Men With Chests
There is a passage in the book of Ezekiel that should make our generation shake in its proverbial boots. God looked down upon a dying nation and declared: "I searched for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand in the gap before me for the land so that I would not destroy it. But I found no one."
Let that sink in. The Almighty walked the length of a ruined city, searching among the leaders of a collapsing nation for just one man. One man who would stand in the breach, rebuild what was broken, and safeguard his people from destruction. What he found was priests and princes, officials with functioning male bodies and impressive titles. But what he didn't find was men.
And because there were no men, destruction came.
When Men Stand, Nations Fall
Fast forward several centuries to the book of Acts, and the story flips dramatically. A handful of men with the courage of a thousand lions caused such an uproar that their accusers shouted: "These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also!" (Acts 17:6)
The contrast between these two examples is staggering. When God found no men in Ezekiel's day, Israel fell. When God found a few men in Acts, pagan Rome fell. This teaches us a profound truth. When hollow men abound within the visible covenant community, calamity for God's people is not far away. But when real men build in joyful obedience to God, nations will eventually collapse as the Kingdom of God advances.
Isaiah described this phenomenon in the negative, the absence of godly men, as a curse: "Oh, my people. Their oppressors are children and the women rule over them" (Isaiah 3:12). To be clear, this isn't an attack on faithful women. It's a description of a world where the created order has been turned upside down because men who were appointed to bear responsibility have abandoned their post.
When men abdicate, Isaiah tells us that children become tyrants. When men sit idly by, entire nations burn around them. This pattern holds true in families, churches, and nations alike.
THE WAR ON MASCULINITY
To make matters worse, for more than a century our culture has waged deliberate war on masculinity. This assault has come from every direction (schools, universities, television screens, corporations, entertainment, etc.) Under all of these attacks has come the same message: men are the problem.
Your strength is dangerous. Your ambition is a disease. Your authority is oppression. Your desire to conquer and spread dominion needs medication. Your willingness to fight must be apologized for.
Turn on any television show from the past fifty years. How often do you see men portrayed as noble, wise, and courageous versus bumbling idiots who must be constantly rescued by their wives and children? Men are presented as serial morons or as permanent suspects, latent predators, dangers that must be quarantined and restrained.
But here's the question: When this litany of accusations came knocking at the doors of the church, did we reject those lies? Did we answer from the Word of God? Did we put forward Abraham, Moses, Joshua, David, Daniel, Paul, Peter, and Jesus Christ as the picture of masculinity? No. We did not.
Instead of discipling masculinity, we've tried to sanitize it. Which has led us to the impotent state the church is currently in. Boldness became an embarrassment. Authority became something to apologize for. Leadership was stripped of its holy danger and replaced with toothy-smiled mediocrity. None of it has helped us.
WHY MEN LEFT THE CHURCH
In such a time as this, is it any wonder men stopped coming to church? Why would a man enter a place embarrassed by him, suspicious of his godly instincts, hostile toward his desire for authority, and uninterested in giving him a mission worth living and a cause worth dying for?
When men scan the room in many churches, they don't find "Soldiers Marching Unto War." They find brittle egos seeking Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. So men turn around, walk away, and don't come back.
Again, faithful women are not the problem. God bless the godly women who have prayed, served, endured, taught their children, practiced hospitality, honored their husbands, and carried crushing burdens while men were missing in action. The problem, instead, is that we've built churches where biblical masculinity is unwelcome.
WHY THEY FEAR MASCULINE MEN
As we ask ourselves the question, why has this attack on masculinity become so relentless? We must recognize that real men with real chests, set on fire by the living God and governed by truth, are one of the most dangerous creatures under heaven.
A man who cannot be bought with money, flattered with smooth words, or governed by lust is dangerous. A man not ruled by comfort, applause, or fear. A man who will stand between the serpent and his wife, between the wolf and the sheep, between the tyrant and the innocent, between the lie and the truth. That man is dangerous.
C.S. Lewis captured this brilliantly in The Abolition of Man: "In a sort of ghastly simplicity, we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful."
MEN WITH CHESTS IN THE HOME
In Acts 17, we meet a man named Jason, who is named only here in the book of Acts. He wasn't an apostle, preacher, or elder. He was just a man who ruled over his door.
When the mob came for Paul and Silas, they dragged Jason from his house because he had made the dangerous decision to open his door to the gospel. His door was a border, a threshold where his authority was exercised. He welcomed the righteous with joy; the wicked could only enter by force.
Jason took the most wanted men in the empire and quartered them under his own roof. He was dangerous not because he was loud, but because he ruled over his door. He was what stood between what was inside his house and what was outside.
Compare this to Adam, the first man without a chest. God commanded him to dress and keep the garden. The word keep means to guard, like a military officer holding a perimeter. But when the serpent came, Adam sat passively by while Eve opened the door. The first man without a chest wasn't invented by feminists in a faculty lounge. He was standing in paradise, refusing to secure his bride.
What comes into your home comes through you, whether you're sitting and watching like Adam or standing guard. Every father's abdication causes collapse.
Guard your home from threats: from society polluting your children, from culture dehumanizing your wife, from ideology breaking in like a thief. But also guard your home for something: for the praise of God, for family worship, for discipleship, for the aroma of Christ.
MEN WITH CHESTS IN THE CHURCH
The church needs dangerous men. Jesus said, "Upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it" (Matthew 16:18). Notice: gates are defensive structures. They don't chase you. They just stand there. And you've been promised that if you just move toward them, they will fall down.
Why don't we advance when we have this promise? Why don't we raise up elders, deacons, and Christian men who are dangerous to the world? Why do we settle for vanilla, watered-down masculinity?
It's time for gates to fall again. It's time for men to have knobby knees from hard praying, worn Bibles from hard reading, and worn shoes from hard leading.
MEN WITH CHESTS IN THE WORLD
Jesus didn't send us merely to disciple individuals. He sent us to disciple the nations (Matthew 28:19). Nations have governments. Nations need Christians. Washington needs Christians. State houses need Christians. School boards need Christians.
There's nothing wrong with godly ambition to lead, to govern, to take dominion. It's actually noble when submitted to Christ. If Christian men don't step up, someone else will. And they already are.
Our model is Christ Himself, who braided His own whip and drove out the money changers from the temple. Who endured the cross with joy for the mission set before Him. An effeminate man who calls himself a Christian is a contradiction because we follow a very masculine Christ.
THE HOUR IS LATE
The condition of a nation's men reveals how many grains of sand remain in that nation's hourglass. We can find out what hour we're in simply by looking at what men love, fear, build, and tolerate.
The call is urgent. We need men with chests, men whose heads and hearts are integrated, whose reason and passion are united under the lordship of Christ. Men who are both strong and loving, full of grace and truth.
The promise stands: the gates of hell cannot withstand the advance of holy, righteous, dangerous men. The only question is whether we'll rise up and take what's been promised, or continue sitting while everything burns around us.
The search continues. Will God find men standing in the gap? I pray the man he finds is you!
