What a Man, What A Mighty Good Man
Mark 5:1-19
Today is father’s day; a day that we set aside to honor those men who played a very important role in our lives. But on Father’s Day I want to ask you a question, who in their right mind would want to be a man? If you were to look at the way we as a society portrays men who would want to be one. For example if we were to watch one night of TV what do you think we could learn about men?
They are not very smart, always being out smarted by women, children, or dogs.
They are not very loyal; they are always looking for a better job, car, wife, or family.
They are not very motivated, they would love to spend their days sitting on the couch drinking and eating Cheetos.
And the best they can do is be the bumbling idiot in the office or work as a shoe salesman.
You know if that’s our idea of what being a man is about you can have it. Because I want to be the type of man that I remember growing up.
John Wayne or Clint Eastwood riding into town and taking on 100 bad guys and winning with their fists and a good piece of Hickory.
One of the three musketeers who would loose their very life to save the honor of a lady.
To me that’s manhood, and if we think we can remember some great men. Remember right after September 11th as the firemen and policemen, and paramedics made there way into the rubble and risked their lives for the lives of others.
Or do you remember the stories about men like Todd Beamer who fought his way to the cockpit of an airplane to overtake some terrorist and save the White House from being destroyed by crashing the plane he was on into a Pennsylvania field. Do you know any men who have left their homes and families to go off and fight for the freedom of a country that isn’t very grateful?
Those are real men, but honestly those types of men are in short supply, and I think that it’s my fault and yours. You see in the 60’s we were told that a woman could do anything that a man could do, and we believed it. Then we were told that women could do it better, and we accepted it.
Now I believe that women are powerful and they can do anything that they set there mind to but I also believe that we have forgotten the way that we were made. You see God made men to act like men and women to act like women. It is not anything that we can teach. It is how God made us. With a 16 month old and a 4 year old boys in the house I am learning that no one has to teach them how to act like boys they just do and if you try to go against their nature you frustrate them.
We have some friends who wanted to train there son to be polite, and kind, and quiet, and act against his nature, so they gave him little girl toys as well as little boy toys so he could be well rounded. You know he has the kitchen set right next to the tool set in his room.
I remember one day seeing them and listening to their frustration as they explained how there son would not quit taking the Barbie doll they gave him, bending it over at the waste holding the legs in his hands and shooting it like a gun. That’s not the way to you play with a Barbie doll, they said and I thought that’s the way you play with it if you are a boy.
Trafton acts like a little man. He is not interested in tea parties or staying clean he wants to bite his cheese sandwiches into guns and shoot his mom or me. Rylan makes noises like Vroom, and beep, beep and he thinks it’s funny to burp because that’s how boys act. I didn’t teach them how to do those things they just know.
But some boys are confused because as women took the mans role in the home there was nothing left for the man to do so he got bored and left. They left a powerful wife at home to raise the kids. You see we told them that they were not needed, a woman could perform both roles, so the dad in the house was useless and in homes across America dad’s left. Left the house, Left the family hurting, and left the family confused.
Now it’s 2005 and we have a generation of young men who have no vision. They think real men play football or wrestle on TV, and get paid millions of dollars to play a game. They see men, like presidents or basketball players cheating on their wives and we have told them well that’s just how a man acts.
Church I am here to tell you today that’s not a man. And that’s surely not a man of God.
Today our text comes from the book of Mark Chapter 5:1-19 let’s read this story and see what we can learn about being a man on this Fathers Day.
Read Passage
Now there is a lot going on in this passage. We can look at the fact that the demons were afraid of the very presence of Christ, or the fact that they had to ask His permission to go into the pigs. We can look at the fact that the man had not only one struggle or demon but many. But I don’t think that those things, even though they are true, are what we need to talk about on Father’s Day. The one thing I want you to notice today, the whole reason that this story is put in your Bible and mine is because this one man mattered. He was valuable.
First I want you to notice that he was valuable to his community.
Look again at verses 3-4 “This man lived in the burial caves. No person could tie him. Even chains could not keep this man tied. Many times people had used chains to tie the man’s hands and feet. But the man broke the chains on his hands and feet. No person was strong enough to control him.”
This is probably the town where this man grew up. These were the people that he went to school with, that he worked in the fields or the shops with, the people that he counted on to survive and the people who counted on him to survive. Now these same people had tried to tie him up according to verse 5 to keep him from hurting himself.
I wonder how they came to the decision that it was finally time to do something? And how did they decide that tying him up was the best thing?
You see in our communities today if someone is making trouble we run them off and then forget about them. If you have a neighbor who is causing you trouble do you go the extra mile or do you just pray that a dump truck will hit them?
But this man had to be important to his community because they didn’t kill him. They didn’t even send him off Luke tells us that it was the demons that drove him off into the wilderness, and the tombs. I am sure that the community wanted him back because he was valuable to them. He helped with the planting, he helped with the harvest, and he helped with the protection of the village. He was a vital part of the community because the community was valuable to him and he was valuable to the community.
Men we must live in such a way that we also show the value we have to our community. As men of God it is our responsibility to bring hope and grace to the community where we live. We have hope because Christ died for our sins. We know that when we die we are going to get to live in heaven with Him, forever. That is our hope. We know that all of our pain, and sorrow, and aches are just temporary but God is eternal.
Next I want you to notice that He was valuable to his family.
That’s one thing that has not changed in the past 2000 years. We might be confused about men’s roles and women’s roles. We might think that we don’t need a dad in the house or a mom in the house. We might think that if I don’t like my family anymore that divorce is the best answer. But I want you to see today that a Christian family is one that has a mom and a dad.
We all know how valuable a mom is to the family. She is the comforter. She is the one who makes things right and bearable. She is the one everyone says hi to when they get on T.V. But what about Dad? How is he valuable to the family?
I believe that it is the dad’s responsibility to show God to His family. Researchers from Switzerland examined whether parents’ religious habits were passed to their children. They studied different variables, but one critical factor towered above the rest: the practices of the father determine whether children grow up attending church or not. And here’s the shocker: the habits of the mother have almost no influence over their kids’ future devotion.
Consider these findings:
When Mom is a regular churchgoer but Dad attends infrequently, just 3 percent of their kids go on to become regular churchgoers.
When Mom is regular but Dad never attends, just 2 percent become regular attenders.
Now, let’s flip the chart. What if Dad is faithful?
When both Mom and Dad attend church regularly, 33 percent of kids grow up to attend regularly.
When Dad is regular but Mom only goes once in a while, the figure jumps to 38 percent.
Here’s the real bombshell: when Dad is faithful but Mom never attends, 44 percent of the kids end up as regular church attenders!
This is not new information. God has said this all along, let’s look at a few verses together to back this up.
Isaiah 38:19 says “fathers tell their children about your (God’s) faithfulness.”
Dad we have a responsibility to our Children to teach them about the faithfulness of God. It is our job to lead our children into a relationship with God.
My dad used to tell me that the only way I could know about God, trust God, Love God, and Obey God was if I could learn how to have that relationship with him. At 7 when he first told me that I thought he was a little nuts. But 23 years later I understand that my relationship with my dad can tell you a lot about my relationship with God.
Proverbs 3:12 says “For the LORD corrects those he loves, just as a father corrects a child in whom he delights.”
We have a responsibility to correct our Children. I don’t know about you but the 8 words I hated to hear the most, 8 words that would make me weak in the knees growing up were “You, just wait until your dad gets home.” It wasn’t that my mom wouldn’t correct me. She would, but there is something about getting corrected by your dad. Even now in my house Trista can correct, discipline, spank the boys and they act like it’s no big deal but If I tell them no it drives them to tears. Why do you think that is?
Is it because I am big and scary? Is it because I can spank harder that Trista? Or is it because God has said that it’s a Fathers job and we know from a very early age about a dad’s correction?
Finally in Ephesians 5:25 we read “Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave his life for it.”
Real quick and to the point A Man’s responsibility to his wife is to love her like Christ loved the Church. Well how much did Christ love the Church? He loved the church enough to die for our right to do the very thing that he hates the most…Sin.
Christ died so that when we sin He has already paid the cost.
So men how much should we love our wives? Think real hard about the one thing she does that makes you mad. That one thing that drives you nuts. I am not going to ask you what it is but I want you to think about it. Now answer this question, are you willing to die so that she can do it? If not you do not love your wife the way you should.
Men we have value in our families only when we are doing our job. And sadly there a too many men who have walked out on their job because they believe that they have lost their value. And our families, community, and churches are suffering because of it.
Look in our text at the last thing Christ tells this man. It is found in verse 19
“Jesus said, “Go home to your family and friends. Tell them about all the things the Lord did for you. Tell them that the Lord was good to you.”
And men that’s still our job today.
Lastly I want you to see that He was valuable to Jesus
This man needed Jesus. The community could not save him, His family could not save him, the doctor could not save him, and the government could not save him. Only Jesus could give him what he truly needed. And because he had value to Christ Jesus gave him what he needed.
He needed to get rid of the demons that lived in his soul and Christ took them away.
He needed to fill the void in his family a family that was without a dad, and Christ made that possible.
He needed to take his rightful place in his community, to make his community a better place, and he could because Jesus had restored his Hope.
Church Jesus did for this man the same thing that he does for us. He finds us where we are, naked, crazy, filthy, and drowning in our sins and rescues us.
It like the family that was down fishing at the pier one day, The dad was busy watching the rods and bobbers while his two sons, a 12-year old and a 3-year old were down playing along the dock. The 12 year old was supposed to be watching his little brother, but he got distracted. The 3 year old, named Billy, thought that would be a good time to see if he could reach the bottom of the water and stretched his little arm down into the water and then just a little further. He lost his balance and fell into the water, which was about 5 or 6 ft deep.
The splash alerted the 12-yr old who screamed for help and Dad came running from the end of the pier, jumped into the water, swam down, but unable to see anything, came up for air. Sick with panic, he went right back down into this murky water, and began to feel everywhere around the bottom. He couldn’t feel anything and had to come back up for air.
On his way up, he felt little Billy’s arms locked in a death grip on one of the posts of the dock, about 4 ft under water. Prying the boy’s fingers loose, they broke the surface of the water and filled their lungs with air.
After 5 minutes of holding when the tears stopped, and nerves had calmed down a little bit, the dad asked his son, “What on earth were you doing down there hanging onto the post so far under the water? And little Billy answer in a 3 year olds matter of fact way, he said, "I was just waiting for you dad. Just waiting for you."
Church, today we celebrate that 2000 yrs ago, the God of the universe left the glory and the splendor of heaven, a place where there was no pain and no sickness, no accidents, no hurt, and no death.
And he plunged into this dark, gloomy world on a rescue mission, a rescue mission for all of us who are drowning, a rescue mission for all of us who are barely hanging on, a rescue mission for all of us who are lost in the darkness.
Today are you a real man? Are you a real woman? A man or woman that would make God proud, are you valuable to your community, to your family?
Today God can prove how valuable you are to him. Paul writes in Romans that we have all sinned, everyone of us is like the crazy naked man living in the tombs but Jesus thinks that we are so valuable He died so that we can have hope.
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