Where are the Men – Part 1
Transcript of FLOT Line Episode 566 aired on July 3, 2016
Good morning and welcome to The FLOT Line. I’m your host Rick Hughes and for the next few
moments I’d like to invite you to stay tuned. It’s going to be a time of motivation, some
inspiration, a whole lot of education, and we do it as always, without any manipulation because
we don’t play games. We don’t have hidden agendas. We’re not trying to solicit money. We’re not
trying to sell you anything. We’re definitely not trying to ask you to join anything. The only
thing this radio show is about is giving you accurate information, information from the Bible, the
canon of Scripture. That’s right, it’s a talk show about the Bible but not a dialogue, it’s just a
monologue. It’s just me but if you’ll listen, if you’ll pay attention, and if you will apply what you
learn, I can guarantee you one thing, you will live a much greater life. You will have capacity
like you’ve never dreamed of before. When you learn what the Christian life is and how to
execute the Christian life, it is the most phenomenal thing in the entire universe. The assets that
we have, the availability of God through prayer, the availability of strength through faith, the
availability of encouragement through His Word, it is unmatched. All of this is available for us as
Christians. When we talk about the Bible, when we talk about the Word of God, these are the
things that you need in your life that will guarantee you have great happiness and great success.
It all starts with you learning and applying the Word of God to your life. If you can stick with me
for the next few moments, I want to introduce the subject to you that’s very important to me.
Where have all the men gone in America? What happened to the men? It seems like every place
that I go there are a lot of males. Males are a dime a dozen and maybe some you females know
what I’m talking about. Some of you ladies can appreciate this. The question is where have the
men gone? Just as the current United States military cannot depend completely on a female
warrior to deliver us from enemy threats, this nation, this United States of America, the client
nation, we cannot depend on females only to deliver us from national discipline as a failed client
nation.
What I mean by this is so many males are willing to let their wives take the lead
spiritually.
They’re willing to let their wives take the lead in church and willing to let their wives
take the lead in Bible study. They want to do other things. They do not place the priority in their
marriage on the spiritual life. Where have the men gone? Why have the women come to the
front? Why is it that we need to depend on women to carry us as a nation? Where are the men?
It’s interesting to note how the world searches for a man and the world is always looking for a
man. There are all sorts of manly magazines out there like
Fantastic Man
,
Man of the World,
leading avant-garde magazines that look at the modern man. We also have
Men’s Journal
, we
have the men’s magazine
Sports Illustrated
, and my favorite magazine,
Bass Master,
man smells,
fish, and sweat and tobacco stains and all of this leather, it’s the man’s smells. Well, I enjoy bass
fishing so I like
Bass Master
. All of these magazines that I’m talking about, they all appeal to a
man’s interest in health and fitness and sports, not to mention the magazines that appeal to the
deviant side of the sin nature such as the
Playboy
magazine or
Hustler
magazine or things like
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this. Even these deviant magazines prosper mainly because they pander to the male area of
arousal. The Bible talks about the man being aroused by his eyes. Ladies, you know how easy it
is to arouse a man. Job said in Job 31:1,
“I’ve made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully
at a young woman.”
In Matthew 5:28,
“But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman
with lust for her has committed adultery already in his heart.”
So men can sin by being aroused
with their eyes. We have a sin nature just like a female does. I do not believe the female is
aroused by look, I think she’s aroused by touch, but the man can be aroused by look. There’s
nothing wrong with appreciating female symmetry, don’t get me wrong, but lust and appreciation
are two different things. What I want to talk about is manhood and where have the men gone. It’s
not intended to lessen the role of the female in the body of Christ, this is not what I’m trying to
do. My desire is that this will be a call for men to be men and live like men. When I’m talking
about manhood, I’m not talking about how much weight you can lift. I’m not talking about how
fast you can run.
The manhood that I’m talking about is determined by what a man thinks,
that’s the real you.
It doesn’t make any difference if you’re a 21 year old male or a 70 year old.
The godly man, the man that God is looking for, is not linked to age or ability because once your
strength and your stamina is gone from a human body, are mature male believers any less of a
man? The answer is no. But you can’t stay young forever, you know this. You can’t pick up the
weights you use to pick up. You can’t work the pace you use to work. You just can’t stay young
forever as a male. If you’re a male, the question that you have to answer to yourself is are you a
real man or are you just a male in a man’s body? Which one are you? What’s important is
leadership and leadership of men. My life has been directed by a couple of men that are pastors,
godly men, men that I respect. They have served me and others honorably for years.
God is
looking for a few good men.
I’d like to ask this question. Wherever you may be, if you are a
male, whether you are sitting at home or whether you’re in an automobile or sitting somewhere
else, can God count on you to live like a man should live? Can you be His man? Let me start off
by reading Ezekiel 22:29-31,
“The people of the land have practiced oppression and committed
robbery. They’ve wronged the poor and the needy and have oppressed the sojourner without
justice. Thus God says, ‘I searched for a man
[a masculine man]
among them, a man who would
build up the wall and stand in the gap before Me for the land so that I should not destroy it, but I
found no one. Thus, I have poured out My indignation on them. I have consumed them with the
fire of My wrath and their way I have brought upon their heads,’ declares the Lord God.”
We are
all products of our decisions both individually and nationally.
What will happen in this country
is a direct result of what we choose, not the President or the Congressman that we choose,
but what we choose to think. Whether we choose to think like men, Biblical men, what we
should think or whether we choose to think like males.
The sacrifice of an American citizen to
serve his country in the Armed Forces is very much like the sacrifice that mature believers make
to serve their client nation such as the United States of America, both spiritually and physically.
Both of these sacrifices as a citizen and as a believer, provide freedom and the opportunity for
prosperity. If an American male serves his country, he purchases our freedom. If a mature
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believer grows in grace and begins to replicate the life of Christ, he preserves the freedom of the
client nation because as goes the believer in that nation, so goes the freedom of that nation. Luke
17:10 talks about a slave who expected some special recognition because he did his job and these
are the words of Jesus,
“And so you too, when you do all the things which are commanded of
you, will you say, We are unworthy slaves because we’ve done only that which we ought to have
done?’”
What the Lord is asking out of you is nothing unusual.
When He asks you to be a
man and to stand up for Him and to represent Him and to live for Him, this is what’s
required of you as a slave. You were purchased, you were bought, you were redeemed out of
the slave market of sin.
For you to want special recognition because you’ve served the Lord,
why that’s crazy. Recently I read a book entitled
A Higher Calling.
It’s a New York Times
international bestseller. This book details the incredible story of combat and chivalry in the war-
torn skies of World War II. In this book you can read the detailed story of pilot Charlie Brown of
the 379th bomber group and how he flew his first mission on 20 December 1943, way before you
probably were born. During the course of this mission his B-17 which was named Ye Old Pub, it
was hit repeatedly by flak from German fighters and should have gone down. Two of his engines
were out. A third was running on half power. His guns had iced up due to the altitude and the loss
of pressure. His tail gunner was dead and other men on his crew were injured. During his return
back to England after he had dropped his bombs on Germany, it was doubtful at best that he was
even going to make it. He was approached by a lone German fighter who could have shot him
down, could have ended it all right there, but he had compassion on him, and he spared Charlie
Brown’s life and his crew’s life by not shooting them down. That German pilot was Franz
Stiegler and he actually tried to steer them to Sweden where they could survive the war and not
risk crashing into the North Sea as they flew back to England. The top turret gunner Frenchy told
the pilot Charlie Brown, “We are chewed to pieces. The left stabilizer is all but gone. The
hydraulics are bleeding from the wings. There are holes in the fuselage big enough to climb
through, and upfront the nose has been blasted open to the sky,” but they made it home on an
engine and a half. I mean only a couple hundred feet off the ground when they finally got across
the North Sea and landed. After that narrow escape the pilot asked his superiors, how could he
nominate his crew for awards? He wanted a Distinguished Flying Cross for each one of them and
a Bronze Star for one of them. The commander said, “When they see that plane of yours, you’ll
all be wearing Bronze Stars.” That wasn’t the case. Headquarters decided not to mention the
German fighter sparing them and how the fighter escorted them out to the North Sea on their
way home and didn’t award them. The pilot, Charlie Brown, was upset when he learned that his
men would not be recognized for their bravery and he asked a question, “What am I suppose to
tell my men?” This was the answer. “You tell them they did what they came here to do, bomb
Germany, fly home, go back and do it again.” The pilot nodded. He and his crew weren’t in it for
the medals. Surviving a horrendous attack was just doing what they volunteered to do. Are you in
it for the medals with God or have you volunteered to serve Him as a man?
You see, serving the
Lord Jesus Christ is a voluntary mission. No one’s going to force you to do it. You have to
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make up your mind if you are willing to lay your life on the line for His cause and His
purpose and His future.
Can one single man like you make a national impact in a country as
big as America with over 300 million people? Can one single man like you stem the flow of
divine discipline on a client nation like us? Can one single man like you lead a nation out of sin
and out of degradation? The question is, can you be the man? I can tell you this, you have to be a
man, not a mousy male, and you must be willing to breach the gap, stand against the flow is what
the Bible says. We’ll actually determine what is a man or a male here this morning. In this
passage of Scripture when God laid these words out through Ezekiel, we see the coming of the
fifth cycle of discipline, the destruction of Judah and Jerusalem. Remember that the nation had
been split into two kingdoms. The Northern Kingdom made up of 10 tribes and in the Bible
called Israel was destroyed in 722 BC under the fifth cycle of discipline administered by Syria
and Sargon the Second. Thus, Reuben, Simeon, Zebulun, Issachar, Dan, Gad, Asher, Naphtali,
Ephraim, and Manasseh, all destroyed, taken into captivity. Then the Southern Kingdom with
two tribes, Judah and Benjamin, is now about to face the same fate as the Northern Kingdom
except this time the instrument of divine discipline will be the Chaldeans, under the command of
Nebuchadnezzar. It happened in 586 BC. Both of these nations, the Northern Kingdom and the
Southern Kingdom, Israel and Judah, both of them ignored the warnings of Elijah and Elisha.
They didn’t pay attention in the Northern Kingdom. The Southern Kingdom did not heed the
warnings of Ezekiel and Jeremiah and thus the fall of Jerusalem. Ezekiel wrote about it from
exile and warned the inhabitants of Jerusalem what was about to happen. He warned them of
bloodshed and extreme violence in their city from the worship of idols, the real issue. This is the
same thing that we face today.
In Ezekiel 22:12 and Ezekiel 23:35 we find this warning,
“They had forgotten God.”
Have you forgotten God? Have you forgotten what He did for
you when He saved you, when He delivered you from the slave market of sin, when He gave
you these phenomenal assets called the Christian life?
Have you forgotten when He prospered
you, when He blessed you? Have you forgotten this? Ezekiel 22:6-12 cites the sins of Jerusalem.
There was social injustice in Ezekiel 22:7. There was apostasy in Ezekiel 22:8. There was
idolatry in Ezekiel 22:9, immorality in Ezekiel 22:10, and greed in Ezekiel 22:12.
Here’s what
God said,
“Therefore thus saith the Lord God, ‘Because you have forgotten Me, because you
cast Me behind your back, bear now the punishment for your lewdness and your
harlotries’”
(Ezekiel 23:35). Wake up America, we are exactly the same way.
What I have
read to you is the picture of what’s going on in America today. We are on the verge of being
destroyed. We are on the verge of divine discipline. Why? Because men have acted like males.
They have put their spiritual life aside. They refuse to serve the God that serves them. They want
special recognition when they do. If they are at least making an attempt to glorify God, they want
to be recognized for this and to be given an award. Wow, God warned through Ezekiel that
Jerusalem would become a furnace of affliction and that would melt those who remained. Notice
Ezekiel 22:24,
“Son of man say to her, ‘You are a land that is not cleansed or rained on in the
day of indignation.’”
This is us. This is America,
“Not cleansed,”
no rebound, no confession of
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sin.
Remember this verse,
“If My people, which are called by My name will humble
themselves and turn from their wicked ways”
(2 Chronicles 7:14)?
It didn’t happen here and
it’s not happening in America today. There is very little clear lucid Bible teaching. A lot of
religion, a lot of ritual without reality, but as far as clear lucid Bible teaching like you are hearing
today, very little. This is the washing of the Word, the raining of the Word of God. The Word of
God was not being taught and the people were not being cleansed from their sin. There were four
reasons why. The Bible goes on to list the prophets who ignored the sins and gave false doctrine
(Ezekiel 22:25-28). The Bible lists in Ezekiel 22:26 the priests who shut their eyes to keeping the
Sabbath and abandoned God’s Word, the princes, that’s the royalty, who used their power for
material gain and murder for gain (Ezekiel 22:27), and the people who followed their leaders in
extortion and robbery of the needy and the helpless (Ezekiel 22:29). God in His mercy and His
grace said,
“I’m looking for a man
[a male type believer, not a female, who could stop the
degeneracy and the decay of the nation]
I could not even find one”
(Ezekiel 22:30). There was
not even one in the position of leadership who could be counted upon to turn around the
destructive tendency of that nation, no prophet, no priest, no prince, no person, not one. Do you
want to know the conclusion that I come to? Apparently one squared away leader could have
been used by God to avert national disaster by national discipline, but there were none that fit the
profile.
National discipline. God can destroy a nation just like He raises that nation. There
is no doubt that He blessed us. There’s no doubt that He raised us up to world prominence.
And there’s no doubt we have forgotten our God and have kicked Him out of everything.
We can’t even mention Him in the public streets, not in the public schools, not in the military, not
anywhere. We can’t take Bibles into foreign battlefields and give them away, it might offend
someone. We are crazy, we forgot our God. We forgot Who got us where we are today. What sort
of man was God looking for? He was looking for a leader, one man maybe like you, one man
that could inspire loyalty to the laws of establishment, one man, a leader who can encourage
sacrifice and influence by example, a leader. Let me give you an acrostic for
LEADER.
L, a
leader has to be a
Learner.
Teachability requires humility. God can’t use an arrogant jerk.
A
leader has to have humility and be willing to renovate his thinking by learning the mind of
Christ and acquiring divine viewpoint
. He’s got to be a learner. Secondly E, he must
Execute
the spiritual life
and not emote his way through life. Emoting is emotions. You can’t be a leader
and live by your emotions. You’ve got to learn how to function by means of execution, and
unless you learn how to execute the spiritual life, you can never glorify God. Next he must be A,
Authority oriented
since authority is the umbrella of freedom in this country. If he doesn’t
understand authority, if he doesn’t establish authority, if he doesn’t live by means of authority,
there can be no freedom. Freedom without authority is anarchy, that’s all it is. Too much
authority and no freedom, well that’s tyranny. The D means he
must not Deviate from God’s
Word.
He must not drift away from grace. He must not be discouraged when discipline comes
upon the nation, and he must be dedicated to the mission of restoring this country.
The only way
this country is going to be restored is when we restore God’s Word to prominence in our
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nation.
You will never again see a great evangelist like Billy Graham. You won’t see great
crusades held in stadiums anymore. Our government has made sure of this. They made sure that
we don’t try to evangelize anybody anymore. He must be an E, what does this mean? He must be
of
Exemplary character.
He must have virtue and integrity. He must be a man of integrity. The
R, he must
be Regenerated,
he must be born again. He must be relaxed, not legalistic, not self-
righteous, not uptight. This is the kind of leader God needs. That’s the kind of leader God is
looking for. If you want to be that one man that can stand in the gap between God and this
nation, your family, your grandchildren, your friends, if you want to be the man, this is what you
are going to have to be.
You are going to have to be a learner. You are going to have to
execute the spiritual life. You are going to have to orient to authority and you cannot
deviate from God’s Word. You must have exemplary character. You must be regenerated.
Can a woman be a leader? Sure you can, in your home, in your community, and in your nation
but this is not what God said. God didn’t say, “I’m looking for a woman.” He said,
“I’m looking
for a man.”
You see, here’s a principle, a nation devoid of leaders is like the blind leading the
blind. Even in America if God’s Word is taught clearly, there’s always that negative volition that
will ignore the warning with no national leadership. With no national leadership the people will
ignore the warning, the leader has to call their attention to it. At least the justice of God is
vindicated in this country. The warning has been given through people like myself and others
who have clearly warned you what’s coming, clearly warned you that
unless you take your
spiritual life seriously, you are going to lose everything.
Here is a warning from my pastor
who is now with the Lord. He said these words, “The United States of America is under the
liability of the Supreme Court of Heaven for the fifth cycle of discipline. It all depends on
whether or not believers fulfill the unique spiritual life of the Church Age. The unique spiritual
life is a major factor in history.” He restated it when he said, “Our only hope for survival as a
client nation rests in certain principles of the Word of God. Three principles that begin to solve
the problem are these: the grace of God, the fact that Jesus Christ controls history, and the
principle that as goes the Church Age believer, so goes the client nation.”
I believe that if we are
to avert this fifth cycle of discipline as a nation, if we are to avoid this discipline, we’ve got
to have some Christian men who will reach spiritual maturity, men who will be used by
God to stem the tide of national degeneracy, including pastor-teachers.
We must have them
or we are toast. Tune in next week, there is a lot more to say about this. I hope I have your
attention. Until then, this is your host Rick Hughes saying thank you for listening to The FLOT
Line