The Growing Gender Gap | Doug Ponder | Grimké Chapel

Thanks, brothers, always a joy to be with you. Let me just say, by way of introduction, that sometimes the preachers that we see in the Bible don't start with a passage, but with a problem. When Elijah was on Mount Vail, he didn't tell the prophets of Mount Carmo, he didn't tell the prophets of Bail to open their Bible to Leviticus, but addressed the situation that was in front of him. Jeremiah does something similar at the gates of the temple in Jeremiah 7. Jesus does the same thing after the Tower of Salom fell. He didn't just continue in his series in the book of Numbers. And of course, Paul does the same at the area of Agus, Mars Hill, and I am going to do the same tonight. I'm not going to start with a passage in the Bible, but with a problem that the Bible alone addresses. Let me pray for us, and then we'll think together. Father, we ask for your help. We need it. We need your wisdom. We need your courage. We need all the things that you give us to meet, all the problems that we create. So would you give us what we need tonight so that we can leave here, living as the men you have called us to be, and we ask this in any of your son, Jesus Christ. Amen. Well, here's the problem. There's a growing gender divide in the world today. And unless something is done about it, it's going to cause many problems on a scale that, frankly, few people can even imagine. When this divide is discussed in mainstream media, we're often told that the central factor, the cause for the growing gender divide, is that young men have been radicalizing on the right at alarming rates. In reality, the data shows that conclusion is exactly backwards. I want you to look at this chart, which is measuring men and women on a scale from more conservative to more liberal, measured by things like their support for abortion, gay marriage, transgenderism, the treatment of criminals, diversity, equity, and inclusion practices, and so on, all of which you know reflects the values and world views of those who support such ideas. Look at that bottom line first. You'll see that men have ebbed and flowed this way in that, a little over the last 25 years, but if you notice where they started in the year 1999, and where they finished around the year 2024, they haven't moved that much overall. Now, this beginning to change, and I will talk about that later, but what is most noticeable is that women have moved much further to the left in just the last 10 or 15 years. And although there was a slight return to sanity after the government overreach of 2020 to 2024, the overall trend has been decidedly in the progressive direction. But you need to know this isn't just happening in the US. This is happening across the world. Now, here's some data from the United Kingdom and Germany that show the same basic trend. Men aren't moving all that much in terms of their world view while women are moving significantly to the left, and this movement is fueling a growing gap between the sexes. And if you were to go and look up other countries where this kind of data is available, you will find the same trends, all of which is significant because it rules out any factors that are unique to this country. You can't blame Trump in other words. The liberalization of women started before him, and it's happening in countries where he's not president. The key questions that we need to consider are, why is this happening and what can be done about it? So let's start with the reason for the growing gap. Now, you know, it's the mark of a mature mind to resist overly simple reductionistic solutions to large scale problems. So we got to consider several factors which together, like vinegar and baking soda, create an explosive leftward drift among women in the last 10 to 15 years. First, there's the design factor by which I mean, the natural differences between the sexes in God's design, which is not a problem on its own, of course. But our enemy, the devil, knows how to use what is good for his own evil purposes. And you must never forget, the devil was there in the beginning when, Genesis 1, 27, God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them. The devil was there, which means he knows what too many Christians today have forgotten. The devil knows that God made men and women equally valuable, but structurally different, which is to say, we are embodied souls whose whole self reflects our makeup as male or as female. Women are designed with bodies that can conceive and grow and give birth and nurture new life. It's amazing, it's a biological fact as everybody with a working brain knows. In fact, the West would be in a lot better shape today if in order to run for political office, you had to answer one question first. Can men get pregnant? And if they say, yes, they're not allowed to run and they go to prison for thought crimes or something like that. Back to the point, God did not make men and women to be identical in all ways except just the baby making way. God has equipped us with differing traits and tendencies that are suited to the tasks for which each sex was uniquely designed. This is why, listen, certain patterns and trends show up across all places in every era of history. There's a sociologist named David Schmidt who's studied over 50 cultures and he found that women have in every one of the cultures he studied, higher rates of both agreeableness and neuroticism, which is a technical term that means higher rates of anxiety, depression and emotional instability. Now listen to me, this is just a fact, it's a fact and it doesn't do anybody any good to pretend it's not true. Facts are our friends. Now the question we should ask is why would God give women traits such as these? And the right answer is that agreeableness and neuroticism actually work together in the context of the home to gift women uniquely toward compassion, cooperation and consensus which are necessary in every healthy functioning family. But this also means that women are more sensitive to social pressure, more clued in to acceptance and rejection in social relationships. Like moms usually know that something is wrong with their children and sometimes even wrong with their husbands before you do. And that's not because every father is an idiotic sitcom character, it's because God made women and gave them specific traits that impart a Titus II V orientation to the family for the good of everyone in it. That's amazing. But men were created after the pattern of Adam and he was formed to work the garden and watch over it. Genesis 215. The man was also called to leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, Genesis 2, 24. Put all that together. It means this calling to provide, protect and lead, explains why statistics across all cultures also demonstrate that men have a higher tolerance than women for stress, for disagreement and for conflict. It's because we were made for jobs where traits like those are required. But you know what's funny to me? All these sociologists are just discovering the hard way what God already told us, men and women are different with differing strengths and weaknesses and these show up in every culture across time because they were hardwired into us by the design of God. But the question is, how does that affect this growing gender divide that we've been talking about? Well the truth is by itself it doesn't. But when you add in other factors that intersect with our biological and spiritual makeup, then you begin to get exactly what we're seeing. And this is where smartphones and social media come into the equation. It brings us to number two, the tech factor. Now listen, history is full of stories that warn about inventors whose creations eventually destroy them or the people that they love. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the monster in the book Frankenstein whose name actually isn't Frankenstein by the way. Mary Shelley's monster is a famous example. There's a Jewish folktale called the Golem of Prague, same thing happens there, or the Greek myth of deadlylis and his poor son Icarus. All these stories and many more are sources of ancient wisdom. There are warnings to us that not everything we invent will always serve only the purposes we had intended for it. And I've long thought we would do well to consider the internet, smartphones and social media in exactly that light. So the smartphone invented 2007. Shortly after Facebook became available for all people and not just college students. I'm old enough to remember when you couldn't get Facebook unless you were in college. Shortly changed thereafter just before the smartphone came out. Now, it took a few years for the smartphone to catch on. But by the year 2012, 51% of all cell phones purchased in America were smartphones. And today it's over 90%. Which means there's still a few holdouts. God bless them. All right? Now, I want you to see how the rise of the smartphone compares to the growing gender divide. So what I've done is I've taken a chart that showed the smartphones purchased in ownership rate and then overlaided on this other chart. I want you to see how closely that green line follows the purple one. That my friends is what you call a strong correlation. That line also tracks, by the way, with data that shows a meteoric rise in the rates of depression, anxiety, and self-harm among girls. Now this tech factor is not by itself enough to explain what we're seeing or you would see similar rates for boys and for people of all ages. But what we're seeing is that women and especially women under 30 were not only prone to certain disorders before technological changes like smartphones and social media came under the scene, but the rate of change since smartphones and social media has affected them significantly. Now the reason for this goes back to what I just told you about the differences between men and women. Women are more sensitive by design to social cues in group out-group dynamics, more vulnerable to social pressure. They have a lower tolerance for disagreeableness, a higher desire for consensus and inclusivity. You put all that together and what it means is women are more likely to be swayed by what they see online than men tend to be. I'll explain more of that in just a moment. I just want you to know this holds true in the aggregate. There's always exceptions, but in the aggregate it holds true and it ain't anything new. The Apostle Paul warned his pastoral protégé about a similar tendency in his own day. In 2 Timothy, chapter 3, verse 6 and 7, the Apostle Paul says, "Among them are those who worm their way into households and deceive gullible women, overwhelmed by sins and led a stray by a variety of passions like a desire for consensus, cooperation, conformity, always learning and never able to come to a knowledge of the truth." Now here's what we both know. The tech gurus and our day didn't design social media or smartphones specifically to capture women, but their intentions don't change the impact that their inventions are having. Social media and smartphones have created an environment in which women are constantly exposed to situations that appeal to their innate traits and tendencies toward compassion, cooperation and consensus. Everything they post online is subjected to likes or dislikes, hearts or angry face emojis. That affects people who are perfectly wired to be sensitive to social cues. It calls forth compassion when they see stories in the news or sound political sound bites that calls forth compassion and sympathy even, unfortunately, in situations when compassion and sympathy are not appropriate, like when you're dealing with matters of truth or justice. That's factor number 2. Number 3, the institution factor. Did you know that women currently make up almost 60% of all undergraduate enrollment across colleges in the US? That's a complete flip from 1980 when college enrollment was 60% male. Here's what's happening as a result. Fields that were long dominated by men are now becoming majority female as well. Law courts, classrooms, media outlets and so on. Now think about everything I've already told you about God's design. Now think about what that does to institutions across our country. Consider courts of law. God says in Deuteronomy 19, verse 21, "That in matters of justice, your eye shall show no pity. Otherwise a judge is being unfair. He's being partial. He's allowing his feelings for the victim to overrule the facts of the case, the laws that were broken, the damage that was done and so on." Think about schools. Schools are supposed to deal with ideas which can be wrong or facts which by definition are never wrong and which we are repeatedly told don't care about your feelings. That statement itself might not make you feel good but it's a fact so it also doesn't care. Now, what I mean simply is that 2+2 really does equal 4 even if that hurt somebody's feelings for getting it wrong. When colleges became majority female, both in terms of student body and professors are employed, the female tendency toward agreeableness has created campuses where free speech and debate are now seen as dangerous to the inclusion of everybody. Brothers, this is how the truth dies. Now think about businesses. Did you know that several studies have shown that majority female staffed businesses have lower income, slower growth and a smaller number of total employees than majority male staffed businesses? Maybe thinking, who cares? You should care. That means less jobs in the economy, less money for the average family and so on. But there's a reason for this. Men have to compete in the world to get ahead. Resources are scarce. Natural disasters threaten your security. Roberts can steal your property. Wars can deprive you of liberty. It takes strength, courage and resolve to get things done in a fallen world. But women were equipped with tendencies and traits to serve them in a different kind of calling. This God-given orientation, true compassion, consensus and cooperation is absolutely essential. If a family is going to make it with no child left behind, but in a business, these traits translate into keeping an employee who's not getting their work done. Listening to ideas. Everybody knows they're bad and will hurt the business, but you want to make everyone feel like they contribute equally. It leads to diminishing risk out of a desire for safety. All of these things disincentivize the very things needed to make a business successful. Law courts, classrooms, businesses, that's just three arenas. I can highlight a lot more. That'll have to do for the sake of time. The net effect of all of this is what Helen Andrews calls the Great Feminization of the West. In her October 16, 2025, Compact Magazine article, she writes, "Everything you think of as "wokeness or progressivism simply involves prioritizing the feminine over the masculine, empathy over rationality, safety over risk, cohesion over competition." In other words, when the feminine drive for compassion, cooperation and consensus, which is a good thing, becomes the majority culture in places where it wasn't supposed to be, what happens is exactly what you've seen happening for the last 15 years in every sector of society. Figure warnings get added to celibis. Email, employee emails are carefully monitored for tone. Criminals are given lighter sentences. Public disagreement with the majority opinion becomes verboten and anybody who dares to disagree is socially punished. Welcome to cancel culture. Number four, the marriage factor. Single women are about 34% more liberal in their worldview than married women. And remember, politics is a reflection of worldview. Politics is about the ordering of society according to what is just and good and true, all of which are worldview questions. Single women have always been more liberal than married women. It's been true for a long time. It's not new. One reason is they don't have a husband to protect them or provide for them. They look to the government to provide economic services and other kinds of protections. They're married women have a husband, so the government's not seen as a provider and a protector, but an interference with their husband's ability to provide and protect, thanks to things like overbearing tax laws. Now the important thing to note about the marriage gap is it's not simply a correlation but a causation that's at work here too. Studies have shown that women tend to become more conservative after they marry. It's almost like embracing God's design brings out the good and rejecting it causes harm. The problem however is that marriage rates have been plummeting for the last few decades. Here's one more chart for you. This shows you the percentage of women who ever get married at any point in their life divided by the decade of when they were born. I want you to note that all the women who were born in the 30s, 40s and 50s, 95% of them got married at some point in their lives with most of them being married well before they were 30. A little less than 90% of those born in the 1960s ever got married as they were born on the wrong side of the sexual revolution. Only 75% of those born in the 70s ever get married and the figures now down to 60% for those born in the 80s. The people born in the 90s are still young enough to make it happen but if you see from the bottom line the trend is moving in the wrong direction. This leads to the last and final factor. Number five, the feminism factor. Feminism lied to women. I once said in an article that I wrote that if I had three wishes I would use the first to get rid of feminism and all of its wicked tentacles and the second to make sure that it never comes back again. And I wasn't exaggerating. Feminism told us that there's no substantial differences between men and women. That anything a man can do, a woman can do, and that anybody who says otherwise is perpetuating an oppressive system. Feminism told women that wanting a husband and children was in a form of internalized misogyny owing to a systemic patriarchy and millions of women believe this lie and build their lives on it. All my ladies independent, Beyonce, saying, "Coreers first, always, husband later, if you want, kids probably never, totally up to you. This is how you're happy and free." They were told. But Brad Wilcox and the Institute of Family Studies in Charlottesville, Virginia has conducted research that's shown that married women with children are happier than married women without children. And both of those groups are happier than unmarried women, whether they have kids or not. Yet now the West is filled with women who are approaching 40 and are still unmarried. Their careers haven't made them happily ever after and their ovaries are drying up. Listen to me, it takes a lot of humility and courage to admit that you wasted your most fruitful years chasing a lie and to acknowledge that your grandmother was right. So most people will never admit this. It's called the sunk cost fallacy. When the psychological cost of admitting failure feels so high that you double down on your chosen path, no matter how bad of a choice it was. What this means is people keep lying to themselves in order to reinforce the illusion that they made the right decision while silencing anyone who dares to question their chosen path. Instead of pointing the finger in, they keep pointing the finger out. Insisting, they're not the problem. The problem is a society that still hasn't changed as much as it needs to. Put it all together and the reason for this growing gap is that God made men and women with different bodies, different callings, different traits and tendencies suited to their different design. And this is all very good, God said. But we unleash technological forces in the world that we didn't fully understand and cannot fully control and these are wreaking havoc on many people, especially women. Institutions are now filled with people who were shaped by this tech, creating new environments that reinforced these patterns with terrible efficiency. Add the collapse of marriage to this and you've got reason to think this is all going to get worse before it gets better if it ever does. And last comes the sunk cost of the feminist fallacy as the final bull work that holds back the revelation of everything we've been speaking about tonight. Feminism is the little finger in the dam holding back the waters of reality from crashing in. Now it's at this point in the sermon that some of you are wondering, what about the men though? That is a great question. And I'm happy to answer it. In fact, I do all the time. This is an all-male seminary and we're joined tonight by the men of our eminent church. You know, we usually tailor every one of these messages to men. But you also need to know, there are very few pastors today who are willing to speak about the unique temptations and challenges facing women, which is a big problem. Not only because of all the factors we've already mentioned, but because it also creates the false impression that women aren't really sinners too. Besides all this, you guys are brothers who have sisters, if not in your family, at least in your church. Most of your husbands who have wives, many of your fathers who have daughters and some of your pastors who then shepherd women as well as men in your church, which means you need to know about these things if you're going to love the other half of the human race well. Even so, lest I be accused of acting as if the only problems in the world today are somehow related to ladies, let me say this. While most men haven't moved as much in terms of world view over the last couple of decades, that's still not the whole picture. To begin with, men were captured differently than women. Instead of adopting progressive views on mass as many women have done through the pressure to conform, men have tended to withdraw. They turn to porn, video games, sports gambling, or some kind of addiction to outrage content on social media. One commentator put it like this, women were captured by being told, "Believe these lies or face social death." Men were captured by an endless supply of dopamine so they never have to build anything real. Women become compliant, in other words, and men become passive and self-destructive. Now, some men have noticed these trends, and they are beginning to move to the right. Not to the same degree that women have moved left, but the shift is real, it's discernible. I think these guys have just woken up to what's happening, and they're tired of pretending that a man can become a woman. Anybody else tired of pretending that? I mean, I never really pretended, but you know what I'm saying. But other men have been told they are the problem for so many years as this became the mainstream narrative, and they were excluded from certain parts of society, passed over per-promotions by less qualified candidates, and told that their masculinity was toxic. But these men have become anything but passive, while not actively building anything substantial either. They have swung from passivity into a kind of reactionary opposition. Think of men like Andrew Tate, Nick Fuenteis. Now, if these names are unknown to you, you're either very old or you're not very online. That's okay. But you need to know the rest of the world is online for better or for worse. Listen to this, "Android Tate has 10.7 million followers on Twitter, just for comparison, John Piper has less than a million." Andrew Tate's blog has a huge list of subscribers, his TikTok videos have generated more than 11 billion views, none of which would be problematic if he weren't so problematic. But that man is a materialistic, misogynistic, utterly pagan womanizer. And yet, one survey in the 90 Kingdom found, almost half of young men in the UK between the ages of 16 to 24 have a positive view of him. Fuenteis, his platform's smaller, but it's growing. He has millions of followers in his content, frequently draws a half million views per video, despite the fact that YouTube canceled his channel for Hates Beach more than six years ago. Fuenteis is openly racist toward non-whites and Jews. He despises women and tells men they should never date them. You know why guys like these are capturing young men, including a lot of young Christian men, maybe even some of you? It's not just because they're encouraging fleshly male pursuits like lust and wrath and all the wrath. That's part of it, it's not the whole story. These men are building a massive following because they're part of a small group who are willing to speak about the trends I've been telling you about tonight. And this is so essential for Christians to understand. Many men are being captured because too many Christians are either ignorant of what is obviously going on or worse, they are not ignorant, but they're too cowardly to say anything about it. If you want to stop men from withdrawing into porn, alcohol, games, and gambling, and if you want to stop men from being captured by wicked men who are leading them astray, then you have to stop acting like everything is okay. You have to wake up to the trends I've been telling you about, and then you have to do something about them. And that brings us to the remedy for the growing gap. The truth is we are facing a galaeth of our own making and he is slaying men and women by the millions. So what can one brother, one husband, one father, one pastor do against such a foe? What's Joe Rigny recently said? The attitude of Christian men who live in a time like this should be, I may be just one man, but I found these five smooth stones. Here's the first smooth stone the Lord God has put into your hands. He is with you, so trust in Him. Now listen, listen to me, this is not a cop out. Faith is never a cop out. It only sounds like a cop out to those who are tired, as frankly I am tired, of other people talking about faith in ways that God does not talk about faith. Faith is not a substitute for action. In the Bible, those who have the most faith are those who do something because of their faith. Yes, yes, it's true. Sometimes God does all the work and we just stand there like Moses at the Red Sea. But nobody talks that way about evangelism. Nobody thinks that trusting in the God who saves means disobeying how He's chosen to save people. We heard a sermon on that last night. Jesus will save people through His people, right? God uses means. So stop telling people to pray until something happens and start talking like the Bible does. Tell them to pray and then take action to the glory of God knowing He is with you. But also know, you can only do the Lord's work in the Lord's way. You can know all about the trends I mentioned here and you can hate them as much as you should. But if you seek to oppose the world with fleshly tactics, you won't succeed. That's why the Psalmist says, unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Now that verse tells us there's labor to be done and we're the ones who must do what God has tasked us with doing. But unless you're looking to the Lord for instruction on how to do this, unless you're depending on Him for His gracious help, unless you're giving Him the credit for all He accomplishes through you, then your labor will be in vain. The Lord builds His house only through laborers who labor in His name. So trust Him, brothers, keep your eyes fixed on Christ, assess the problems of this world with spiritual eyes and then do something about them with all the strength the Lord supplies because the God who slays giants is with you. Smooth stone number two, the devil's crafty, so be on guard. Now listen, each of the five stones that we have in our possession are meant to be positive, helpful, encouraging truths, kind of like K-love. No. (congregation laughing) But this one doesn't seem to be positive, helpful, encouraging in first glance. Like how's it good news that the devil's crafty? What, what, listen, I mean, on its own, that's not good news. But the fact that we are told about the devil's nature in his ways is good news 'cause the only thing worse than having an enemy is having one you don't know anything about. This means you can be ready for him so that you're not caught off guard or unaware. And I'm telling you all this because the devil is at work even now during my talk tonight. He would love nothing more than for you to walk away from this saying, "None of that will ever happen to my wife, my daughters, my church members." You guys, the devil's been a liar from the beginning. And one of his favorites is, "This will never happen to you." He loves to put us off our guard, to give us a false sense of security. We hear all the statistics, all the trends, all the charts, all the graphs, and we still are tempted to think that won't be us. We go to church, we do VPS, family worship. We have Vid Angel. We're gonna be fine. But listen, guys, a few hours of your life every week are not a very strong defense against scrolling social media every day, watching movies with feminist themes, listening to songs, to celebrate the things that Taylor Swift sings about, and then going off to college, where women are told they're the victims, men are the villains, Christianity's regressive, and blue hair is cool. Your sons, meanwhile, have in their pockets an instant free ubiquitous porn device. They've got more screen time than anybody's ever had in history. They listen to music that speaks degradingly about women, and they watch podcasts by pagan rascals that introduce them to truly radical ideas. None of this is news. In fact, these paths are so well worn, you can see them from space. And yet, there's still something in us that resist thinking, "Get ever happen to our families or churches." I think it's because deep down, we know that being on guard against the devil probably costs us something that we might not be willing to give up. Like I almost titled this second smooth stone, something to the effect of stop making fun of the Amish, but I didn't want it to be the only command, and I also feared that speaking positively about the Amish was a bridge too far for some of you. So I saved it for now. This is just a thought experiment. Alright, stick with me. We're gonna make it. Just think with me for one moment about what the Amish don't have. They are not fed images on Instagram all day to stoke their envy and bitterness. The Amish are not decreasing the white matter brain cells in their minds by two hours of screen time every day, which by the way is all that studies show it takes according to brain science to make yourself dumber. The Amish are not playing games on their phones when there's work to do. They're not using AI to write their sermons. The Amish aren't watching Netflix instead of reading their Bible or other good books. They're not scrolling their phones on the couch while sitting next to their wives instead of talking or praying with her. They're not struggling with porn because they can't access pornography with the touch of a button. Did you know the Amish also have 50% higher retention rates of the disciples in their communities and the average evangelical church? This is what we call inconvenient truth. It's true, therefore it's truth. It's inconvenient because it often costs us something we're not willing to change. And some of you will say to me, this sounds crazy. Are you saying we should retreat from the world? No, I haven't done that. I'm preaching from an iPad, okay? And I would be a hypocrite if I were telling you to do that too. But I am saying you should retreat from using things in such a way that has a demonstrably destructive impact on your life. And you will do this. If you stop thinking of technology as simply neutral, it is true that tools don't sin, but some of them make sinning easier. Do you understand? So instead of talking in terms of abstract neutrality, I think it's way more helpful to think of technology as very powerful, both for good and for evil. That makes it more like dynamite, okay? Dynamite can be used for good. You can blast away chunks of rock. You can build roads, railroad tunnels, whatever else you build with dynamite. Nothing wrong with dynamite. It's fine, but you don't respect it in the power it has. There's something about to be very wrong with you. It's called death. Now that's how I would encourage you to think of the internet, smartphones, and social media. You have dynamite in your house. And the right times and places when you's carefully by people who know what they're doing, these things can accomplish a lot of good. I really believe that and I've seen it. But if you don't respect the power these tools have to tempt you and to shape you, you are playing with dynamite and are closer to destruction than you could ever possibly realize. And for the record, just so any of you know, your kids won't die if they don't have smartphones so they're much older. They're gonna feel like they are dying, but they're not. They're not gonna die if they don't have social media accounts. They won't even die if you don't have a TV. I know this because I didn't have a smartphone or the internet or TV for the first year of my marriage. And I didn't just survive. It was wonderful. Just a thought experiment. Number three, smooth stone. God purposed all of this. So don't despair. Didn't we sing earlier tonight what comes apart from his command? So whether by his passive permission or his active involvement, the Bible tells us all things that come to pass filter through the providential hands of our God, which is just another way of saying the Lord knew this moment and all its challenges would come to us and he's not shocked or scared or regrouping. Guys, God's not in heaven calling an audible because the enemy changed his plan of attack. And there's two takeaways for us. First, the Lord's not despairing over the trends I shared with you. He grieves over our sins but doesn't despair over them because he knows all things. And if he's not despairing, we shouldn't despair either. Second, Paul says that God determines the times and places of our birth, which means he meant for you and I to be here in this time. We're not here by accident. The Lord chose you and me for such a time as this as Mordecai once told Esther. So see the hand of God in placing you here and now with all the wisdom he's given you, not so that you would long for simpler times. But so you might rise up and do what is necessary in this time to make a difference for the glory of God. Smoothstone number four, the truth still sets us free. So teach it all. Our Lord said, you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. John 8.32. Now the context makes it clear he's talking about the truth of God's word. And though that's obvious, there's an important point for us to consider especially in a message like this one. Guys, it is good to understand the times like the men of Isocar did. That's important. We shouldn't bury our heads in the sand. We should exegy the world with both eyes wide open. But our children and our churches need to be experts in God's word more than experts with what is wrong in the world. In fact, you can't even read the world rightly apart from God's word, which helps you rightly see it. But there's another and more insidious danger here. What I'm telling you is that your sons and daughters, your brothers and sisters, your male and female members and your churches, they should know more about what the Bible says is right than what the world gets wrong. Both are needed. Of course they are. But if you get the ratio backwards, then you may have people who can speak boldly about rainbow flags and progressive politics. But it will not come from a place of being grounded in a love for the truth. It will come from a reactionary posture that is so easily manipulated by our enemy to react again to what is good at some point down the road. Many people who walk away from the faith later in life were those who could tell you with great gusto everything that was wrong with our nation from a very young age. And they weren't always wrong in what they said. They might even have been mostly right. But they weren't saying it from a firm foundation provided by a solid grasp of God's truth. And that means they were never trained into discernment. They were only trained into reactionary opposition that loves to critique and oppose. And it won't be long before that love of opposition turns the guns on the Word of God itself. I've seen it so many times. So teach the truth that sets us free. And teach it in such a way that you don't under-emphasize exactly those truths that devil is attacking right now. Women, especially young women need to know their emotions are a gift, but they are not an infallible guide. Your emotions can be wrong in other words. You can feel like it's mean to punish a criminal, but that doesn't make it mean if the punishment fits the crime. That's just called justice. And your feelings are called wrong. Men and especially young men need to know righteous anger is good. Jesus had it, so did Paul, so did all the psalmist who prayed for God to wipe their enemies from the earth. But unrighteous wrath is a great evil and it will never produce the righteousness of God. Fifth and finally, the church is resilient. So make yours strong. We have this as a sure promise from our Lord. He says, "I will build my church and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it." That is gloriously true. But it might not look like what you think. This is not a guarantee that grave errors and hard times will never affect the church. In fact, many tragedies have been fallen the church across many ages. This shouldn't surprise us. We see those kinds of things happening before the pages of the New Testament finish. Why should we not think such a challenge could happen in our day too? This then is our hope, not a triumphalist church that never experiences any setbacks, but rather a church who, despite many setbacks over time, will always find its way again. GK Chesterton put it like this, Christianity has died many times and risen again for it had a God who knew the way out of the grave. Now I don't think the church in the West is dead, though I confess some days it seems like it has one foot in the grave, but we belong to the God of Resurrection. And so, and so. Whether we will live to see a revival that keeps the church in this land from death or some other generation will see a resurrection that raises the church from the grave. In either case, the means by which God will do this are these. The church that can withstand the forces I've been describing tonight is a church who sees the problem clearly, knows that God is with us truly, is on guard against the devil whose crafty reaches the liberating truthfully and is made up of a church with strong and resilient communities. You know, I'm talking about churches where men know what it means to be a man. Women know what it means to be a woman and they're not embarrassed or disgusted by any of it. I'm talking about churches where families make the truth of God such a normal part of their lives that every other kind of life looks insane and undesirable by comparison. I'm talking about churches where the doctrines of our God and Savior are adorned with such joy that the allure of the world's approval pales in comparison to the fellowship we already have in Christ church. You just gotta know that kind of community doesn't happen by accident. It takes prayerful work and a lot of diligence paying careful attention to our lives and our teaching, as Paul says. Some of you would say, "Yeah, but Jesus promised "this would happen." He sure did. He also told us the means by which it would happen, which makes me think about the book of the Hobbit ends. Bill Boe's gone on his quest. He's done what he's set out to do, and he's utterly shocked that it all came true. He says, "The prophecies of the old songs "have turned out to be true after a fashion." Of course they have, Gandalf says, and why should they not prove true? Surely you don't disbelieve the prophecies just because you had a hand in bringing them about yourself. This is how the Lord works. He slays giants, but he also raises up a David to do it. And it's my prayer for you, brothers, that you would be exactly that kind of man. Following in the footsteps of your Savior, clinging tightly to everything that he's ever said, trusting in him fully and then acting on that faith with the kind of courage that's required to do something about the evil in this world for the good of all those who live in it. (upbeat music)