 Well, we're back after lunch and we've got something to wake you up. Brian Sauvay. Sauvay? Brian Sauvay is a friend of mine, but I can never say his name. We just spent some time together a month ago at another conference. One reason I like Brian is that Brian is probably one of the more hated pastors on Twitter than even me. He gets more hate than I do these days, which is nice. And you can go Google Dear Brian. This is the Brian of the Dear Brian fame. It was a funny tweet that went viral. It was a very basic thing. So he's made a name for himself by just speaking truth plainly. He's a pastor of a church in Utah. It's the refuge church and he's a godly man. And I'm glad to have him here as the first time speaker. Please welcome Brian to the stage. Thank you, Michael. Thank you, gentlemen, for having me today and Anthony for letting me be here. You guys are here at the Patriarchy Convention. And in terms of cultural capital, you might as well be at something named the Puppy Torturing Convention and your social image going forward from now on. Because that word, and I've discovered this particularly on Twitter, that word is a word that will get you hated very, very quickly. A mundane historical word that was used for a long, long time to talk about something that is very commonplace in history. Today is a lightning rod for hatred. Our culture hates loaths. We could say abominates patriarchy. And specifically, they hate not just the word but they actually hate men who act like and look like patriarchs. If you are a man who simply embraces your masculinity, likes the thing that men likes, talks like a man, and generally refuses to follow the modern call for men to get in touch with their feminine side or to eat vegan or to vote to be ruled by feminists and boss babes in the home and the city council and everywhere else, then you will be hated in our culture. And you can see this hatred literally everywhere you look in the culture, on every level. You can look at the way that men are portrayed in television and movies. Men are generally presented or routinely presented at least as bumblers like Homer Simpsons or Fred Flintstones. Men always look like goofy sidekicks to powerful women. If you've ever watched a sitcom that was made for Netflix or Amazon Prime in the last 5 or 10 years, there's probably some male character who basically exists to be a goofball. And he exists to be a foil to make the female character starring next to him look powerful, funny, highly intelligent, etc. On a more serious note, you can see this in the courts. I think there's even going to be some talks this weekend talking about some of the legal issues facing men in the courts today. If a woman decides to murder a man's child at the local Planned Parenthood, there is no legal recourse that he can take. Say, that is my child, that's my son, that's my daughter, in your womb, and she can go murder that child. No legal recourse. A man, alternately, can marry a woman. He can provide for her well. He can get a good job, be a good man, be faithful to her, not running around with mistresses, have children with her, provide, pay the bills for 20 years, only to have her cheat on him leave. 70-plus percent of divorces today are initiated by women, as you probably are aware of today. She can take his kids, his house, half his money, forever. For no reason. He can do nothing wrong, and she can do that. And the courts will routinely side with her. I have a friend, actually, at my church, who, long time ago, his wife did something similar to him. He was deployed, actually, as a marine, and she was running around with another man, divorced him. And he had been faithful to her, had children with her, been a good husband to her. And then over the years, she's just made false accusation after false accusation. Recently, she even had him in the courts, took his children away. Police showed up at his house, took his children away for months because she lied about him. And he had no legal recourse. It took months to get his children back. And in the meantime, his children had mandatory therapy with pink-haired feminists who were trying to convince his children to hate him. And even though everything she said was not true, he still had no legal recourse. Before they memory-hold this on the Black Lives Matter website, you could have gone and seen that one of the stated goals of, at least the official organization, was the subversion of the nuclear family, the destruction of the patriarchy. You can think about the typical rhetoric in feminist circles that is perfectly acceptable in our culture. You can talk as poorly as you want about men. You can bash men. You can call them mansplainers, manspreaders, toxic, etc. Everything from how they sit on the subway, how they converse in public. But if you think about it, if you were to reverse those roles and find a man speaking in an analogous way about women generally in public, he would be canceled in a hail of shrieking instantaneously. I mean, it would be moments before there would be websites dedicated to attacking him. I know that there are literally websites with pages that exist just to call me things like, you know, a pedophile or just for saying things like, I think that Christian women should dress modestly as a pastor talking to my Christian followers. In preparing for this talk, I made the terrible mistake of inputting the phrase, well, of visiting etsy.com, which is like a crafty sort of site where you can buy different, I don't know, crafty items, word art, if you're the type of person that wants to hang something in your kitchen that says, like, this house is a house of peace or something like that. You could get one of those there on etsy. And I put in Fight the Patriarchy on the search bar and returned almost 3,000 products. And the first one was a baby onesie that said, what was it? Burn the patriarchy. And it had a skeleton on fire on it. It was a baby onesie. Or one sweater said, this is fall. So this is probably the algorithm. My favorite season is the fall of the patriarchy, which is actually kind of funny. And a man probably wrote that. Can you imagine trying to sell anti-women products on etsy.com today? If you started a store and you put up Fight the Patriarchy down with the school marms, say no to feminism, that sort of thing, I think there would be an official apology from the president of etsy, whoever that is, within a week. I tried. I searched Fight the Patriarchy. I searched all kinds of terms. And it just kept returning the Fight the Patriarchy stuff. The other example, there was a college professor some time ago who would, this was the early 2000s, and he was teaching at a Christian college. He would pull his students in coming class and he would say, OK, class, raise your hand. Let's put together on the whiteboard a list of sins or flaws that are common to men. And I mean, instantly hands are up. Men are arrogant. Men are overbearing. Men are lustful, et cetera. Long list, fairly quickly. And then he would ask, OK, class, what are the sins and flaws common to women? And after about a minute of stunned silence where people were thinking, they would usually come up with a list, something like, well, low self-esteem. And they had a hard time coming up with more than that. So by the end, it was like, what are the problems with men? Well, they're lust buckets. They're big rageaholics. They're huge jerks. They're really arrogant. They have big egos. What's wrong with the ladies? Well, they just don't think highly enough of themselves. And this was not one year. This happened over and over and over again year after year that he ran this sort of little social experiment. In the New Testament of the Bible, which I usually, as a pastor, I teach verse by verse through whole books to the Bible week after week at my church in Utah. And there's a passage in 1 Peter 3 that I'll often go to when we're talking about the household and husbands and wives and how to be a successful husband, how to be a godly wife. And in this passage, the apostle Peter, he points back at an Old Testament matriarch named Sarah, who is husband of an Old Testament patriarch, Abraham. And he commends her, Peter commends her for calling her husband Lord that she looked at him and she said, yes, my Lord, I will submit to you in your leadership and your protection and your care. And so I sometimes encourage the ladies in our church to consider occasionally calling your husband, my Lord, just maybe take it for a spin and see how it happens. And why do you imagine now, because some of the ladies in our church, actually, they do this. You'll hear it at our church sometime like, my Lord, do you want me to save you a seat? And it's kind of like they respect their husbands and we get the joke. You get that it's really out of place culturally. But can you imagine being at Walmart and the record-scratch silence that would follow if a woman from my church were to call out two aisles over, my Lord, would you like the grass-fed ribeye or the New York strip for dinner tonight? It'd be like, what did she just say, my Lord? What is this like, medieval? Our sophisticated modern feminist society despises the idea of patriarchy, of masculinity in a classical sense. And so in my talk today, what I want to do is talk about why that is. Talk about why that is and why it matters that we understand why that is. And so, like Michael said, I'm a reformed, I'm a Presbyterian pastor in Ogden, Utah, a church full of glorious, masculine men, glorious feminine women, approaching 6,000 to 10,000 children on the average Sunday morning by the sound of it. Lots of kids running around, not really. But 100 is not exaggerating. My wife and I have been married for just over 10 years now. We have six kids together, five breathing air, one currently growing in the womb. And we love our life together. God's been very good to us, very kind, and we feel very blessed. At the conference that Michael mentioned a month ago, he had Delano Squires from the blaze speaking as well. And I like something he said. Delano said that he was an aspiring patriarch. And I like that. I stole it. Next time I give this talk, I'm not going to even say that he came up with it. I'm just going to say, I was thinking the other day, I'm an aspiring patriarch. And I think that's what you should be aiming for as a man. You should be an aspiring patriarch and one who aspires to be a good patriarch, one whose household legacy is a well-loved wife, kids whose dad is proud of them, eager to see them succeed in a legacy of faithfulness and fruitfulness at work. Sometime last year, Michael told me, he said, hey, I told Anthony that he should invite you to speak at this, his convention at the 21 summit next year. And I said, well, should I do that? I'm a Christian pastor. I preach. I generally don't do this sort of thing. Should I accept the invite if he does invite me? And he said, well, Anthony has had me out a few times to speak and every time he's told me that I can say whatever I want, that there are no blacklisted subjects and that he fully expects me to sound like a Christian pastor when I talk. I can talk about hell. I can talk about the Lordship of Christ. I can talk about the gospel. I can talk about the Bible. I can quote the Bible. I can say pretty much whatever I want. I can tell them the truth. If you do it, you won't be shackled. You'll be free to speak. And that's why I'm here because I want to tell you the truth and I want to aim to convince you to fling everything in your life into orbit around the truth. And again, I'm a Christian pastor and that means something particular to me. That means I believe that the truth is the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what Jesus says in the New Testament. He says, I am the way, the truth and the life. Everything comes to the Father except through me. I believe the whole Bible. I believe every word of it. I love the Bible. One of my aims in life is to have no problem passages so that you can open the Bible, read a passage and once you do the work of understanding it in its context say, amen, yes, I love that passage. I confess the truth of a nearly 400 year old Protestant and Reformed confession. The Westminster Confession of Faith. I think all porn is gay porn. I think sex should be held in high honor and sanctity of the marriage covenant of one man and one woman for life. I think that pickup artistry is an abomination designed to destroy men and households and that promiscuity is a one-way ticket to hell. I believe that much of what passes for wisdom in the secular realm telling people how to be men or women actually ends up to be high foolishness and rebellion against the holy God. And so I'm not going to hide anything from you. That's what I am. That's what I believe. That's where I'm coming from today and my goal today is to convince you to be a Christian. That's why I'm here. Specifically, to convince you that unless you worship the Father, Son and Spirit by grace and through faith that the only kind of patriarchy you can attain is the LARPing kind. If you've ever seen those guys at the park the live-action role-play dressing up like medieval knights with their foam swords kind of jousting at one another I don't want you to be waving around a foam sword with your patriarchy. I want you to have a real one and I believe that the Christian faith is the only way to have a real sword in your hand and to have a sharp, potent, world-transforming patriarchy. So today that's what we're going to talk about. There's three things that I basically want to accomplish. First, I'm aiming to define our terms to explain what patriarchy even is in the first place. And here you'll see why I believe that any attempt at patriarchy without reference to the cosmic fatherhood of God is ultimately nothing more than live-action role-play. It's just LARPing. Second, I want to tell you why it is that our culture hates patriarchy so much. All of those examples I gave at the beginning why are those true? Why is that how our culture thinks about patriarchy and why it matters that we understand this? Finally, I do hope to give you a deep desire to build and rule a house worth building in the name of Jesus Christ and under his authority for his glory and not your own. So first, what is patriarchy? Before we talk about why they hate it we should probably understand what it is that we're talking about. Maybe you've heard the term thrown around. It's the patriarchy convention. We're talking about patriarchy. We want to become patriarchs. What does that mean? Because a patriarchy is not just a man. A patriarchy is not just a man. Patriarchy is nothing less, I would say, than the societal expression of the cosmic father rule of God. It is the father rule of God in the family and in society or expressed in the family and society as an outflow of that cosmic father rule. And this is why you'll often hear people say, Michael Foster a few years ago, last year here, said that patriarchy is inevitable. And that's true. Patriarchy is inevitable. The more you try to crush it, the more it will just continue to grow. Some kind of patriarchy is inevitable. Whether good or bad, some kind is inevitable. And this is why. It's inevitable not just because of mere biology or sociology, but because it is an echo of the nature of God the Father, the Creator God, reverberating throughout His creation. Some of you, and maybe not you guys here, maybe some of you, maybe some listening later, might object to that definition of patriarchy. Maybe you're not a Christian. You might object to saying that patriarchy must be grounded in the fatherhood of God and in Christian theology. And they might say, well, that's what you're doing. You're making it so that you have to be a Christian to agree with your definition. They would be understanding me. I am claiming that the goodness of and the normativity of patriarchy is an outflow and an implication of the godness of the Christian God. Someone might come along and maybe say, well, we don't need that. We can ground a concept of patriarchal society, patriarchal rule, patriarchy in the family and in the world in general, in maybe the normativity of that and some kind of evolutionary sort of thinking without reference to God the Father. And someone might do that and actually end up saying many similar things to what I would say. They might say, well, I ground my concept of patriarchy in something like evolutionary biology and so we might not agree on the foundations, but we can agree on the wrongness of hating men, the wrong-footedness of attacking patriarchy the way that they do. And I would actually say, yes, we're closer. I'm closer to that guy than, and I think that guy is closer to the truth than the pink-haired feminist in her Ruth Bader Ginsburg tattoo. I think that they're doing better than that pink-haired feminist with her RBG tattoo, but can't really account for why. It really is the case that the person who says 2 plus 2 is 4 is doing better than the feminist studies major who says that 2 plus 2 equals 5 and that it's racist to say that it equals 4, but they're better in a way where their feet are firmly planted in mid-air. They can't account for why they're better. The point I'm trying to make is that without some objective grounding for the goodness of patriarchy, a grounding that transcends mere biology or sociology, you can never escape the trap of subjectivity and therefore the best that you can say about patriarchy is that it's consistent with our animal nature. You can say that. That might be true, it might not be true, but you could defend that statement. Patriarchy is consistent with our animal nature. But someone might easily respond, why is it better to live consistently with our animal nature? Who cares? See, any patriarchy that tries to say that patriarchy is some kind of universal good without reference to the objective mooring of the cosmic father rule of God is not just being incoherent but they're being emotional ultimately. They're trying to conjure a moral ought as in you ought to do this, you ought to agree with me, you ought to live this way, it's wrong to not agree with me, it's wrong to live otherwise. They're trying to conjure that moral ought out of mere fact and out of their feelings. But mere facts don't tell you what anybody must do they simply tell you what is. And so in the end, that person is ultimately trying to enforce their emotional preferences on you and it ends up being kind of effeminate to live that way. If you're trying to establish some kind of patriarchy unattached from the fatherhood of God you can never actually say anything like you should all believe in patriarchy. You can never get a moral ought out of a world that is simply randomly moving stuff out of a world with no lawgiver, no creator, or no father who can look at you and say son this is how the world is and I know because I made it. This is how the world is and I made it that way. For patriarchy to be a good thing rather than just a thing that is mankind actually has to have some kind of tealoss, has to have some kind of purpose. Mankind actually has to have some end for which it exists. There has to be some kind of ideal man. There has to be some kind of ideal good family. There has to be some kind of moral ought somewhere in the creation out there. This end would imply intentionality and intentionality implies creator. You can certainly say I prefer patriarchy. You could say I like patriarchy. You could say I think patriarchy is normal. I think it's a natural phenomena that arose from biological evolution. But none of that would mean that the pain-cared feminist is wrong at the end of the day. Because there is no wrong if I grant your premises. There is no wrong because there is no right. There are only highly advanced primates in their limbic systems. There are only highly advanced primates and their emotions. Godless patriarchy means that the moment you try to tell anyone that they too ought to believe in patriarchy all you're doing is emoting your way around the world and trying to make other people obey your arbitrary preferences. They might simply respond well your preferences be damned. I want to cut off my breasts and be a woman. Why do I have to do what you think I have to do? Why do I have to do what you think is good? And what can you say back? Well Darwin says that you can't do that. You can't really say that. Darwin can't give you objective moral truth. You can't say back. But don't you know that males take the dominant role in a troop of apes? Who cares? So what? Why do I have to do what apes do? Is my biology destiny? Many of you may not be Christians and you might see that patriarchy nonetheless that father rule is good and natural and historically commonplace. But if you try to explain it without reference or especially if you try to not just explain it but say that it is a moral good that other people ought to aim for you end up engaging in an impossible project. You end up fighting reality itself. The problem with people trying to fight against the normativity and goodness of patriarchy isn't about evolutionary biology though we are created for the ends for which we're created our bodies are tuned for the purposes which God gave us men are men and that is good and he made men to be men just like the creator of a hammer made a hammer with a hard steel tip why? So that it could drive nails in. Men are made the way they are so that they can do what God made them to do. But if you try to account for that without reference to God the Father you're engaging in an impossible project because you are fighting against reality. Fundamentally the reason that patriarchy is the normative and that we all ought to aim for and love it and uphold it and seek to be good patriarchs is because we live in a cosmos created by the Father. And at the heart of reality if you were to get right there to the center if you were to get beyond all the philosophers and all of the theologians and all of the scientists and you were to find right there to the center the beating heart of reality do you know what you would find? a father you would find a divine father there in the middle that is actually why they hate it so much it's why our culture hates patriarchy so much they hate patriarchy with this vehemence because it tells the truth about what stands at the center of reality a father and they are living at odds with that father they're not at peace with that father they're living lives at war with reality lives at war in incoherent lives at war with the fatherhood of God and so they hate it, they hate patriarchy because they see the face of God the father in it this is one of those principles that once you see it anywhere you kind of see it everywhere if a person hates God he will hate God everywhere he sees God and the Christian scriptures tell us that where should you expect to see God most clearly in all of the creation well you just have to read the very first book in the Bible the book of Genesis and you don't even have to read past the first chapter to know the answer the answer is where are you going to see God most clearly in creation in the face of man in the face of man in the book of Genesis we read then God said let us make man in our image through our likeness let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth so God created man in his own image in the image of God he created him male and female he created them why does humanity apart from the renewing grace of God look at the image of God displayed in mankind and often respond with hearts full of murder think about that that's not an understatement you've heard of Nazi Germany I'm sure you have in the body count purported body count there well we're not better we're not better abortion murder of a baby that's what it is oh it's a fetus that's just Latin for baby you just spoke Latin I didn't know you went to a classical school 60 million we've done that 60 million times we've looked at a baby and we said I will vacuum your brain out of your skull and sell your body parts and then I will prosecute somebody who tries to whistle blow that it's just the news the last five years 60 million times we did that we're not better we can't look at them and say well our hearts aren't full of murder well yes that's 60 million orgasms from 60 million men that did not take responsibility for their children or maybe they tried in 60 million women that said no and we actually have parades for this we have parades that march that say my body my choice even though the body in your body is not your body why will they fight tooth and nail for an ideology that says that it is a moral good to cut the penises off of boys and surgically construct fake vaginas for them out of rectal tissue that for the rest of their life will smell like colon why will they sew girls vaginas shut and cut skin off their arm to make them a laughable imitation of a penis and say that they're men now that's just demonic disfiguring of the image of God and man that's what that is only somebody who really particularly hated mankind would come up with something as abominable as those ideas why do we do this we don't do this to labradors we don't do this to pet monkeys why do we do it to people why do people do it to themselves because of this principle if you are at odds with your father you will do everything you can to thumb your nose at him you will hate him everywhere you see him and you will see him most clearly in the mirror and so hate yourself or in the face of mankind and so hate your fellow man they hate it because all of it says God made this and if God made it God can say this is how to use it they hate it because they're in rebellion against their father and so like little children shaking their fists and saying no, no, no, no, won't stamping their feet they will reject their father everywhere they see him they hate it because all of creation preaches the fatherhood of God babies, boys, girls, men, women, marriage, family, patriarchy all of these are good gifts that reflect God's good nature in his good creation and so they hate it all and they try to substitute their own reality they try to say my own God this is what the Bible is fundamentally talking about by the way when it says the word sin you heard Christians why are you guys talking about sin sinners in the hands of an angry God maybe you had to read that sermon from the last Puritan Jonathan Edwards sinners, you're all sinners maybe you hear that word and you go stop imposing your religion on this guy like come on sin is kind of an archaic concept well this is what sin is Romans 3, Paul puts it like this he says all of sin fallen short of the glory of God you've probably heard that verse before but have you thought about that sentence before to sin, Paul says is to fall short of something and particularly it is to fall short of something that is called glory it's to look at the glory of God and his reflected glory and all that he's made and say I don't want that I will make my own glories I will be my own glory they hate the patriarchy because it says this world was made by exists for and is sustained by a glorious father secondly they also hate this fact or they hate the patriarchy because they hate hierarchy they hate hierarchy because they actually at the end they believe the oldest lie of all that they can be God they want to be their own God if you picture in your mind a child shaking his fist at his dad who's his dad saying no son you may not eat three dozen chocolate chip cookies moments before dinner you will have diabetes and then you will die and I love you and I have six children so like I said this is in the heart of every little boy and little girl is the desire to eat three dozen chocolate chip cookies and die of diabetes by the time they're 30 that's in every one of their hearts they want to be more but there's a morbidly obese adult trying to get out and my fatherhood exists to say son slow down let me show you a better way let me show you a better way not because I hate you but because I love you I know what you're for I know what you exist for and it's not to be a morbidly obese loser with no self control that's not what you're for so let me shape you well every son who loses his temper at that father and shakes his fist at him and says dad you hate me you won't give me what I want he's not just rejecting his father he's trying to say that he wants to be the father he's trying to say I want to be the one who makes the rules I want to be the one who is in authority see if it's true that you and I live in a world made by a father then that father is free to govern his own house he's free to give house rules he's free to save for example well sex is for this it's not for that this is what is beautiful this is what it's ugly this is truth this is falsity truth goodness and beauty he can define those things and in our rebellion against our father we often want nothing to do with it not only want nothing to do with it but we actually want to replace the father so that the creation itself says I am God worship me worship me we're at the center of their lives there is an altar and on that altar is themselves and everybody in their life that does not worship them will be instantly rejected you've met men like this you've met women like this this is what sin ultimately does to us it makes us want to be gods we killed God and maybe that was a job opening maybe I could apply maybe I could become my own father they hate patriarchy because of what it preaches they hate the sermon that patriarchy is pleading and preaching to the world and so they plug their ears and they try to shout down the music and this is why we must not do that this is why you must make your life and your marriage, your fatherhood your father rule sing all the louder along with that song with the song that the father has set over his house over the cosmos the only way to build a house that matters is to properly relate that household to the fatherhood of God and let that household sing in harmony with this music otherwise you'll have discord and you won't have beauty you'll have ugliness you won't have rightness you'll have wrongness and jarring discord what is wrong with the world all the way down all the way down what is wrong with the world is that we have rejected our father we're self-made bastards all the way down that's what's wrong with the world so how do you write that wrong there is a way but there is only one way in the gospel according to luke chapter 15 one of my favorite chapters a man who had two sons, one of the sons, the younger son, one day told his father, essentially, I wish you were dead. I wish you were dead. It's obviously a wealthy, landed father. He's come up. He flocks, herds, land, and he looks at his father and he says, I would rather have your money than you. I wish you were dead so I could get my inheritance. He says, give me my inheritance now, and that's what it is to say that. It's to say I want your money more than you. I want you dead so that I can get your money. Well, the father, rather than cursing his son and disowning him, which you could have rightfully done. If your son comes up to you and he says, Dad, I wish you were dead, give me all of your money, you're not obligated to do that. You could say, well, no, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to continue living. I'm not going to give you all the money that you're asking. Instead, he did it. He did something scandalous. He gave him the money. And in this society, I mean, this wasn't like, let me sell some stocks. Let me sell some land that's been in our family probably for generations. Let me divide herds and sell them. This is serious undertaking, talking about giving half of your estate away while you're still alive. But he doesn't. He gives him all the money. And his son, without a word of thanks, this younger son, sets off into a far country. And we're told that he promptly squandered his father's money on whores and parties and fake friends on all of the kind of sex and friends that money can buy. But then he finds out that the kind of sex and the kind of friends that money can buy are the kind of sex and the kind of friends that go away when you don't have any more money. The friends leave. They weren't actually friends. The sex is all gone. And so when hard times fall on the land, the younger son is broke and destitute and friendless. And he ends up, the scene, him eating pig slop out of the trough, where he scrapes a living working as a servant, cleaning and feeding these pigs. That's how he makes his food. He eats with the pigs. And one day of this, he thinks to himself, well, the lowest servants in my father's house eat better than this. So I'll go home and beg to be made a slave. So the son cooks up this line. He's going to tell his dad. He says, I'll arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, father, I've sinned against heaven and before you. I'm no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants. And the text simply says then, after he's cooked up the story, and he arose and came to his father. So what's going to happen next? Some of you know. Well, again, scandalously, it's not wrath. It's not rejection. This isn't a story that ends with the perfect telling off of the worthless guy, like the perfect quitting story when you quit your job and all the lines you've been thinking to tell to that terrible boss for five years come out and it's, everybody claps and it's just this amazing cathartic scene. It's not that at all. Not hatred, not earned rejection from his father. Verse 20 says, but while he was a long way off, his father saw him. His father's clearly standing there looking at the horizon saying, I hope my son comes home. Felt compassion and ran and embraced him and kissed him. And the son said to him, father, I've sinned against heaven and before you, I'm no longer worthy to be called your son. But the father said to his servants, bring quickly the best robe and put it on him and put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet and bring the fattened calf and kill it and let us eat and celebrate. For this my son was dead and is alive again. He was lost and is found and they began to celebrate. Some of us are this boy, this man or have been or are currently some of us are this son. Some of us have been devouring pig slop with all of our might. And some of us have forgotten the face of our father. Absolutely. And there's 10 million different ways to be this man. Maybe you've bought into this, what I would say is utterly unself-controlled nonsense of pickup artistry, et cetera. And maybe you thought yourself a big deal for a while because hey, I can go and I can, I've got these three tips and tricks. I can get almost any woman in this place to sleep with me. Maybe you can and maybe you did and maybe it was a lot of fun and maybe you went back and it was more fun and then you went back and it was more fun and then you kept going back. But maybe after all of that you found out that you're just hollowed out, that all of that doesn't do a dang thing for you and that you end up just being a hollow man who is hollowing himself out further and further getting thinner and thinner and thinner in his soul and that nothing can touch the hollowness. The women won't do it, no matter how many you can bet. 10,000 orgasms with 10,000 women will not make you a whole man again. So here's what I wanna tell you as a Christian pastor. I wanna tell you the truth. You are not the product of blind, evolutionary and meaningless processes. You are not simply a certain kind of special arrangement of molecules and atoms and particles. You were made in the image of God Almighty and that is a glorious thing to be. In fact, Paul in 1 Corinthians 11 says, man is the glory of God and woman is the glory of man. You were made in the image of God Almighty and God Almighty is a father. If you will have him, he will be a father to you and this is the Christian gospel that he gave his son the Lord Jesus Christ to die for your sin that he rose from the dead that he rules now from the right hand of his father. He has endless grace, endless mercy. He washes prodigals clean of pig slop. He takes hollowed out men and he makes them whole again and he makes them glories. He puts a robe on his sons and he says, come and feast and I will pay and I'll pay. The prophets Isaiah 2,700 years ago said, come and drink wine without price but you must repent of your sin. You must turn, you must turn to the Father. You must be clean, be forgiven and come home and then this is what I'll leave you with. The end of the Christian gospel, maybe you've heard this message before, maybe you've turned on the 700 club and you've seen Joel Osteen with his like 87 teeth shining there under the lights. I don't know how they do it. I don't know if it's plastic surgery or what. And he says, you know, here's the gospel. Confess your sin, repent, be forgiven and when you go to heaven or when you die, you'll go to heaven. The gospel is so much more than that. The Christian faith is more than that. The Christian faith is how to be a proper man. The Christian gospel is that grace restores nature. It's that we can be returned to what we were created for which is image bearers of God taking dominion in his name, sons of the Father, being and doing what we were made to be and do. And so love a wife in Jesus' name. Be faithful to her. Stop looking at porn in Jesus' name. Stop wasting your life trying to get women to sleep with you in Jesus' name. Crucify your selfishness in Jesus' name. Have children and put your own childish ways behind in Jesus' name. Why? So that you can be a glory. So that you can be a glory. So that you can be a son of the Father. That's what the Christian faith has to offer and offer freely. It's glory upon glory. The glory of a son who knows the face of his father. The glory of a son who stopped trying to be his father and displace him and be his own God and rule the universe himself. But a man who will settle for being a son of God Almighty. And so don't settle for the slavery of sexual self-gratification or the small self-pleasing masturbatory glories of our own making in your own kingdom. There will never be enough sex, money, achievement, respect, YouTube listeners, et cetera, to fulfill and satisfy you down that path. No matter how much success you find down that path, it will not ever be enough because that's not what you were made to run on. That's not the gasoline to this engine. It's not those small things. It's a much bigger glory than that. It's a glory of God. There's only one thing at the end of that path of seeking to build your own kingdom to your own glory. And it is hell and death and judgment. But the other way, there's life and glory and fruitfulness. That's what I'm pursuing as a Christian man. Not because I think that I'm great, but because I know that I'm not. But I know that I have a great father. Thank you for listening to me and I'd like to open it now for questions if you guys have any. A fantastic presentation. There's something that while you were going through kind of got me thinking about a kind of comparison. Basically, I'm gonna sum up. You said patriarchy is essentially a reflection of God and creation. What would you consider matriarchy and or feminism? And if you would explain that in detail please. Yeah, absolutely. So the question is essentially when I'm talking about patriarchy, I'm saying that what patriarchy is is an expression that's inevitable in family and culture and society across the world, everywhere, all times. Human beings will always do this. They'll always end up with some kind of patriarchy. Simply because at the center of reality there is a father, God the father. And he made the world and he made it as a reflection of his character in nature. So this is a rut that people will always fall into. So what is matriarchy? What is feminism? What are all these things? Well, they're exactly what sin always does. It's an inversion. In Genesis three, so we have Genesis one, the creation, Genesis one and two, the creation of all things and man and woman as the image bearers of God, the pinnacles of God in creation. Adam and Eve, they're made in God's image. They're made to rule in his name as his vice gerent, as his representative rulers in creation. Sin comes in and then immediately when God comes down and pronounces the curse of sin, he says because of sin, because you've thrown off my father rule, this is what's going to happen in creation. Everything will be inverted. Sin is nothing. Sin is a parasite. It can create nothing of its own. It can only pervert that which God has made. And so what it does is it comes in and God says now Eve, your desire will be to rule over your husband. This Genesis three, he says this is the curse. Your desire will be for your husband. It's this Hebrew word for that means like to want to rule over, to subvert his authority. He was made to be your head. You were made to be as either connecto in Hebrew. It means helper suitable. You were to help him fulfill the mission of your household together. That's patriarchy right there in the Bible. That's what you were made to do. And then your desire now will be to rule over him. But because that's like using a table saw as a leaf blower, it doesn't work. Wasn't made for that. It won't go well for you. The very next chapter, Genesis chapter four, Cain is told, Cain be warned, sin is crouching at your door and it's desire is for you. Same word. It's desires to rule over you. And then Cain ends up murdering his brother. Again, inverting brotherly love into fratricide. So when you see matriarchy, when you see feminism, what you're always seeing are people, again, shaking their fists at their dad, saying, no, I won't live. It's the kids saying, I will eat 15 cookies before dinner and your authority be damned. It just doesn't work. That's why it's miserable every time you see it. That's why women cheat on their feminist boyfriends with alpha men. Why? Because it actually doesn't work to rule over your man as a woman. It's just, it doesn't actually work. That's why you see in the Old Testament, the Old Testament's based, by the way. And the Old Testament, there's one point where God says, hey, Israel, this nation that was supposed to be like a representative of God's son, Israel was supposed to be a son of Yahweh. And he says, Israel, if you reject my fatherly rule, it's gonna get so bad that women are going to rule over you. Like it could be as bad as you having senators who are not men. That's the equivalent. And they're like, what? We might have women ruling over us? That's bad. Like you know it's gotten bad at that point. There's that, this is completely unrelated, but I can say whatever I want. Another one of those curse promises where God says, hey, just be warned, Israel, if you reject me as your king, you will have human kings and they're gonna be so bad they might even ask you to, they might tax you at 10%, which would be a crazy number, right? Like they, because God, you've heard of the tithe, means a 10th, where the Israel's required to give a tithe of their first fruits to support the Levitical priests to the sacrifices and whatnot, the worship of God. That was the inheritance of the tribe of Levi. And so he says, they'll be like that. They'll demand their own tithe. And now we're getting taxed at 40%, which tells you what our state thinks it is. It thinks it is God the Father times four. So all throughout the Old Testament, what God does is he warns, he says, if you reject my father rule, basically if you will not live it in harmony with the world I've created, then you will ultimately end up ruled by foolishness. You'll ultimately be ruled by foolishness. You will be like a mathematician trying to reject the fundamental rules of addition and still get correct answers. It's just not possible. Good question. Any other questions? It was a great presentation. Thank you, sir. I was raised Catholic and I've been studying the Bible with Protestant men. I don't wanna go back to Catholic Church, move to an area where most people are Baptist and there are other Protestants. How do you suggest trying to find a actual church that's Bible based? Yeah, that's a great question. I'm a Protestant, I'm a reformed and Protestant Christian. So I'm not Roman Catholic. And my list of things that I'm always looking for aren't necessarily what are the most important things theologically like the doctrine of the Trinity, the doctrine of justification. I'm actually looking for things that tell me whether someone actually believes the Bible or not. So Martin Luther was said, Martin Luther reformer, he was said to have written this paragraph that actually he didn't really write it but it's attributed to him. And the gist of it is something like the courage of the soldier is tested at the point of attack. So if a soldier is courageous in 10,000 parts of the battlefield where the enemy's not attacking, so what? If he flees at that one point where the enemy's attacking. If you're at Helms Deep and that one orc dude was just a movie, didn't really happen in the books. But he's running there with the big flaming thing like the bombs and you're faithful everywhere else where there's no orc attacking. And then he runs to that point and you run away with your peeing your pants. You're a coward no matter how courageous you were where there were no enemies. A lot of pastors can tend to be this way where when it comes to doctrines that were defended 500 years ago, like the doctrine of justification by grace alone through faith alone, they're quite strong. But then places where our culture is actually attacking vehemently right now, things like patriarchy, feminism, female pastors, is the Bible forbids women from holding the office of pastor, the church has agreed on this for something like 1,850 years or until 10 minutes ago is another way of putting it. So if a church ordains women, then I'm gonna assume that if they can't get the two plus two equals four right, then they're probably not gonna get calculus right either. So I look for, do they openly reject female pastors? Do they preach the Bible? Do they sound really ashamed of parts of the Bible? Like when they get to 1 Timothy two and it says I don't allow a woman to preach or hold, to teach or hold authority over a man, did they like make 1,000 asterisks and qualifications? They're like, well now this was another time and you know, it was really patriarchal but now we're a lot more advanced than the living God who breathed out every word of scripture. So we're smarter than him. So I'm looking for things like that, courageous, upholding of doctrine. And so for me, I'm looking at groups like the CREC is a group of churches that I think are phenomenal, more than 100 of them in the country. You could also talk to myself or Pastor Michael Foster and we can help network you with someone close. We do have people relocating all the time to our church. Michael has the same thing because it is unfortunately difficult sometimes to find this kind of thing. Yeah, and it's very different. A lot of compromise. It's very different than being anonymous, sitting in a mass than it is. I might find myself intimidated by the fact that the parishes are 30, 40 people. I don't want to insult anyone if I go one week and then decide it doesn't fit. And they will be my neighbors to begin with. So that's a good thing to me that's not something in Catholic Church that I've ever seen before. It's a good question. People all the time are like, we try to talk them out of joining our church. When they have a membership interview, we'll say like, well now here are the top six most offensive doctrines that we totally believe. And we're gonna preach this way and counsel you this way and so if you're like some of our women wear head coverings because the first Corinthians 11 and we're patriarchal and so. So it makes sense to reach out to the pastors first somewhere during the week on a phone call. Yeah, pastors usually appreciate that and it's a red flag of a pastor won't answer your question directly. If you just say, hey, what do you believe about this? They should be like, well this, this is what we believe. No, I mean to say, I'd like to, I'm looking for a new church. Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, reach out. You could talk to either me or Michael or as you're looking just reach out to pastors through the week and say, tell me about your church that kind of thing. And usually that's a good first step. Okay, thank you. Yeah, yeah, you got it. Thanks. Yes, sir. So I've got a question early in this speech. You said that I think it was a pastor front of yours asked people to make a list of sins common to men and the list of sins common to women. Was this a church group or a secular group? I believe that it was a professor at a Christian college who this was in the early 2000s. So he wasn't teaching theology, teaching some kind of other subject within the undergraduate program, but it was kind of just a fun experiment I think he'd run every year. I guess, was there like a theory he had behind it that women are so talked up today that he expects if he had asked this like 100 years ago he would have gotten like a longer or more equivalent list. Yes, I think so every culture has blasphemy laws. Think of like Saudi Arabia, really strict Muslim country, you can't go and blaspheme the name of Allah in public, they will literally kill you. Okay, there's a not whether but which issue. Every culture, it's not whether or not you will have blasphemy laws, it's just which kind you will have. So go to the UK and read Romans one out loud where it condemns homosexual sexual activity, both lesbianism and male sodomy. And you will actually go to jail if you do that in the UK right now. It's illegal to publicly teach against homosexual sexual acts. In our culture, if you were to go into the public square and say something like I repeal the 19th amendment I don't think women should vote. You'll find that there's a blasphemy law there culturally, you're not allowed to say that. Now I think that what this professor was getting at is that we have a blasphemy law, blasphemy laws are meant to protect the worship of a God, right? You're not allowed to take the Lord's name in vain. It's one of the 10 commandments. So what does it tell you that you're not allowed to publicly criticize women? You're not allowed to say, well, biblically speaking, for example, there are lots of verses that warn women not to be busybodies, not to be gossips. Maybe apparently there's a, this is a sin that is common to women. They are tempted often to be gossips. And so at our church we'll say like, men, you're tempted probably to be lustful. Don't look at pornography, let's help you with that. Ladies, you're probably tempted to talk bad about your husband behind his back. Don't do that, that's a sin you're prone to. And I think that's the kind of exercise he was getting at is to reveal a blasphemy law and reveal a false God, or the worship of women as gods. And gods don't sin. So, you know, you're not allowed, you know, Zeus did for sure, but I mean like, you're not allowed to say that your God sins, so we'll protect them with that kind of blasphemy law. All right, thank you. Yeah, thank you, good question. Hey, excellent message. Thank you for sharing your heart with us, giving us an opportunity to respond. My question to you is how are you received among other Christian churches, not only in your community, but you know, in the industry, for lack of a better word, you guys seem to obviously be very forward leaning into, you know, the politics of feminism and patriarchy and all that. So I'm interested to know how other pastors, other churches, and other bodies are responding to you, if at all. There's basically two completely divergent reactions to anybody taking a strong stand on controversial issues. You'll have people who hate your guts and want you to die, and if you died, they would throw a party. And then there are people who actually rally and say, wow, somebody's saying a truth that is actually costly to say at this time. So, you know, Pastor Michael and I, we get both responses. There are men and women who are absolutely fed up with essentially a version of Christian faith that would say, let's take everything that our broad mainstream culture believes, and that's like the top ramen noodles, and then we'll take some Christian seasoning packet and we'll kind of sprinkle it in. And we'll be like, we're Christians. You're like, well, do you believe First Timothy 2? Do you believe the Bible? Do you believe Creation X and the Helo? Do you reject biological evolution? Do you believe that women can be pastors? Do you believe that there's only one way to Christ, or one way to the Father, and that's through the blood of Christ? Do you believe in hell? Do you believe, you know, and you start going through and you find out that a lot of Christian churches are compromised on the fundamental doctrines that actually identify you as a Christian. So Michael and my goal, and I think I can say this for him, isn't to be like the patriarchy pastors. It's really just to be boringly normal pastors from 400 years ago. It's like, what the church did for century after century, we're saying, let's go back to that, because when we stopped doing that, really bad things happened. You know, really bad things happened to the family, to the culture, et cetera, on down the line, they're compromised after a compromise. So maybe we should stop building churches that are designed to try and trick people into attending in exchanging their attendance and tithe for spiritual goods and services, dispensed by a class of religious professionals, and instead let's reclaim the vocation of pastor as shepherd who cares for the souls of people and will say true things, whether or not the people receive them or not, right? So we do get a lot of hatred. We also get plenty of support. I think churches that embrace wokeness, feminism, et cetera, are going to die in a decade or two, and normal Christian churches will continue to grow and conquer the world. So that's my general prophecy there. Could be wrong. It's not actually a prophecy, YouTube. Nobody send me an email. Anybody else? Probably have time for one more question? Anybody has one? Yes, sir. Obviously you're talking to men here, either patriarchs or desiring to be patriarchs. In terms of the feminism that's going on, the matriarchy idea, how do you suggest or how do you see these crazy bitches being held accountable? Who does that and what do you see the process and path for addressing that situation? Yeah, so big distinction and then other distinctions downstream from that big distinction. The big distinction, am I talking to Christians or not? And my main goal, again, like in this talk, my main goal wasn't to give you five tips to be a better patriarch, I want you to be a Christian. Like that's what, I'm a pastor. It's literally my whole thing. I want you to be a Christian and then I want you to live like you're a Christian. So if somebody comes to me and they're not a Christian and they say, give me some tips on being a more moral person, I'll say, well, that's not your biggest problem. Your biggest problem is that you're spiritually dead and you need to be resurrected by grace and through faith. So that's your, I'm not just trying to make you not look at porn or not be a crazy feminist. I actually want you to be reconciled to God the Father through his son, right? So then once somebody is a Christian, they're coming to my church, for example. We have these normal tools again, we don't reinvent these, they've been used by pastors and churches given to us in the New Testament scriptures called church discipline where like Galatians six one brothers, if anyone has caught in a trespass, you who are spiritual restore such one in a spirit of gentleness, keeping watch on yourself lest you be tempted. So, you know, we'll say, young lady, you're being really disrespectful to your husband and maybe you don't even know it because the whole world has discipled you to be like this. You shouldn't, let me, you're a Christian. God commands you to respect your husband. He is your head, respect and love him. You know, men, you need to provide a man who doesn't provide for his family has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever, Paul says. So if they're not a Christian, I don't just want to make them more moral. I want to see them reconciled to the Father. If they are a Christian, then I want to see them obey Christ. And then we're going to walk with them in normal discipleship where we're all being conformed from one degree of glory to another into the image of Christ. Well, thank you gentlemen for listening and for your good questions. And I'll be hanging out around here if any of you guys have any further questions, but. One more round of applause, guys. Thank you.