Mission Statement
The mission of this page is simple and focused: to edify Christian men by highlighting and summarizing podcasts specifically useful for Christian men in areas including leadership, marriage, and family life. Most podcasts will be useful for married men or men seeking marriage, and an occasional podcast may be focused on single men.
I am intentionally writing summaries rather than adding my personal reviews of the podcasts. I plan on updating this page normally on a weekly basis.
Week of June 23, 2024
Founders Ministries
The Christian and the Civil Government (Part 1-5)
- The general thrust of Romans 13:1-7 is that Christians are to be submissive to the governing authorities that are God ordained.
- Governing authorities are only given their authority from the author who is God. Governments sometimes they fall far short of upholding God’s standard of righteousness and justice. In one example that has become common, some hypocritical governing authorities have not abided by the lockdowns they enforced in 2020-2022. While it is understandable that people do not want to respect such authorities, nonetheless we are called to give honor and deference to authorities.
- Government is to wield the sword to deter criminals and to enforce retributive justice. If we do not submit to authority, we are subject to God’s wrath and the sword of authority.
- Submitting to authority is not unquestioning obedience. Christians are also called to submit to each other. It is a deference for the position of authority.
- God ordained different spheres of authority: family, church, government. We are to obey authorities within their sphere of authority. Churches that resisted mandates to stay open did so rightly to obey God over men. We see biblical examples, even in Paul, John the Baptist, of calling government to follow righteousness and justice.
Week of June 16, 2024
Renewing Your Mind
- The husband has been given the final authority for the family, and this is a weighty responsibility. The call for the wife to submit to her husband’s leadership indicates no difference in dignity or value between the husband and wife.
- No Christian woman has concerns about submitting to the Lord if He were her husband. The husband is called to sacrifice his life for his wife as Christ has done for the church.
- The wife wants his husband to cherish her and honor her and offer her to Christ while protecting her integrity. The husband wants his wife’s admiration.
Week of June 9, 2024
Renewing Your Mind
- God issued the first malediction when He says that it was not good for man to be alone. God provided a solution for man’s loneliness. Eve was a helpful suitable for him. He created marriage as a gift for our well being.
- God regulates marriage – He creates marriage in the form of a covenant. Idea of a covenant is rooted deeply in Christianity. Covenant is a contract, at the heart is a promise, and it has stipulations and provisions.
- There is no such thing as a private contract. A covenant is undertaken in the presence of witnesses. In front of every authority structure in your life, you make promises and vows.
Week of June 2, 2024
Grace to You Radio
A Plan for Your Family: God’s vs. the World’s, Part 3
- The Jewish and pagan marriage and sexual standards of Christ’s time were far different than the new life Paul describes for Christians in Ephesians 5, the focus of this sermon.
- Jewish women had no legal rights. According to the school of Hillel, the Mosaic law that allowed a man to divorce his wife for indecency was interpreted to allow divorcing his wife for any reason.
- Women living in Athens without citizenship had little hope of marriage and resorted to prostitution for sustainment.
- By 200 B.C., feminism had become rampant. Roman women were challenging husbands in feats of strength, abandoning pursuits of embroidery, reading, songs, and instruments, and taking up fencing and wrestling. Women avoided having children to keep their youthful looks.
- The ancient world had the same sexual immorality that is being normalized today: adultery, divorce, prostitution, homosexuality, sexualization of children. Marriage becomes a fight for rights, and this creates chaos.
- God’s plan is an authority and submission plan, not inferiority but harmony.
- What is most important is not the behavior of our partner, but our relationship to God. Successful family life is defined by what you do not tolerate.
Week of May 26, 2024
Straight Truth Podcast
Biblical Masculinity and Femininity Under Attack
- Christ is the ultimate model for a man in his role as husband in Ephesians 5. Christ exhibits a supernatural combination of strength and gentleness in the same life. Christ is someone who would not break off a bruised reed. This allows a man to lead and love his wife and lead his children without exasperating them.
- This supernatural combination of strength and gentleness is only available to fallen men by regeneration and sanctification of the Spirit.
- Protecting and providing are characteristic of masculinity and headship of the husband.
Grace to You Radio
A Plan for Your Family: God’s vs. the World’s, Part 2
- The key to all relationships is to be Spirit-filled, be speaking with psalms/hymns/spiritual songs, be filled with thankfulness, and to embrace Christ-like submission.
- Christ was submissive to the Father’s will and need of man.
- In all Christian relationships, there will be a spirit of equality, a spirit of authority, and a spirit of submission.
- As sin has a desire for Cain, so God’s curse on the woman was to desire her husband. As a curse, God’s curse of “desire” on the woman as no natural positive desire but a desire to rule over the man, to force him to do certain things. Likewise, the man is cursed to want to dominate, and his rule can be oppressive and insensitive. This is how depravity of the human heart reveals itself.
- Hope exists where people are Spirit-filled. Conflict goes where the Holy Spirit dominates.
Week of May 19, 2024
The Sword and The Trowel
Joe Rigney |Leadership & Emotional Sabotage – Resist the Anxiety Wrecking Our World
- Steps of emotional sabotage of leadership: abdication, idolatry, and blame shifting. Seen in Adam’s response to Eve and the serpent.
- Family headship of the husband is an indicative not an imperative. Dual calls to love and submit are imperatives. Complementarian movement can sometimes confuse these by juxtaposing headship and submission.
- Temptations and causes of sabotage: name-calling for being a leader, emotional blackmail of the leader, and not knowing and staying true to the husband’s mission.
- Emotional blackmail as coined by John Piper is synonymous with how Shakespeare describe pity as a tool that can be used to attack the degree, or center of gravity, of an institution as Shakespeare called it. Example is a child threatening suicide if their parents don’t support a transition.
- J.D. Greear ironically called for tearing down hierarchies when he was SBC President. This behavior is consistent with abdicating his leadership role. The SBC has been subject to leadership and emotional sabotage.
Grace to You Radio
A Plan for Your Family: God’s vs. the World’s, Part 1
- This is the first episode in a series called The Fulfilled Family from sermons in 1996. MacArthur has said this series is the most requested by listeners.
- Dr. Armand Nicolai, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard medical school, sees the trend to destroy the family as a devasting trend. He points to parents not raising their own children, family moving frequently, TV dominating homes, lack of family communication, and divorce threatening our way of life. He predicted this will result in increased mental illness, violent crimes, suicide, and bizarre sexual experimentation.
- Ages 6 through 12 are formative years when a foundation will be put down or not put down.
- Eph. 5:18 is the verse that unlocks the rest. Whatever we are going to do in terms of our Christian life, whether it’s our marriage or our family, it has to flow out of a life controlled by the Holy Spirit.
- Being filled with the Spirit is obedience to Christ, being filled with praise and thanksgiving, and producing fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, thankfulness, and self-control.
- In our relationships, it is hard to argue with someone thankful for everything.