentionally designed to look like a phallic symbol where they would, you know, perform sex acts that were degraded as like forms of pagan worship to these demonic false gods. So they're surrounded by sexual degradation and purity. Well, like, hey man, like open your eyes.

Welcome to 21st century of America. You are surrounded by sexual degradation, impurity, everywhere you go. Like, we're going to talk with a Sydney-Sweeney ad, like, later. And, you know, I think a lot of Christians were like, oh, man, like, there's some things that I feel like I should celebrate here. But I also feel like, ah, there's, it doesn't feel, so you kind of have, you know, you kind of have, so there's similarities. Now, so here's what happens is I got this from a Bible teaching Mark Drewskel. He gave the example that in general, people tend to view sex in one of three categories.

God gross or gift. The alliteration is very helpful. So God, you know, you treat sex as God. Like that's idolatry when you put anything in the place of God. People treat sex as God when all of a sudden it's like, man, they look to a creation. thing, sexuality, for something only the creator can give them. So when they look to sexuality for like, give me my identity, I'm going to build my happiness on sexual experiences. The pursuit of my life is now about sexual conquest and sexual pleasure. Well, all of a sudden now, it's like,

hey dude, like all of a sudden, you're treating this, putting this in position of God. You even see this right now, like, honestly, just in like the rise of the sexual revolution and, you know, related movements was like, hey man, build your entire identity on any sexual desire you have. Build your whole identity on it. And what's happening right there is, man, we as Christians, like literally, why do we call ourselves Christians? Because we take our identity from our relationship to Jesus Christ. That's primary.

Everything else is secondary. And a lot of people more today are finding that that, that quote unquote God is failing them. Doesn't work. Because any time you build your life on a false God, it leaves you empty. every time. There you go. That's it, man. And I think people are seeing that our culture. So, you know, and you even see this, you know, just to be, I want to be a little gentle here, but like, you know, you take the example of, and either a man or a woman can do this.

But like, you know, you take the example of a girl that's fornicating, that's the Bible word for sleeping with somebody outside of marriage, fornication. And it's like, really what's happening there is this, the is the altar, her body is the sacrifice, the guy is the God, and the act of sex is the worship, the act of worship where she offers her body as a living sacrifice to her functional God. You can do the same thing with a guy, but you see this, even like, and dude, I don't want to riff on this too long, but even like the LGBT movement, like if you watch how it works, it's like a religion. Like it's, hey, this is your whole identity and, you know, manifesting to the fullest, you know,

of your ability is how you're going to achieve like actual happiness. And people have noted the like the similarities between that movement and religions. So like just like within Christianity you have different denominations, Baptists, and Methodist, Pentecost, da-da-da-da. One, the religion of sex, the L, the G, the B, the T,

the Q, the I, the A, those are the denominations in the overall religion. And people started asking like, man, I wonder why? Why is it that, man, they really care about getting LGBT stuff into elementary schools, and, you know, the libraries and children, well, eventually every religion gets into children's ministry. So it's just like, you just, so here's a deal. You know, sex cannot be a God. So we don't want to do that. We worship a guy who died single and never had sex. And the Bible says he's the happiest man who ever lived. Now, the others are shorter, so we don't go up too long here. Some people, very

frankly, a lot of times this is people who grew up around degradation and impurity, and they saw the harmful things that happen. We treat sex as God, and they swing the exact other way, and they treat sex not as God, but as gross. And a lot of times this is like very religious people who kind of carry this vibe, this like sex is dirty, gross, disgusting, and vile. So save it for the one you love. You know, it's just very weird. And I'll just be like very honest, like Jan and I did a lot of premarital counseling back in the day. And not only, but especially women that grow up around people who stigmatize and treat sex as gross, it can be real hard for people to flip that switch and get into marriage and, like,

you know, be able to lean in to the last thing, which is Song Solomon, portrays sex not as God or gross, but as a gift. That God has given us for at least two purposes, procreation. and recreation to be enjoyed within marriage for joy and intimacy. Interestingly enough, is there, we know there's procreation in this book, but is there, there is no mention of recreation,

or sorry, we know there's recreation in this book, but there is no mention of procreation in this book. None, ever. So that's interesting. Yeah, yeah, and you got that like, you know, Paul, I'm sure you're aware of this, but like Puritan pastors and especially early church fathers, like they didn't have a category for marital intimacy and sexuality

as just for joy and intended for pleasure. By the way, there's a great book. If you get into early marriage, somebody handed us to this book to us early in marriage, you know, because by guy's grace, you know, Jan was, you know, first intimacy, you know. I didn't know anything.

And so somebody just handed me that book intended for pleasure early on, very helpful. But you have early church fathers who had no category for that. And they literally, in some of the early church fathers, teachings were teaching that the only appropriate time for marital intimacy was if you're trying of a kid and otherwise no nothing. And that one theory I have on why so many people allegorize a Song of Solomon is because the people who usually do that have that frame of reference for it. That usually when you look at the people who have a frame of reference of sex is gross or it's

only for procreation, then they have a real trouble like explaining because in Song of Solomon it is for recreation, it is for enjoyment. So I think there's a definite connection there. obviously so this week is the week of the man and you know you you address that in the sermon man let's talk about gender roles somebody's asking okay so you know i heard the sermon and i got some questions like does the bible actually prescribe gender roles for men and women let's go there all right yeah i mean you know we touched on this but didn't go like deep this week in the met because really what i wanted to do this week is disciple men to love their wives or single men to, man,

man, here's how I pursue one. So we got all throughout the series, we're gonna hit both marriage, dating and sexuality and all kind of weaves this way in there. So we touched it, but man, honestly, it's not super popular. That's one of those things where. Definitely not.

Yeah, not super popular. There's the word and there's the world and you gotta decide which one is gonna stand in authority over the other one. But guys, like honestly, there's like simply no way to read the Bible and not understand that God has assigned gender roles in marriage and local church. And we can touch on local church you want to here in a second. Sure. But if I'm just,

let me say one sentence and then Paul, why don't you riff on this for a second. If I zoom all the way out the uniform testament of the scriptures from Genesis, by the way, pre-fall and post-fall. Yes. If you want to do some like little theology nerd stuff real quick, are you going to talk about complementary egalitarianism? Yep. And I'm not. keep going, but I'm literally going to do an overview of from beginning to end of scripture, read from everything you said, but I'm going to give details, but keep going. Okay, so Paul, that's great. Yeah, it's really important to notice that both pre-fall, before Satan enters the world and

post-fall, the uniform narrative of scripture is that, watch this, is really important. That God has created men and women as equals, but not equivalence. That's right. Equal in value, but different in function. And so, you know, we can, there's a million things we can talk about there, but that's the uniform testimony of Scripture, and we do not apologize for it. Paul. That's right. Well, I think you even stopping for a second and asking, okay, why is this important? We're not discussing this because we're like, oh, guys should be in control and we should be in power. Really the idea, the heart of this is we want to honor God by honoring his design for how he has created all things.

In this case, has functions for men and women in the church, specifically, and in marriage. And then also we want men and women to flourish. And that best happens and most consistently happens when we are operating according to his design. So this is not just because, oh, we want it this way is because, hey, we're asking, how does God want it? We want it to do it his way. And by the way, his way is best for us at the same time. Let me interject. I just, there's one little sentence is so helpful to me.

I can't remember what Bible teacher said it. But he said, when you go against the grain of the universe, you always get splinters. Yes. And it's like we can pretend all we want that men and women were not created differently and were not assigned some different roles in marriage and local church at minimum. We can pretend that all we want. But when you go against the grain of the universe, you're going to get some splinters. That's right.

So again, your point is God's design and commands are good for us. Yes. All right. So two broad views. And at the same time, I actually, I had a diagram. We don't have to put it up or anything like that. I love diagrams. Okay, well, actually, let's put the diagram.

The Galatarian versus complementarianism. So really, you got one side. Did you make this? I did. I did. This is something that I draw on here. Oh, look at this guy. He used Canva.

That's what he did. Hey, man, everybody looking at this, you can tell Paul is in the theology department, not the graphic design. Listen, I draw all this on a board. This is the best I could do on short order. So you kind of basically have two sides. A galitarian and complementarian. One thing I do want to point out for getting into details is still on both sides,

there's a spectrum. So by the way, not all complementarians agree on every unique thing. So when I'm doing this, I'm really just painting some broad brush jokes. So egalitarians would say that men and women are equal and that they're both in the image of God, they have worth and dignity, and they have the exact same roles. The roles are interchangeable. So they are equal and the same in all things. Complementarians would also say that men and women are completely equal and that they're both created the image of God, they both have worth, and they both have dignity. Same exact, same.

What we would say differently is that we are distinct in roles, that we are equal, but we are not the same. And where we get this from really the complementarian position, like you said, is really from beginning to end of Scripture, we see two things. I actually want to start with where I wish more complementarians would start in this conversation. So first thing is from beginning to end of Scripture, we see that women are elevated and valued in ways that would have been countercultural and revolutionary in the time of the Bible. Like we consistently see that. So for example, in Genesis, both Adam and Eve are creating God's image. Both Adam and Eve are given the command to rule over the earth. Genesis 128, God blessed them and God said to them, both Adam and Eve,

be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over it. So he doesn't just say that to the man. No. He's like, no, I'm creating a king and a queen. Exactly. And you are vice. The theologians love that word, vice regents of creation. That literally when it even talks about being in the image of God,

there's a lot of things that means that we have more, we don't understand. have enough time to unpack. Which, by the way, it was extremely countercultural. Yes. Extremely counterculture. Only, that would have only been for men in other places. Like, no, the idea that women were included, that would have been, I mean, just shocking to most readers. And so, like, the idea of being made in the image of something that, and in those times, if I came in the image of the king, I was ruling on the king's behalf. So the fact that they're both called this and they're both given this command is incredible. The word used for

Eve, helper is from Ezer or Ezer is there. It is also used for God in the Old Testament. So again, but even before the fall, we see that women are just esteemed in value. Yeah, it's like, what is it? I'm having a brain lapse. It's translated, necessary ally. Yes, necessary ally. Yeah. It's like, dude, if you don't have this person fighting with you, you're not going to win your battle.

Exactly. You have to have them. So we're going to get real practical here in a second. But the implication of that is the man or the husband that is not pulling his wife in. like, hey, let's lead this thing together. He doesn't have the necessary ally. You're not going to win, brother. Exactly.

Yeah, exactly. Like, let your helper help or help. We'll talk about helper and headship here in a second. Do you still need that diagram? No, no, I don't need it at this point. Let me just give you some other examples in terms of how women are esteemed throughout the Bible. Old Testament, Miriam is a prophetess. Debra was a judge, like a leader of the nation of Israel for a short time.

Esther rescued her people by displaying great courage. And Jesus' ministry, Jesus taught women, which rabbis did not do in that day. He esteemed women in a way that no one else was at his time. Women supported his ministry. They were the first witnesses to his resurrection. Even like with Paul, for example, a lot of times people think, oh, Paul sex is half of the people at the end of Romans that he thinks or commends are women. Interesting.

Yeah. Including Phoebe. I've never cataloged that. Oh, yeah. I almost have, including Phoebe, who is a, he called literally a patroness. So basically, she was supporting the church. And many scholars would say she was the one who carried the letter of Romans to them. So again, like, Paul valued women.

You have Priscilla who did ministry with Aquila, taught a guy named Apollus. So Priscilla was helping disciple a guy named Apollus with her husband. I could go on and on, but basically from beginning to end of Scripture, women are valued in Erstein. And I just want to give three quick takeaways before we give to the other thing that we see throughout Scripture. I think three takeaways. Number one, like women, you are indispensable to your families, to the church, and to the world. Like literally that, the complementarian voice.

you is that you have something to give that men cannot because God has not designed them to. You're gifted by God and your gifts from God for your family and for the church. And we could not do this without you. And we cannot be everything that God desires or has designed without you. Which by the way, like for the Bible nerds, like when Paul is using the name for this theological position that we hold at Lake Point, that is, I'll just say it. Like this is the biblical position. Yes.

is the name for the position is complementarianism. So when Paul says, man, different, but both absolutely necessary. Yes. You know, why is that? Well, they complement one. My mom's a math teacher taught in school for over 30 years. And, you know, you go through that thing. There's obtuse angles, and then there's acute angles,

and then there's a thing that's called a complimentary angle. And that's when two angles add up together. to make a perfect right angle. That's right. They're different degrees, but added together, they make a perfect angle. That's what we mean by complementarianism.

Exactly. The two become one. There you go. That's it. Second thing I would say briefly is that to the men out there, specifically to the husbands, the dads,

like if the women around you don't feel like what I just said, then you, and that we are falling short of our role. So I'll just say, crappy complementarianism is when we start with and we focus almost exclusively on,

Women, here's what you shouldn't do and here's what you can't do. Ideal complementarianism, biblical complementarianism is actually we recognize R.O. as men is to empower and equip the women and the church and our families to do all that God has called them to do. And so that's the thing. Third thing would be is that because of the Bible's picture of esteeming women, any kind of chauvinism or sexism, including the stuff that we see from guys like Andrew Tate, is evil and from the pit of hell.

It is not. That's literally. So Genesis 3, Curse of the Fall. It says that one of the curses of the fall is that, man, he shall rule over you. And honestly, that's kind of the Andrew Tate-Sholvenism thing. That's exactly what that is. It's curse of fall. And sometimes what happens in these conversations is people will equate that with biblical masculinity.

And it is not. It is not whatsoever. So, okay, so from beginnings in, we see that women are valued in a scene. But also from beginning to end, we see that God makes distinction between men and rows, and men and women in the roles that he wants to be. to fulfill. So going back to Genesis, Adam was formed first and then Eve. Some people will say, well, this is a dumb argument. The problem is that this is the exact argument the Apostle Paul uses in First Symphony to establish authority in roles in the church. Adam means that as a standard,

Paul. Yes, he uses that. And even that goes through sometimes in egalitarian would say, well, hey, those were cultural conditions. They were just speaking to the culture of the time. The problem is, is that often when they were doing that, they would refer to Adam and Eve prefall, that this was not about a cultural issue. This was actually a creational principle. It's something that lasts for all time. Adam named Eve. Adam is held accountable actually first when they sin. Go ahead.

This is what you just said is very important. So throughout the scriptures, not just in Genesis, throughout the scriptures, somebody in a man's family will sin and God will hold the man responsible even though it wasn't his

fault. So Eve sins and God goes straight to Adam and he goes, Where were you, man? Now, Eve is still responsible for her sin before God, and she has held accountable for her sin before God. But he goes to the leader of the family and he goes, hey, man, where were you? And even like, I'm looking at Romans 5, 12, it literally says same sin came into the world through one man. Well, wait a second. Like, Eve actually sinned first. And that is because the man was responsible and he was the representative and the representative had the responsibility. I have another diagram for you. Please, I love, hey man, my love language, two in a row. Come on.

Lines of authority at creation. So really the idea of us supposed to be, you had God, man, Adam, woman, and then they would over serpent and Satan. But then what happens is, is think about it, Satan does what? He goes to the woman, who then goes to the man, and then they are putting themselves above God, and that they're not obeying God. So literally, Satan flips it on its head. But then think about what God does when then he goes and he confronts them.

Who does he go to first? The man, and then to the woman, and then he talks to Satan. Hey, Paul, can I interrupt you? So let me channel immediately when somebody's looking at this right now, because we have been disciples so much by our culture, when somebody sees that like, quote, unquote, hierarchy and sees God underneath man and a woman underneath man, somebody's asking, wait, I thought you said that men and women were equal. Why is man above categorically a woman according to your graph?

Is my child as valuable as I am? Yeah. Yes. But my child also is supposed to be in submission to me in terms of authority. So I think sometimes we immediately associate higher in authority or responsibility with higher and inherent value. And that is not the case. For clarity, those lines of authority are within a family.

Yep. So he's not, and we're going to get to this in a second. What this does not mean is that all men are in authority over all women. So we're going to get to that in a second. Very key point. So let me speed up a little bit. All right. Rest the Old Testament.

So, well, again, women are very. valued in his teams, you also have the fact that priests and kings, two of the big spiritual offices of the church held only by men. Also, God approaches, for example, know it to build the ark to save his family. He says of Abraham in Genesis 1819, I have chosen him that he may command his children in his household after him to keep the way the Lord. So you just see this pattern over and over again of the man has the responsibility ultimately of his home, but then also of the spiritual state of the nation or this specifically of the church. Jesus, he esteems women, but all the apostles, the leaders that are the early church were men.

the rest of the New Testament. Paul, again, valued women, but he instructed for men only to be elders who were the authoritative leaders of local churches. In Ephesians 5, I have it right here. It says, wives submit to your husbands as to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself his savor. So again, from beginning to end, we see that women are valued and from beginning to end. We see that men and women are equal, but they are not equivalent. That God has distinct roles for each. two things to put it in modern parlance that are out. If we go Bible, there's two things that are out. Andrew Tate's chauvinism is out. It's out. Because he's like, men dominate women. By the way, we're Christians, not Muslims. That's, honestly, I'll get to, that's Islam. Islam is all men over all women.

We're Christians, not Muslims. On the other hand, the other thing that's out is like fourth wave feminism. It's out. And that's the, hey, man, there is no distinction in any way. and to say so is repressive. Or even, you know, this new wave saying, well, actually women are better than men, period. Yeah. The future is female.

Actually, it's really not. The future is male and female, literally no matter what. And I think everyone knows that, by the way, that there's distinctions. Of course, they know that. And here's the, I give the scenario, even like when I've talked to extreme feminist or egalitarians, and I've yet to have one that responds differently. So I'll give these scenarios because part of being a biblical man is that, that in addition to having the responsibility to lead your family to lead the church,

part of that is the idea of providing and protecting. So let's focus on protecting for a second. Is that, let's imagine a scenario where, and this is morbid to think about, but it just helps, is gunman comes into a crowd. Okay, option one. All of the men automatically cover the women and the children and a feud charge the guy. Let me pause. Go ahead.

If a gunman were to ever, this is like one of my greatest fears. If a gunman were to ever come into a crowd at a lake point, it would be the crossfire. that would be our problem. Let me just say like, save his place on Earth. We are, we got some concealed carry going out of the way. Go ahead. Sorry. The point is, okay, so all the guys do that.

Okay, then what I'll ask is, okay, do you think anything less of the women by not doing that? Of course not. But what do you think of the men? In terms of they're not covering the guys and they're not charging the man. Gotcha. Yes, yes. You don't think anything less of. them. But what do you think of the men? On the one you think courageous, but also like they did what

they were supposed to do. Now let's switch the scenario around. All right. Gumman comes in. All the guys stay down and all the females cover the men and the kids in charge the man. And when I ask people, including I've had one-on-one conversation like, what do you think of the guy? And they'll often pause. And I'm like, and I'll just say the fact that you paused lets me know that you know in your heart of hearts that God has created men and women to have different rows and function. Well, hey, guys, one of the reasons we have. are intentional in creating these kind of podcast episodes is because we believe that discipleship happens in relationships. Having said that, what we want to do through the live free

podcast is we want to model what it looks like to be in a discipleship group where we come together and open up the word of God together and honestly just grow together as followers of Jesus to live free in Christ. For this reason, we love that you're tuning in, but honestly, we don't just want you to be a passive listener, we want you to be an active participant. And so if you have not yet joined a group, whether that's in person or online, I want to challenge you to test drive one. To do that, just text the word group to 20411, or you can also go to lakepoint.org slash groups, because listen, you're not one podcast away, one habit away, one decision away, one book away, one sermon away. You are one relationship away.

to experience freedom in Christ in community. Now, let's get back to the podcast. So going back to what, initially what we're saying, in terms of like the Bible, just to recap what you're saying, Paul, you're saying, man, the Bible does prescribe specific God-given roles for husbands and wives. In other words, for men and women. And this is helpful because, you know,

more so than just kind of going theological, I think it's just when you understand, when you're a man and you understand that the expectation of, of God is for you to have a higher responsibility, that you can't blame other people, you can't just sit around. Like God's actually, the expectation is way higher in the responsibility,

and he will keep you accountable, just like what we're seeing in scripture. That changes who you are as a man. That changes what your decisions are. That changes you as a husband. And so I think that's kind of why, honestly, like I love it because even like when you think of marriage, man, you know, marriage is, obviously marriage can be tough.

It's two sinners coming together. That does not equal less sin. but then hey husbands like you have a responsibility to to step up and address and and lead your family lead your wife and so I want to get into some misconceptions because obviously when we have this conversation man immediately you know I know people say wait what do you mean are you saying da-da-da and so I want to go through some of these obviously Ephesians chapter 5 verse 23 talks about the husband being the head and I think when we have these conversations it matters what terms we use because we don't want to borrow terms from culture. We want to go Bible. And so let me just

throw some common misconceptions and, you know, let's rapid fire briefly respond to some of these. Number one, biblical idea of headship. Hey, that is abusive, domineering, insensitive, demeans and hurts women. Yeah. I mean, if you, it says to love your wives as Christ love the church. So the way that Jesus did that is he loved the bride. He laid down his life for the bride. He was attentive to the needs of the bride. And there ain't a way that somebody would see that example and say abusive and domineering is the exact opposite of that.

So if you want to, Carlos, I can go through like, man, things that submission is not. I don't know, however you want to take it. If you're good, I'd save that because I know next week, we're going the woman. and we'll, if you want, if that works for you, we'll probably address that. That's great. Paul, you get anything out here?

I think on that specific one, it's just from headship is not about having the right to rule, but the responsibility to serve. That is the key. Headship is not about power. It is about responsibility. It's like you just said, Pastor Josh, to serve. And then you are ultimately responsible. The buck stops with you if you are the husband for the well-being in every kind of way,

physical, financial, spiritual, emotional, mental, everything. of your family. And I'll just say this with the amount of people that listen. Ladies, if you are in any way being abused, get help and get safety. That is not biblical manhood. And I would even say to the men, like, if you are abusing your spouse, like you have to remember, you're not only abusing your bride. You're abusing Christ's bride. And he does not take that lightly. There's a book that I would highly recommend. It's called The Toxic War and Masculinity by Nancy Piercy. Dude, it is excellent. It's incredible. It's incredible. Honestly, I was reviewing it this week because I read it like a couple years ago and it is amazing. I actually got a quote to address

this specifically. So she's like super brilliant researcher and she's an author and she addresses the idea of like, oh, biblical view of masculinity is toxic and she says, this is literally from her book. She says, the problem with these accusations is that they ignore the data from the social sciences. And then she says, the data actually shows that men who are religiously devout And by that she means those who attend church at least three times a month. The data says these men shatter the negative stereotypes. They are more loving to their wives and more emotionally engaged with their children than any other group in America. They are the least likely to divorce and they have the lowest levels of domestic abuse and violence.

These are people that have understood the idea that when we look at the Bible and it talks about headship and it's not talking about power or abuse like you said. It's talking about sacrifice, about laying down your life. And it's also so interesting because, Paul, you're so right. Like, the Bible is so radical when it speaks to Christian husbands. It demands responsibility and accountability from Christian husband. It's interesting. There's that verse in 1st Peter 3.7. Here's how you ruin your relationship with God if you're a Christian husband.

First Peter 3-7 basically says husbands treat your wife with respect so that nothing will hinder your prayers. This is a big deal right here. This is like, like if you think about what this is saying, Peter is saying, hey, if you are a disrespectful husband to your wife, God takes that so seriously that he's literally saying he will stop communicating with you and there's no chance you will ever grow in your spiritual life in your spiritual relationship with God

if you have no communication with God, God's saying, actually, you're treating your wife with disrespect, you and I are going to have a problem. Yeah, dude, I mean, this is like, here's the analogy. It's like every woman everywhere in one sense is a daughter of the living God in one sense. Okay. Well, it's like, dude, if somebody was mistreating Eliana,

and then they walked up to me in the lobby, and they were like, hey, man, you want to talk about the, you know, you want to talk about the golf tournament you're watching this weekend? Actually, no, I don't, man. There's only one thing I'm willing to talk to you about right now. Yeah. It's the exact same thing.

If somebody, if a husband is hurting, his wife, is a poor man. If he's, and by poor, I mean, like, low quality. If he's, you know, running her down. Like, God's, going, hey, dude, you're hurting one of my daughters. I really don't want to have any conversation with you right now other than like, you need to fix how you treat my daughter. So Carlos, let me just, like here's a point on this one. Hey, you know, abusive, domineering, that kind of thing. Like,

dude, what a lot of people do, so Ephesians 5 is one of the passages where it talks about, Ephesion 522, wives submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. We do not apologize for that verse. That's in the Bible. Well, women of God love that verse. Okay. But what a lot of people do is they run past Ephesion 521. Before it commands wives to submit your husbands. In verse 22, in verse 21, it says submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. So, man, honestly, it's like, whenever people have rough marriages, I just want to be like, dude, you don't have to do this.

There is, like, there's such a better way where both people walk in the door and in every conversation, they're going, man, how can I lay down my wants, my needs, my desires, so that I can bless you. And when two people do that, I've heard this analogy before, when you get a blesser and a, wait, let me make sure I do this right. It's a blessing. I'm making sure I get this right. When you get a blesser and a taker, what you have is abuse.

It's like one person's always going to get what they want and they're going to take advantage of the other person. When you get two takers, taker and a taker, you have a battle. It's like literally everything's a fight. When you have a blesser and a blesser, it's just like, it's bliss. It's amazing. And so this is the example that we have right here. That's good.

Somebody said, we can go quickly through these. Man, headship means that the husband always gets his way. Yeah, man, you're right. That's, you crazy. Like, again, that's the answer to that. Again, Ephesians 5, husbands love your wives as Christ love the church. Later in the Bible is going to say, to be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, watch this.

And then it says, let all that you do be done in love. So how did Jesus our example, who was the head of the church, his bride? How did Jesus use his power and authority? He used it to lay down his desires to bless her. So like I'll give, can I give some examples of how Jan and I have had very, very, very, by the way, I'll just say this, husbands. If you're pulling rank frequently in your marriage, bro, you are so off the rails. Like maybe five, three to five times in 20 years have, have I ever like pulled rank on something?

And every single time it's been to keep, either to bless Jana in a way that she was uncomfortable with, or because Jana was working so hard and doing something so hard that it was hurting her. And I needed to like alleviate her conscience and be like, hey, babe, we're not doing this anymore because it's hurting you in the family. So it's been stuff for us like, hey, like I literally before have been like, hey, babe, Jan is like super frugal. We're both savers. We've literally, I've literally been like, hey, babe, here's some money. I am commanding you to go spend some money on yourself. Like, so I'm pulling rank right now.

Did you quote a Bible verse? Honestly, I was like, hey, babe, I'm pulling the husband card. I need you to get. This actually, this happened like two weeks ago where I told Jana, hey, babe, tonight, you've been working really, really hard. I can tell us, and I can tell you feel guilty, not getting some stuff done. I'm pulling rank. I need you tonight.

Take the night off. Go take a bath. what it read go read whatever you want to do go read a book in the backyard and a hammock whatever like you know that kind of thing uh when we made the decision to go to providence lines that's shout out providence lines with the school school that we're at the homeschooling thing was becoming too much for jana and the kids were getting to a certain age where it felt right but jana felt there was a conscience thing where she was like ah but am i missing you know and it you know it was one where i had to be like hey babe we got we got to go

different route. But anyway, I could give other examples. It's always been, how do I bless you for the good of our family? On that note, man, I think it's important because when we talk about masculinity, obviously people automatically assume, you know, brave heart, you know, just tough, fighter. And obviously, yes, that's what part of being a man, according to the Bible, is you want to be somebody that is tough. But when you look at scripture, Jesus is our example as the ultimate man. He is tough, but he's also tender. And what I hear you say is, man, a man is called, has a biblical responsibility to be tough, but they also have a biblical responsibility

to be tender like Jesus. Jesus was tough with religious people. He literally, like I just saw the chosen some weeks ago and like he's preparing a whip. He goes to the temple, like he's not playing games. He's tough, but he was also extremely tender and compassionate family, friends, disciples. He cried, children ran towards him.

And so some people, it seems like we only wanna focus on man being, tough, but you actually want to look to Jesus who also shows us that man are tender. That's right. Can I actually, you riff for a minute, Josh, on the idea of singular headship plural leadership. Because I think we, I was like, before we move on, I think that's really important. And we, I think we hinted at it. But I think whenever you impact this, you do a great job.

I can add in some color and some detail of you about. I think it would be great to explain. Like, when we say that husbands are the heads of their family, it doesn't mean that they exert all decisions, all leadership. Yeah, let me talk about that. So the language we like to use, and it's not original to me, is single headship, plural leadership. So for instance, Paul mentioned earlier in the Bible that when God creates man and woman

in Genesis one and two, what he does is he sets them up as the big theological word is vice regents of creation. I'm going to rule through you and the you is plural. So is there an authority structure, husband, head of the wife, yep, there is. And then wife as noble helper, yep, there is. that's there, but it's singular headship, but there's plural leadership. In other words, God said, it is not good for the man to be alone. In other words, he will not be able to fulfill his calling. So like if we apply that, calling that a man has in his life, whatever that is,

outward, ministry, whatever it is, you're not going to be able to fulfill it by yourself, by yourself, you're going to need a helper. If you're married, we're talking about if you're married, you're going to, God gave you that partner, that spouse to help you. In the home, like the way that it's designed ideally is you need mom and dad leading together. So like it's kind of the example we'll use. The Puritans used to say that every family is like a little church and every church is like a big family. So honestly, in our house, we'll use this language sometimes with the kids is, hey,

is pastor dad and executive pastor mom and we lead this little flock together. So what you need is mom and dad leading together in the home, authority structure, yes, singular headship, but plural leadership. And we can apply that to the church as well. We need both spiritual fathers and mothers in the spiritual house of the church. And Jesus modeled this. Think about Matthew 28 when he says,

all authority on heaven and earth has been given to me. So therefore, go and make disciples. So it wasn't saying, hey, I'm going to make every decision. I'm going to do everything. It was like, I am giving you the authority on my behalf. I have to go and now do this. And even this gets into specific things and misconceptions of it.

So for example, if the wife is incredible at managing money and budgeting, it is not unless you can disagree with me. And bastard Josh and this, but that's not a wrong thing to let her do that. I think, again, there's so many misconceptions of like, oh, then the husband controls the finances. Like, a bad leader would do that. A good leader knows what he is good at or she's good and then says, all right, they're better than me as something, then I'm actually going to delegate it to them. But the husband is ultimately responsible. So if for some reason, they come on financial hard times because of mismanagement, the husband, if he's a good leader, doesn't look at the wife and

say it's your father. I'm responsible for this. Let's figure out how to help you. Let's get us back on track. He takes responsibility for owning and catalyzing. Let's go fix this thing. That's great, man. So let's get practical. Let's help some people. Some husbands are listening right now and say, great. That's amazing. Got it. How do I do that? What do I do now? How do I love and serve my wife as head? You know, let's just start with some thoughts. Yeah, I got a few things here. And let's just put the cookies on the bottom shelf. You know, let's make this real easy. Number one, we already pointed this out,

but in the Bible, submit to one another. It comes before wives submit to your husband. So we don't want abuse, one blesser, one taker. We don't want a battle, two takers. We want a blessing. Two people walking into marriage going, man, I'm here because I want to bless you. That's what we want.

So like, I'll get like for Jan and I, like a date night. Typically Thursday's our date night. And for real, Jan, it's just, it's funny. The entire night is just, how do I do what you want? Jana's like literally when she picks out her outfit, what do you want? When I'm trying to choose the restaurant,

I'm trying to think through what's Jana want? Literally we get there and where we sit. I've got this thing, like I'm kind of neurotic where I need to be able to see the entire room. And Jana will help make sure that we get seated where Josh wants so that Josh can sit in the corner and see everything, so that kind of thing. And then we get in the car

and I'm trying to think through, okay, you know, which songs on the playlist does channel? I mean, you can go on and on and on. Literally, I'll just say it because we're in Song of Solomon, even all the way down to intimacy. Like, that is the only way, if you're walking into marital intimacy and sexuality and you have a take, take, take, take, take,

what do I like, what do I like, what do I like? Let me just tell you, like, it's not going to go well for you, bro. Yeah. Did you hear that hack, you know, for whenever you want to date night, and you, you as a husband, you're not sure what to take your wife, you just kind of say, hey, sweetie. guess what? I'm going to take you to the place that you love and you're not going to,

I need you to guess where. And then she's like, what? To this plane, and she'll say the place she's got to mind. Exactly. That's it. That's exactly where we're going. How did you know? The Genesis joke is why is it, you know, why is it sometimes difficult? I'll say, why is it sometimes difficult for Jamba to choose where to eat? Because the first time the woman chose to doom the whole world. That's a joke, by the way, just joke. So number one is submit to one another, that's the biggest deal. Number two is, hey, man, if you're, if you want to be a godly man, where it starts as head of the home is you be the example of godliness and servanthood. Like you, what leaders can say is they say, man, follow me. Paul said that, follow me as I

follow Christ. And man, I think that's, again, it's a leadership thing. You don't, a good leader doesn't have to ask people, hey, like, you have to beg you, like a good leader inspires. Like, you don't have to force anybody to follow you that you just inspire to be followed. Yeah, man. Just follow me as I follow Christ. Be the guy that reads the Bible every day and prays every day and acts like it. Like, I'll just want one quick thing.

I noticed this for the first time, last time we read the Gospels. So Joseph, blue-collar dude, swinging a hammer, carpenter. He is never recorded as saying a single word in the Bible. Not one word. But every time God tells him to do something, he just does it. So he was that guy that's like, hey, man, swings a hammer, blue-collar dude, doesn't like to say much. but he was a doer of the word.

I love it. Be that kind of guy. Number three, I would say real practically is, man, this isn't rocket science. Like if you're a guy that's, how do I lead my wife? How to leave the family? Here's how. Lead with let's. All you get, like, be the guy that says, let's go to church.

Let's pray before the meal. Grab your wife's hand before bed. Hey, babe, let's pray real quick. You know, I don't know whatever you want. Let's take a walk together. Lead with let's. Number three or four. I would say this is real important, be the lead repenter.

That's good. So like, man, I've just, it seems to me like some, you know, men in general can sometimes be a little more prideful than women in general. And man, just like be the guy that's the first one in your home to say, I'm sorry. Your kids and your wife need to see that. So you be the lead repenter. It's a good leader right there. There you go. I'm sorry.

I messed up, man. Like, be the first one. Two other quick ones. This is not hard. just like pray for her. So this is not rocket science. Okay, here's how this works. Because I think there are a lot of husbands who are like,

dude, I've never prayed for my wife. I don't know what to do. This is really easy. Here's all you do. This is like maybe right before bed, wherever it is. Here's all you got to do. Ask her, just say, babe, can I pray for you? She's going to say yes, I promise.

And she's going to be freaking out inside. Yeah, yeah, it's amazing. She's going to be freaking out. And then all you do is ask her what she wants you to pray for her, then she's going to say some words. Some words are going to come out of her mouth. All you have to do is listen to those words

and then bow your head and say, Dear God, repeat those exact same words that you just heard back to God and for her and then say amen. And you did it. Boom. It's like very specific. Yeah, I need peace to work. God let her have peace at work.

That's it, bro. Great job. He's practicing. Great job. I got that from Jobie Mart. I like it. And then last one, I'll just say this, is First Peter commands husbands to, quote, live with your wives in an understanding way. And what this really means is we're supposed to become like PhDs in our wives.

So like, like, I'm a student of Janet Howerton. Like I got a lot of areas where I'm weak. This is not one where I'm weak. I have iPhone notes about, I keep little things. I didn't get all this at once, dude. I did not walk into marriage good at this. I just figured out by failing forward. I have iPhone notes about anything that Jana mentions ever,

that she's like, oh, that's kind of cool. And I'll just keep the iPhone note on, that could be the gift next Mother's Day or whatever it is. I got iPhone notes on any restaurant that Jana has ever mentioned. She liked. That's great. Any vacation, that kind of stuff. I am a student of, and again,

this is just, we need to kind of go here. But physically, for marital intimacy, you need to be a student of your wife. Figure it out, man. Like you're not going to walk in knowing what, but over time, you need to be a student of her. Emotionally, be a student of her. I have, especially with words,

we hit this in the message, but man, like, love her well with words, but go a second step, be a student of the words that bless her in her frame. So I've, this is what I've, learned about Jana and your wife's going to be different. You got to figure out your wife. I can say, I love you to Jana all I want. And yes, of course that matters. But I've just learned

that there are other words that mean more to Jana than I love you. Like if I say, Jana's like the most hardworking person in the, she's got a work ethic that's ridiculous. I got to beg her to sit down. And if I just say, hey, babe, thank you for working so hard for our family, dude, that just hits her different. Or, hey, I am so glad I married you. Or this is another one. I am so proud to be your husband. That hits Janet different. Or, hey, especially if you're a husband and you got kids, I guarantee your wife needs to hear this. You are such an incredible mother. Be a student of the things that bless your wife's frame in her heart. That's great, man. You got anything else?

I think I would say, you know, especially because I'm thinking for like my generation, I'm sure there's a lot of people right now, a lot of men listening as husbands. Man, we're not great at relationships sometimes. And so today, especially with the upcoming generation, man, the place we want to go learn about how to be a better husband, you know, it's either movies or, you know, for many people, porn is probably their main way they want to learn. That's a great way to learn from Satan. That's right.

You're learning from Satan. And yeah, honestly, like, if I mean honest, that's how most people are learning or they think that they can learn from it. Movies, porn, chat GPT, chat GPT, what do I do with my wife? And so here's what I would say. Those are bad places to learn. You know what, the best, honestly,

the best place to learn how to grow as a husband, community. There you go. Word-centered community. At the end of the day, man, I think for my marriage, I'm going to, Brooklyn Hark and attorney, 11 years by the grace of God.

And let's go. And for me, this has been a game changer for me in the last five to six years, I have been surrounded by other godly men who, Brooke and I, especially, but for me, just myself, I've been able to observe other men around me as I'm in community and be like, oh, man, that's interesting. These guys are like five to ten years ahead of me. Man, I've learned a lot. And I've learned a lot. And obviously, it's still learning. And I'd say that because you cannot grow as a husband if you are isolated. And if you do not have men around you to show you by example.

You don't just like receive this from the air and be like, oh, I'm gonna, okay, great, I listen to the podcast, great. No, you need somebody. And so I want to, you know, for people that are listening right now that are not yet part of a group, Lake Point Church, we're here to help you.

Well, whoa, check this out. Let's go. Come on, look at this. And so, we have to, can we, can they get that shot? Yeah, what's that say? What's that say? Rooted.

Let's go, man. You need to be rooted in community for this reason amongst others, obviously. And so if you're not yet part of a life group, we are actually getting ready to launch. Rooted. Rooted. And this is a 10-week discipleship experience, literally designed if you're a man,

for you to be part of another group of other men, dig into the word together, start practicing some rhythms that we find in scripture, basically to live out everyday discipleship, which obviously your marriage is a huge part of that. That's right. And so, again, if you're not in a group, this is for you. And so to join Rootay or to hear more about it, just text the word rooted to 20411.

Fall rooted session kicks off on September. It's coming up, man. Jan and I are leading the rootie group. Let's go. I'm very, very excited, man. That's awesome. Very excited. Yeah.

And the hats are great. And the hats are awesome. I'm sorry. What are you saying? No, did you have anything else? You covered it so well, Josh. If anything, it's just a specific application what you said, which is just, I think if a husband will just stop and ask at the beginning of the airs one day, how can I serve

or bless my wife today? You know, at least just one thing. But even to your point later, hey, what is the best way I can do that today? It's like a brief example of how I actually failed at this a couple days ago. And then I felt convicted and I need to do it because the idea of owning it. It's like it's not her job. It's my job. I've got the responsibility. I got back home from a trip to Canada, which my wife was amazing. Let me go with my dad did some hike in. Got back and just first day back at work was busy and going and I didn't text her. And I could tell that my wife was not as happy when I got home as I thought after

I'd been gone five or six days. She was happy the first I got on, but I was like, oh, it feels like there's some distance. And she's like, I was like, what's the wrong? He's like, you didn't text me or call me at Otter Day. And I just, I'm just going to be honest and learning. Texted me about some movies and stuff.

Carlos, you're killing him, bro. You're killing him. Well, you had said it first. So I figured out. So community is a safe place to share. No, no, anyways, but well, and I'm just, again, you know, you learn from examples. So don't do what I did.

My first instinct was, well, you didn't text me either. Bad way to go. Bad way to go. Did not go well. But eventually I had to do a few things. Number one, I just realized like, hey, I'm responsible that. And I realized that, man, even if I was busy, I was also being selfish. And I just a few minutes later was like, hey, I am so sorry I didn't do that.

And so then I literally made a note in my phone to make sure and just to text her a few times throughout the day. There you go. And here's what I'll tell you is that like, that's not fake. That's intentional. That's not fake service or love. what I realize is the best way I can bless my wife as she's a teacher and go back to school is just to send her a couple of notes during the day

say, love you, praying for you. And so I just want to learn from my failures, but also then just I just realize the best way I can serve her is to send a simple tech. So it doesn't have to be something massive. It can be something small. There you go. That's great, man.

Well, in the time of, you know, there's a lot of things going on in the world right now, wars, political conflicts, lots of very important issues. The internet is actually going crazy because of American Eagle ad. That was a good transition. The internet is really going crazy, and it's been going crazy for the last two weeks

because of an American Eagle ad. And so, man, let's, we actually have a video that is intentionally censored. Okay. Because you'll see it. So we can play it. Jeans are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality,

and even eye color. That's weird. I'll be honest, this is weird. My jeans are blue. Sydney Sweeney being sultry in a jeans ad, you'd think that's something all Americans could come together on. But the new campaign from American Eagle, starring the blonde-haired, blue-eyed beauty, has sent the woke mob into a meltdown, in part thanks to the tagline, which riffs off denim jeans and a person's genetics. This punny play on words was enough to trigger the woke mob, with many on the left interpreting it as a nod to eugenics, and some going so far as to outright call it Nazi propaganda. political podcaster Brad Palumbo compiled the most outrageous hot takes on TikTok.

You guys are complaining about that Sydney, Sweeney, Jean's ad, so I went and saw it. That's Nazi propaganda. Wow. I will be the friend that's too woke because those Sydney, Sweeney American Eagle ads are weird, like fascist weird, like Nazi propaganda weird. This is Nazi. Pure Nazi. Across social media, many were shocked to see that leftists were freaking out about this. Meanwhile, journalist Robbie Suave called the manufactured outrage,

quite possibly the stupidest, most likely to backfire, liberal overreach social media pile on in the history of the internet. History of the internet. Was that it? That's probably, all right. Okay, there you go. So multiple things here. Let me just break it down. Number one, internet is obviously outrage because, quote, this is from literally one of the articles,

A blonde-haired, blue-white woman is talking about her good genes. Like, that is Nazi propaganda. All right. Can I start with an observation? So I did a little quick digging. American Eagle is run by a Jewish man. He's probably not running Nazi propaganda. I'm just going to go out on a limb and, like, just probably guess that.

Pretty safe assumption. I'll begin right there. Makes sense. Can I articulate a few things? Yeah. Well, actually, yes, go ahead. What are you doing? I mean, I mean, yeah, I think, so Trump called it the quote, the hottest ad out there.

And obviously, everybody else is, you know, talking about it. A lot of people are celebrating the fact that, you know, it's very anti-woke. And so that's just take it from there. So here's what I think, you know, when I did a quick like, okay, let me see, I was not very super tuned into this. So here's what I think, it would have felt like doing a quick overview. It felt like Christians were ambivalent. And people didn't know how to like, you know, just watching how all this is going down,

am I celebrating? Because like, you know, woke thing feels like it's tumbling and this is anti-woke and non-mante-woke. So I'm celebrating that. But wait, that ad kind of feels like sexualized. And so I think Christians, like, felt ambivalent. So can I talk about like some things that we may have liked and some things that maybe we shouldn't like?

I'll go, let's do this. So here's what we liked. Okay. Here's why I think some people, like Christians, were like, hey, man, it feels like something good's happening, but I don't know how to feel about it, okay? Because, again, what it felt like was happening is a shift in the culture away from ads where it's like dudes or girls that are acting like dudes or dudes that are acting like girls or celebration of, you know, the kind of body positivity movement where it's like, let's like, let's like, Let's have somebody that's morbidly obese here and celebrate that. I think people are like, okay, good. We're not doing that anymore.

That's really good. And, you know, we've actually never talked about this in the pod. We probably should at some time and we can't deep dive on it today. But if you really want to boil it down, what the whole wokeness thing was, is it was defining justice as equal outcomes instead of equal standards. And we actually have commands against identifying justice as equal outcomes for. groups, the Bible actually commands, defines justice as equal standards for individuals. So, for instance, like the whole DEI thing and how a lot of that plays out, we're actually expressly forbidden by

scripture to even in the name of justice show partiality to individuals in order to try to manufacture equal outcomes for groups. James 2.1 says this, my brothers show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of Glory. So it's like, hey man, no, no, you're not allowed to favor this person because of their skin color in college admissions just to try to manufacture equal outcomes for groups. That's actually like injustice. Deuteronomy 25, the most common definition of justice in the Old Testament is equal weights and measures. In other words, equal standards for individuals do not try to manufacture equal outcomes for groups. So what, so, and I got a point to this, like, what, you know, why were people responding like this?

it's because that ad in some ways is like just undercutting the whole woke thing. Like, oh, actually, it's okay to celebrate somebody that is, you know, a white dude person. That's okay for them to be white. It's not bad. So the whole point is if you, here's a big idea. If you define justice as it is not, you will see just injustice where it is not. Let me say it one more time. if you define justice as it is not, you are going to see injustice where it is not.

That's good. That explains a lot of what we see in culture. I have some screenshots. Should I do them? Absolutely. I have not seen it, but I think you do. I do. Okay, so I'm going to give some examples. We're going to do these like really fast. So I started like in 2019, like when the woke thing was like at its peak, I started going like, dude, people are misdefining justice. and so they're seeing injustice in insane places where it's actually it's absurd. Yeah.

And I started keeping screenshots of the most absurd ones where people were like calling literally everything white supremacy. Why? Because they were defining justice as it is not equal outcomes for groups. So they were seeing injustice where it was not anywhere that there was any inequality of outcomes for groups. That must be injustice. So we'll just do these really fast. These were the most absurd ones. So highways, racist, totally racist.

Highways are racist. Obviously, exercise, very racist. Exercise. You got to do these slow. Give them a second to see it. Wait, yeah, let me see. Exercise, the white supremacist's origins of exercise and six other surprising facts

about the history of U.S. physical fitness. So exercise, totally racist. Totally racist. Obviously racist. Next one. The unbearable whiteness of camping. Camping, racist. Do you guys know that?

Camping is racist. Paul, did you camp while you were in Canada? I did not, but I am an avarable. Avid camper and bad packer. This is a joke. Let's keep on. Let's go on. Who, me, bias.

Look at the bottom. Peanut butter, jelly, and racism. Peanut butter and jelly? Very racist, white supremacist. Let's keep going. Is coffee racist? How drinking coffee perpetuates white supremacy. Coffee, racist.

We are really sorry, everybody. Bringing coffee right now. Okay. By the way, if you may be listening to this and you may be like, ah, I'm uncomfortable right now. you should absolutely, we should mock things that are stupid. Yes. It is actually a good and just and righteous thing to treat stupid things as stupid. Josh, explain that.

It's a, I don't think actually, it's self-explanatory. Some people would say, oh, I thought, you know, Christians are not supposed to mock things. No, this is like, you know, Elijah mocking the prophets of bail. And it's like, you know, he's like, hey, your God's not answering you. He must be on the pot. right now. It exposes things as they are. Ridiculous. Honestly, this is like the Babylon B phenomenon. Yes. Yeah. Because we're not mocking people. We're mocking the ideas. Ideas. We're not mocking but we're mocking

the idea. Exactly. Exactly. So what like when we treat foolish things as foolish, it instructs people around us. Oh, that's foolish. And actually when you dignify foolish ideas too much, you actually accidentally train people to take things seriously that are extremely unsurious. And you normalize stupidity. That's right. Sorry if that sounds harsh, but it's like, yeah, keep going. So this was CNN.

Again, I just started screenshot in these in 2019. PETA says phrases like bring home the bacon are comparable to racism and homophobia. So saying bring home the bacon, obviously racist. We'll keep going. Do you know what else is racist? Want to see less racism and sexism and classical music? stop calling Beethoven by his last name. So even the name Beethoven, just saying it out loud.

Oh, man. Racist. Very racist. Is the word picnic racist, the inquirer asked, how to deal with questions about language right now? Saying the word picnic, racist. Well, I'm learning a lot. Racist. Did you not know this?

No. Carlos, your baby is racist. Oh, man. And here's why you can live with that. You know, it's just, do we have more? Is that it true? Oh, this was my favorite one. Okay.

When I screen shot of this, I was like dying. I remember where I was when a screenshot of this, the Washington Post, the racist legacy birds carry. Every bird you see, racist. Yes. So, and the person we're doing,

we're treating foolish things as foolish. If you, I was on debate team for a little bit in high school, and one form of, of dismantling an argument, dismantling an argument, is called a reductio ad absurdum. And it's when you take a principle

that somebody espouses and you tease it out so far to its logical conclusions that it becomes absurd. Yes. Reductio ad absurdum, reduced to absurdity. All those are, is this reducing to absurdity, the mentality that justice equals equal outcomes for groups. No, it does not.

And when you start thinking like that, you start thinking and saying really stupid things. Like, let's go back to where we started, like an American Eagle Act. with it just like a white chick wearing jeans is racist. That's good. Wow. Okay, so I forgot what I said.

Yes, you're good. So here's what I think a lot of Christians liked. What they liked is like, okay, dude, the absurd concept of misdefinitions of racism and justice are falling apart. Yay. And that honestly is something that Christians should cheer. cheer. Yay, our culture is moving away from that absurdity. That's wonderful. Now, here's some things that we should not have liked, and then I'll let you guys kind of riff if you got any other ideas. Dude, the whole concept of, hey, sex cells, that was obviously, there's a, like we literally

had to blur out the ad. I wish it had been blurred a little more. I may ask for that in post. You know, the whole concept of the Bible is that is that sex is like fire in a fireplace. very, very helpful. It keeps a whole house warm and people alive when it stays in the fireplace gets outside the fireplace and burn your whole house down. So, like, as Christians,

what we should want is, man, actually, we keep sex and sexuality in the confines that is supposed to be. And so, like, we're anti-porn. We are not porn people. We are anti-lust. Some ads that you will see would have been considered

explicit pornography 30, 40 years ago. Yeah. Can I connect this actually? what we talked about earlier. We talked about how throughout the Bible, God elevates and esteems women. And so God made beauty. And beauty is for appreciation, but it's not for objectification. And the second you begin objectifying a woman or a man, basically you are turning them from an image bear to just a body. And at that point, you've stepped over. And you're longer esteeming what God esteems. Say how many time, Paul, you said God made. God made beauty. Beauty is for appreciation, but not for objectification.

That's great, Paul. It's good, man. Actually, it's interesting, Solomon himself in the book of Ecclesiastes. He talks about, man, I had this 700 wives or however many wives it was and 300 concubines. And then later in the book, he's like in a state of depression. And he's like, basically, I can never be friends with a woman anymore. That's the modern translation. I can never. And what he's saying is, man, I objectified so many women and reduced them to their sexuality that I can.

can be sitting across a table from a woman with hopes and dreams in a soul and all I can see is a pair of breasts. And he's like, man, it's terrible. And because in the same way to even go back, in the same way that we can train our minds to accept silly or stupid things as normal, we can train our minds to eventually see a woman as just a body. That's right. And we should not do that. And it's like, so as much as some people hate it when you mention this, the Bible actually commands us to dress in modesty. First Timothy talks. talks about respectable apparel with modesty and self-control. And Christians should want that.

So let me just put a bow on it. Like if Sidney Sweeney was my daughter, what I'd say is, hey, I love, hey, babe, a few things I love. Again, I'm talking as my daughter when I say, hey, babe, that's what I say to my daughter. See, I'm not talking in an inappropriate way, a woman that's not my wife. I say, hey, babe, you know, I'd say, hey, I love, here's what I love. I love the conservative kind of understanding of justice and beauty. I love that. love that we're not doing the woke thing

love that love that you're confident I love that you got that in you and I've purchased you 20 new long sleeve turtlenex and I need you to start wearing them be something like that that's where I'd go yeah yeah Steve Jobs Steve Jobs there you go there you go

somebody asking here obviously men are more visual so how should a Christian as we land this plane how should a Christian man guard their eyes or just be a handle you know, go about that. Well, I'll just, I'll do a quick one,

and then we can just wrap it. I'll just do one. Because we're going to get, let me just say, we're going to get there. In Song of Psalm, we're going to get there. It's very interesting. He talks like multiple times in the book. He's like, hey, man, you know what's the problem? The little foxes. Yes. There you go. He's like, watch out. The little foxes are messing up the field

that we got going on here. And what he's saying is, dude, it's a bunch of little stuff. He's like, it's going to get you. And you don't think it's a big deal. That one tiny little fox running through the field. You don't think a big deal. But a bunch of little foxes, and it's going to eat you. Here's, I'll kind of tease what we're going to say a lot more later in the series. Is man, watch your consumption. Like, even ads like that, like I'm not watching stuff like that. So it's like social media, you know, TV, movies you watch, just little things that trigger little moments of inappropriate

little stuff. You watch out all of a sudden your soul gets dirty. It kind of moves you in a wrong direction and all of a sudden it's like the momentum of a few little foxes and all of a sudden now you're down in a pit that you don't want to be in so here's why i'd say for for guys is like back the line way up set a line way back here about what you will let pass in front of your eyes the book of job says i've made a covenant with my eyes not to look lessively at a woman back way up up here and it's like engineer your life so that those little things aren't in front of your eyes so that the momentum of a few little things that lead you into something big. Yeah. So honestly, when I see ads like this on my social media feed, like my first instinct

is just, man, I don't need to see this. If it keeps showing out or popping on my feed, like just, again, there's an intentionality there. The Bible says you don't fight sexual temptation, you flee from it. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's good, ma'am. Nothing much to add. I'd tell people it was like, Jesus does that say, do not notice. In other words, like you talk about men are visual creatures. He says, do not look. And so to me, usually that line is, is really the idea of when I'm dwelling on it, where I'm gazing at it, when I'm not, okay, it's like the idea of you notice a beautiful woman. It's like, okay, it's a beautiful woman. But the second you begin dwelling on it, that's where you are letting a fire be cultivated. And that fire is eventually going to burn out of control. That's great, man. Yeah. Pastor Paul, Cunningham, our theologian, would you please pray for us? Amen. I love to. Father, we just always thank you for the time that we get to get to just talk about you and also talk about the. the way you have designed us to live and to be together.

God, I want to pray over the men that are listening to this right now, that you would make them good, godly, fierce men. The men of late point, the other men that are listening to this, would you make the men who love you, who love their wives as Christ love the church, who love their families, God. And may they just be exemplary men who will go into the trenches and fight the battles.

You were calling them to fight. I've got to pray that this week you would help us as men to love our families well, to serve them well and to take responsibility for the welfare of our families. God, to pray for the women that you would help them, Lord, to cheer on their husbands, to encourage them in every way possible. And God, would you make us all to be more like you, to look more like you? And God, I want to pray over this last thing that we were just discussing. I would you protect our eyes and help us, Lord, to respect people that you've created because they bear your image and you love them and

help us to see them the way that you see them. It is your name that we pray. Amen. Amen. Amen. Thanks for tuning in to live free with Pastor Josh Howard. We pray today's episode helped you take a step forward in life, culture, and faith as you live free in Christ. If it encouraged you, be sure to rate, review, and share the podcast, and don't forget to subscribe so you'll never miss an episode. Join us for Lake Point Church online every weekend and find more resources at lakepoint.church slash live free. We'll see you next time.