Sermon: Virtues Hard and Soft

Building Complete Character
#1752
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Given 16-Mar-24; 81 minutes 2024-03-16

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Over the last few years, Americans have become familiar with the phrase "toxic masculinity." I am sure you have heard it somewhere, maybe on the radio or on the Internet somewhere. But feminists and man-haters of all kinds have railed against the prevalence among American men of being men, of having these traits that they think are toxic. They do not want to come up against it and they do not want their children, or especially their girls, to have to come up against toxic masculinity because in our progressive culture, and face it, that is what it is, manliness has become a liability. It is far better in this progressive culture to be a woman than to be a man because men are the source of all evil.

A few decades ago, I remember Rush Limbaugh making snide comments about what he called "metrosexuals." I do not know if any of you remember him saying that but he termed men as metrosexuals after feminists remade them into soft, liberal, easily manipulated men who flocked to urban areas because they are not hearty enough to endure the rigors of real life in the country, out there in the red states across the fruited plain.

But what is exactly toxic masculinity? Well, I have got an article that is named exactly that. The title is, "What Is Toxic Masculinity?" So I thought I would read you some of that so that we are all on the same page here. This is by Silva Nevis and it was found (by me) in Psychology Today, March 12th, 2021. So just three years ago and I will quote here.

Toxic masculinity is the result of a [and I will insert this word, traditional] set of strict rules that prescribe what being a man should be. These toxic "man rules" include 1) A man should suffer physical and emotional pain in silence. 2) A man shouldn't seek warmth, comfort, or tenderness. 3) A man should only have the emotions of bravery and anger. Any other emotions are weaknesses,. Weakness is unacceptable. 4) A man shouldn't depend on anyone. Asking for help is also weak. 5) A man should always want to win, whether in sports, work, relationships, or sex.

We do not have to look far to see traces of toxic masculinity in many men. Why is that? It's not because men are naturally bad people. It's because men were boys who were often taught terrible lessons from a very young age. For example, boys shouldn't cry, boys shouldn't be sensitive, boys should defend themselves, boys shouldn't want to play with girls toys, boys should be rough, boys should want to conquer the hearts of girls, etc. These are only a few of the very common damaging messages boys grow up to absorb. The consequence of this kind of messaging is boys becoming men who are emotionally blunt and who may find it hard to connect with others, particularly their girlfriends and wives, if they are heterosexual. In most cases, these messages will make it difficult for these men to have a good relationship with their partners. But in the worst of cases, it can transform into rage and unfortunately, murder.

This is what is generally thought of among psychologists and psychiatrists. It is very radical. I think they went like from zero to a hundred here by saying, well, this toxic masculinity is apt to go to murder.

Now those trying to remake the world in their own image want to knock the rough edges of men to take away their strength, their endurance, their resilience, their courage, their assertiveness, their leadership, and their initiative. Why? Well, if you ask the feminists, it basically comes down to "make them more like women." Writing for webmd.com, a woman named Sarah Valley says in her November 11th, 2022 article, "What is Toxic Masculinity?"

The phrase "toxic masculinity" was later adopted by the fourth wave of feminism, a wave that started about a decade ago. [So this was 2022 now, just a few years later than that.] This wave focused more on intersectionality than the waves before it. Intersectionality is the idea that sexism is just one part of systematic oppression along with atheism, ageism, classism, homophobia, and racism.

I know that was a mouthful. Let me rephrase it in a very simple sentence that you could take home with you. This is my rephrase of what she said. "Feminists decided every form of oppression has a common root: the traditional masculine male." That is basically what she said in her psychobabble speak. Later on in the article, she lists toxic masculinity signs as homophobia, need for control, promiscuity, refusing to help with household duties, risk-taking, sexual aggression toward women, stoicism, and violence. What were her solutions to this problem? Look at this.

She urges (this is from webmd.com) changing social and cultural norms, abolishing corporal punishment (that was her second one), creating safe spaces, teaching boys emotional self-control. (That is not bad, that was a good one. I think everybody should learn emotional self-control.), encouraging therapy for trauma. (I will just jump in here and say if you can read Abigail Schrier's book, Bad Therapy. I think you will see by the end of that book that that is a very bad solution because therapy, they found, does not work. Back to this list of hers.) She also says that we should program boys to integrate positively into society and promote healthy abuse-and-violence-free relationships.

That is a real mixed bag of suggestions. I only agree with a few of them. But there are some doozies in there that you really need to be careful about.

Now, missing from this thinking about boys and men is, of course, the biblical angle. It is that intrinsically, down to the chromosomal level, males are different than females. That is just the truth. Both are human, males and females. You know, I think sometimes boys think that girls are aliens and they have cooties. But really the truth is that males and females are very different despite both being human. But God made them that way. God made males and females to be different from creation, from the very beginning. Males have more testosterone, which makes them different from females, who have more estrogen. It is just a fact.

Those hormones make people do different things. Their sex-determining chromosomes are different. Males are XY and females are XX. Down to the chromosomal level they are different. All mothers eggs carry an X chromosome and she needs a father's sperm because he carries either an X or a Y. And so that is why they say the fathers actually determine the sex of a child. And there are many, many more things. I just got to the very basics of things in that. But we could probably sit around in a circle and come up with, I do not know, how many things that are different between males and females. It is just that way. That is the way God made us.

So the fact is, that masculinity goes back to God's creation of Adam. He gave Adam what we call masculine traits and He made Eve and He gave her feminine traits. Now we can understand, we know very well that sinful human nature has absolutely corrupted these traits on both sides, both masculine and feminine, because we have perverted them towards selflessness. And some go so far that they actually become evil in the way they use their masculine or feminine traits. But that does not diminish the fact that God originally created them male and female and He pronounced His creation very good. If you want to go back to Genesis 1:31, you can find it right there in black and white.

Further, these traits, masculine or feminine, can be virtues. The way we look at it, we say that men have hard virtues. They tend to have the stronger virtues, if you will. So we call them hard virtues. And then there are feminine virtues which we tend to think of as being softer. So we have virtues, hard and soft, depending on if it is a male or a female. And that is what we are going to consider today throughout the rest of the sermon. That is what I have titled this sermon, "Virtues Hard and Soft."

Now, let me be very clear right at the beginning here about these hard and soft or masculine and feminine virtues. The Bible does not call them hard or soft. That is something that we do. We use those descriptions because that is how we see them. We give them a value; that this is hard, it is strong, it is a more, I do not know, robust virtue. Whereas on the feminine side, we say they are softer, they are more emotional, they are kinder. And that is how we look at it as human beings.

But the Bible does not call them that. We think of them in these terms because we perceive that they come easier to men, these hard virtues come easier to men than to women. And we believe, we perceive that the soft virtues come easier to women. And so we call them hard or soft virtues.

However, in reality, if either of these are true, real virtues, then they are not hard or soft. They are divine. They are godly virtues. We will get to this as we go through that. If they are actually good virtues, they are from God and He made them, made us to be able to express them.

I was just talking about Genesis 1. Let us go back to Genesis 1. We are going to read verses 26 and 27 and build up a biblical case for this.

Genesis 1:26-27 Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

Did you notice that in these two verses, God says three times—three times in two verses—that God made man in His image? I think He wanted to get the point across to us that as we read this, in opening up our Bibles, the first chapter here, that He wanted us to understand that human beings were made in His image. He essentially says, "I made human beings in My image." "I made human beings in My image." "I made human beings in My image. Are you clear yet?" He wanted us to have that in mind, that humanity is after Him, Himself. He made us look and act like Him, and think like Him. We are in both His image and His likeness. He wanted to make sure that He used those words so we understand that we are very much like Him.

But one way we are not like Him is that He is a spirit being and we are human beings. We have flesh. Flesh constrains us, we are very weak, and we have very few abilities that we can project very far because we are flesh. So we are physical humans, but we possess attributes and abilities on the physical plane that mimic His on the spiritual plane. His are much bigger, stronger, better than ours, far superior to us. But we have those attributes that look like Him, very weak compared to Him, but they are like Him. So these not only include physical attributes like a head, arms, legs, a body, you know, that sort of thing. We believe that God looks like us. The evidence of Scripture tells us that He fashioned us after Him, so we must look a lot like Him in general.

But He also gave us mental, emotional, and spiritual attributes that are much like His. These include things like intelligence, well, some of us, language, understanding, planning, reasoning, the ability to think spatially and geometrically, being able to create and invent, and a lot of those things that our minds are able to do that animals are not. But God can; He could do these things, you know, hardly without thinking because He is God, He is so supreme. But we are able to develop those things because He gave us the ability because we are in His image.

We also have human analogs to God's emotions. God is an emotional being. Of course, His emotions are always in control. And we have, like I said, physical analogs to those things, comparative physical life's emotions. And also because He put a spiritual element in us, remember, we are told by Elihu in Job 32:8 that there is a spirit in man. And because there is a spirit in man, we can have a relationship with God and we can develop and use godly character because in that way, we are very much like God.

Let us go, in my Bible it is just across the page, to Genesis 2, verses 18 through 24. What we are going to read here in this six or seven verses is an expanded view of what appears in Genesis 1 after God makes Adam.

Genesis 2:18-24 And the Lord God said, "It is not good that man should be alone; I will make a helper comparable to him." Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name. So Adam gave names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper comparable to him. And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place. Then the rib which the Lord God had taken from the man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man. And Adam said: "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man." Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.

Like I said, this expands our view, our understanding of what happened there in Genesis 1:26-27. Now we get a close up of what God did in order to create Eve. Eve is special. Eve is different. She was created, not from the dust of the ground, but from the flesh and bones of Adam. And there is a reason for this. So in this passage, God provides some of His thinking for creating humans in two flavors, male and female. While Adam's creation was very good, as we see in chapter 1, verse 31 (and Eve's as well but I am speaking specifically about Adam's creation here), it was very good.

But as He tells us here in chapter 2, verse 18, that he was made and only had one sex. That is, he was the only human and the only human was male. That was not good. It is not good that man should be alone, that there should only be men, if you want to put it that way. So He says, "I'm going to make someone that is (He says here), a helper comparable to him." So God would fix this lack of diversity, that is a word we hear a lot in this country, and He would do this by creating a partnership, a helper or a coworker that He says is comparable to the man.

Now, lest we have any feminists who think that this is not good that He made a helper for the man, like a servant, that is not what it means! That has been read into the text. In fact, God Himself, in other places in the Old Testament, is described the same way when He helps men. Are you going to call God a slave to man? No, He is a helper. He is one who comes alongside and assists when it is necessary. It is not a demeaning term at all. It is one that is equal but differs. Someone who can fulfill or complete what is missing in Adam. One who, coming together with a man, can solve those problems because they have come from two different perspectives and they are better able, then, to complete what they need to complete.

And of course, we understand from the New Testament, Paul says a couple of times that women have the equal spiritual potential to men in Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, male or female, etc. And so we are all just humans to God. Our sex does not matter in terms of our spiritual potential. It is not something that He necessarily looks at as a qualifying element. So men and women have that equal potential, but vis-à-vis a man and marriage, as a mate, in this case, the woman was made specifically to help the man. And do we not need it, if that makes you feel better.

So, what did God do here? God made Adam stand there and he brought all the animals in front of him and He said, "Adam, what do you think of this giraffe, or this thing with the long neck?" And Adam said, "Well, it's a long neck thing. Ok. That's his name, long neck. You're gone, bring in the cat." And so he went through all of these animals. We do not know how many there were. It was probably just one of the major groups of animals. I do not think he had to do every species.

But by the time he got to the end of the line, he looked over at God and said, none of these works for me, God. You know, they have four legs, the creepy crawling, they are just not like me. And so Adam understood after that object lesson of naming the animals, that there was no one among the animals that could be his mate, could be this helper comparable to him. His mate had to be like him. That is, made in God's image. He needed someone of another sex, if he understood that at that time, but who was also a human being made in God's image.

So God said, "Okay, sleep boy," and he slept, it says, and made Eve from Adam's flesh and bones to make it crystal clear to men. You know, we men are sometimes pretty dense. But He made Adam go through all of this so that he would come to the understanding that she was like him because she came from him, was made of the same stuff as him, from his own rib. But she was an individual too. He wanted, that is, God, wanted Adam to understand that she was his equal, just like him. But she was an individual, she could make her own decisions.

And when Adam awakes and God shows her to him, Adam's word confirms that he understood this. "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man." We have here, in the Anglo Saxon come down to us into modern English, woman, man with a womb. Womb-man. That is what that word means if you take it all the way back. In Hebrew, it is even maybe more obvious what he says here. She shall be called isha. That is the Hebrew word for a woman, isha, because she was taken out of ish. It is very similar. Man, womb-man, ish, isha. He understood that they were alike. They were both human beings, but she was different. So they were separate. They were different from the animals. A cut far above them, far above animals. Because, as we saw back in Genesis 1:26, God made us in His image to have dominion over all those animals. But God made it clear that she, Eve, his mate, was no less than he.

Then Moses makes a comment here in verse 24 that the institution of marriage joins or binds them as one flesh. So they come together as man and wife and they form a distinct unit. They are now one; where they were two now they are one. They are now more complete and whole than they were when they were single, when they were separate. Because now married, one flesh together, they have both masculine and feminine traits to aid them. Now they are fully equipped to face the world as their own unit. They complement each other, complement, not compliment, although more of the latter should be done probably. But each brings something different to the marriage that aids in filling out what the other lacks. At least that is the principle. There are a lot of cases where this does not happen. They are either so much alike or so different that they have troubles. But the principle is that a man's traits and a woman's traits, combined in a marriage, makes them stronger, makes them more able to do what they need to do in surviving this world, and growing.

This does not mean, as we have said before, that if you are single that you do not have a chance. It just perhaps makes things a little bit harder because we have seen this in like, single mothers, where many of them have difficulty being harder, like a father would, because they are women and they do not necessarily like to treat their children that way. You know, it is a little bit more difficult. So they have to do both roles and that makes rearing their children that much harder. But even so, that is why God recommends marriage and forbids unmarried sex. That is one of the factors. So just to throw that out there.

Now, from all this (I know we have gone a long way around to come to this point), but it is commonly assumed that God divided His traits between males and females as both are human, both are in His image, both got a collection of His traits. Now, there is some truth to this, but we should not take it too far. We should not be very specific, we should just take it as a generality. So maybe this is the way we can explain it: Due to the way He made us, from creation men have a proclivity for God's what we would call harder virtues, while women tend toward the softer ones. I am being a little squishy on this because I do not want us to say, "Well, I'm not like that" and just dismiss everything. We need to understand that this is a general tendency.

However, there are frequent exceptions to the rule. Have you ever read the story of Deborah and Barak? Because sometimes we do not even remember Barak because she was the one that everybody wanted to follow. She was the one that led the army. You know, Barak was out there and he did what he had to do. But she was the judge. On the other hand, have you ever heard of the prophet Jeremiah? You know what his nickname is? The weeping prophet. He was always seeing how bad everything was and he would weep to God and say, when is this going to be over? When are You going to intervene? But that does not mean he was feminine. He just could express that emotion easily, it was part of his nature.

Let us go to Ephesians 5. I know you are thinking, Oh, this is the marriage chapter, and it is.

Ephesians 5:22-33 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body. Therefore, just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that He might present it to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish.

So husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies; he who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as the Lord does the church. For we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones. [That should make you think a little bit. We just read about that in Genesis 2.] For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. [We just read that one in Genesis 2 as well.] This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Nevertheless let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

This passage of Scripture has gotten beaten up a lot over the past 50 years. Feminists hate this section of Scripture because it tells them to submit.

What is Paul doing here? He is giving advice to married people here, obviously. And it tracks with this idea that men and women generally have difficulty with certain virtues. So he takes each one and says, I want you to work on this women, submit yourself to your husband just as the church submits to Christ. And men, you better love your wives just as Christ loves His church because we are learning in this arena of marriage how to be like Christ, how to be one with Him. And the marriage situation is a laboratory for character building.

And so he says women, you work on this; men, you work on this.

I tell every couple that comes to me for marriage counseling that Paul instructs husbands and wives here to work on the virtue that they find hardest to do. Get that? Paul tells them: women, you are probably weak in submission. Men, you are definitely weak in love. So men generally find it difficult to love. That is agapeo here—godly love. Men generally find it difficult to love their wives. You may find that surprising but it is true. Men have no trouble with romantic or sexual love normally. It is the agapeo, the agape love that they have trouble with. Men often consider it a soft virtue to love their wives. They want to go play ball or take down a tree or something rather than love their wives.

But the virtue that Paul tells them to work on is the one that describes God Himself (I John 4:8, 16). John says very clearly that "God is love" and we need to work on love—all of us. But in the marriage situation here, Paul says, Hey, guys, you really need to work on showing agape to your wife. So men would rather do something heroic and bold or even just work all the time and they feel like they are fulfilling their role. "I've gotta make money. I've got to bring home the bacon." Well, bring home the side of beef and or is it beef bacon? I guess we can do that. And they feel like just doing that is all they need to do. They need to make sure their wives are in shoes and dresses and whatnot, and their kids are taken care of, and they feel like they have done their bit.

But that is not true. That is not true at all. They need to learn how to express love or godly outgoing concern, as Mr. Armstrong used to describe it, toward their wives, something more than just providing for them. And if we would go to I Peter 3:7, he defines it a bit more. He says that showing love to their wives is being understanding and showing them honor as the weaker vessel, the weaker of the two. He means generally physically.

Now, keep these things in mind as we go on here because it is important to understand. Men need to treat their wives better. They need, as my dad used to say, How would you describe most men in terms of a drinking vessel? Well, I always thought, well, okay, a clay mug or even a stein that has been used a lot and it has got dents in it, but it has a lot of character. You know, it has been through it. It can hold a lot. Well, what is the woman then, if men are a stein or some sort of ugly mug—and men generally have ugly mugs.

But what is the corresponding feminine vessel? Glass. My dad used to say she is that piece of crystal that you put up in your cabinet with the light shining on it because it is the most delicate thing and you only reserve it for special occasions. Well, you would not do that with your wife. But the idea is it is something you put in a safe place and honor, and understand that if you treat it roughly, it will break.

And so that made to be man and woman opens up all kinds of possibilities about how men are supposed to love their wives. They are to treat them as the most precious thing. Gently, always concerned, always looking out for them and giving them what they need, and being the first one there standing before her in times of trouble. Men often absent themselves from the house, from the wife, when they are out doing the things that they do to provide for her. And so they think they are doing what they should be doing when actually she may need something more personal from the man, from her husband.

This has a lot to do with emotional things that she has, that she goes through that he does not. He is oblivious to most things other than sharp things like axes and saws and stuff like that or whatever he does as a man that he is interested in, you know, hot rods, that sort of thing. A lot of the things that men are interested are out, they are away. I mean, do you know men that are really interested in clearing off the table and washing the dishes and being in the house and doing all kinds of things with their lives? Well, if not, then you get the point. I know I am exaggerating a lot of these things, but it is to make the point that men need to work on being emotionally there with their wives, spiritually there with their wives, helping their wives, because as the weaker vessel, they tire out sooner than we do, and on and on it goes; that men need to be there to help. They are a helper too, not just the woman helping the man. The man is supposed to reciprocate and help the woman, and this is done in love.

Enough about that. Let us go to the other side.

Women generally find it difficult to submit or to respect their husbands. Now again, if we go to I Peter 3:1-6, Peter says the same thing. That is the section where it says, let us look at Sarah. She called her husband lord. She is an example of this as one of the faithful women. She was willing to submit to him, to her husband Abraham.

Now, you may not have thought that submission was a hard or masculine virtue, but it is, especially intentional submission. This is not the case where the conquering horde came through and made you a slave and you have to submit. That is just absolute subjection. I am talking about where you make up your mind that you are going to call this person sir or lord. But the idea is there that the person is the leader; God made men as the leaders of their family and there is a certain amount of submission that must be done and it has to be intentional. It has to be given. If it is taken, then that is wrong. That is, "You will obey me, woman!" That is not good. But if the woman gives it in faith, then that is what she needs to do because that is what God calls for.

But you know how I know that this is a hard virtue? Because men do it automatically. Now, some of you are bosses, but many of you have bosses and you intentionally submit to your bosses because that is the way it is. Men go into the army. They come in as a private, they submit to their sergeant, they submit to their lieutenant, they submit to their captain, they submit to the major, they submit to the colonel. You know, go all the way up. Men are made to form into hierarchical tiers and submit to the tier above them. We do it all the time. Your little sons, they go out and play ball, they listen to their coach, they know he is in charge. And usually there is no problem. Men tend to rank themselves that way.

Women though, do not. It is like the difference between dogs and cats. That is probably a bad analogy. But men seem to automatically conform to that kind of hierarchy. But women have a harder time with this, generally, because women have something in their nature where they want to steer the boat. It is part of their nature.

Let us go to back to Genesis and I will show you where Paul and Peter got all this. This is in Genesis 3. It is in what I call the first prophecy. First, God made the prophecy about the Serpent and then He picks on the woman and then the man. We are going to go through both.

Genesis 3:16-19 To the woman He said: "I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception; in pain you shall bring forth children; your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you." Then to Adam he said: "Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, 'You shall not eat of it': Cursed is the ground for your sake; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for dust you are, and to dust you shall return."

This is where these masculine and feminine virtues really got messed up. The reason? Hint: not because of God. You know, calling it the first prophecy is kind of a misnomer because God is prophesying but He is saying, "Look, these are the consequences of what you two just did. I'm sorry, but this is how it's going to be. Eve, you and all your daughters are going to have pain in childbirth." (And this other thing which we will get to.) And He said, "Adam, you and all your sons down through history are going to work and work and work and work and work and you're going to squeeze your sustenance out of the ground and then you're going to hand it off and die."

I mean, I am being dramatic, but that is basically what He said here. Women, you are going to have trouble. Your whole world is going to be your children. They will bring you pain coming out and they will bring you pain all the way through their lives. And this other thing. And men, you are going to find yourself working hard among all the bad things that man has brought upon this world. And then once you are totally dried out and have no strength, you are going to die. As I put it before, you will be there in the fields, hoeing, planting, whatever, and you will die between the corn stalks. I mean, it is rather serious, rather, almost morbid. But this is a result of sin. Sin brings forth agony and destruction and death. It is inevitable.

And God just told them, Look, I am sorry, but this is how it is going to be because you have brought sin into the world and you have not subjected yourself or submitted yourself to My way. So have fun! Yeah, this is your life.

But let us understand this. This is where Peter and Paul got their understanding of why men need to love their wives and why women need to submit themselves to their husbands. What did Eve do? She just went full ahead and spoke for both of them. Hey, apple, great, wonderful. Hey, Adam, try this. And he just did whatever she said. She took the reins, right? Adam, he did nothing, he just did whatever she said. And he was the one that sinned. She was deceived, he was not.

That is the way it happened. And so, if Adam had really shown any love for his wife, he would have said no, but he did not. He abdicated. That was not loving, that was just giving in, surrendering. And so he sinned.

So Peter and Paul are telling us that this is the way men and women and their relationship were destined from the beginning—because of sin. And because we are all human, we all react the same ways without God's Spirit guiding us to do what is right. And this is because God made us masculine. God made us feminine. He gave us these dominant traits, one way or the other, and they always go in one direction under sin. Some worse, some a little better. But this is the course of mankind without God's Spirit.

So what does He do here? In verse 16 God foretells the battle of the sexes. That is in that section we have not talked about yet. God predicts, and I want to emphasize this, God predicts that generally the wife will vie with her husband for control. Now, it is hidden in the Hebrew because it is kind of badly translated here. But the word "desire," "your desire shall be for your husband," it sometimes means a sexual desire. But it is pretty clear here that it does not mean the sexual desire. The other way it is used is desire for control, desire to overcome, the desire to prevail. It is almost militant in the way that it is used elsewhere. So He says here that in this second part of His prophecy to the woman, that most women are going to have a desire to wrest the wheel away from the man in the marriage and control the family.

But then there is that last line: "and he shall rule over you." He said, you are going to fight, you are going to fight for control. Even if you have a happy marriage, there are going to be times when the woman wants to make the decisions, and to say, this is right and this is what we are going to do now. This is over against God saying that the man is the head of the family. And so there is going to be conflict here. And God says, Sorry ladies. You may want to have control but you are the weaker vessel and in a world of men, a world without My Spirit, he is going to dominate you just by being stronger. He will rule over you.

And how has the world been? Up until the last 100 years when the equal rights started coming in with the suffragettes and all that, men have virtually owned their wives. They have dominated them. They have had freedom to abuse them. A lot of societies down through the ages, the men can just say, I'm divorcing you, bye. And he ruled over her. That is how it has been. It has only been recently that women have had some measure of equality. And this has come to pass billions of times down through the centuries. God was right. You want to control but the man is stronger and so you do not control. But it will be there. It will be that feeling in one's breast that you must wrench control. And you want to do it but it is a lost cause.

That is what God is saying. Your husband is stronger than you. It has been brutal at times and it has not been fair, it has not been good. But that is culture without God's Spirit. That is how it works.

Then we get to the man. God then prophesized that generally husbands will be so busy working to make a living under harsh conditions that he will often ignore his wife and her needs. We kind of went over that earlier. Because all his energies are focused on work—his work, his responsibilities—and that is what he does all his life and he dies a worn out husk. Because he has been working all his life he has not had those softer virtues to ameliorate all the pressures of life.

So Paul and Peter, they come back and they see this; this is what God said at the beginning. So they say in their instruction to married couples: women, you have to cede your desire for control and learn to voluntarily submit to him as the head of the family. And men, you must learn to pay attention to the needs of your wife and to show them godly love through outgoing concern. Not just providing for them on a physical level, but providing everything that they need and making their submission to you worth it.

Another way to put it, if a bit crudely, is that women must learn to be more like men and men need to learn to be more like women. Like I said, it is crude but that is the thing; men need to engage in and learn the softer virtues so that they can use them on their wives, on their children, on other people. And women need to be strong and faithful and enduring and a lot of these other harder virtues so that they can make things work better. And so man, woman, come together as a married couple, and now we have a 24/7/365 example of the other side that we need to learn how to be. And God says, commence, learn, start, grow, develop, become complete.

Let us go to the book of Mark. Here is a single man who had all the virtues. I am talking of course about Jesus Christ. We are going to go through the book of Mark very quickly, just hitting various passages to show that Jesus is our example of how to be a complete human; not just a complete man, not just a complete woman, but how to be a complete human. Because He was the only one who did it right. He had both. He was God in the flesh. He did not have the virtues split up, if you will, between male and female. He had everything, He had all of God's Spirit from the beginning. Let us start in chapter 1, verse 21. Notice how Mark tends to tell Jesus' emotional or spiritual approach rather than just what He did.

Mark 1:21-25 They went into Capernaum, and immediately on the Sabbath He entered the synagogue and taught. And they were astonished at His teaching, for He taught as one having authority, and not as the scribes. [That is generally something that we say about men, that he taught it with authority, right?] Now there was a man in their synagogue with an unclean spirit. And he cried out, saying, "Let us alone! What have we to do with you, Jesus of Nazareth? Do you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God!" But Jesus rebuked him, saying, "Be quiet, and come out of him!" [Rebuke. That is another thing that in a public situation we tend to think of as something men would do and not necessarily a woman.] And when the unclean spirit had convulsed him and cried out with a loud voice, he came out of him. Then they were all amazed so that they questioned among themselves, "What is this? What new doctrine is this? For with authority He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey Him."

Mark 1:40-41 Then a leper came to Him, imploring Him, kneeling down to Him and saying to Him, "If You are willing, You could make me clean." And Jesus, moved with compassion, put out His hand and touched him, and said to him, "I am willing; be cleansed."

Now, here is compassion. Most men are not considered necessarily compassionate. That is what we consider women to be. Women tend to be more compassionate than men.

Let us go to chapter 3, verse 1.

Mark 3:1-5 He entered the synagogue again, and a man was there who had a withered hand. And they watched Him closely, whether He would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse Him [that is the Pharisees]. Then He said to the man who had the withered hand, "Step forward." And He said to them, "Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?" But they kept silent. So when He had looked around at them with anger, being grieved by the hardness of their hearts, He said to the man, "Stretch out your hand." And he stretched it out, and his hand was restored as whole as the other.

So you have anger and you also have grief. He showed both. What we often think of as a male virtue of anger, but on the other hand, He was grieved for the sin that was there and also for what the man had gone through having that withered hand.

Mark 3:11-12 And the unclean spirits, whenever they saw Him, fell down before Him and cried out, saying, "You are the Son of God." But He sternly warned them that they should not make Him known.

Sternness, usually a male thing. Women can be stern too. But mostly we think of that as something men are.

Mark 6:33-37 But the multitude saw them departing [that is, the disciples and Jesus], and many knew Him and ran there on foot from all the cities. They arrived before them and came together to Him. And Jesus, when He came out, saw a great multitude and was moved with compassion for them, because they were like sheep not having a shepherd. So He began to teach them many things. When the day was now far spent, His disciples came to Him and said, "This is a deserted place, and already the hour is late. Send them away, that they may go into the surrounding country and villages and buy themselves bread, for they have nothing to eat." But He answered and said to them, "You give them something to eat." And they said to Him, "Shall we go and buy 200 denarii worth of bread and give them something to eat?"

And then of course, the story goes on and He provides them something to eat. So again, we see another mix of these virtues here.

Mark 8:1-3 In those days, the multitude being very great and having nothing to eat, Jesus called His disciples to Him and said to them, "I have compassion on the multitude, because they have now been with Me three days and have nothing to eat. And if I send them away hungry to their own houses, they will faint on the way; for some of them have come from afar."

Again, He is showing what we think of as a kind of a woman's job, to provide or to make the food, as it were. And what happens in most households? The men bring it in, but it is the women who prepare the table for the family.

Mark 10:13-15 And they brought young children to Him, that He might touch them; but the disciples rebuked those who brought them. And when Jesus saw it, He was greatly displeased and said to them, "Let the little children come to Me, and do not forbid them; for of such is the kingdom of God."

Mark 10:16 And He took them up in His arms, put His hands on them, and blessed them.

So He shows again; He was sharp in His rebuke of His disciples and very warm and loving and compassionate towards the children.

I do not know if we have to go much farther. I think you are getting the point that I am trying to say here. But Jesus is showing how well mixed these virtues were in Himself as a man. He was not just a man, a masculine man. He was also a man who could show very kind, what we would consider more feminine virtues, but He was complete and whole. And this is something that Mark does really well,

John also does this time or two. Of course, he is the one that says that Jesus wept. He is the one that washed the feet of His disciples, but he also records that Jesus not only did one cleansing, which the other synoptic authors did: the one near His death. But He also did an earlier one. So twice He went into the Temple with a whip of cords and got the money changers out. And He had many bold encounters with the Pharisees where they were ready to just take His head off and they tried to push Him over a hill or stone Him and do all these other things, but He boldly stood up to them and told them you are wrong. Woe to you! This is going to happen to you.

So we can conclude that Jesus was a complete man, with both hard and soft virtues, whatever was required for the circumstances. Sometimes both were needed in the same circumstance. And He used them righteously every time. He never sinned, He always knew what to do, what the best thing to do at the time was. So as a man, He was not afraid to show grief, or compassion, or pity, or courage, or zeal, or sternness, or love, or forbearance, or mercy, or humility, or kindness, or joy. That is just the way He was. He simply did what was right.

And it did not matter to Him whether He was manly in doing it. He did not care. He was going to show the proper emotion and the proper action that was necessary for the circumstance. I do not think He saw them as manly virtues or as feminine virtues. I think He saw them as divine virtues. They were from God and they needed to be employed. And so He did. That is all that matters.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is our divine Example. You need to be more like Him, expressing the virtue that is necessary for the situation.

Let us, in our remaining time, go to Galatians 5, verses 22 and 23, which you may know just from those verses, are the fruit of the Spirit.

Galatians 5:22-23 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control. Against such there is no law.

They are absolutely good. There is no law telling you cannot do these things, you cannot express these things.

These are all divine attributes, traits of God, expressions of God's nature that we can produce even in our fleshly state with the help of His Spirit working in us. I could have also gone to the Beatitudes in Matthew 5. We could have done the same thing there because those attitudes that Jesus shows us as He starts the Sermon on the Mount are divine things. They are neither male nor female. They are godly. Through the Spirit, the Beatitudes are produced by faithful growth in knowledge and understanding and practice. We have got to practice God's way of life over time. These are not things that we are just going to have. That is not the way it works. These have to be developed.

So going through these lists, this one here specifically with the fruit of the Spirit, which are hard virtues and which are soft? Now, if we would go through this, taking each one, hard, soft, hard, soft, whatever, most of us would say they are all soft. But maybe not longsuffering, although I have seen a lot of women suffer long over the years. But definitely self-control, right? That is a hard virtue. That is something that you really need a lot of strength to do. Maybe I would include meekness as well. Once you really figure out what meekness is, or gentleness as it translated here, that is a really stern virtue where you weather everything that comes at you and you still are strong afterwards.

But this is really a trick question. You probably figured that out. My last two sermons have covered building on the rock and making sure we are sweeping away the sand that distracts us from living God's way of life to its full. But I have an analogy, if you will, that I would like to add to this from the fruit of the Spirit.

I like to think of the fruit of the Spirit like steel piles driven straight down to bedrock. You know, those great steel beams that are driven into the earth. You go on a building site and you see the big machines pounding the steel down through the soil. Well, that is the fruit of the Spirit. Those piles, those steel piles going all the way down to bedrock, and they connect us to the foundation, to the rock, to Christ. You can look at it another way. They come from Him. But the fruit of the Spirit are the result of our developing those things and making sure that we are firmly embedded in the Rock, if you will.

But you know what? After the building is finished, you are looking at this nice big office tower or something that has been built, you do not see the pile. They are invisible. They have actually been covered up by the building's superstructure and all you see is the pleasant exterior finishes of the building. In this way, if we look at it this way, the fruit of the Spirit, the pile or the pilings, if you like that term better, are hard and soft. Hard in their inner core, but soft in their exterior expressions as they are used in our external interactions with one another.

Now, this belies our superficial descriptions of them as hard or soft; where actually they are not masculine or feminine because in most cases to express them in truth as God does, that is, I am saying, if doing them in truth as God does, requires the inner strength of faith and commitment to God and the outward gentleness in how we approach others with them.

So perhaps this is something we can consider as we evaluate ourselves as per II Corinthians 13:5 and coming up to the Passover. Are we becoming complete in our growth into the image of Christ? Or are we relying just on those virtues that come easy to us as men or as women? We have natural strength. Are we just building on our natural strength or are we trying to actually build those areas in which we are weak? And if we do, then we become a more complete and Christ-like person.

Are we men giving due consideration and growing in the softer virtues? Are the women among us growing in the harder virtues? Are we becoming more like Christ in every way or just in the ways that appeal to us?

Let us finish in James 1. I want the principle here more than the specifics.

James 1:2-3 My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials [that is, the trials that happen throughout our lives], knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience.

This is probably properly endurance, not just patience. Because remember, it is those who endure to the end, right, that will be saved. We have to through the trials of our lives, endure to the end, endure so that we can, by the end of our lives, have built up a complete list of virtues like Christ.

James 1:4 But let patience [or endurance] have its perfect work, that you may be perfect [or mature] and complete, lacking nothing.

That is the goal as we march toward the Kingdom of God. Does not Jesus say, be you perfect like the Father in heaven is perfect? The goal is to be as complete and as perfect, as spiritually mature as possible. And it is going to take patience (or endurance) through many experiences and trials to mature and complete us into the image of Christ.

So if I can give you any advice, any "rah rah, let's go!" at the end of the sermon, just keep moving forward. Keep improving, keep looking for areas of weakness and improve them. And we will find that with endurance, we will one day be spiritually complete.

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